Rodney and I believed if we held our breath too long we might die. We spent our afternoons up on his roof, taking turns. The roof faced nothing but a big tree, so no one ever saw. We'd time each other on the stopwatch I stole from school, and Rodney would always say something like, "If I get a minute thirty, you got to kiss my shoe." Or bet me: "More than two minutes, that means my mom's coming back."

My mom had told me not to play with Rodney after I stepped on an upturned nail in his dad's workshed. His hair was greasy and he smelled like talcum powder. Years later we'd lose touch after he fell hard into drugs. But Rodney had the lungs of a whale. He'd go a minute thirty at least, then his eyes would roll back in his head. I knew he was putting me on, but still, every time, I'd hunch over him in a panic, slapping color into his cheeks until he opened his eyes. He told me stories about the things he saw: tunnels of light, dead relatives in robes, animals assembled from spare car parts, women with forked tongues. "That was a close one," he'd say. "I almost didn't make it back." But he always did, and that was the point, at least back then. That there was nothing you couldn't come back from.

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