A young man reflects on moments of friendship with two other boys; there is both an intimacy and a distance in their relationships. An air of melancholy suffuses the story.
This story was one of the winners of the “One Story” teen contest, and it certainly has a teenage angst feeling to it. The scene of the three friends driving at night put me in mind of the Smiths’ “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” (peak teen angst for my generation); intense emotion, unrequited and confusing longing, and the desperate need to connect with someone run through the story, and even decades past that kind of fierce yearning “The Frame Between Us” makes me remember that age.
That it was written in the opening months of the pandemic (described in the Q&A at the end of the story, though it isn’t explicit to the story) gives it an even sharper poignancy. That the fumbling efforts to reach out to their peers would be interrupted by something as tiny yet massive as a virus is one of the many losses of the last two years.