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8. Marcus had to do community service at an old-folks’ home as part of his penance. After his 200 hours were up, he got a job there because he likes "kickin’ it with the old fogues."

7. Marcus is teaching himself how to play guitar. He bought it not because he wants to be a rock star (let’s face it, the only reason guys want to be rock stars is so they can get play from hot chicks, and Marcus already gets more play than he can handle) but because it gives him something constructive to do with his hands instead of smoking.

6. Marcus is trying to stop smoking. Tobacco, that is. He figures this will be harder to kick than all the illegal substances combined because he was never addicted to all that other stuff. He just did it because he was bored, which he now realizes was a sad lack of imagination on his part.

5. Marcus adopted his semiformal jacket-and-tie dress code in order to better look the part of a goody-goody honors student. (Besides, what could be more subversive in a world of casual Fridays in which Internet gazillionaires dress like skater punks?) Now he does it because the chicks are digging it.

4. Marcus is currently "chillin’" with a senior named Mia. She’s six foot two, which makes her the first girl he’s ever been able to look in the eye. This, he has found, makes it much harder to lie to her. He hopes this will stop him from hurting her feelings, which he always seems to do with girls he’s chillin’ with, but never intentionally. Mia is not that bright, but she has a cartoonish Saint Bernard named Bubba that Marcus likes to play with.

3. Marcus spends a lot of time alone now. When he got out of Middlebury, he knew that he had to ditch anybody who knew him only as Krispy Kreme, which was everyone.

2. Marcus often has the urge to talk to people in the middle of the night. He tried chat rooms, but he found the idea of talking nonsense to a worldwide web full of strangers extremely depressing. He thinks we’re losing the ability to touch each other in a personal, human kind of way. (Me too!)

1. Marcus writes—in longhand—in a journal when he can’t sleep. Usually this helps him fall asleep. (ME TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Do I even need to tell you that my plan royally backfired? I thought that learning about Marcus would demystify him. That I’d find out there was nothing more to him than tired, nonconformist clichés. But he’s more like me than I ever imagined. I listen to Marcus talking to Len, and I wish he were talking to me. This punishment for peeing in the yogurt cup is far worse than anything the administration could have come up with.

October 2nd

Hope,

Exactly one year ago today, I sprinted the last 100 yards to win a cross-country meet against Eastland and nailed a new PR (19:32) in the process. I was feeling proud and happy. I rented Heathers at Blockbuster and was looking forward to what new insights/analysis we would come up with in our tenth VCR viewing. I got ready to make two bowls of Chubby Hubby—mine topped with Cap’n Crunch, yours without—when you arrived for our Friday Night Food and Flick Fest. You wore the slouchy gray Old Navy cargo pants I’d persuaded you to buy and a white Fruit of the Loom T-shirt you had embroidered with pink and aqua daisies. You didn’t burst through the kitchen door cracking a joke about the Clueless Crew or doing a dead-on imitation of one of Christina Aguilera’s white-girl soul riffs or bearing a construction-paper-and-glitter gold medal that you’d insist I wear on my chest all evening. Your face was sad and serious in a way that I hadn’t seen since Heath died. I knew something was wrong. Then you said it.

"We’re moving to Tennessee."

As horrible and impossible and all-other-ibles as the news was, I knew it was true. You put the ice cream back in the freezer so it wouldn’t melt, and I cried for hours.

Today I dug past layer upon layer of microwave dinners and foil-covered leftovers in the freezer. I found that pint of Chubby Hubby covered in flowery frost, unopened, uneaten. And I cried