Crosby 11 and Mondo 10

Crosby 13

"Crosby," a voice said, but it was sucked into the wind as soon as it left it's speaker's mouth.

Crosby stood on the peak of the hill, once so unconquerable to him, but now the hill barely registered as a triumph to him. The view from the top, framed by a tall tree with bark peeling and small brown birds nesting in its limp branches, was abysmal. There was nothing to see but the same vinyl sided houses of suburbia he always saw. The street below that Mondo and he had skimmed their knees on countless times trying tricks on their bikes they had seen on YouTube, snaked dully through the neighborhood. Most of the streetlights had popped years ago either naturally or by the idle throws of rocks from boys who had nothing better to do with their summer days than throw rocks and climb hills.

"Crosby!" the voice said, louder now to be heard over the unseasonably strong wind of a late August day.

Crosby tilted his head towards the voice, his eyes still trained on the so familiar neighborhood beneath him. If he squinted he could make out his own home, where he and Mondo had once climbed the massive oak in the front lawn. The game had ended when Mondo had fell.

Mondo's father came beside him, slightly out of breath, as he leaned against the peeling tree. "You finally made it up here," he said, wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead with his hand.

"Yeah," Crosby said, letting his eyes close against the setting sun, "It's nothing special. He didn't miss much."

Mondo's father rustled beside him. Crosby didn't, couldn't open his eye, not until the sorrow, sharp and stinging behind his eyes had passed. When he did open his eyes, he saw the crystalline stone hanging from a cord in front of him.

"Mondo wanted you to have this."

Crosby took the rock from Mondo's father, looked at it in his palm. It was just a rock. Mondo and he had found it in a park nearby. Crosby, so imaginative as a child, had deemed it a treasure left behind from pirate thieves who had buried it to hide from whoever they had stolen it from before meeting an untimely death at sea. There was nothing special about the rock, but Mondo, who had looked up to Crosby so much back then, almost worshipping the older boy, had wanted the rock so badly. And so, the rock was special. Because of its story. Because it was needed.

Crosby turned the rock over in his hands before pulling the cord it was on over his head. He felt his throat closing and so he closed his eyes again. He felt Mondo's father's large hand clamp over his shoulder and then disappear. When he reopened his eyes, and looked down at the world beneath him, he was struck by how beautiful it was, and how his friend, Mondo would have loved to see it.