If only it were a joke

Mental Health

With candy rations dwindling daily and the calendar continuing its inexorable march, David and Eric and Dave found themselves mere days away from school. As they toured their habitual haunts in the neighborhood and the dry creek bed, they found that the usual joys had been leeched out of everything. They spoke seldom and grimly, three little men facing lengthy incarceration. They kicked tin cans perfunctorily as they walked, heads down, already dead to summer.