We met Josh when I was seven years old. That day, my older brother, John, and I were doing homework on the dining room table when we saw a boy, dark-skinned and covered in sweat, walking a bicycle down the sidewalk in front of our home. My mother, knowing that John and I didn’t have many friends because she had chosen to homeschool us at the time, prompted us both to go meet this boy.

“You guys should go over to his house today,” I remember her saying to us. Being the curious and restless little boys that we were, we complied with her request eagerly, finished our homework in record-breaking time, and walked over to Josh’s dilapidated residence two houses away from our own.

I followed behind John as we walked up the driveway, massive cracks lining the concrete. John usually took the lead during our childhood adventures because he was older and taller than me. As we got closer to the front door, I noticed it was off-white, mostly due to the filth that covered it. The outside of the house was covered in old and peeling light-blue paint, rotting wood being exposed underneath. A bit sketched out, I turned around to get a better look at the front yard. It was small, about half the size of a basketball court, with dead and dying patches of grass splotching the soil, a few medium-sized palm trees on either side of the yard, and a large oak tree directly in the center of it. I turned back to John, nervously inching closer to him as he began to extend his hand to knock on the door. He hesitated.

“I don’t want to knock. You do it,” he spat out quickly.

“What? Why not?” I replied.

“Because I ain’t tryna’ get shot or nothing man,” he said, clearly exaggerating, but visibly nervous about knocking on the door. I sighed, pressing my hand to my forehead.

“Fine,” I said, reluctantly moving in front of him and closer to the front door. I closed my hand into a fist and extended it towards the door. Various thoughts rushed through my head. What if we do get shot? What if he thinks we’re weird? What if he doesn’t answer the door? What will I say to whoever answers instead? What should I say to him if he does answer the door?

I knocked three times. A few seconds went by. Shuffling could be heard from inside the house. Then came a booming voice, hoarse and vicious like a grizzly bear.

“JOSH, GET THE DAMN DOOR,” it bellowed. John and I jumped back and looked at each other, fear hanging in the air. The only thought in my head was, Yup, we’re definitely getting shot today.

More shuffling came from behind the door, faster and more urgent than the last. The doorknob rattled, clicked and turned. The door opened a crack, and from behind it a small, Hispanic boy with black spiky hair poked his head out.

“Hello?” he said.

John spoke up. “Hi! I’m John and this is Danny. What’s your name?”

“I’m Josh,” he replied. He stepped out of the house, closing the door behind him, and from that day forward, the three of us were nearly inseparable.

Josh would come over almost every day, my mother forcing him to stay for dinner every time he entered our home. We would explore the neighborhood all the time, terrorizing the neighbors with our somewhat invasive and obnoxious tendency to build forts in their backyards. We would make up and play games together, and we would hang out in John’s room all the time to talk about girls and life. John and I eventually enrolled in public school again for middle school, but that didn’t inhibit our friendship in the slightest. We still ran around the neighborhood, had sleepovers, and acted like complete imbeciles. Time was so kind to us back then.

During my seventh grade year, Josh and his mother were evicted from their home on our street. They moved to one of the worst neighborhoods in Saint Petersburg, Florida, our hometown, into a house that was about half the size of their previous one and in comparatively worse condition. However, as fate would have it, Josh’s new home was only a block away from the middle school that John and I attended. John and I were hesitant to go visit Josh at first, mainly because of the reputation of the neighborhood, but we couldn’t just abandon our best friend. Our friendship at that point was hard to maintain at first, since we were unable to drive to see Josh on the weekends and it was too dangerous to be in that neighborhood past 6 p.m. because of gang violence. But, when we all entered high school and John got his driver’s license, it was like nothing had ever happened. John and I would make the trip to Southside St. Pete all the time to see Josh, sometimes playfully “kidnapping” him and taking him back to our house to stay over for a couple nights each week or so. We continued to play video games together, especially the Halo Series, and got into trouble together all the time. The three of us grew closer than we’d ever been before during my four years of high school. Josh even moved in with us after he turned 18 at the end of my sophomore year. We shared meals, beds, bathrooms, laughter, tears, happiness, sadness, successes and failures with each other. Josh had become a part of our family. He was our brother.

I am now 20 years old. John is 21. Josh is 22. John and I both got into Florida State University after graduating high school and are now in our senior and junior years. Josh joined the Marine Corps as an aviation mechanic after graduating high school, and just finished a seven month deployment. However, time is no longer kind to us. Years go by without us seeing Josh due to the nature of all of our responsibilities, and when we do see him, it’s brief because of Josh’s strict schedule. The distances between us are sometimes incomprehensible, making communication a struggle. But, despite these obstacles, we don’t lose hope. We know we’ll all be together again. And whenever those days come, it’s like no time has passed at all. It’s like I’m seven again, and the three of us are still those little kids that met on Seventh Avenue in Saint Petersburg Florida.