“See, that’s it. Fucker’s got too much time to think.”

“He got up in English class when we were reading some poetry — Walt Whitman, by the way, who seems like kind of an asshole, but once in a while I think he’s onto something — he gets up and says ‘I dig this Whitman dude. I hug trees.’”

“We all laughed. Even Miss Mousy, the politest girl in the world from St. Louis, Michigan, the ‘official’ Middle of the Mitten, gives a little titter. Then a couple weeks later, I see him down by the river actually hugging tree after tree.”

“How much is this college shit costing you again?” Charles scratched his unshaven chin.

“Mudboy ran up to him, sniffing around like he was gonna piss on him, but then the guy sees me and starts waving like I’m a hundred miles away, though I’m only about maybe thirty yards. ‘Want to hug trees with me?’ he asks.”

“Dude must be lonely or crazy.”

“Lonely, that’s what Kim said.”

“What’d you say?”

“’Nah.’ I just said ‘Nah.’”

“You ain’t told me much about Kim,” he says. “What was that all about last night?”

I was starting to feel hungover with what I’d done. “Kim’s cool,” I said. “You’ll meet her.” Though he never did.

Kim. Slim Kim. We had taken our sleeping bags down to the river to sleep under the stars on the clearest night in the history of the world, Alba, Michigan version. We lay on the banks of the Pine River. She was writing a song in pencil in her tiny blue notebook, trying to come up with a good rhyme for fear.

“Beer,” I whispered, and she hit me. Our sleeping bags, though two different brands, two different colors — red and blue — magically zipped together, and we lay curled into each other for warmth. I was exactly her height. She was so thin that she chilled easily, her lips bluing, even through her smiling, chattering teeth. Mid-October — a little late for sleeping out in Mid-Michigan. But the sky was clear, the moon was a whopper, and the river electric with flashes of white foam and glints of light.

“Atmosphere,” she said, writing it down.

“There’s a lot of rhymes with that ‘ear’ sound,” I said, listing them alphabetically in my head. “I am mere without you near,” I said, and kissed her on the ear. “Ear,” I whispered.

She reached around and pulled me tighter into her.

“Walt Whitman didn’t use rhymes.”

“That’s what makes him cool,” she said. Kim was a literature and art double major. She was going into elementary education. I was majoring in business. My father insisted that I study something that could make me his boss one day.