Mike and Terry are cousins that are as close as brothers, whose fathers are killed in a car accident during their youth.
The short stories include flashbacks, remembering Mike's childhood and young adult life and shows how one tragedy changed their lives.
The waitress there tells them that the city is the “...sex-change capital of the world.” He asks Terry he thinks Chris is actually a man.
In an interview conducted by Teresa Miller, founder and executive director of the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers, S.E Hinton explained: “Tim is the author of these stories.
But by telling it like it was, she left a record of the way things were—a record that can’t be revised or erased, even after we’ve crushed that last Marlboro box and left it behind forever.”[16] Publishers Weekly-“Hinton is clearly aiming for terse, but what's here feels bare bones; interviews with the author take up more space than these plainspoken tales.” [17] Booklist-“Readers curious about a beloved writer's mature output won't want to skip the novella, aimed at an adult audience, where linked vignettes about male cousins form a smooth continuum with Hinton's gritty, guy-dominated YA novels...Hinton's fan base extends beyond regional and generational boundaries, warranting broader attention for this title than is suggested by the series' regional focus.” [18]