Missing Her

When the teacher was out of the room Myron pretended to play with himself, saying, “down boy” and smiling to the nervous gasping and fake coughs from the other classmates and, since he's my close friend, I think he does silly stuff like this to contend with the murk of his mind which sometimes seems to snap closed giving way to a hard, sad, stone-cold stare that almost burns a hole in you like last winter when we started smoking the cigarettes Myron stole from his Dad, hiding the pack in the hood of his parka as he left home and when I asked him what would happen if he got caught and he gave me that stare and said his Dad will go nuts but he said his Mom will not care and I knew she wouldn't because his Mom died three years ago.