10

I’ve known Max since the first day of kindergarten. We’ve been best friends ever since. We used to pretend we were brothers. I used to imagine how great it would be to live with Max. We could hang out all the time, and I’d get to live in a huge house. We stopped pretending we were brothers after Sam was born. I guess it would have been kind of strange to keep pretending when I had a real brother.

In some ways Max and I are the same. That’s probably why we’ve been friends for so long. In other ways, though, we’re different. Like, for instance, I live in an apartment. Max lives in a house. He lives on the same street as Poppy, my grandpa, on the other side of the park. Poppy’s house is old and small, but it has a big backyard. Max’s house is newer and way bigger than Poppy’s. Max has a huge bedroom with a big-screen television that he uses for gaming. His basement is almost as big as my whole apartment.

It was after the Fifth Grade Spring Chess Challenge that I really started to wonder if we were still best friends. We walked to school together, but once we got there, Max would take off to hang out with his friends from the chess club. I’d stand around and wait for the bell to ring. Sometimes I played four square with some of the other guys. A lot of times I’d watch Max hanging out with his chess friends and wonder what was so great about them.

Max and I used to do everything together. We rode our bikes and read comics and drew and played on the computer. Now it seems we don’t like the same things anymore. Max is all about chess, and I’m not really sure what I’m all about. Maybe I’m about collecting old books. I don’t know.

I came across a box of old Hardy Boys books in Poppy’s basement last summer when we were sorting through some stuff. He said I could have them. The oldest one I have is volume four, The Missing Chums. My copy is a first edition. It’s from 1928. It’s worth money. I saw another first edition for sale online for $450. I love the way it smells. The other Hardy Boys books I have are newer than The Missing Chums, but they’re still old. I’ve collected a few other old books, too. I have an old atlas that I bought with Poppy at a secondhand bookshop. I used some of my allowance money for it. It’s big and heavy, and some of the countries on the maps don’t even exist anymore. I also have a cool book about space exploration from the 1960s. They thought we’d have colonies on Mars by now.

But other than my new old books, I was the same as I’d always been. It felt like Max was the one who was changing, and that was what was different. I tried to explain the whole thing to my dad one day. He suggested I join the chess club or find some new friends. He said there was no point in being mad. He said it was like getting mad at the seasons for changing. He wasn’t much help.

I tried to explain it to my mom. I tried to tell her how sometimes it felt like Max and I weren’t best friends anymore. She seemed to understand exactly how I felt. She said it was good to talk about my feelings. She told me about what happened with her best friend when she was my age. They went through a rough patch, she said, and for a while they didn’t talk to each other. Then, one day, they went back to being best friends again. There was no particular reason. It’s just the way friendship is sometimes. It changes. She suggested that I talk to Max. She said he might even feel the same way I did.

“Do you ever wish things were still the way they used to be?” I asked Max a few days after the whole Egg Man incident.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“It used to seem like it was just you and me,” I said. “Remember how we used to pretend we were brothers?”

“Now you have a real brother,” said Max, matter-of-factly.

“And now you’re hanging out with Jamal, and Youssef, and Gretchen, and everyone else in the chess club,” I said.

“You know, you could join the chess club anytime you want,” he suggested. “You could hang out with us, and then we’d get to see each other more.”

“It’s not that,” I said, knowing it was partly that. “I don’t want to join the chess club. It’s weird. It’s hard to explain.”

“I know,” he said. “It is weird.”

“I guess things just change,” I said.

“I guess,” he agreed.

“Remember that movie we saw in health and phys ed with Mr. Cameron?” I said. “Remember how it said puberty makes you change and act kind of weird?”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure we’re not going through puberty,” said Max. “We’re only eleven.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Good. I don’t know if I could handle it.”

“Me neither,” said Max.

Talking didn’t really fix anything, but at least now I knew that I wasn’t the only one who thought things were getting a little weird. I guess that was good.

But it sucks.

It sucks that things have to change.