Everything Breaks by Vicki Grove Page B

is just so awful, you know? Well, of course you do, you guys were best friends.”
    â€œRight.” I knew all three things she’d mentioned. It was unbelievable, and it was awful. And we were best friends. Zero and then Steve ever since they moved to Clevesdale, but Trey and I practically forever, since we were barely four years old.
    At first I hated Wee Ones Preschool because this kid named Charley kept hitting me on the head day after day with a can of chicken noodle soup he’d pilfered from somewhere and kept hidden in his Spider-Man backpack. Then suddenly this boy with crazy orange hair arrived for the first time, teary-eyed from being left behind by his mother. I told him a story to make him feel better, the one my own mother had told me the day she first left me there, something about a bulldozer named Annie who loved doing preschool things, sharing crayons, making music. By the end of that story our friendship was sealed, and the very next day Trey saved me from Charley.
    He tricked Charley into taking off his right shoe by telling him there was a rock in it, then he threatened to have a Ninja Turtle action figure bite off Charley’s big toe unless Charley gave up that can of soup. I can still see four-year-old Trey kneeling, his hair a bright tangled curtain on both sides of his face as he held that action figure so close to Charley’s bare foot that Charley didn’t dare move or even scream for grown-up help. Trey calmly waited for Charley to quit his angry but silent crying and to simply surrender his unlawful weapon, and Charley finally threw the can of soup at the wall and a girl named Jessica pounced on it and took it home in her Barbie case that afternoon.
    Everyone was so impressed by the clever bravado behind that plan that Trey pretty much took over leadership of the rug-rat societal structure at Wee Ones. We all began letting him decide complicated things—how long someone’s block tower had to stand before someone else could charge over and knock it down, what you could cut when we got to use scissors and what it wasn’t cool to cut even if the teacher wasn’t looking, how many people it took to cram the ragtag stuffed animals back into their tattered refrigerator box at day’s end.
    Over and over again I saw Trey gain that same sort of respect in various situations. He was the renegade trickster rabbit that people wanted to win the costume contest, not because he was bad in a cool way or even because his costume was good in a gross way but because he was unpredictable and fun-loving and patient with his plans. Trey never settled for smiling if the flashier response of howling was what the occasion called for.
    He was fond of risks because they made his life exciting and paid off for him far more often than they didn’t, and he was lucky and well liked. And I was his friend and became entitled through his friendship to the other two good friends Trey picked up along the way, guys similarly flashy and lucky and risky. Zero in eighth grade, Steve in ninth.
    â€œTucker? Hey, are you still there?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œSo, Jess and Aimee and I are making black armbands, enough for everybody. Out of, like, respect? To wear at school and stuff. We’ll give them to the juniors tomorrow, and the senior cheerleaders will give them to the seniors. Because see, Jilly and Kim and Traci are making them too. It was Traci’s idea. We wanted you to know. It’s the least we can do. What . . . was it like, Tuck? Awful, right?”
    A large black ant was traveling across the windowsill, dragging a crumb behind him. The ant was acting like the whole future of the world hung on what it was doing with that probably moldy piece of something. At any second I could drop on it with my fist and crumbs or anything else would have absolutely no meaning for it any longer.
    â€œTucker?”
    â€œMary Beth, did you see a large black dog at the