This Is How It's Supposed to Be.

The party was in full swing when we got back to Garrett’s, started at least two hours early, just like every other year. The fire wasn’t started up yet –it was too early for that– but the drinks were out, the grill was on, and everyone was there. Tim was talking animatedly to Trey by the grill, waving his hands everywhere, while Trey just nodded. The rest of the boys were scattered around the yard, all with red plastic cups in their hands, chatting and laughing.

“Hey, look who’s finally here!”

“Hey ,Trey.”

He slung an arm around my shoulder and lead me away from the gate, as well as away from Garrett, looking at me and asking, “So, how was your afternoon?”

“Not bad. Went running. Took a shower. Got scared half to death by your brother waiting in my room for me when I got out.” I knew it wasn’t the answer he was looking for. It was a loaded question, really; what he actually wanted to know how I was holding up, what had made me walk out. I knew that he wanted to know more, but I also knew that he wouldn’t pry. I was deliberately not answering the real question he posed, and he’d caught on. But we were at the edge of the fence now, standing in front of the few big red buckets filled with ice and drinks, and Halvo was next to us, so I knew I’d escaped further questions for the time being.

“Yo, Caleb!” Eric said, raising his arm for a high five. “What’s up?”

I high-fived him and he pulled me into one of those guy-hugs that looked as awkward as they felt. “Not much. ‘Sup with you?”

He shrugged and pulled a soda out of the ice, waiting for me to grab something for myself, and then we both walked over to the rest of the boys together, easily joining their circle. Sunset was fast approaching, so Tim shut off the grill and everyone grabbed some last minute hot dogs and hamburgers and went to sit in the middle of the yard around the fire pit that Garrett and John were struggling with.

The fire pit was older than Garrett and I; they’d had it since before even Trey was born. They hadn’t used it much before I came around, so at our first annual bonfire it was still shiny silver, completely intact. Since then the bowl had blackened with the kind of soot and dirt and ash that couldn’t be scrubbed off no matter how hard we tried. The wrought-iron frame was slightly warped and definitely scratched and dented, and the matching bench and wire-mesh cover were long lost. We refused to get rid of it because it held so many fires, so many memories of our friendship and summers spent together, and on top of that, it was tradition. Just like the location of the bonfire (Garrett’s house since year one), the fire pit itself was a tradition we refused to mess with. And every year Garrett and John struggled for at least ten minutes to get the fire going from the same older than old book of matches from Garrett’s parents’ wedding.

When they got the fire going, finally, the sun was setting, painting the sky above us with pinks and oranges and eventually deep reds. I sat on the ground Indian style, legs crossed beneath me, and pulled down whoever was sitting next to me (Garrett, as always), who pulled down the person next to him and so on and so on, until we were all lying down in the nearly-dead grass together. We were lined up shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, staring at the sky, tuning out everything but it and each other. We stopped talking, stopped joking and pushing, and just laid there, for one completely silent. Once the sun was gone completely, replaced by the moon and stars, I knew that everyone had picked one star, the star they’d claimed as theirs our first year out here, convinced it was still the same one after all this time. And maybe it was. Maybe we all had the ability to pick out that one star on this one day every year, because it was ours. Because we had claimed it when we started this whole tradition and therefore it would always be ours. But regardless, I knew we were all focused on that one point of light so many hundreds of thousands and probably even millions of miles away, making our wishes for the summer and the rest of our lives.

I didn’t know what I was wishing for. I had everything I wanted: a great neighborhood, a great family, and even greater friends. There wasn’t one thing missing from the picture that was my life at that moment; I didn’t want and I didn’t need anything else. So I wished for whatever I might have been missing, and I left it up to the stars and the moon to decide just what that was.

I’m pretty sure that somewhere, buried deep in my brain, my true wish was waiting and maybe had already been made.

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Hours later, we were all huddled around the fire in old tattered beach chairs, fighting off the slight chill and pretending to roast marshmallows. We burned (either intentionally or not) more marshmallows than we ate and battled with the sticks more than roasted anything. But we were having fun, and we were all together, and so we didn’t care about a couple of wasted sugar puffs.

The lights in Garrett’s house had long since gone off, and even the fire was burning down. It wasn’t so much a fire anymore as it was a burning pile of ash and embers that would probably still be hot come morning, anyway. It was casting a strange glow on everyone’s faces, throwing faint orange light similar to that of a candle onto any exposed skin. Even that glow faded shortly, and Kennedy decided he had to go home. Pat agreed and then Garrett kicked us out, claiming he needed his beauty sleep for tomorrow. I started walking, waving my goodbyes only to be stopped by Trey, who kept trying to make Garrett drive me. I denied every one of his twelve offers, including the ones to just walk me home, and ran home instead, loving the complete stillness and silence that the night always brought.