The story began like many life-changing stories do — not with a grand event or a dramatic revelation, but with two teenagers walking home after school on a cool autumn afternoon, unaware that one small detour would alter the entire course of their lives.

Stuart and Dylan had been best friends for as long as either of them could remember. They didn’t even recall the exact moment they became friends — it felt as though their friendship had simply always been there, forming the background of every memory, every inside joke, every important milestone.

From the first day of kindergarten to their junior year of high school, they had been inseparable. They were sixteen now, tall and broad-shouldered in the case of Dylan, lean and thoughtful in the case…