Steven and Oliver. Oliver and Steven. Always together. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.

I felt an awful, hard knot in my gut, like a punch — the mixture of shock and rage and vulnerability that comes with losing something that just a moment ago was there. The false, desperate hope that if you just look hard enough for it, the precious thing that was yours will still be yours because it belongs with you, right where you left it, and nowhere else.

The boy who was going to be president was not the man who had nothing.

We are a community, I thought. That’s what we humans do. We commune with each other. We help each other. We support each other. We share love.

I hadn’t cried for help; I’d screamed for help. And my call was answered.

I was possessed, crawling through the dirt with abandon to somehow get to Oliver.

We became inseparable, bound to each other in ways neither of us fully understood. All we knew for sure was that, as long as we were together, nothing could really hurt us. Together, we would always be okay.

Being so high above the din of the streets felt special and peaceful. It was like, after digging down into the nitty-gritty of Oliver’s theft, we were suddenly being given a broader overview. A new perspective.

Something was happening. Something bigger than me. My eyes were being opened to a greater truth about the world, an insight into our shared humanity, a close-up look at the extraordinary power of love and empathy.