Lost Boys

I don’t remember the ticket.
I don’t remember the airport.
I don’t remember the plane tearing itself loose from gravity.

All I remember is the grass, damp and clinging to me like a burial shroud. Kerry Park, Seattle. My jeans wet with dew. The earth beneath me humming like it had swallowed me whole and was now trying to decide if it would spit me back out or keep me forever.

The skyline shimmered, all steel and glass pretending to be immortal, the Space Needle a candle lit for some forgotten god. I thought of how we used to pretend the same way—immortal, barefoot, reckless. The sky wasn’t morning yet—it was a bruise, violet and blue and aching, and then slowly it began to heal into gold. The sun’s first blade cut the horizon, and the whole city bled light.

Silence. Not quiet—silence absolute.

No cars. No footsteps. No trains whining their iron song. Only a sprinkler exhaling mist, a far-off dog barking at ghosts, and the faint hiss of salt air crawling up from Puget Sound.

I should have felt alone. I should have felt afraid, wandering an emptied city like a body after the soul leaves. But instead I felt summoned, as though my whole life had been a long-distance phone ringing and this was the moment I finally picked up.

Something was missing. Something vital. My chest ached like someone had removed a rib, or maybe all of them, leaving me hollow, fragile, waiting to collapse.

And then—
A flare. Sudden. Violent.

Light, sharp as a blade, bouncing off a rooftop far below. It wasn’t sunlight exactly—it was memory disguised as reflection. My heart stuttered, then lunged. I knew it instantly, without language: That is it. That is where you belong.

I rose without question. My body leaned toward that rooftop like it was magnetic. And then I ran.

I do not run. Not in life. Not in reality. My body is clumsy, my lungs shallow, my legs slow. But here I ran, and none of those rules applied. No stitch in my side. No fire in my chest. The air filled me like an engine, and I was carried by momentum, by desire, by something older than desire.

The streets bent themselves for me.

Seattle was mine alone. A hollow stage. Streetlights glowed like dying stars, stop signs leaned toward me as if bowing. The fish smell of the market, the oil smell of the docks, the faint perfume of coffee grinds rising from empty cafés—they were all scents without sources, flavors without mouths.

I ran.
I had to.

And then, as though I had been running not minutes but centuries, I arrived.

Pike Place, quiet, too quiet, its red brick skin glowing under the newborn sun. Market stalls shuttered, their painted signs cracked and peeling. A memory of shouts and haggling hovered faintly in the air, but no people remained to make them.

There it was: a green double door. Old paint flaking away in strips like sunburnt skin. Brass knobs dull with time, catching the light and holding it like secrets. The doors were open. Waiting.

So I entered.

And I was there.

The rooftop.

It was impossible. Too wide. Too tall. A rooftop the size of a city block, but intimate, close, like the living room of a memory. People milled about, holding drinks though it was dawn, their voices blurred, their faces indistinct. Extras. Shadows. They existed only to make this scene believable, like background actors in a sitcom that never aired.

The edge called me, and I drifted toward it. The bay stretched outward like molten metal, reflecting the sky’s golden blood. The sun had risen now, but it felt less like a sunrise and more like the world itself had been set on fire for me alone.

And then—
And then—

I saw them.

Sam.
Andrew.

The brothers.

Time ripped apart. My stomach fell open. My throat filled with gravel.

Sam, still with that ridiculous boyish grin, blond hair catching the sun like it had been spun from daylight itself. A camera in his hands, fussing with buttons like he always had, never satisfied, always chasing the perfect shot.
Andrew crouched near an amplifier, curls wild, grin stretching his whole face, hands tangled in cords the same way he used to tangle fishing lines on summer nights at the lake.

“Sam? Andrew?”

The words escaped me cracked, like I hadn’t spoken in centuries.

They turned.

For one trembling moment, the rooftop held its breath. Their eyes met mine, and I saw disbelief bloom into recognition, and recognition bloom into joy, and joy bloom into grief, all in the span of a heartbeat.

“No way.”
“What the hell?”

Their voices weren’t just voices—they were echoes, old recordings pulled from summers long gone, overlapping with the sound of boys laughing in backyards and running down cracked streets at midnight.

Our steps staggered forward, hesitant at first, like approaching wild animals, afraid the other would vanish if touched. Then faster. Then faster. Then—impact.

We collided, bodies slamming, arms wrapping, ribs crushing, three figures tangled in an embrace that was less a hug and more a collapse, a collapse of time and distance and silence. We laughed, but the laughter was wet, breaking apart in sobs. We cried, but the crying was joyous, breathless, like drowning and being pulled from the water at once.

I clutched them as if I were trying to press them into me, to fuse us together so that the world could never separate us again. My fingers dug into shoulders, into hair, into the soft fabric of shirts. Their bodies shook against mine. Sam’s camera dangled, clattering against us like a metronome of the moment. Andrew’s curls brushed my face, tickling like when we were kids, and the sensation nearly undid me.

The rooftop tilted. My knees buckled. But still we held.

“Oh my god—oh my god—”
“What are you doing here?!”
“What are YOU doing here?!”

The words tumbled out like water from broken jars. They didn’t matter. What mattered was the sound of their voices—unchanged, eternal, beloved.

We were the lost boys, found again. Found at last.

And then—

“Hey, I bought some waters. I think it’s too early to drink—”

The voice. Flat. Familiar.

I froze.

“Miles?”

I turned. And there he was.

His arms full of bottles that slipped through his hands and fell, forgotten. His face opened like a door—shock, fear, joy all crashing at once. He ran, and I ran too, though I was already running without moving. And then his arms wrapped me whole, tan and strong, pulling me in with the gravity of years.

I broke. My body convulsed, sobs ripping free. I clung to him as though my entire life depended on the pressure of his hold. The same crooked grin I remembered flashing when we were about to get in trouble twisted through his tears.

And then we were all together. Four bodies in one embrace. Sam, Andrew, Miles, and me. The rooftop vanished around us. The world shrank to the sound of our laughter-sobs, to the salt of our tears, to the smell of sweat and memory on familiar skin.

For one impossible moment, we were eternal. We were the boys we’d always been, the brothers we had lost, the family we thought was buried under a decade of silence.

The weight of it crushed me. Joy, grief, guilt—all of it together. It was too much. It was everything.

And then Sam’s smirk pierced the flood. His eyes glinted mischief even as tears streaked his face. “Who do you think is performing?”

I turned, chest still heaving, and saw him.

Joe.

Black hair falling into his eyes, guitar in his hands, strumming something so fragile it could have been spun from spider silk.

And he looked up. And he smiled.

And the world broke open into music.

One note. Then another. Then another. Each chord was not a sound but a resurrection. Fireworks of summers long gone. The slam of screen doors. The laughter of boys who believed in forever.

Sam lifted the camera through tears, clicking wildly, trying to capture a moment too infinite to frame. Andrew stomped the roof in rhythm, curls bouncing with each beat. Miles shook his head, grinning through his sobs, mouthing words I couldn’t hear but had heard a thousand times before.

And me—I stood there undone, wrecked, radiant with grief and joy.

The rooftop glowed, bled light, dissolved. The city blurred. Their faces shone until they weren’t faces anymore but light itself.

The song swelled—then thinned—then snapped.

And I woke.

Boston.
My room.
7 a.m.

No rooftop.
No show.
No brothers.

Just the pale blue hour bleeding through the blinds, cold and indifferent.

I lay there, heart pounding, tears running into the real world now.

It had only been a dream.

But my body didn’t know the difference. My chest still ached with their arms around me. My ears still rang with Joe’s guitar. My skin still burned with sunlight that never existed.

And all I could do was weep—for them, for us, for the eternity I’d touched only long enough to lose again.

Outside, the outline of dawn continued to grow, silent and merciless.

And I kept crying.