Candles lined a Falmouth High School athletic field as friends and classmates attended a vigil. Students James Lavin and Owen Higgins died in a car crash. —John Tlumacki / The Boston Globe

FALMOUTH — Bobby Whelan tried to hold back his emotions as he visited the roadside memorial, where mourners had left flowers, handwritten signs, and a varsity letter, and where teenagers James Lavin and Owen Higgins, best friends on their way home from hockey practice, had struck a tree Thursday evening.

Lavin and Higgins, both 17, were killed. The crash happened on a narrow road about a mile from the rink in this Cape Cod town.

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