Chapter 1
October, 1964

I lied awake on my bed.

I couldn’t sleep.

My mind was wandering, racing to different topics at the same time. I couldn’t stay on one subject in my mind for more than ten seconds. I was restless.

Just then, out of nowhere, I remembered something that I particularly didn’t want to remember. But I did anyway. It was something that I hated thinking about, and something that I thought about all the time. I got up, clad in only a pair of jeans, and walked over to my closet and turned on the light. I pulled down old, dusty boxes and yellowed papers off of the closet’s shelf. I searched until I found what I was looking for: 198 papers that were bound into a story. A book. It wasn’t mine. I didn’t write it. My old friend Johnnie Gatlyn did. She wrote it, and I was the only one who had ever read it.

I remember Johnnie telling me about it one time. She told me she wrote a book and she wanted me to read it. So I did.

Johnnie had always wanted to write a book and publish it and become an author. She didn’t care if she became famous or not. She just wanted her stories out there. But she never got to publish the story that I was holding in my hands. So now I had it. And I was the only one who knew about it.

I was the only one she ever told. She never shared her stories or poems or songs with other people. Nor her drawings. Only me. I was the only one she had ever trusted. I wish I could thank her for trusting me.

I slowly sat down on the edge of my bed, careful not to wake my older brother, and stared at Johnnie’s story. It stared back at me, its dirty, dusty face masked with inked words. I felt tears forming in my eyes and hurriedly brushed them away. I didn’t want to cry. But, I’m sure if I had let the tears fall, I would’ve been sobbing instead of crying. I flipped through the pages and old memories of reading this great story flushed through me. I remembered lots of it, even though the last time I read it was three months ago. Three long, lonely months ago.

I couldn’t bear to remember that event that happened months ago, but it was too late. The memory was coming back.

I stared at the very first page and read the first line. I remember that line, I thought. And remembering that line made me remember Johnnie. Sweeter-than-honey Johnnie Gatlyn. I lied back down on my bed and gave up. I let myself remember.

I didn’t want to. But remembering Johnnie also made me happy.