A/N: For best reading experience and most emotion, listen to ‘Torture’ by Les Friction as you read this. PS, Les Friction was one of the inspirations for this story I devote to my brother who died March 30th, of this year.

Act I

The last day that I spent with Pete was a clear day, and it was the day that I showed him my power. I had been afraid to tell anyone about, my parents didn’t know about it, and none of my friends knew about it. I had kept it a secret for so long that I always that it would only be that—a secret. But I hadn’t even thought about telling Pete until I saw him in the wheelchair. I hadn’t thought about telling him anything until he put the baseball cap on, and he and his mom—she was a hot mom, but I didn’t care when they came to my door that day. Pete was smiling, but his mother was in hysterics when she tumbled into my arms. Pete stopped smiling then and he bowed his head, and over his mother’s shoulder I saw him crying too.
            I had let them in, and his mother and I went into the kitchen, and she tried to tell me, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She fell beside me, and held my hand and cried with her lustrous brown hair cast over her face, and fresh tears gleamed on her cheeks. Then Pete came in and there was no hint of a smile on his face, and there was only silence.
            “My time is up, Rick.” He said in a low voice. I narrowed my eyes at him. He swallowed, and in a louder voice than I think he intended, he spoke again. “They say that I won’t make it to surgery tomorrow, they say that—that I’ll be gone by tonight.” He was choking up and before I knew it, tears streamed down the sides of my face, and I hugged his mother, and then I hugged him, and in that second we were all hugging. Tears on our faces.
            When my parents came home, Pete and I were on the porch playing go-fish. They asked why Pete’s mom looked so sad, and the story was told again, and the tears were spread again. My parents told Pete and his mother he could stay for dinner, and they agreed. We stayed on the porch while Pete’s mother went into chat with my parents.
            The wind blew softly, and the big tree in our front yard wavered, the grass was a lustrous emerald ocean. There was an ant walking along the porch rail, and there was a bee pollenating the flowers in the grass. The clouds were big and puffy, and the sky was an endless ocean all around.
            “Your go,” Pete said. I looked at him. His grey eyes were darker, and paler at the same time. I swallowed hard and slapped the cards down on the table, and I stood. He looked at me perplexed.
            “This isn’t how I want to spend the lah-lah-last day with my friend,” I could barely say ‘last’ without tears beginning to come from my eyes. Pete and I had spent so many days together, and done so many things. He had even come to Alaska with me that summer, and we had protected each other at school when the bullies came on us like vultures. Pete put his cards face down, still playing the game, and looked at me with a cocked head. I licked my lips and I leaned on the post, looking out at the street.
            “Hey, we can always do something else, I mean…” he trailed off as I looked at him, shaking my head.
            “What have you always wanted to do, Pete? All your life, what have you always dreamt of doing?” Pete didn’t answer, opened his mouth, closed it again, and then spoke.
            “I don’t know if you—” I was shaking my head viciously.
            “Don’t worry about it, just tell me, what have you always wanted to do, Pete, please.” I looked at him with glassy eyes. He and I stared at each other for a long moment, and then after a few seconds, he said, “I wanted to go to space. I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up and watch the stars pass in a daze, to see the beautiful planets spinning in outer space, and I wanted to walk on the moon, ride an asteroid like Captain Sprocket in the Adventures. I wanted to fly around the sun and dance on the deserts of Mars. I wanted to see the universe, because the world is just too small.” I nodded, and I told him to stay there.
            I bolted to the back shed, got my bike and some rope, and when I returned, I helped him down the stairs. I tied the chair to my bike in a way so that he was facing the house, and then I kicked the kickstand out.
            I crouched down in front of him. “Pete,” I began with my fingers laced into each other and my knuckles whitened because they were so tightly clutched. He stared at me, confused. “I want you to know that you have been one of the greatest friends I have ever had, and I will never forget you when you are gone. And that’s why—well, that’s why I’m going to show you my secret. I’m going to show you my magic tricks, okay? You may not understand now, but you will when we get there.” My bottom lip was trembling, and I wiped the tears that had appeared out of my face, and quickly got on my bike. I didn’t give him a chance ot say anything and before he could we were moving.
            Around us, the neighborhood was a flash of colors—yellow, red, green, blue—and there were the trees that were tall and opaque, casting shadows every which way. When I looked up, the clouds were fallowing us, forming themselves in all different shapes—angels, rabbits, and dragons—and they kept sailing on the azure ocean.
            We whizzed down hills, and I looked back several times to make sure he was still there. He was, and he was holding on for dear life, but he seemed to be at peace as he looked up a thte sky.
            We were going down Main Winsenburge Street, when he suddenly shouted for me to stop. When I stopped, and jogged to him. He smiled at him, and gripped my wrist. He pointed to the toy store across the street. “I want to fly a kite, too, and there’s a red one that I want in there.” He didn’t say it with a demanding voice, a sad, or even happy voice. He just said it. I nodded, and bolted into the store.
            Mr. Keningly was in the back probably, his ancient paperback novel was pages first on the glass counter of stuff. I looked around a moment and I grabbed the kite from off the shelf that it sat on near the back of the store. It was a big kite, crimson as a Spartan flag. Mr. Keningly was just coming out, and he was shouting as I sprinted across the street and tossed the kite to Pete. Mr. Keningly stopped at his door and then gasped at the sight. I looked back at him as we started up the hill again, and I saw he had taken his hat off to reveal his shiny head with white hairs all around it.
            We reached the top of a hill, and far below, and far beyond the street were the hills that overlooked the lake. Their grass hair wavered in the wind coming from the lake. Behind me Pete smiled and held up the kite. I nodded, and started down the hill. On the ground, in an instant, I saw the red diamond shape on the ground, and when I looked back, sure enough it was sailing through the sky, high above and touching the sun.
            Pete was smiling up at it, and I was glad I could give that much to him. I stopped at the break in the fence and dropped my bike. Pete was still watching the kite sail above us, hovering like a bird in midair. I picked him up, he was heavier than I would have expected, and he still held onto the kite as we walked up the hills, and finally we reached the one that had a full view of the entire lake. I set him down on the ground and he sat up with the string spindle in his hands and I sat next to me.
            For a few moments I didn’t say anything, but then I spoke through the wind.
“I didn’t just bring you up here to fly a kite and look at the lake glitter,” I said and he looked at me. He and I met eyes. “I came here to show you what I have never shown anyone else—not even my parents know about this.” I said, and he put the spindle down, but I quickly told him to hold onto it. I smiled at him. “You’re going to need it to fly.” He smirked at me, and then laughed.
            “You’re telling me that you can fly now?” I shook my head, serious.
            “Lie back, watch the clouds and the sky.” I said, and he was hesitant at first then he leaned back and put his hand son his stomach, the spindle in one hand. I lay back too, the grass was soft as my covers at home, if not softer. The red kite was a sigil in the sky, a ripping hole in the emerald like azure that was the sky. The clouds kept sailing. The sun was behind us, making everything bright and gay. “Close your eyes now, Pete, and think about your dream.”
            he suddenly sat up. “What are you going to do, man? Just tell me.” I shook my head.
            “Just close your eyes, Pete—” mine were already closed. “—and think about your dream.” He stared at me for a moment, then lay back down, I heard him do so.
            “They’re closed now.” He said. I sucked in a deep breath and then I felt the ground leave us, I felt it crumble like glass shattering. Our bodies became weightless, and the light of day was lost into a perfect effulgent mess of colors and bright lights. I opened my eyes.
            “Open your eyes now, Pete.” I said and when he did he gasped, and tried to sit up, bgut found that the ground was not there, rather nothing—just space, empty space. Around us was the universe spread out in every which direction. The sun was thousands of miles away, blazing an incandescent golden sphere, solar flares licked the space around it, and it sent rainbows attacking us. Pete’s body went from tan to blue, to red, to green, to golden, and back to tan again. He looked at me, and I smiled at him. There was such a big smile on his face, you wouldn’t have thought that he was going to die tonight, rather you would have thought that he had just learned to live.
            “How did you do this?” He asked me. I smiled and looked below us at an effulgent stare blazing south of Venus. I held out my hand and he took it.
            “Take a flight with me,” I said, and he smiled. I looked up at the kite, and it was there floating and waiting to be pushed. “Where do you want to go first?” I asked. He looked around him, unable to decide, and then he pointed to the northern lights on top of earth and I nodded.
            “Take me there, Pete, make the kite our sail,” I said and he looked overwhelmed, then he held out his kite arm and the kite was zipping through the stars in a few seconds. As we zoomed towards the lights, cerulean flames and scarlet birds engulfed us, we were a meteorite—a comet that shined over earth. The flames of the celestial wind danced around us, a twirling, complex dance of flares and flickers. When we were just outside of earth’s atmosphere, Pete stopped the kite, and the wind dissipated around us, joining the northern lights like rocks from the sky. They exploded in magnanimous and frightening bursts of antifreeze blues, reds, and greens.
            The lights wavered danced, and each light was just another wave of the massive sea of green. They swirled and snapped, slithering like snakes across the sky. Pete’s face was pure amazement, and when he looked at me he was covered with the emerald light that shined through the clouds. He then pulled the kite in another direction, and before I knew it we were engulfed in the blue and red winds of space, and we rocketed past Earth, Venus, and Mercury.
            When we reached the Sun, Pete made the kite fly even faster, and we were rocketing around the sun at the speed of a bullet. Transcendent arches of crimson infernos reaches up from the surface of the sun, a sea of gold and crimson. Rings of fire leapt out at us, and we flew through them, the solar flares whipped out and licked the stars, snatching them up as they went. The flares were light paint from a brush as they flung themselves out and stretched, and stretched until they swiveled out of existence. The magnanimous light of the sun caused our skin to glow just as bright, and the kite was on fire, but unharmed as the multicolored flames burned it. Stars were born from the very same fire, and when they were born they exploded against the sun, pallid rings belched from the kite, turning into their own aurorean lights.
            When we were half way around the sun, we were rocketing outwards, far beyond earth. We shot past Jupiter—a brown dust storm—Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and even the minuscule Pluto came our way. We were soaring out of the galaxy in a vast, tumultuous golden light and the kite guided us through the reaches of space as we flew. Pete was laughing as we flew faster and faster until all that was around us was the scintillating white light of wind.
            We broke the sound barrier, and the winds broke as we glided through space—I had let go of Pete’s hand and I was following him, my arms at my sides. Around us violet clouds thundered with azure lights. Suns burned green in the violet, and comets shined around them, doing their backwards dance. One flew past us, it was a red one and its frost licked our faces, the ice from it melting just as soon as it had frozen. Pete led me far beyond that storm, and to an entirely new galaxy. A black hole was feasting on an indigo sun, and the light that came from the cobalt sun was devoured into darkness as the black hole swallowed it. We flew past that.
            We went on and on, watching the solar storms of comets and red suns. We saw the Phoenix stars as they died sending effulgent tidal waves of light, and creating rips in the universe as black holes are born where they once were. The black hole begins to suck up all the dust and light of everything around it, and in turn that black hole disintegrates sending spears of blinding light and shrapnel like comets in every direction. Several stars are attracted to the explosion, and Pete and I watch as they slam into each other like my mother smashing potatoes together, and suddenly unimaginable light screams through the universe. Lighting trees and comet spears blare out of the infant star. This goes on for a long time, and now Pete turns to me and swims to me. He hugs me tightly, and he hugs me hard.
            “Thank you so much, thank you till the end of time.” He says, and I hug him in the blinding light of the crying infant star. He looked at me then, his baseball cap sending shadows across his face, these same shadows are turned different colors by the tears of the star behind us. “But you still haven’t told me how you did it.” He said. I smile and take his hand.
            “We need to go somewhere quieter.” I said and I punched one hand out—like superman—and we were barreling through the galaxy again the scintillating light bellows around us, and we broke the sound barrier again, this time we were in our own galaxy, and we rocketed towards home.
             We didn’t go to Earth for our talk, we went to the moon. It was the last stop, and I remember that distinctly.
            We landed softly on the light side of the moon where we could see the earth—an emerald and azure mass covered with white lines, and top it were the northern lights till shining bright like we left them.
            I started at the beginning, when I found out I had the power to do this. “It was a rainy day, and I was bored. There was nothing on TV, and the Playstation was broken so I didn’t have much else to day. I deiced to take a nap, but when I did so, I started to think about a bunch of different things, dragons, knights, and princesses. I thought that I was going to sleep, but suddenly I felt my bead dissipate from underneath me, and when I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of a field of white roses, and spiked lilies. And there was a princess running after me, and a dragon over yonder. I thought that it was my imagination—it was, in a way, just like all of this is mostly my imagination—but then the princess touched me, and when I shrugged her away, I was actually hurt by one of the thorns, and when the dragon breathed fire I was burned. I willed myself back to reality, and when I opened my eyes, I saw my room morph before my eyes, the fields of flowers turned back into carpet, and the dragon turned back into a wall. The princess tuned back to my guitar.
            “I tried it again, but this time it was a sunny day. And suddenly the rain stopped, and I heard birds singing. I ran to my window, and it was sunny outside. When I blinked—testing making the illusions go away—it was raining again, and I saw the sky ripple back into livid greyness. I knew then that I was what people would call an illusionist. No one else could see my illusions unless I wanted them too. I could make them hurt, make them laugh, make them feel anything with my illusions, but they would never know who did it. I never told anyone for fear of what they might think, for fear of what they might feel, for fear of what they might do. So I kept it to myself. I used it when I was angry, sad, and even happy. I would use it to make everything better, I would use it for my own personal gain. I used it on bullies who picked on us when you weren’t around, and I used to make myself more attractive so that Chloe Camille would date me that one time.” Pete didn’t say anything, he only looked at the Earth. I joined him in this watch, and then he smiled.
            “So why did you decide to tell me now?” He asked. He didn’t sound mad, I swallowed and stared at the silver moon dust below us.
            “Because Pete, I had to tell someone, and…and I couldn’t let you go without knowing. Because you’re my best friend, Pete, and…and when you’re gone I don’t know who else I would be able to tell, or to…to, to…” I was sobbing the next second and I leaned on Pete, and he let me lean on him.
            “Promise me something before I go.” He said. I looked at him with tears blurring my vision, and I gripped his arm.
            “PETE! No, you’re not about to go, no, no—” he shook his head, and took his baseball cap off, revealing his hairless head.
            “No,” he snapped and gripped my arm now. “You listen to me, and you listen to me good, okay?” He said, and he was on the verge of tears, it was in his voice. I nodded and wiped my tears away. “I want you to make sure my mom knows that I love her a whole bunch, and I want you to make sure that she has something to remember me by, a keepsake.” I stared at him, and he put the baseball cap in my hand. He smiled, gripping my hand in his hand with the baseball cap in the middle.
            “I have my secrets too, Rick.” He said. Suddenly the universe was crumbling around us, and I shot to my feet.
            “NO-O-O-O-O!” I screamed. Pete was still sitting staring at the Earth with a smile on his face. “Thank you,” he said in a whisper. The stars fell, the moon broke into a billion fragments of dust, the earth exploded, and the universe went white.

I opened my eyes with a gasp, and the kite fell down next to me. I sat up quickly, and looked over at Pete. He still had his eyes closed. He was limp, and his chest didn’t move. He also didn’t have his hat on, I looked at the red and white baseball cap in my hand, and my lip trembled, and I broke. I fell over him, and gripped his dead body. I wailed in pain, and I sobbed pon his chest—his lifeless chest.
            “Pete…Pete, I told you no.” I said, and sat up, crying into his hat. When I looked up the world was strange. It was so strange, and it was so odd now. The sun was going down, and there was no wind, there was only wind, and there was only silence and my sniffles as I cried. I held his cap and I clutched it so tightly that I was sure it was going to rip in half. I looked over at the kite, and I swear I heard his voice, “I want to fly a kite, too.”
            I picked up the kite and the spindle and I put on his hat. I stood up and I threw the kite in the air, and I made wind. It went up and up and up, it sailed in the nonexistent wind. It kept going up. I made it so that the string would never stop coming. It would keep going until it sailed the solar winds of space. Into the clouds it went, and past the clouds, and past the sky, and beyond. Into space, around the sun and into the universe. Into space and with Pete.

Act II

It’s been 30 years since then, 30 long years, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. Like Pete had only just died yesterday afternoon. I have a family now, they know. My kids do, I make them pretty illusions all the time, and I make them laugh and smile, and I make them happy. I make my wife smile whenever she had a long day with my illusions, and I did the best I could to make sure that they would never have to go through much pain, much torture, much anguish. I wish I could say the same for myself.
            I still have Pete’s kite, it’s locked up the shed behind our house, with his wheelchair. His hat is still with his mom in Pennsylvania. Pete was buried back in South Carolina from when we were kids. We decided to bury him at that very hill where he and I went across the universe and back, where he told me he had his secrets too. I still don’ know those secrets, and for the past 30 years, I have always pondered what they could be, but I have never gone so far as to actually try and find them. That was until now.
            I was working on my first book in a long time—I had gone to college for literature, but never finished finding that I already knew what they were overcomplicating. It was going to be about flying, and the real superheroes. I was about four hundred pages in when the phone rang. Brenda was in New York on a business trip, and the kids were at my mom’s house in Carolina. I broke from my chair and answered the phone without looking at the caller ID.
            “Hello?” I said quickly, determined to get back to writing. The phone was answered by a woman who sounded likes she was nearing seventy.
            “Yes, is this the McCaithy residence?” The old voice asked. I nodded, forgetting was on the phone.
            “Yes, yes it is. This is Rick McCaithy, whose this?” I asked. The old voice coughed.
            “It’s Miss Plume.”

I was in Pennsylvania by Monday afternoon, and I was on a bus ride to Harrisburg by eight. When I got to Harrisburg I dug out the crumpled piece of paper that had been burrowed in my jacket pocket since Danville. On the paper I had scrawled in Sharpie: 78 Ridgefoot Street. I started my journey through the sprawling city that was Harrisburg, admiring the Susquehanna River to my life as I went down the road, hailing taxis whenever I could, and hurrying down streets. It was nearly eleven o’clock before I turned in at an old motel off the side of a street called Kingsphit, it wasn’t until late the next morning that I learned Kingsphit was only a block from Ridgefoot.
            I hurried, my calf’s burning and my suitcase rolling behind me as I wandered onto Ridgefoot. Ridgefoot was a street of an apartments, for seniors, and ther were a few kids riding their bikes on the streets. There were as abundance of those new model Lexus’ and Corvettes as well. I peered through the gardens of azaleas and sunflowers at the brown doors with their steel knockers. Finally, on the right side of the street, one house form the last, wa 78. It was yellow like all the others, but the garden was a pallet of every color from pink to green to white to cerulean. And when I mounted the steps to knock on the door, I found that they were in the exact formations of a galaxy, far, far away—in fact, it was one of the galaxies that Pete and I had passed so many years ago.
            I swallowed, and knocked the knocker. There was only the sound of birds chirping, and kids laughing down the street. I knocked again, and then the door unlocked quickly, and I was greeted by a woman about a foot shorter than me, long tumultuous livid hair, and turquoise eyes rested behind a pair of glasses perched on her nose. She wore jeans, a red and white striped shirt, and a smock with paint covering it like blood.
            I licked my lips. “Miss…Plume?” I asked. She smiled at me over her glasses.
            “Yes,” she said and moved aside, opening the door wide. “Please, come in, I’ve already made coffee.” She said and I let myself in.
            She closed the door behind me as I found myself in the spacious living room where there was a rather large woman with a striped orange tabby on her stomach and watching a Lifetime movie. She had glasses that were large and seemingly glued to her face. Ms. Plume came up behind me and she spoke loudly and clearly to the fat woman.
            “Lillian, maybe you could move upstairs, I have a guest.” She said. Lillian grumbled and when she stood—leaving an imprint of her large butt in her midst—the tabby bolted towards us, dashed right, and down the hall. Lillian made her away upstairs. When Ms. Plume was sure that Lillian was out of earshot, and the sound of a door clicking, she entered the living room and clicked the TV off. I entered and sat in the Lazy Boy recliner. Ms. Plume brought me a mug of coffee, and seated herself on the opposite couch. She had taken off her smock, and I could see that even after all these years. Pete’s mother was still hot as ever.
            “You look well, Miss Plume,” I spoke my mind. She smiled and nodded.
            “Don’t call me Miss Plume, call me Lois, we’re both grown people here. And it’s been a long time since you were a boy, Rick.” She smiled, her teeth were all white, and her eyes glittered in the sunlight. I nodded.
            “Okay, Lois.” She and I chuckled, and then all was silent again. I took a sip of coffee, and she began.
            “You know why I called you, I told you I believe—my memory is waning as you might imagine.” As I might not imagine. She was the envy of every elder on the block. I shook my head, and she shrugged. “Anyhow, it is time that we had talked about my Peter.” She said. Suddenly the coffee needed more sugar. I sat it on the coaster next to me.
            “Right,” I said in a low voice. She took a sip of her own coffee, and then took off her glasses. She laced her fingers together and thought about where she could begin.
            “I had Peter when I was a college professor in Boston, I was 27, and the man I was with at the time was a druggie who got into too much trouble for his own good, and I don’t remember why I ever dated him. All the same, he was Pete’s father, and he dropped out after a week of being with little Peter. I had to quit being a professor, and I had to take a job at a coffeehouse down the street from the college. It was there that Pete was looked after by a woman named Margaret Petigre. She was the sweetest little red headed woman ever, and she always knew how to calm Pete down when he was screaming his little head off and scarin’ away the costumers. But, she would always tell me that Pete seemed to stare at her or long periods of time, as if he was reading her like he read books. Pete started reading at a few months you know, which was always exciting for me. Of course, I didn’t report him to Mensa or whathaveyou, he was just always my special little boy. In some ways, I feel that Pete and I grew up together. Even though I was 27, and I was pretty grown up, I still acted like I was in college, and I was still trying to find myself—aren’t we all?
            “Margaret died when Pete turned 5, but thankfully he wasn’t screaming anymore, rather he was talking to people and keeping his nose in those books. Then one day I was feeling stressed, and Pete kept asking me question after question, and I didn’t blame the child, he was curious, it was in his nature, but I was about to snap on him when he said, ‘sorry, mommy’ and I only stared at him. He stared at me for a long minute and then spoke, ‘I didn’t mean to be so annoying, I’ll shut up.’ Believe it, terrible as it may have been, or not, I had wanted to tell him that. And he knew it, he had read me, and he knew what I had been thinking from the moment that I started thinking it. I kept my mouth shut from then on till we got to the shabby apartment down the street.
            “That same night, I started thinking about the things that Margaret had told me. She had said that Pete was able to tell her what people were thinking, and he always guessed correctly on what she wanted that day. She said that the child had been touched by the hands of God and he had a power. She laughed a little, I laughed a little, but we both knew that it was just a little true, maybe even completely true, we could not say exactly for sure though.” She took a swallow of coffee, and I did as well. She pushed a lock of her silver hair out of her face, and continued her story.
            “When Pete was 8, we moved down to South Carolina, and then you and Pete became friends. Pete said that he couldn’t read your mind, he could literally only guess. I had always smiled and acted as if it was just something that children did, playing the guessing game, but Pete had become exceedingly talented with his gift. His memory had grown too, and he knew things that I never thought a child could have known. He was proving himself to be something out of a science fiction novel. Of course, I suppose you can call yourself something out of a Sci-Fi story as well, can’t you Rick?” She asked. I nearly choked on my coffee. She smiled.
            “How do you mean?” I asked her. She grinned and leaned back in her seat.
            “You know what I mean, Rick. Or rather, let me finish my tale, and then you will understand all.” She drained the rest of her coffee—I could tell she was an addict now—and she continued her tale.
            “Pete was so happy around you, all the time. He said that he was glad that he couldn’t read your mind, he said you kept him guessing, and he said because of that, you were made a better friend for it. But he did say that he knew there was something you were hiding, he just knew it, but he could never guess exactly what that thing you were hiding was. When Pete was 9 the diagnosed him with Leukemia. They said he would die in a few months, but he didn’t,” now she was shaking her head, and I could feel her voice beginning to falter. “No, he didn’t last a few months. Year after year he got worse and better at the same time. His hair didn’t fall out until a few months before he died. He lasted a few years, he was so strong, years and years he lasted, and then he ended. But that baseball cap he was wearing, he made that cap special.” I shifted my weight in my seat, and Lois looked up at me with tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks.
            “When you and Pete went to that hill, I didn’t know what to think, I thought you and he were going to try and run away from his death, but you didn’t. Rather you did something that no friend could have ever done, you did the one thing that Pete had been expecting for a long time. And more than that, you made his dreams come true. You took him to space and back. And he died at your side, but I don’t blame you.” She said. I stared at her, and she suddenly fell into hysterics as she had that Wednesday afternoon 30 years ago. She wailed, and I hurried out of my chair, knocking the coffee over in the same instant, and hugged her. She hugged my back and she sobbed into my chest. I swallowed my own tears as she cried. We sat in the position for a good ten minutes before she pulled away, wiping her tears with the collar of her shirt. I was crouched down in front of her, and she looked at me.
            “I’m sorry,” She said, I took her open hand, and I shook my head.
            “No, don’t be, I understand.” She nodded, because she knew I understood. She knew so well.
            “The hat, you see, Peter, he had somehow—I don’t know how—put all his memories, and all the thoughts he had ever read, into that hat, and somehow, he passed his self through that hat. Not a day has gone by where I don’t think about that day where we found you surrounded by half the people in town, screaming and crying over Peter. I remember pushing through those people and joining you.” She was right, so right.
            It had been twilight, and nearly everyone in town had heard my screams, my pleas, and they had surrounded me, people called the ambulance, but they didn’t come till an =hour afterwards. Lois had broken through the crowd and she stared agog at us for a minute. I had Pete’s hat on my head and his kite was beside us. I had sat beside him until I had started crying again, because I had forgotten he was dead.
            “Where is it?” I asked her. She stood and I stood with her, towering her rather. She led me down the hall where the tabby had gone, and she unlocked a closet door. She pointed to the red and white shoe box on the top shelf. I slid it from the shelf and we made our way back into the living room. I set the box on the table and opened it. The hat sat atop photos, little pieces of jewelry, and other things from Pete’s past. Some of those pictures I hadn’t seen since the 70’s. I picked up the hat. It was dingy, there were a few laces that hung lose, and there was a heavy coating of dust that powdered it. I wiped it off, and looked on the inside of it. Sure enough, there was his name, badly scrawled in with Sharpie.
            I stared at the hat for a long time. The past was so far, yet so close, as it was right here in my hands. “What will I see if I put it on?” I asked her. Lois looked from me to the hat.
            “In all actuality, I have no idea. If Pete couldn’t read your mind, I don’t see why you would be able to read his.” She didn’t smile at her pun, only stared at the cap. “I just remembered that beautiful thing you did, and I remember the last thing he saw.” I stared at her. She sat back down on the couch. “He saw the entire universe dissolve into oblivion, he saw the backdrop of earth—the stars and the galaxies beyond—hatter like a baseball to a window. He saw the moon, earth, and every other planet dissolve into colorful dust, and he saw them all merge as though you’d dumped them into a gallon of water and shook it up. Most importantly, he saw you.” I moved my thumb along the side of the hat, then I put it in the box.
            She was aghast, flummoxed even. “You don’t want to put it on?” I shook my head.
            “No, I don’t. I saw all I needed to see then. And I want to remember him how I saw him all those years ago, and the day that I met him. I don’t want to see the world through his eyes, I just want to leave it how it is. Don’t mess with things that you can’t handle, that’s what my grandmother used to say when I was a boy.” She said. Lois sat for a minute with her hands in her lap, and then nodded. I checked the time.
            “I think it’s time I take my leave.” She didn’t object, rather she took in stride, and smile. She stood up and then hugged me.
            “It was good to see you again, Rick. Let’s keep in touch,” she said with a smile. I nodded, and she walked me to the door. She watched me down the street, and still didn’t go inside long after that.

At the motel, I lay awake all night unable to find sleep in the infinite sea of insomnia. I felt he same as the night when Pete had died. I was unable to sleep for a month, after that, sleep still didn’t come easy. I had clutched one of his baseball cards every night, and I held onto our last flight, and I held onto that kite. I never flew it after that day, and I never moved his wheelchair from the shed until I moved to North Carolina. After a few hours of watching nothing by the terrible news, I finally fell asleep.
            The next morning, I got a call just as I was leaving the motel, and I was stricken when the news that Lois had croaked it last night. I felt my heart fall into my stomach, and I nearly fell to my knees at the shock. I left the motel quickly, and when I arrived at Lois’s house, Lillian answered the door. She was wearing the most atrocious and most spandex-ed nightgown I had ever seen. Lillian had muttered to me that they had taken her body already, and they were coming to get interviews from her son. I wanted to be out of there before then, so I quickly went to the closet and retrieved the box. From it I took several photos, one his toy cars, and hesitantly, I took the baseball cap and stuffed in the back of my jeans pocket. When I got to the airport, I stuffed the cap into my luggage and forgot about it by the time I got back to North Carolina.
            When my wife and kids came home, it fell deeper into the back of my mind. I was becoming happy again. I was making illusions again, but the memories of the week before were already fading. My wife tucked the cap away in the garage, I think, and that caused the memories to wane even more.
            Fast forward 7 months later, after my oldest son was moving into high school, and my daughter had her fourth birthday with all her friends and a few illusions, too. I was working on the car in the garage when the hat fell on my feet. I was startled and nearly hit myself in the face with the wrench. I slid from under the car and I picked up the cap.
            “What do you want to tell me ol’ buddy, ol’ pal?” I asked the cap. It didn’t grow lips and speak, it was still the dusty, dingy, degrading baseball cap that it had been seven months ago, 30 years ago.
            I sighed and finished working on the car with the cap in my front pocket this time. When I finished, it was time for dinner. After dinner it was time for bed. While my wife was in the shower, I pulled the cap from my jeans and stared at it, crumpled and rolled in my hands. I flapped it out, and held it for another long moment before I placed it on my head. I laid down, and stared at the ceiling with my hands on my stomach for a long moment before, finally I closed my eyes.
            That night, I dreamt a most beauteous dream. He looked at me with his pristine smile.
“I want to fly a kite, too.”