Maybe today will be the day. I sit down and do something about it. I dig in my heels, clear fuzz from my wooly head, and leap. I don’t think about where the hole goes or what I’ll find at the bottom. I leap while humming a triumphant song knowing that hope ends well since what starts that way should end that way. So I think as I fall with a smile stretched across a tight face.

School was a dark place. It is late afternoon when I leave the side door. I find Henry waiting for me against the wall tapping his fingers against his jeans in a repeated rhythm.

We talk for a bit and then he waves. I wish I remembered the last words he said before walking away. Regrets are like that: they start small and before you know it there’s an avalanche. I’m almost glad I don’t remember. At the time I probably wasn’t thinking about much of anything, certainly nothing important, nothing about the aliens that waited a block from our school.

They weren’t aliens as you learned about them at the movies.