Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play by Danny Wallace

Hey—do you remember that Japanese kid at school?”
    Yes. I did.
    “Akira
Matsui!
”
    “When was the last time you heard that name?” said Anil, and I
knew:
it was just a couple of days before, when I’d seen it in the Book and whispered it in awe…
    “I remember when I’d just seen
The Karate Kid,
” said Mikey, “and I thought it would be a good idea to welcome Akira to the school by imitating the Deadly Crane Kick from
     the end of the film. But I accidentally followed through and kicked him in the head and he fell to the floor. I felt so guilty
     afterwards. I think he thought I was an evil ninja. Or a racist.”
    Akira Matsui had come to Loughborough with his family and been placed in our school for a short while. The only link any of
     us had with Japan was Mr. Miyagi, and we’d employed all the wisdom we’d learned from the films to make Akira feel welcome.
     On his first day, I’d run up to him and counted up to five in Japanese, very loudly, in his face. He had been terrified. Anil
     would shout “Wax on! Wax off!” at him, in the hope of somehow making a
connection.
And then, apparently, Michael had kicked him in the head. Which I suppose was a
real
connection. As welcomes go, there have been better. But when Akira recovered, we all became firm friends. We had just three
     foreigners in our school. Akira, a Greek kid called Spiros, and… I suddenly remembered someone… someone from the Book… someone
important
…
    “You’ve just reminded me of someone else,” I said, excited. “Cameron Dewa! Remember him?”
    Anil piped up.
    “The albino?” he said.
    “The Fijian,” I said.
    “I knew it was something like that.”
    “I wonder where
he
is now,” I said.
    “Probably Fiji,” said Michael, and we all agreed that that was quite a sensible answer.
    “And what about Simon Gibson?” I asked. “Remember how excited we all were when we saw McDonald’s was coming to town? I wonder
     how he is?”
    Michael’s hand shot in the air.
    “He’s back!” he said.
    Anil looked puzzled.
    “Last I heard he was working in Aberdeen,” he said. “No, Birmingham. At a Toby Carvery.”
    “They moved him—he’s manager of the Toby Carvery in Colwick.”
    “Where’s
Colwick?
” I asked.
    “Just outside Nottingham,” said Anil.
    “But that’s…”
    “Close,”
said Mikey.
    I looked at Anil. I raised my eyebrows. He shrugged and nodded.
    We would go and find Simon Gibson. A third name from my address book. A third name to be updated.
    “Mikey, listen,” I said. “What are you up to later on?”
    “Nothing,” said Michael.
    And then I uttered a phrase that I’d never said to either Anil or Mikey in my entire life before.
    “Shall we go to the pub?”
    We were going to meet later on that evening in the center of Loughborough to catch up some more and fill each other in on
     what we’d been up to. It felt good to see Mikey again, like I’d recaptured something. Revisited somewhere I thought I’d lost.
    And as we were leaving, I remembered something.
    “How’s the family?” I said. “How’s your brother?”
    “He’s a policeman now,” said Michael.
    “Cool,” I said.
    “Yeah. He gave up the stripping.”
    “The
stripping?
”
    “Yeah. He was a stripper for a long while. He was in a male stripping group called Natural Born Thrillers. They were very
     successful. They went to Greece and everything. But he gave it up after there was a riot in Middlesbrough when sixty drunk
     old women went mental when he was late on stage. I think he decided enough was enough after that.”
    I didn’t really know what to do with that information.
    “Listen, Dan…” said Mikey, suddenly. “And, Anil, too… listen… this is… I don’t know how to put it…”
    Anil and I both looked at Michael. He wanted to tell us something. We didn’t know what. We couldn’t even be sure
Mikey
did. And then he waved it away and looked to the floor.
    “It’s… I’ll tell you later…” he