David Riedmaier [It's the slap in the face, the punch in the stomach, the kick in the groin you don't see coming. The kind that drives the air out of your lungs, stretching those two seconds of pain and breathlessness into eternity.
He stares at the words on the page, brushes a finger over the lines, half expecting them to vanish or change into something else. Half expects to be seeing things, but they remain.
Cal remembers that promise, but also remembers watching the boy he gave it to slowly fade away, while Cal tried to not die too fast himself - watching David become someone who is hard to reach and even harder to hold. Someone who takes care of himself, the way city-boys do.
The way they get by, it's become a series of almosts.]