For four consecutive Saturday mornings when we were in ninth grade, Brian Henderson and I went to a second-floor office above the pharmacy downtown to breathe. We woke at eight o’clock. We could not brush our teeth or eat. Our mothers took turns shuttling us to and from the squat brick building, where we assembled with a couple of dozen others — some high-schoolers, but mostly college kids and down-on-their-luck adults — in a low-ceilinged waiting room with a black-and-white tile floor and a bank of windows overlooking Hudson Road. Brian and I signed in and took numbers, which we pinned to our shirts. Then we each took a two-inch section of clear plastic tubing from a box by the door, and we sat in folding chairs along the wall to wait. Brian always brought the latest issue of Sports Illustrated (his dad had a subscription), and I brought the sports section from the Saturday paper, and we sat next to one another, not actually talking, but definitely there together — two boys who’d known each other since fourth grade.