His tall slender build and big bright eyes are the first things I remember. I also remember that his brother looked just like him. He moved in across the street when I was eleven. He was the first guy I ever had a real crush on. He was always quiet, reserved; yet something about him spoke so loudly that he needn't say anything. His sister and I were also friends. The long, hot days of summer were filled with gossip, popsicles and listening to him play songs on his violin.
             They moved away a few summers later, to a house not far away at all. Yet, I seemed to distance myself, almost purposely from their family. I still don't know why I did that.
             I missed them. I missed the time we spent outside in the cul-de-sac making forts and playing impromptu baseball without bases, and sometime even without a bat.
             Then, as we started high school, the unthinkable happened. Craig was diagnosed with cancer. When I found out, things went blurry. I don't remember what people told me, or even remember most of the rest of that day. I walked around in a daze thinking "this doesn't happen to people I know" and wondering what I could do to help.
             The doctors caught it and it went away for a while. But when it came back, it over ran him with a vengeance, taking over his body like wildfire. Months of treatments flew by and in November of 2001 Craig A. Leavitt died. I miss my old friend.
             We were all sitting on the living room floor, my eyes filled with tears. My dad was saying that he was going to move out! My sister was yelling about how this couldn't happen to people like us, how this just could not be true.
             We were a well-rounded family. Or so I thought. We had a good size house on a quiet street, with two kids, mom, dad and of course, the family dog. We had "normal" friends and what you could consider a "normal" extended family. We had extravagant family holidays...