My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Grown men don’t have enough things they’re afraid of on this planet to become good at running.

Those teenagers? Before they were in the painting they only existed for each other. They had one summer on that pier twenty-five years ago which felt like it was going to last forever, because that’s how all summers must feel when you’re about to turn fifteen, that’s the age when friendship is like joining the mafia: you can’t leave it, you know too much. When you’re fourteen you know every corner of each other, all the weakest and most fragile places, and of course you can’t be allowed to become an adult with all that knowledge, because an adult would never be able to keep secrets like that.

“How many damn books have you actually read?” “Not nearly enough.”