Before my bus rolls away from this town in Maine, I see my brother Jay laughing, and I wonder why.

A few nights before, he was giving me his keys, so he could go to his girlfriend’s place again.

It leaves me to my own devices, here, on this college campus in Maine. I put on my plaid L.L. Bean button down.

I walk to the party at the student center. I smile and tell everybody who I am. I drink keg beer, and when I say I’m 15 it lands like a punch-line. Everyone’s laughing. Before I leave, I’m head-butted by a thick-chested guy in a gray Champion sweatshirt. It’s supposed to be for fun, I think.

This is 1987. That guy’s name was Sandy. I can remember names, for the most part.

But numbers?

That night, I find my way back to my brother’s dorm, but I can’t remember the number on his door. Or even which floor.

I look. I get tired. I get tired of looking. I try a door. Any old door. One opens. Like that. I go inside. It’s dark. I find a bed. It’s empty.

Bingo.

I take off my clothes. I climb in.

This is one of the stories about me that’s ripping through this little campus even as I board the bus at the end of my stay.

From that bus, I’m looking at my brother, who I already kind of miss. He’s laughing with a friend, and I don’t know why.

But, already, I’ve been thinking.

About my misadventures at this little college.

I’ve learned some things. Not the things my parents had hoped I’d learned on this visit, but still.

There was the morning after the keg party, for instance. I tell myself:

If you sleep in a random room, don’t forget where you put your clothes.

But if you do?

Don’t go walking around in someone’s robe the next day, asking for your brother.

You just don’t.

Unless you’re me, at 15.

Through the bus window, my brother’s laughing. I’m hoping it has something to do with me.

You know, as long as he thinks it’s funny.

On the ride back to Mass, I feel alright. Better than that, actually. And why wouldn’t I?

I go to college parties now. I take my coffee black. I own a razor. I’m a man of the world, practically.

At the bus stop, my mom picks me up in the blue Isuzu Trooper II.

A couple days later, a letter arrives from Maine.

Even the handwriting on the envelope looks mean. That’s my brother. I assume the crash position.

“What if you started reading?

That’s what he says to me, in this note.

That’s all?

But before I can relax, there’s more.

It bothers me, he says, that we have nothing in common.

To this, I have to say, I feel a little shame. I’m not sure why.

But, he says, we can do something about it.

What? I wonder. What?

Read some of the books I’m reading.

Books? Read? That’s it?

So we can have something to talk about.

Okay. If you say so. I put away the letter. I start to relax.

To tell you the truth, it takes a few weeks.

But when I finish Full Moon, the biography of Keith Moon, drummer for The Who?

I tell my brother all about it.

It’s not his thing. Not even close.

But you know what? On the phone, he’s listening. I can tell.

And one book leads to another.

What are YOU reading?

For years, our calls can start this way.

I liked being his brother, but it's better now, we're friends. He will shape my tastes in books, no question. We'll hunt for used paperbacks in the summers. He'll get all fired up. He'll take it seriously. I can never resist. I don’t want to. Even writing this now, I feel the oceans of stories between us. And that is what we love.

Ah, love. Besides stories, that is all there is.

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