Here’s a letter that probably doesn’t often pop up in the advice columns of teen magazines:

Dear Random Magazine Editor,

There’s something I need to tell my boyfriend, but I’m not sure how to bring it up. You see, until a few weeks ago, he was a spirit inhabiting a younger version of his own body. Or not a spirit, exactly. He wasn’t dead yet; he was just seriously injured, dying at some point in the future. His younger self was able to access memories from his future self, connecting to his thoughts across time and space until his older body died.

Makes perfect sense, right? Okay, maybe it doesn’t, but I promise you, it’s all true. I’m not writing to ask if you believe it, anyway.

Before his future spirit disappeared, my boyfriend knew he was going to join the marines. He was going to die in a war. A war that hasn’t happened yet. And now that he can’t remember this anymore, I’m tortured by questions. What I want you to tell me is this: Should I tell him? Should I beg him not to enlist? How can I make him believe me when I am so convinced no one in their right mind would that I’m not even going to mail this letter?

Sincerely,

Confused

Forget mailing it; I never even sat down to write it. Advice letters are just not me. I don’t even read the magazines that print them. But I thought about those questions all the time. I thought about writing to someone, asking for help. Who could I turn to? My mom—and raise her suspicions? Since the day she’d held me as I cried in the hospital, I’d noticed her staring at me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. She’d been suggesting I go visit my dad, and when I reminded her that I couldn’t exactly miss school during my junior year, the one colleges look at most closely, she, who was always so enthusiastic about my education, would say things like “What? They have schools in California.”

And Rosemary? I hadn’t told her about Lucas’s delusions before he went into the hospital because I hadn’t thought she’d believe me. Why would she now?

Lucas was discharged from the hospital two days after he’d flatlined and revived. He wasn’t allowed to climb stairs or go to school, but even just sitting on the couch, we had fun. I couldn’t stop touching him, reaching for his hand, tucking my head into the crook of his elbow. We watched Beavis and Butt-Head, The Simpsons, a new channel, the Food Network, that featured this young chef named Emeril.

We ate all the microwave popcorn Tommy was supposed to be selling for Boy Scouts.

A photographer from the local paper came to take Lucas’s picture.

I taught Lucas how to make the friendship bracelets I taught the little kids how to make at camp, and he made me an anklet.

All the neighbors dropped off casseroles and we ate ourselves sick on lasagna and tuna noodle.

For a week, Mrs. Dunready set her alarm for two-hour intervals during the night and woke Lucas to be sure he didn’t drift too deeply into sleep. They were both exhausted. She joked it was like having a newborn again.

His dad moved back in, supposedly so he could get Tommy and Wendell’s breakfast (toaster waffles) and, when the casseroles ran out, dinner (more toaster waffles) while Mrs. Dunready slept on Lucas’s clock. But Lucas believed that his dad’s moving back in meant the separation was off. “It’s disgusting,” he said, sounding pleased. “I heard them laughing. The other night, my mom said she needed some fresh air and was going to walk around the neighborhood and my dad went with her. They were like a pair of senior citizens or something.”

I tried hard to remember what Lucas had said. That his parents got divorced? Or just separated for a little while? The distinction mattered. Was the future not set in stone?

All the doctors except Dr. Katz lost interest in Lucas’s case once it was clear he was out of danger. They said he was allowed to go back to school, but I still went home with him to make sure he was okay. Rosemary gave us rides, as Lucas wasn’t allowed to drive yet.

Then Dr. Katz said Lucas was okay to be left alone. He was okay to drive a car and to sleep through the night. But still no hockey. That was when I thought he was probably well enough for me to tell him why he had to stay away from the marines.

But I didn’t.

I thought about bringing it up after a round of aggressive thumb wrestling on the Dunreadys’ couch (Lucas cheats). I thought about it while sitting on a bench in his backyard on a suddenly warm early-spring day, the moisture from the ground soaking through the soles of the old pair of sneakers I was wearing.

I thought about it when Rosemary showed me and Lucas the latest batch of Jason letters she’d had to hide from her parents and said, “I wish he never even existed.” I thought about it when Lucas and I were on a bit of a sugar high after buying Tommy and Wendell a package of Oreos and eating most of them ourselves.

I’ve lost track of all the times I opened my mouth to explain, or to ask if any of what he’d told me sounded familiar now, or to try to let him know that there was much more to the story than just the parts everyone was talking about. But there was something sharp, something worried, about the way Lucas looked at me. He was guarded, even when we were playing games or watching TV or listing the fifteen CDs we’d bring with us to a desert island or the top ten disaster movies of all time. It was like he sensed that I had something to say and knew he didn’t want to hear it. So I kept waiting. And as I did, the shell of his not-knowing grew thicker, felt harder to crack.

I didn’t have much time. His eighteenth birthday was coming up. And since he could drive but not play hockey, Lucas began spending more afternoons hanging out at the MEPS in the mall, counting down the days until he could sign up.

We fought.

“How come all the marines they profile in this brochure end up owning their own businesses?” I said while we were eating sundae cups in his car after he taught me to parallel park in preparation for taking my driving exam. “Are they impossible to hire? Do they have problems acclimating to work environments where it’s not okay to settle disputes with your fists?”

Lucas rolled his eyes.

“What about the ones who end up in prison because they can’t reacclimate to society after being in the military?” I said. “How come there’s nothing in here about the ones who turn out to like prison because it reminds them of living on a base? Where do they talk about all the chemicals soldiers were exposed to during Desert Storm?”

“Are you jealous?” he teased. “Because you can’t serve in combat? Admit it—handling a rifle is your secret fantasy. You’re a closet gun nut.”

Lucas still had the power to make me laugh. Really hard.

But laughing or fighting, he wouldn’t talk about the marines for real, as if by engaging in a sincere conversation—no matter where things went after that—he would be conceding whatever point he believed I was trying to score.

“Look at this,” I said one time when Lucas picked me up after a visit to the MEPS and there was a folder of information “for parents” in the backseat of the car. “See this list of frequently asked questions? Every single answer tells you to ‘contact a recruiter.’ Look here. They tell parents that every man deserves a chance to serve his country. What’s your mom think about all this?” I said.

“She thinks it’s great,” Lucas said, his mouth a straight line after he told this lie that he was halfheartedly trying to pass off as a joke. And then, as close as he ever got to taking me seriously: “She’s made her peace with it. It’s part of having my dad back home. So you can see, it’s good.”

It wasn’t good. “Is she going to go down to the recruitment office with you and take pictures as you swear the oath of service?” I said. The brochure said there was a room set up for this at the MEPS.

“Somehow,” he said, his voice short and clipped, “I don’t think she’ll find the time.”

While we were arguing, we were still often holding on to each other. Talking about the brochures in the car, Lucas didn’t take his hand off my leg, where he’d casually draped it. Another time, sprawled on the porch furniture at Nunchuck’s cousin’s beach house, I laid out all the ridiculous defense-spending numbers from the federal budget. I was leaning against Lucas’s arm and he had one leg wrapped around mine.

In the school newspaper office, I’d look up from my table a dozen times, hoping to see him swaggering into the room. And he often did. He would usually be waiting for me when debate practice was over.

He could still make me shiver just by looking at me. He teased me; he tickled me; he’d come up behind me, push my knees forward with his so I lost my balance, and then reach his arms around in front and catch me just before I fell.

He was still friendly beyond reason. Strangers smiled at him. Waitresses gave him free drinks. Kids in our school, kids on his team—they liked him. I liked him.

And … this is important for me to remember. Lucas still loved me. He would still run his finger down this little curve just beneath my rib cage and say, “This is my favorite part of your body.” I would finish saying something that seemed perfectly innocuous, and he’d say, “I just don’t know anyone else like you.”

I remember the last hockey game of the season. Lucas was finally allowed back on the ice. Out of loyalty, Coach O’Reilly put Lucas in the starting line. I guess he felt sorry for Lucas. But Lucas’s errors were costly. It was like he’d forgotten about passing. Every time he got the puck, he went in for a score, and he wasn’t enough of a player for that to work out in the team’s favor.

That was new.

On the Saturday night after that game, when he was still under strict orders from the doctor not to drink, to be home by nine, to take it easy, Lucas decided to hang out with the team and drink himself into a stupor.

“Why don’t we just rent a movie and go to your house?” I said.

Lucas said, “No way.” Later, I’d realize he was frustrated by the way he’d played, by the limits of his mysterious brain condition. But at the time, his anger felt personal.

He said, “We don’t always have to be together, you know,” and I felt as if he’d slapped me in the face. How could someone who said he loved me lash out in that way?

Monday, it was like that conversation had never happened. We held hands in the hallway. He kissed me in the front seat of his car. He came over after school and we did our homework together on the floor of my bedroom, then chopped the onions while my mom cooked dinner.

Before he’d gone to the hospital, he used to hold my face and just look at me, like he was trying to sear an image into his brain. He didn’t do that anymore. But he knew me; he knew the best parts of me, the private self that no one else except maybe Rosemary and my mom could see. I could look at him across a room and know that he knew I was me.

And also that he was going to die.