“I waved to him, and he waved back. I tried not to think about how Chad couldn’t see me doing that now. Helen Keller said that when you lose one sense, another one grows stronger. But by the time Chad learned how to hear me waving, it would be too late.”

“Apron,” Chad said, sounding a little nervous. “I’ve been wondering. Do you think you and me would have been friends, if, you know, we were in seventh grade together?” I thought about it for a second. I thought about Rennie and Jenny Pratt making fun of Chad, his swishy way of walking down the halls, and Johnny Berman and Sherman Howl writing faggot on the top of his desk and picking him last for dodge ball. And I thought about how, if I ignored them all and decided to be friends with Chad anyway, he would have been my only one. “Yes,” I nodded. “We’d be friends.” “Yup,” Chad said smiling as far as his cracked lips would let him. “That’s what I think, too.”

“What’s that?” he asked. “A picture of my mom,” I said, opening his ice-cold hand and putting the frame in it gently. “But Apron,” Chad said. “I can’t see.” “I know. But it’s not for now. It’s for when you get there, so you can find her.” Chad tapped his finger on my mom’s cheek. “Does she look like you?” I thought about it hard enough for Chad to take in another long breath. “A little bit,” I said. “Not quite as pretty?” “Well,” I said. “You’ll have to see for yourself.” Chad raised his eyebrows. “I’ll find her, Apron. I promise. If you promise me something, too.” I nodded, but then remembered he couldn’t see me. “What?” “Don’t stay sad. Remember our poem. What it means. Promise?”

“It's like there's this wave coming toward me, but there's nothing I can do about it. And then it reaches me, crashes over me and...and I'm done for another day. I just give up. Give in to it. Because how do you stop a wave?You don't. And you're wise to recognize your powerlessness to do so. But what you can do is learn how to negotiate this wave. Work within the context of its inevitability.”

“It was just regular growing up, of course, the kind everyone does - but it still hurt him, I know, like the memory I have of the time he dropped me off at the train station when I was going back to Chicago. I could see him through the window of the train, but he couldn't see me through the tinted glass. I waved, trying to get his attention as he walked up and down the platform trying to figure out where I was sitting. From up in the train, he looked so small. If he'd seen me, he would have smiled and waved, but he didn't know I could see him, and the sadness on his face was exposed to me then. He looked lost. He stood there on the platform a long time, even after my train started pulling away, still trying to catch a glimpse of me waving back.”

“Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air-until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. "My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what's going to happen to me!" Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?"The first wave says, "You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?"The second wave says, "No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean.”