Chapter 2: Lost Decade, Shattered Bonds

The second the kid ran off, I snatched up the phone, hands shaking. Derek had always been my lifeline. If anyone could help me make sense of this, it was him.

I fumbled through the contact list, searching for something familiar. My heart hammered in my chest. Most of my old friends were gone. No group chats. No dumb memes or drunken late-night texts. Just a bland list of strangers and a handful of work emails I was too scared to open. I paused at a memory—a flash of our old group chat, “The League of Average Dudes,” with a stupid pizza emoji as the icon. Gone. A sad smile flickered across my face before panic took over again.

I finally found Derek’s number and hit call. The dial tone dragged on forever, my palms sweating.

At last, Derek answered, voice sharp and raw: “Seriously, man? After all this time, you just call me out of the blue?”

I swallowed hard, thrown by his anger. “Hey, man, I… something really weird happened. Can you come over?”

My voice shook, but I tried to play it cool. Derek could always tell when I was hiding something.

Derek and I go way back. First grade, fighting over chocolate milk at lunch. After that, we were inseparable—every secret, every scraped knee, every dumb idea.

If I ever needed to bury a body, Derek would show up with a shovel and never ask why.

I remembered one summer—Fourth of July, the neighbor’s kid tossed a firecracker in the storm drain and the whole thing blew. Derek yanked me back at the last second, took the blast himself, and spent two weeks in the hospital. I brought him Jell-O and comic books, feeling guilty and lucky. We were brothers in everything but blood.

Derek’s voice softened, but there was an edge: “Jason, are you sick again? What, you’re still hung up on Emily and called to cuss me out again?”

Emily. The campus beauty. Yesterday she’d just agreed to go out with me. Now Derek was talking like it was ancient history. What had I missed?

A pit opened in my stomach. Had I really lost touch with Derek?

I pleaded with him, voice cracking, begging him to come over. I’d never felt more desperate.

He cursed me out for a good minute, but finally, with a sigh and a mutter about idiots and lost causes, he agreed. As the call ended, I slumped back, relief flooding me.