Los apestosos. The stinky ones. That’s what my mother called them. They weren’t really — at least I didn’t think so. They just smelled different. In my mother’s view of the world, smelling differently than she did meant that you stank. What she didn’t realize was that despite her zealous obsession with my brother’s and my cleanliness — which even involved perfuming our hair before combing it anytime we were to leave the house — we were actually considered the stinky ones by some of the other kids at school. All of that bathing and perfuming was always undone by the smells of her cooking—delicious though it was—which adhered to us, our clothing and whatever belongings we carried with us. Redolent in the smell of garlic and cilantro and a pantry full of other ingredients (the smells in our hair subtly masked by a sprinkling of Jean Nate’) and, thankfully, oblivious we ambled off to school every day.

The stinky ones were a brother and sister who lived around the corner from us: Michael and Jane. Michael was a legitimate delinquent (another, probably very good, reason my mother didn’t like him). He had been kept back in school at least once that we knew of. Jane was, to me, the prettiest thing in the world. She was blonde, pale and skinny but with huge blue eyes, bright pink lips and cheeks that always seemed flush. She, of course, was completely oblivious to my devoted infatuation.

We went on that way, my brother Jimmy and I, our friends from the neighborhood (like Michael) and kid brothers and sisters (like Jane) spending our childhoods going to school, hanging out, playing games, fighting, breaking the occasional window or bone and somehow surviving an incredible number and variety of other mishaps and near disasters. Stupid as this might sound, it was, honest to God, the time of our lives. We got into trouble, got punished by our parents and, when the spankings were over and their sanctions lifted, got right back into trouble. Then one summer, just before school started, Michael was gone.

The circumstances and the event itself were the stuff of whispers among the adults. Most of that fall our friends and we trafficked in half heard conversations embellished with details we mostly pulled from our imaginations. It was a black car, a Cadillac; no it was a van; no a station wagon. It was man, a black guy; no, he was definitely white; wrong, there were two men; no it was three, the third was driving. They grabbed him right in front of his house; no he was alone at the park; no it wasn’t even here, he was at his cousins’, THAT’S where it happened. On and on it went. The only thing we knew for sure was that at some point in time, in a certain place, when none of us were around, somebody came and took Michael away. We never saw nor heard from him again.

The other thing that happened was that, suddenly, we found our movements restricted, our time playing together and the perimeter of territory within which we played curtailed by those same whispering adults. We were driven to school and back rather than allowed to walk together. Curfews were strictly enforced, even on weekends.

Matters were made worse for me because of what Michael’s disappearance did to Jane. She withdrew from the world, from us, from me, emotionally and physically. When she wasn’t at school, sullen and quiet, she was behind the walls of her house, separated from the life she had before someone took her big brother from her. Hardly a word passed between us after that. I had no idea what to say, no idea how to even talk to her anymore. I don’t think any of us did, but I know that I felt it the most.

As time passed the rest of us withdrew from each other too. The natural thing that happens as childhood friends mature — they grow apart as they grow up — was made sharper and more harsh not only by our parents and their obsessive vigilance, but also because whomever it was that took Michael away also took from us whatever it was that held us together as friends.

I think about this sometimes when my own kids leave the house to go hang out (I don’t think kids “play” anymore) with their friends. I think about how the stranger that took Michael and Jane and our friendships from us is still out there. Maybe not the same guy, he could be dead now for all I know, but one just like him. Hanging around playgrounds, schoolyards, public libraries, little league games and wherever else kids congregate. And I stifle the memory of it and teach my kids all the usual lessons, forced into their fragile, little skulls by rote, and send them out the door. Because while he may have robbed my friends and me of life, innocence and memories made and yet to be made, I’ll be damned if he reaches through time to do the same to them.