I stood up at the front of the room in a poorly cut blazer looking out into a crowd of most everyone I knew, with a ring clutched in my sweaty hand shoved in my pocket. At this point Brandon knew it was better not trust me with little things, as I was incredibly talented at breaking or misplacing them. But then again this little ring was not so little at all. This ring was last the big adventure that we Antkowiak brothers would embark on. Bigger than secretly carrying our science teachers small sedan into the field next to the parking lot. Bigger than getting lost in the woods for nine hours and having our mother call the police. Bigger than all the holes we had punched in walls, bigger than any guy we had decked in lacrosse, bigger than any cigars we ever smoked, bigger than any fort that we had ever built. As the eighty-year-old man of God announced that Brandon had become one flesh with the radiant woman standing next to him, Brandon looked at me, and they asked me for the ring. Against all odds I still had it, hidden in the creases of my sweaty palm. They exchanged rings and love and a very long kiss and rode of into the west. Our adventures would continue but never in the same way. She now has his love and his child and his ring, and will forever. But I still have a piece of Brandon that will always stay with me. His mark is stamped six inches below my left knee, hidden under hair: four evenly spaced dots, almost as if I had been stabbed by a fork.