As I write about my time with Lucas, I find I remember so much more than I thought I would. Somehow, one memory leads to another. They don’t exist in a vacuum but rather overlap with one another, each image, smell, or sound that I recall just another link in a very, very long chain. I pull and pull and never seem to get to the end of it.

Some of the memories I can tell are important, but others surface for no apparent reason. Dex opening his locker, only to have a pile of books cascade down on top of him. He jumped back, caught a history text in one hand. Why would I remember that?

Rose spraying me with a can of Reddi-wip outside the hockey locker room after a big win, any disagreements between us about Dex and Lucas fading in the excitement of the victory.

Val dragging a coffee table she’d refinished through the front door of the house in her Shaw Festival T-shirt, spewing swearwords appropriate to a sailor.

Lucas throwing an arm over his mother’s shoulder after Tommy announced at the dinner table that he didn’t want anything for his birthday except his dad to come back home.

Are the memories we recall governed by the feelings attached to them? Is that why they stay with us? Or do we remember only what we remind ourselves of over and again as the years go by? How is it possible that some memories you’d like to hold on to slip away and others—mundane and sad alike, the memories you’d just as soon forget—stay, bubbling to the surface of your brain for no reason at all?

I remember Rosemary’s dad quizzing us on the state capitals over her mother’s cornflake chicken, horrified that we were less than two years away from college and didn’t know them all.

I remember my mom, who hates games, acquiescing to penny poker with Val and me, shaking her head in annoyance when she forgot the difference between a straight and a flush, giving me her “What have you gotten me into?” look when I threw down four kings.

A Sunday-afternoon phone call with my dad, the click of one metal ball hitting another in the toy he kept on his desk as he told me about a new protocol for fluid absorption.

Lucas waiting by my locker at the end of a school day.

Lucas tying his skates.

Lucas sneaking up on Tommy and Wendell in a snowball fight.

My memories of Lucas surprise me in dreams. They come back to me as if I just experienced them yesterday. I remember what he smelled like, how his skin felt when I touched his cheek, how I could shiver with pleasure just hearing his voice on the phone. I can see him fresh in my mind’s eye, the way he looked coming off the ice after hockey, his hair matted to his head, his cheeks red, one glove tucked under his arm as he worked the other one free with his teeth.

During a debate tournament where I was losing a round, up on an auditorium stage, in front of a crowd: one of the middle school helpers slipped a note onto my desk. I recognized Lucas’s chicken scratch right away.

Chin up.

How had he sent that note? The hockey team was in a tournament too. Lucas wasn’t here.

Except he was. All the way in the back, against the wall next to the auditorium doors. His hair was still wet. He must have rushed here between games. He lifted a hand and gave me a thumbs-up before rolling back out the door.

Early in March, Lucas and I were buying ice cream in the mini-mart of a gas station. There was a woman in front of us with a loaf of bread, two cans of tuna, and a bag of Doritos. A little girl in baggy pants and a matching tunic I later learned to call a salwar kameez was tugging on her skirt. “Hey,” we heard from behind, and turned toward the granola bar and mixed nuts section. There was Sanjay Shah. His “Hey” was for Lucas, as if Lucas was someone he would have said hi to passing in the halls.

I did a quick calculation. The woman in front of us must be Sanjay’s mom, the little girl his sister. I knew Sanjay’s family was living in our town’s one hotel, which you reached through the parking lot behind the gas station. So the tuna fish and bread—was that dinner?

Sanjay took a step closer to Lucas, and Lucas’s arm tightened around my waist. “You’re the guy,” Sanjay said to him. “You’re the one who brought back my dog.”

By now Sanjay’s mom was looking at us too. Even his sister was standing up straighter, as if eager to hear how the stranger her brother was speaking to would respond.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucas responded, his voice deadpan, uncharacteristically unfriendly.

“No,” Sanjay said. “It was you.” He took another step closer. “The terrier, remember? Brown with black ears? The night of the fire, you came down to the fire station with him. I saw you leave him with the guy washing the truck. Where did you find him?”

Lucas sighed. “He ran down to the river. Something happened to his paw, so he couldn’t walk.”

“He had glass in it,” Sanjay said. “The vet fixed it. He said if you hadn’t found him, he probably would have been too weak to find his way up the hill.”

“Yeah,” said Lucas. “That’s what I was guessing.”

“But how did you know to look?” Sanjay said. His black eyes were flashing, his Adam’s apple sticking out like a challenge. He had the beginnings of a mustache on his lip.

Lucas shrugged. “I was down there anyway.”

“And you just guessed he was ours?”

Lucas stepped around Sanjay’s mother and pushed the quart of ice cream over to the cashier, who picked it up without looking at it. Like Sanjay’s mom and sister and me, the clerk was listening to the two boys.

“I figured,” Lucas said. “I’d heard about the fire, so I put two and two together.”

“Do you have a police scanner?” Sanjay asked. “You found the dog before the fire had even been put out. Also, you could have taken him to the police station or the shelter, but you knew to come to the station. How did you know he was ours?”

Sanjay put his hands in his pockets, determinedly waiting for an answer, but Lucas just stood there without even shrugging. “Okay,” Sanjay said when it was clear he wouldn’t get a response. He looked down at his feet, then back up. “Thanks. He really could have died.”

“Yup,” Lucas said. “I know.”

Another Lucas memory: We were at the pond in the woods behind his house. Tommy and Wendell were scraping up a fine mist of ice dust behind them as they skated quickly back and forth, their skate blades clacking on the frozen surface. Even though they were playing by moonlight, they went at it furiously, their sticks tangling, their narrow hips checking each other, as if they were one person tripping over his own feet.

When Lucas skated out to meet them, their game became two against one. They tried to shoot against him while he guarded the net. Then he was the monkey in monkey in the middle.

I stayed to the outer edge of the cleared ice—I hadn’t been on skates in years, and I was slowly figuring out how to get my balance. But then suddenly, Lucas was behind me. He skated into me as if he were going to knock me over, but he caught me, his hands wrapped around my waist, the two of us moving forward as one. At breakneck speed.

We skated in circles around the cleared area of the ice, twisting into figure eights, Lucas holding my hands and skating backward, then coming back to join me, pushing the pace. I was pretty much screaming the whole time, but afterward I felt completely different about my balance. We could hold hands then and skate and I didn’t feel like I was in danger of falling. In the bitter cold, we skated into clouds of our own breath. Beautiful.

“Look up,” Lucas said, and there was the full moon and stars and stars and stars. They traveled so deep back into the soft blackness it felt like they were falling on us.

“I feel so small,” I said.

Lucas nodded.

“And dizzy,” I said.

He nodded again.

And this, now, I remember thinking, this was a moment, a peak moment, like the peak day of foliage I’m always waiting for in the fall. It was a peak of happiness, but “happiness” isn’t even the right word. What I felt was a connection, like a tunnel running between our minds had been opened and could never be closed.

“Maybe I won’t sign up,” Lucas said.

“For … for the marines?” I asked. “You’d do that?”

“Maybe being back here, being allowed to return, even with the headaches, maybe this is my chance.”

I didn’t dare say anything. Lucas wrapped his arms around me tighter.

And then he did this thing. Like we were figure skaters, he grabbed me around the waist and lifted me into the air. I trusted him so completely it didn’t make me lose my balance. I landed easily, and when he did it again, I lifted my arms above my head, feeling all the power of the night sky, the fire inside the faraway stars, the sheer momentum and force of my feelings for Lucas giving me the strength to hold the pose. As I landed, Lucas wrapped his arms around me and I breathed into his jacket. All I wanted was to stay like that, holding on to him in the night air.

I was sure we would have more moments like that. That they would go on forever.

I was wrong.