You carefully curl your fingers around the note that you held in your hand, which you slipped out from the side pocket of your suitcase. It has a long time since you had seen this piece of paper. To you, it is indeed a precious artifact. Out of all of the things that you own, this is your most prized possession. It wasn't just a "piece of paper" to you. It is a letter from your best friend, Dave Strider. This was the only artifact that you had left from Dave that you feel as if it is a part of him. It was a part of him that he left behind for you before he left. He actually gave it to you the day that he left.

Years have passed since you had seen Dave. You last saw him in middle school and then…the bad news came around. He told you that he would be moving halfway across the country…permanently...to a new house. He didn't dare call this new place that he was going to "a home." Dave always claimed that no place could ever be called a "home" without you. His life basically revolved around you and he didn't tell you why he needed to go. It was the only thing that he was never open about. His lips were sealed on that topic. He trusted you with everything, so it was a bit abnormal, but you accepted the fact that he would not talk about it. You assumed that there were some serious family matters going on and he would be moving with his older brother down to Texas. That had to have been the saddest day of your life. The memory is quite vivid in the very back of your mind. He waved out the back car window as his older brother drove him away. He had stopped by your house to see you the day that he left. Tears were streaming down both of your faces. You had fallen to your knees and cried even harder. Fellow classmates who walked past your house laughed at you, kicked you in the shins, and called you a "wussy crybaby." A large bully pushed you back onto the concrete and stared you down as you attempted to look up, but he saw the fear in your eyes. Your knees scraped against the pavement and your glasses fell askew a few feet away and he stepped on them, breaking them at the bridge...a type of break that could not be mended. It was the first time that you had remembered crying for a while. That was the day that you lost everything: what everybody thought of you and your best friend, who meant the world to you. Without him, you had no one. The other kids at school tormented you constantly. You were not like the average kid your age and they knew that. You knew that, too. Due to that, you were a easy target for harassment. Dave was always there for you through thick and thin. He was brave in a cool way. Dave was the type of person who would not let anything slide. To him, harassment was something to punch in the face as if it were the end of the world. Nobody understood you like he had and he always had your back. He was like a shadow, a good shadow. Always there, always loyal. He was always there to listen, to understand. Unlike most young boys, he understood that people had feelings, even though he was not always much for words. He could feel their hurt, their pain. Sometimes, you wondered if Dave went through a lot in his childhood and this was how he learned to understand people so easily. As you mentioned, his moving away (and his early years as well) were not a subject in which he lectured about. You crawled back into the house and for the next week after his leaving you refused to leave your room. You had no motivation to do anything.

In a way, you were just a bit…different…insecure. Then again, everyone then was. The kids always thought that everyone would think of the other as some sort of freak, so they constantly beat each other down to make them feel better about themselves, even though it was wrong.

You slip the paper back into the pocket, zip it back up, and lean back in your seat and sigh. For the past few hours, you have been riding a charter bus across the last state that you needed to travel across in order to visit Dave, who now lives in Texas in an apartment with his brother. The only contact that you two had for the past ten years was through Pesterchum and multiple short text messages. You only had a cell phone that could text (as you could not afford calling) and had not seen Dave face-to-face for quite some time. The thought of that makes you sad, but in a way you are happy that you at least have some form of communication with him. Talking to Dave "in words" was better than talking to "no Dave" at all. A tear rolls down your cheek at the memory. You wipe your face off with your coat sleeve and slouch in your seat, leaning forward so that you sat up once more and then you placed your forehead into your knees. Traveling is exhausting, even though it requires a lot of sitting. The most exhausting thing about it is the fact that you think too much and over-think things, which happens often when you travel as you have nothing else to do. Then at some point, you end up crying, like you are now. Thankfully, the only other person on the bus was the driver and he isn't paying any attention to your silent emotional outbursts.

The bus is rather quiet. It is late in the evening. You look out the bus window and peer up at the stars in the sky. The lights were dimmed on the bus as it is late, so you could easily look out without looking at any glare on the windows. You rest your chin on the small ledge on the bottom of the window and you look up. You've come a long way and Dave is waiting for you at the station. All throughout high school, you have waited for this moment. Dave and you have talked about this for quite some time. You two just had to visit after high school, when you would have more time to meet up. Your high schools had opposite breaks, which made communication fairly difficult, plus the time zone difference and the winter and spring breaks never overlapped. It eventually all added up to a very high level of "difficultness" (if you could call that a word) and isolation from your best friend. Both of your worlds collapsed. Life was just hard for you and nobody seemed to understand. Sometimes you didn't understand why everything was so hard. Everybody else that passed by seemed happy and they could have anything that they possibly wanted. You often felt alone. After Dave left back then, you felt even more alone than you ever had before.

You sigh and wipe the sweat off of your forehead as you wonder why the bus does not have any air conditioning. How could people survive on this vehicle? You wonder why you are wondering this due to the fact that you are the only person on this bus other than the driver. After all, who commutes this late at night and why would a bus driver have this route if nobody else uses it? At times, you over-think things to the extent of which it gives you a headache. At least you will be off of this bus in a few minutes. You are almost there, you can handle this.

The bus hits a bump of some sort in the road and you are thrown forward slightly as you grip the horizontal support rail to avoid being thrown forward even more with your sweaty palms. You could really use that air conditioning as of now. It is difficult to breathe on the heated and muggy the bus. The humid air was coming out to get you and you are not quite used to it. Texas was calling to you. To pass the time, you slipped your cell phone from your pocket and sent a text to Dave, telling him that you would be there soon. You were sure that he would appreciate it.