I’ve known Eli for seven years, which is long enough to know things about a person they don’t even notice about themselves anymore. Like how he takes his coffee black with two sugars but always lets it go cold because he gets distracted. He laughs at his own jokes before he finishes telling them. How his left knee bounces when he’s anxious and how he goes completely still when something is really wrong.

We met freshman year at one of those mandatory orientation mixers that nobody wanted to be at. I walked in, looked around the room full of people performing enthusiastically, and spotted him standing near the drinks table...