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enjoy the moment.” Andrew kicks him in the ankle.
    “No wait, there’s an exposed nail; let me find the hammer—”
    “Milo,” Andrew says in his most stern voice, which isn’t that stern at all when it cracks. He clears his throat. “Shut up, sit down and drink your Coke. We can fix that later.”
    Milo sighs and sits down. Andrew can tell he’s working very hard not to examine the fort for more flaws.
    “We’ll be here again, you know,” Andrew says. “We have time to fix things up if we want. For now, it’s mostly done; it’s awesome . We’re awesome.”
    “Yeah. True.” Milo smiles; his hair is a shaggy mess and his face is spotted with pimples that have come and gone as they’ve started to hit puberty. His shirt is dirty, they’re both sweating and it’s sweltering in the fort—even though it’s in the shade, the heat of their bodies in the confined space is driving the temperature up to uncomfortable. Milo is right—it is small, and being so close to Milo makes a completely different heat suffuse his body. It’s confusing and new and unwelcome, and, if he doesn’t distract himself immediately, will be very obvious.
    Andrew distracts himself by looking over their creation. The wooden floor is rough enough to need more sanding. The walls are made of mismatched wooden boards—some bought and some scavenged—that don’t fit together perfectly, especially around the small window and door. One day, when it’s not about a billion degrees, Andrew wants to paint the walls inside. Milo looks up to examine the roof while they finish lunch, and Andrew contemplates whether making some sort of sign outside the fort would be too childish.
    It’s far from perfect, but still, for that moment, Andrew can’t imagine that he’s ever been happier.

chapter three
    J unior year of high school is the worst year of Milo’s life to date. Between balancing swim team, National Honor Society, the volunteer hours he has to do and his grades in AP classes, Milo is always strained and overwhelmed. Disappointment and anger sit like a constant, suffocating blanket over his home.
    Two weeks into his fall semester, Milo comes home to a pile of messy papers from his room on the kitchen table. The house is dead quiet, silence so menacing Milo has to swallow down rising nausea.
    His room is turned upside down. His mattress is flipped off the bed. Every drawer in his dresser has been removed and emptied.
    Privacy in his home is an illusion; there is always the threat that his father might decide to search his room. He is required to turn in homework and assignments randomly when asked, so his father can keep tabs on his progress.
    But this—this is new. There’s not a clue in the house, no squeaking floorboard or the ping of a phone chiming. He has no idea if anyone is home. But a cold sweat dews, and his heart begins to race. Panic nips at his heels, ugly and familiar but monstrous, as he struggles to think of what might have set this off, if he left anything incriminating in his room.
    He can’t think of anything though, and that’s the worst.
    There are no instructions in his room. Down at the table, he finds leftover assignments, papers he turned in, notes from friends at school, all piled up. Milo doesn’t dare read the notes; he knows his shaking hands would find some conversation or joke he’s going to pay for. There are no instructions in the kitchen either. No one is home, there’s no one to tell him what to do, or how to beg to make it well. Any course of action he can think of carries the weight of repercussion, because it won’t be the right one. Nothing he does now is going to be right.
    So he sits. He sits at the kitchen table and waits. The shadows grow long, and after a while he silences his phone so Andrew’s texts stop interrupting the punishment he’s taking right now—a sentence of anxiety and fear and anticipation.
    His father comes home late from work and deposits his briefcase by the door. He