“My heart clenched. I hated him for what he did. But I loved him as my friend, the one who’d hung out every afternoon and made me smile when my dad hadn’t been back in months. Most of all, I understood him – more than I wanted to. I knew what went on at his house, even if he’d never actually told me. We were all broken, and we turned on each other with our fear and our fists. It was a cold way to live. A familiar one.”