Chapter 4 – Judgments

•••

Conor’s eyes snapped open at the first chime of his alarm. He had slept dreamlessly for three hours, during which the fire in his blood had cooled, leaving behind only ashes and smoke.

Everything hurt. He staggered as he rose out of bed, an icepick pain in his heels, a dull millstone grinding in his knees. It took him a full minute to peel off yesterday’s clothes, and most of another to limp down the hallway to the bathroom, leaning heavily against the wall the whole way. The mirror showed filth everywhere, dark bruises blossoming on his shoulders, cuts on his face and his forearms. There was something oddly familiar about his eyes, dark and sunken, and he stared at his reflection for a dozen heartbeats before it clicked.

Hello, Guyler.

He turned on the shower as hot as it would go and leaned against the tile, watching the dirt and dried blood pooling at his feet. Bit by bit, the heat leached its way into his body, loosening him up until he was able to reach for the soap without wincing.

You may have overdone it.

This wasn’t the usual next-day soreness. Where normally there would be tightness and a dull, constant ache, he now felt a series of short, wild spasms with almost every movement, as though his muscles had lost the ability to control themselves, were one misfire away from contracting into black holes. The worst of it was in his back—when he reached up to lather his armpit, everything to the right of his spine seized up, dragging his vertebrae out of alignment.

…hm.

Slowly, carefully, he bent to wash his shin, where a shortcut through a thornbush had left a spiderweb of thin, black scabs. That one, at least, he remembered—as the water cascaded across his back, he tried to think, to match the various pains with specific moments, specific impacts. But it was all a blur. He hadn’t done anything new, really. Just…

A lot.

Too much.

Too much for your mom last night.

Conor stilled, an unpleasant weight settling into his chest.

(It wasn’t that he’d forgotten—wasn’t that Ashleigh’s voice in his head had suddenly brought it all crashing back, or anything like that. But he had been looking in the other direction, and the words had turned him back.)

Right.

Right.

…fuck.

He began moving again, filling his palm with shampoo, dumping most of it onto his head and saving a drop for the eight wispy hairs above his groin. By now, Ashleigh’s mother would have come home from her graveyard shift, would no doubt have seen what he had done to Ashleigh’s bedroom window, and…

And what?

He leaned forward, letting the water wash the bubbles from his hair, eyes closed against the deluge. Long seconds passed as he waited—for an idea, a next action, anything.

But there was nothing. No response, from his wrung-out brain—just a blank, animal awareness, like a deer in the path of a speeding car.

Incoming…

The word was still echoing in his thoughts when he entered the kitchen ten minutes later. His mother was already there, packing up her lunch, the coffee maker gurgling quietly on the counter. Conor shuffled past her, grabbing a stack of frozen waffles from the freezer and folding himself carefully into his seat.

“Plate,” she said, without looking up.

He groaned.

Smiling, she took one down from the cabinet and slid it to him across the table. “I’ll never understand how you can eat those things cold,” she said. “They taste like frozen cardboard.”

Conor shrugged, immediately regretting it as a muscle seized at the base of his neck, making him wince. “Syrup,” he said, reaching for the bottle in the lazy susan as he dug into the knot with the fingers of his other hand.

“Incidentally, congrats. You’re ungrounded today.”

He looked up. His mother was still smiling as she poured half of the coffee into her thermos and the rest into a mug. “Surprised?” she asked.

“I thought I had four days to go.”

“Time off for good behavior.”

You gonna tell her?

“Plus, your soccer tryouts are tomorrow, and neither one of us can get off work to drive you.” She blew lightly across the surface of her drink and took a careful sip. “Take the trail, not the street, and wear your helmet—Elena told me they’ve had three bike accidents come through the ER this week.”

Conor said nothing, his eyes unfocused, the waffle frozen halfway to his mouth.

Soccer.

He had completely forgotten about soccer.

It wasn’t a big deal, exactly—it was a small rec league, put together by the neighborhood parents, and none of the teams were any good. All the real athletes ended up trying out at school, or leaving to join the traveling championship circuit. It was mostly just a cheap alternative to a babysitter, a way for the grownups to force the kids to get some fresh air, for once.

But Ashleigh would be there…

The sound of his mother clearing her throat made him twitch—which made him wince again—and he looked up to see her standing with arms crossed, waiting.

“Helmet,” he echoed, trying to sound earnest. “Trail. Got it.”

Mollified, she turned back to the sink, began rinsing out the coffee pot. “Oh, and by the way,” she continued, speaking over her shoulder. “You’ll be going out for the Jaguars, not the Vikings.”

Conor’s thoughts, which had just begun to move again, screeched to a halt for a second time. His mouth opened—closed—opened again. “What?”

You mean ‘what’ like you didn’t hear her, or—

“I’ve already talked to Coach Matthews and to the Jaguars’ coach—I think his name was Pool or something?—so everybody knows what to expect. Your lucky number was taken, so you’ll have to settle for jersey number twelve. First practice after tomorrow is next Tuesday.”

Conor stared.

“Why?”

His mother’s eyes flickered briefly in his direction, then away. There was a long pause, during which she shut off the water, dried the coffee pot, and came over to sit down in the seat across from Conor. “A few reasons,” she answered guardedly. “For one, I’ve never liked the way Coach Matthews kept you stuck in the same position for year after year.”

“I like being a fullback.”

“You’ve been a fullback since second grade, though, except for one season playing goalie. You’re supposed to run around, not just stand there waiting for the ball.”

“I get plenty of exercise. I’ve been running back and forth to Ashleigh’s for like a week. And I was outside all summer—”

“That’s not the point. The point is that sometimes you need to shake things up. Try something new.”

Like marijua—

Hssst.

Conor clamped down, cutting off the intruding voice. “Why can’t I shake things up on my team?” he demanded.

“Don’t you think it’ll be nice to get to know some new people?”

There it is.

“I already know them,” Conor argued. “We’ve all been in the same classes since forever. I don’t like any of them.”

“Come on, Conor, half of them go to Blessed Sacrament. You haven’t even given them a chance.”

“But all my friends are in the Vikings!”

Conor’s mother arched an eyebrow, and he shut his mouth with a click, realizing too late that he had come perilously close to shouting. She held his gaze for a moment, then spoke in a steady, level voice. “First of all, that’s not even true. You told me last week that Holt and Nolan are going out for the school team. It’s just Ashleigh and Sam and Eddie on the Vikings, and you despise Eddie—”

“But—”

“And furthermore,” she continued—this time with an edge in her voice that made Conor sit very still—“if you’ll think back, you made most of those friends through the Vikings, and so there’s every reason to believe you’ll make five or six new friends by trying out another team.”

Conor’s mother waited pointedly, clearly expecting another outburst, and gave a curt nod when he held his tongue. “If you don’t like the Jaguars, fine,” she said. “Try the Stars, or the Hawks, or pick a different sport for all I care. But you’re not going back to the Vikings, and that’s final.”

“But why?”

“Because I said so, Conor.”

“What if I don’t want to be on any team, then?” Conor asked, hearing the sullenness in his voice and making no attempt to rein it in.

“Not an option. You need to get out and socialize. You spent the last two weeks moping around in your bedroom—”

“I was GROUNDED!”

“—and you will be again if you do not immediately lower your voice, young man.”

Her own tone had turned glacial, and her knuckles were pale as she gripped her mug. “This is not a negotiation. You are going to come home from school tomorrow and get on your bike. You are going to put on your helmet, and you are going to ride to the park—on the trail—where you will find Coach Pool and tell him that you’re there to try out for any position other than fullback. You’re going to make the team—heaven help you if you don’t and I think you did it on purpose—and then you are going to ride home and tell me all about it. Is that clear?”

“This is totally unfair! It’s my life—I should get a say.”

“Contrary to what you might think, Conor, you are not an adult. You are a child, which means that half the time your brain is physiologically incapable of telling a good idea apart from a bad one.”

(She said the word physiologically in pieces, their edges razor-sharp, as if each syllable was its own whole argument—fizz-ee-oh-lodge-ih-cull-ee.)

“…considering your recent track record when it comes to making decisions, you should count yourself lucky I haven’t pulled you right out of East Binder and dropped you into home school—”

Seriously, you gonna tell her?

Shut up, Ashleigh.

You know it’ll be worse if you wait until my mom calls.

“—you get a say once you’ve convinced me that we’re past this little rough spot, and I can trust you to be mature and act in your own best interest. Want to speed up the process? You could start by not throwing a childish temper tantrum over a change in your little league soccer career, which is clearly so central to your ambitions.”

Neatly trapped, Conor could do nothing but fume as his mother raised her mug and drained the rest of the coffee. His thoughts churned, mental fingers scrabbling, digging, looking for some lever that might move her—

Not like I was going to talk to you at soccer practice anyway.

Conor felt his throat tighten. The voice in his head had never been…been harsh like that, before—almost savage.

Lot of things happening for the first time, lately.

He finished his waffles in trembling silence, dropping his plate into the sink as he shuffled back to his bedroom. Moving as quickly as his aching limbs would allow, he gathered his school things, put on his shoes, and headed for the front door, giving his mother a wide berth as he passed once more through the kitchen. “I love you,” she called out after him, her voice still taut. “Have a good day.”

He let the door swing shut behind him without reply.

Yeah, that’ll show her.

Shut UP, Ashleigh.

The ghost of the other boy’s voice was like a soft wind, feathering over the embers of his frustration, fanning them into open fury. Stalking to the end of the driveway, he threw his bag to the ground and kicked it. None of this was his fault, none of this was fair, he hadn’t done anything wrong—

(An image of broken glass sparkling in the moonlight.)

Furious, he kicked the bag again, then tumbled to the ground as a muscle in his calf suddenly tightened into an iron knot. A wordless howl made it halfway out of his mouth before he bit it off, and he lashed out mindlessly, hammering the side of his fist into the driveway until his arm seized up too.

There you go, whispered Ashleigh, as he curled into a ball on the cold concrete. Nothing a little punching won’t solve.

Strangely, that did it, the anger vanishing as suddenly as it had spiked, leaving behind only a tired, clinical calm. Slowly, the tension drained out of his limbs, and he slumped, boneless, his cheek against the rough surface, the rhythmic throbbing in his muscles like the ticking of a clock.

This, pronounced a soft voice, is what happens.

For once, he wasn’t sure who it was, him or Ashleigh or somebody else.

What does that even mean? he shot back.

There was no answer.

Pulling himself up into a sitting position, Conor began to work out the cramp in his arm, kneading and squeezing his bicep until it finally unclenched. He did the same for his calf, then carried on stretching, slowly rebuilding his composure as he waited for the bus.

He felt almost human again by the time it arrived, managed to climb the three steep steps without staggering. Standing at the top of the aisle, he braced himself against the first two seats as the driver hit the gas, taking advantage of the brief imbalance to sweep his gaze across the battlefield.

If the afternoon bus ride was a hurricane, the morning one was a steady downpour of the forty-days-and-nights variety. There was the same social brinkmanship, the same jockeying for position, but it played itself out over minutes rather than seconds, the rules subtly but meaningfully different.

It was common knowledge that sitting down next to someone when you didn’t absolutely have to meant that you were either humping them already or you hoped to start soon. As a result, the seats filled up in waves, even best friends sitting opposite one another rather than sharing, the number of available options dwindling until every bench had a rider, then opening up again as students began doubling up.

Conor’s stop was in the second wave, but Ashleigh’s was right at the end of the first, meaning that the pair of them had spent all of sixth grade at the mercy of the system, bouncing around from place to place. This year, with Ashleigh on suspension, the short end of the stick had passed to Timothy, who more often than not found himself deep in enemy territory. Conor sat as close as he dared each day, unwilling to leave the younger boy entirely without backup but also eager to avoid pissing him off. That usually put them both somewhere in the rear third of the bus, with Conor a few rows closer to the front.

Today, though, Timothy had taken a spot only four seats back from the door, and he made a point of lifting his bag off of the seat as Conor started down the aisle.

Ah.

Right.

Great.

Conor sat down, noticing as he did so that the younger boy’s bag was brand-new, a tag still dangling off one zipper.

“What did you do?” Timothy hissed, without preamble.

Conor studied the sixth grader’s face, looking for clues. “Does your mom know?” he asked quietly.

“Sort of. She thinks he did it.” Conor shot the younger boy a look of surprise, and he shrugged. “We took all the glass and tossed it out through the hole, along with that bronze Spiderman thing.”

Something in Conor’s torso squirmed. He had given the little statuette to Ashleigh as a Christmas present, two years earlier.

“Did he say anything?” he asked.

“No,” Timothy said. “He just kept crying.”

The world lurched to a halt.

Crying?

“Same deal when Mom got home. He wouldn’t say anything, just sat there. He cut himself on some of the glass—just a little cut, on the side of his wrist, but she was super freaked about it. I think she’s taking him to a therapist today.” Timothy’s scowl deepened. “Which we can’t afford, so there goes my birthday. What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, really, nothing. Just the rock.” Timothy’s expression grew even darker, and Conor hastened to explain. “I came over to talk. He—at school, Eddie was—I just—I needed to talk to him, okay? I threw some pebbles up at the window to wake him up. You know, like usual. But he just stood there looking at me. So then I, um. Uh.”

Conor trailed off, his face burning with embarrassment. It sounded incredibly, incredibly dumb.

Timothy apparently agreed. “That’s it?” he spat, whisper-quiet and razor-sharp. “That’s why you broke my brother’s window? Because he didn’t want to talk to you at one in the goddamn morning?”

“He’s been talking to Eddie.”

Timothy rolled his eyes. “What are you, spoiled little girls?” he asked. “What is with the two of you? Why can’t you just fucking text each other, like normal people? Jesus Christ, of all the stupid, pathetic bullshit—”

The sixth grader broke off, his nostrils flaring, and as if to demonstrate an almost infinite capacity for irrelevance, Conor’s brain chose that exact moment to note that the younger boy smelled exactly like his brother.

“Look,” Timothy said, the word flashing out through clenched teeth. “Here’s a brilliant idea: instead of throwing fucking rocks at my house, why don’t you just give up?”

Conor swayed, as if Timothy had slapped him. “Huh?”

“Give up. He’s an asshole, he’s always been an asshole, he’s never going to stop being an asshole. Case in point, it’s been like two weeks and he’s still ducking you. Why not take a hint? And either way, how does throwing ROCKS through his WINDOW accomplish ANYTHING AT ALL?”

Conor was silent. The full reality of what he’d done was only just now sinking in, and he could hear in Timothy’s words a preview of what his parents would say, of what Ashleigh’s mother would say. Just when he had been on the verge of pulling clear, of putting enough distance between himself and the bag and the fight to start breathing again—

But they’re not going to say anything. They don’t know, and they’re not going to find out.

Because Ashleigh had covered for him.

(While crying, apparently.)

There was confusion there, a whole mystery to vanish into. But before that there was something else, something else he had to ask, he knew just how low the words were going to take him but he said them anyway, because a part of him had to know, had to be sure…

“You’re not going to tell, are you?”

The look of withering contempt on Timothy’s face hit him squarely in the gut. But before he could backpedal, another voice cut through the chatter, making both boys jump.

“Tell? Oh, hell no, man, ain’t no way little man’s gonna tell. Tell him you ain’t that kind of man, little man.”

It was Devon. He had somehow appeared in the seat immediately behind them, a giant out of place amid the middle schoolers, leaning in conspiratorially, his arms draped across the seat back. Timothy shifted his glare without losing a single degree of heat and snarled, “We were whispering, little man. Ever heard of a private conversation?”

The older boy grinned. “Y’all might want to double check the definition of the word ‘whisper.’ Besides,” he said loftily, leaning back. “You know what they say. Knowledge is power.”

He turned to Conor. “Which is exactly why ol’ Tim here ain’t telling nobody, Rocky. That’s the kind of card you can only play once. No sense wasting it, know what I’m saying?”

It took Conor several seconds to work out the implication behind Devon’s words, and when he did, he felt a small shiver of fear.

“Leave us alone,” Timothy snapped. “We’re not talking to you.”

Devon looked back at the younger boy. “You know, you’re kind of a grumpy kid, Tim. Surly. Hell, I might even go so far as to say mean. Anybody ever told you that before?” He shook his head sadly, pursing his lips. “Damn shame. You’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings someday, you keep hatin’ like that.”

The high schooler leaned back even further, lacing his fingers behind his head. “That’s okay, though. I don’t need to interrupt. I’ll just sit back here by myself and whisper, and you can sit up there and whisper, and we can be secret friends. Don’t no one have to know.”

Timothy’s face was a mirror for Conor’s own as he flushed red, his mouth working soundlessly in a mix of confusion and anger. Once again, the older boy turned his attention to Conor. “You ain’t got nothing to worry about, kid. I seen ol’ Tim here get his head swirled, lunch stole, books soaked, and gut punched, and he never said a word to nobody. I don’t think he’s a very big fan of authority. I mean, imagine somebody shitting in your shoes in the locker room, and you don’t even ask the coach for another pair.” He glanced at Timothy and flashed an expression of exaggerated horror, covering his mouth with one hand. “Oops. Don’t think I was supposed to tell you that. But no worries. I mean, we just whispering, right?”

Conor felt movement at his side and looked down to see Timothy’s fists clenched and trembling. The sixth grader’s face, though, was oddly calm, a closed sort of expression coming over it as he fixed Devon with an empty, emotionless stare.

“How did you know about that?” he asked quietly.

“Like I said, amigro, knowledge is power.” Devon flashed another grin, then paused, glancing up and past the two of them as the bus ground to a halt and a taller boy in an East Binder uniform began making his way down the aisle. Holding up a finger to Conor and Timothy, Devon dug into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a pair of bills, tightly folded. He handed them off without a word as the tall boy walked past, then continued on as if nothing had happened.

“Let you in on a secret,” he said. “Lot of knowledge floating around in schools, man. Shit’s omnipresent. Eight times eight is sixty-four, the capital of Djibouti is Djibouti. Facts out the ass…people be, like, giving them away.”

“What was that?” Conor demanded, pointing down the aisle.

“Oh, just paying some debts is all. Man did me a favor yesterday, and I’m not a big fan of hanging out in the red.”

“Forty bucks doesn’t sound like a favor,” Timothy said flatly. “Sounds like a job.”

Devon shook his head. “Nah, just thirty. Big bills on the outside. And I don’t expect nobody to do no job for anything less than a C-note. Thirty’s a good rate for favors. Helps ’em remember to get themselves done.”

He winked, and both Conor and Timothy stared.

What.

It wasn’t a question so much as a mood—everything about Devon was what, the past two minutes no less than their conversation the week before. The older boy was like—like a cartoon, a character, not like a person at all…

It had to be on purpose. An act.

But why?

“Are you selling drugs?” Conor murmured, the words rising all on their own from somewhere in the lower parts of his brain. A high schooler, someone from Central—

(Someone black, he carefully did not think, but seriously, it wasn’t like the black kids who lived in the Central district were rich.)

—throwing around hundreds of dollars like it was nothing—

“Not much of a salesman if I’m the one paying, wouldn’t you say?”

“What kind of favor is worth thirty bucks?” Timothy asked quietly.

“Oh, you know,” the older boy drawled. “This ’n’ that. Depends. Tell you what—you want to guess, start naming things you might could do for me for thirty bucks, and I’ll let you know if you get warm.”

He winked again.

Conor glanced at Timothy, but the younger boy’s eyes were still locked on Devon, a look of hard suspicion on his face. “How about if I volunteered to terrorize some little kid for you?” Timothy asked, his voice still quiet. “Say, maybe a sixth grader with a bit of a mouth. That the kind of thing you pay people for?”

Devon’s ever-present smile slipped, and his answer came out with none of its usual stageplay lightness. “Cold,” he murmured. “Job like that needs doing, I do it my fucking self. ‘Sides, type of thug you can buy for that shit ain’t usually wise enough to stay bought, and then we all got problems.”

He held Timothy’s gaze for a long moment, then tipped his head toward the back, where Eichardt was sitting. “Besides, last I recall, I was offering to get that motherfucker off your back, not paying him to stay on. An offer that still stands, by the way.”

“And that costs what?”

“Well, I don’t know. Kind of depends on whether calming him down works out to be more of a favor or a job, know what I mean? Want me to do you an estimate?”

Timothy’s only answer was to spin around and settle his back against the seat, eyes front and arms crossed. Devon chuckled softly.

“How about you, Rocky?” he asked, turning to Conor. “Looking to get the little man an early Christmas present?”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Timothy hissed.

Devon laughed again. “Well, damn. Blue balls. Remind me not to start conversations around here unless I’m ready to finish ’em off myself.”

And then he leaned back once more, closing his eyes as if napping. Nonplussed, Conor turned back toward the front, throwing Timothy a sidelong glance. They rode in silence for a while, the jolting and lurching of the bus sending spikes of pain through Conor’s battered, aching body. When they stopped on a hill at the railroad crossing, his bookbag slid backwards under the seat, and as he bent down to retrieve it, he saw that Timothy was wearing a pair of Ashleigh’s old shoes.

Come on, say something.

Like what? Where would he even begin?

He fidgeted uncomfortably.

Maybe Timothy has a point, he heard himself think. Maybe it’s time to give up. Maybe let them both take care of themselves.

Except—

Ashleigh hadn’t told.

Ashleigh hadn’t told, and he’d been crying.

(Crying!)

So what? He’s being an asshole.

He was. He was.

And what he did to Guyler…

That, too, had crossed the line. But—

But what?

Conor looked over at Timothy.

But that.

In the cold light of day—with his whole body aching, with the sobering realization that he had fucked up, deeply, in more ways than one—

Timothy was alone.

Angry, determined, hurting—and alone.

And Conor, having just gone through a week and a half of life without Ashleigh, was more aware than ever of what it was he stood to lose. What it meant, to be on your own in a place like East Binder. What he’d thought he’d already lost—

Except that Ashleigh hadn’t told.

Not yet, Conor said, to the voice in the back of his head. He wasn’t ready to give up yet.

So last night was what—a warm-up?

He was unnerved, thinking about how far he’d swerved the night before, and how easily he’d turned back. Afraid that maybe this was just more denial—that he was only making things worse, digging himself deeper, making the eventual break even harder to take.

But still. Not yet.

Taking a deep breath, he reached out to tap Timothy’s shoulder.

“What?”

There was no fire behind the word, just a tired, deflated apathy, and for a moment Conor felt a sudden swell of kinship.

“Will you do me a favor?” he asked.

“You got thirty bucks?”

Conor had no answer for that, so he ignored it. “Just—look, I know you’re not about to start passing notes or anything. But could you—would you just say, um. Thanks? To Ashleigh? For covering for me, I mean. I just—want him to hear it.”

The two boys looked at each other for a long moment.

“Why?” Timothy asked.

Conor didn’t answer.

“He’s not worth it. Piece of shit.”

Conor said nothing.

“You want to say sorry, too?” Timothy asked.

Conor hesitated, biting his lip.

“To me, dickbreath. For waking me up in the middle of the night.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. …sorry, Timothy.”

The younger boy studied him for a moment, then turned back to the window. There was another silence, and then Timothy spoke again, his eyes on the world flashing by outside.

“One condition,” he said flatly.

“Yeah?”

“Stay the fuck away from my house. You guys want to play angry boyfriends, get a room and take turns slamming the door on each other’s dicks.”

“Thanks, Timothy.”

“Save it.”

•••

The best that could be said about the rest of the morning was that Conor survived it.

The tone was set when he tried to stand to get off the bus, and discovered that every single one of his muscles had turned to stone. Hobbling as quickly as he could, he made it out the door and as far as the front circle before he had to stop to work out the cramps in his legs. It took him the full five minutes between bells to make it to homeroom, where he sat at his desk just long enough for everything to seize up again.

This went on for five more periods, during which he also failed to turn in two homework assignments, got told off for nodding off in Social Studies, and miserably bombed a math quiz. That last might not have bothered him except that Guyler Stevens—who shuffled in late only slightly less stiffly than Conor and handed a note to Mrs. Atkins—finished in under ten minutes and was writing in pen.

Conor hoped that he might have a chance to talk to the other boy at some point during the period, but after the quiz they dove straight into the material for the next unit, and by the time the bell rang his limbs were so unresponsive that even Guyler beat him out the door.

Yeah, so, this is really bad.

He had no option but to lurch awkwardly toward the cafeteria, where Holt and the others had saved him a seat and were kind enough to act as though the previous day’s outburst had never happened. Still, Conor sat in silence, making only token contributions to the conversation, spending most of the period with his eyes on the corner by the silent lunch tables, where Guyler had once again settled himself far away from everyone else.

It bothered Conor to realize that he couldn’t say whether this was normal for the other boy. If he’d been asked to name the twenty kids he knew best at East Binder, Guyler would’ve made the list simply by virtue of the sheer number of times he’d squared off with Ashleigh, often with Conor in the middle. The two of them had gotten off on the wrong foot on the very first day of sixth grade, and had been at each other’s throats ever since.

Yet outside of those encounters…

They had shared no classes the year before, and try as he might, Conor couldn’t picture Guyler in any context that didn’t also involve Ashleigh. He watched as other students drifted past the boy’s table, waiting for someone to stop and sit down—or at least say hello—but none did. Nor did Guyler seem bothered by this—for the most part, he kept his eyes on his food, and in his occasional scans of the tables around him his expression showed no anger, no sadness—not much of anything at all.

Doesn’t he have any friends?

It felt like a question Conor should know the answer to. Guyler was at the center of everything that had happened over the past ten days, and it was uncomfortable to realize that he knew practically nothing about him.

Except that Ash can take him in a fight, I guess.

He swept his gaze across the nearby tables, looking for anyone else who might be paying attention—a buddy giving him some space, maybe—

Conor frowned.

There, at the silent lunch tables…

Conor turned to Holt, nudged the other boy on the shoulder. “There’s a high schooler on the wrong side of the line,” he said, pointing.

The other boys fell silent, their heads turning.

“…huh,” said Holt.

“Is he on silent lunch?” Nicholas asked.

Nolan shook his head. “That’s just for middle schoolers,” he said. “High schoolers do lunch detention in the detention room. Or they stay after.”

“Well, the teachers aren’t murdering him, so there’s gotta be a reason,” Eddie pointed out.

“He was there yesterday, too,” Conor said quietly.

“It’s gotta be silent lunch,” Nicholas insisted.

“Trust me, Nick,” Nolan said. “Nobody crosses the line. Something else is going on.”

“One way to find out,” Holt said cheerfully, and he promptly stood, pushing back his chair. The four of them held their breaths as he marched straight across the crowded room, heading for the high schooler’s table. He reached out to tap the older boy’s book, and the two of them spoke briefly—

“Dude, that was ballsy,” Eddie exclaimed.

One of the teachers on duty had swooped in, exchanged a dozen words with Holt, then escorted him back to his seat with a stern warning and a sharp look.

Holt shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said. “Guy’s not actually on silent lunch. Miss Daniels just told me not to bother him. His name’s Oliver. He’s one of the seniors from Central.”

“What’s he doing there?” Nicholas asked.

“No idea. Said he sat there last week and nobody said anything.”

They all digested this.

“Why?” Nolan asked.

Holt shrugged again. “Beats me. Peace and quiet?”

“No, I mean—why didn’t they say anything? The line…”

“Maybe they figure it doesn’t matter?” Nicholas ventured. “Since he’s off to the side and he isn’t bothering anybody?”

“You don’t understand, man. I saw a sophomore trip across the line and they gave him detention. They don’t fuck around.”

“Isn’t that the same kid who was getting thrashed last week?” Eddie put in. “Could have something to do with that.”

“What, like witness protection?”

“But he said he sat there himself.”

“Maybe he’s got some kind of special needs thing?”

“Or the teachers are just getting lazy.”

“No way—you saw how quick they came down on Holt…”

Conor felt his attention waning as the conversation drifted further into speculation. Turning back, he saw that the scrawny teenager was reading once again, and that two tables over, Guyler had finished eating. He watched the pair for another minute, his eyes drifting back and forth between them, and then sighed and began packing up his lunch.

If you start now, you might be able to limp your way to Activity before the tardy bell rings…

Reaching under the seat, he brought up his stack of textbooks.

(They weren’t allowed to carry bags to class, so Conor had been lugging the whole stack with him since first period—as slow as he was moving, today, he hadn’t dared risking the detour to his locker.)

“Extra credit?” Holt asked quietly, making him jump.

“Huh?”

The other boy nodded to the little leatherbound journal sitting on top of the stack. “Saw you writing in that during English,” he said. “Thought maybe you were doing something extra for Palmano.”

“No,” Conor said, shaking his head. “It’s just…kind of a notebook.”

He’d tried to write in it in each of his classes so far, netting four pages redacted with sharpie and a fifth torn out entirely. He had halfway decided that this would be his final entry, and found himself vacillating wildly between I’m so sorry and Go to hell.

(But why was he crying, though?)

“How’s your slave paper coming?” Holt asked.

“Not great.” The bell rang, and the five of them stood, Conor gathering his books. He’d written almost five hundred words in class the day before, but they’d felt flat and unoriginal when he reread them that morning, and he’d scrapped the whole thing and started over.

Noticing a bit of a pattern, there.

Shut up.

“Same,” said Holt absently. And then—

“Hey, hold up a second?”

“What?”

“Hang back with me.”

His hand was on Conor’s sleeve, pulling him out of the flow of traffic, the other boys drifting ahead.

“Uh,” Conor said. “I’m going to be late for Activity—”

“Just a sec, man. I want to talk to you about something.”

Sinking toward the back of the crowd, they passed through the doors and stepped off to the side, out of the way of the last few stragglers.

“What—”

“Listen,” Holt said. “I know this isn’t any of my business, okay? And it’s not like I have any real clue what’s up. But it’s pretty clear you’re messed up about something, and I got ten bucks says it’s got to do with Ashleigh.”

Conor stiffened. He could feel his body…revving, slow waves of panic washing upward from the base of his spine.

“Yeah, I thought so. You guys pissed at each other?”

Conor said nothing.

“Okay, right, sure. Not my business, like I said. But look.” Holt leaned in half an inch, his voice softening. “I just wanted to say. Whatever it is, you decide you do want to talk about it…you got friends, okay? I mean, Sam, Eddie, whatever, but me and Nolan, we’re not taking sides. We’ve been worried about you. Both of you.”

The dark-haired boy looked at Conor searchingly, his gaze excruciatingly gentle. Conor turned away, suddenly unable to maintain eye contact. The panic in his spine had spread, had overflowed into his stomach and transformed into a squirming, animal discomfort.

“Whatever’s going on, you can trust me,” Holt continued. “I won’t say shit to anybody—you know that.”

Conor was fighting to hold still, his body rebelling, trembling—

“I care about you, ¿sale?”

His composure was a house of cards, and Holt’s voice the beginnings of a hurricane, his attention like fingers in unwanted places.

“I’m here, if you need me. Here to help.”

Away, go away, go away—

(Holt wasn’t—wasn’t supposed to talk about things like this. Wasn’t supposed to notice things like this. This was—it was private, it was none of his business—)

“I’m your friend. Yours, and Ashleigh’s, too. We stick together.”

Conor could feel his self-control slipping, another explosion looming—

“Anyway. Good luck in sixth. Try not to pull a muscle.”

And just like that, it was over. Holt held out a fist, and Conor bumped it out of sheer reflex, his throat tight, heart inexplicably pounding. The other boy’s gaze lingered on him for one last pair of centuries, and then he was gone, trailing along behind the rest of the crowd.

Conor went the other way.

A breath he hadn’t noticed himself holding tore from his lungs like a bird taking flight. There was sweat on his brow, and he found himself walking fast enough to hurt, the protests of his aching limbs ignored, irrelevant.

He—

Why would he—

Why DIDN’T he—

He can’t just—

Anger, fear, confusion—Conor didn’t know, had no words for whatever it was he was feeling. He was disturbed by the intensity of his reaction, the abrupt and overwhelming need to escape, the still-lingering disorientation. He’d never felt like that before, that he could recall—beleaguered and harried, as if Holt were an inquisitor tightening the screws. Somehow the other boy had struck a nerve that ran right to Conor’s core…

First my window, then trying to beat up your driveway. Maybe you’re just losing your shit.

He looped around the outer edge of campus, hugging the wall, crossing first behind the three arms of the middle school and then the four long halls of the high school, arriving at the gym from the wrong side, the doors of the emergency exit locked and handleless. Leaning against the bricks, he squeezed his eyes shut, listening to his heartbeat as it slowly dropped back to normal.

No. Just losing your shit wasn’t a reason, it wasn’t an answer. He might be walking around with a short fuse, but that didn’t remove the need for a spark. Last night, the spark had been Ashleigh; this morning, his mother—and both of those had made sense, Conor knew what they were, could see why and how they’d set him off. What had just happened with Holt was…

Crazy.

It was like that first time he’d run home from Ashleigh’s—the intolerable feeling of fragility, of inadequacy—a burning need to understand, to take it apart and fix it, fix it, fix it. Somehow Holt had—had knocked him over, knocked him flat on his ass without even trying, and Conor needed to know what it meant, how it had happened, how to make it not happen again—

The tardy bell rang.

Conor opened his eyes, holding back a groan. Disoriented, practically crippled, and now late, too—for a moment, he considered just walking straight to detention.

But the thought of facing Mr. Sykes made him shiver, and so, on the spur of the moment, he decided to ditch, instead. There were seventy kids in Activity, and half the time they didn’t even take attendance—he had a better shot at avoiding trouble by not going at all. He could wait outside Art, or maybe climb up onto the breezeway, poke around on the rooftops a little. As long as he was quiet, he should be okay…

Rule number—

Shut up.

•••

Ms. Palmano wasn’t having a good week, either.

Conor could see it in the set of her shoulders as he limped in from the hallway on Thursday morning. There was a forbidding slant to her brow, and dark lines etched around her eyes that looked somehow out of place.

“Essays out,” she barked, as soon as the tardy bell rang. “You have ten minutes to confer with your classmates to ensure that they are free of errors. I’ll be at my desk if there’s anything you can’t figure out on your own. Today’s question limit is two.”

Holt raised his hand. “When you say ‘free of errors,’ do you mean—”

“This is one of your two questions?”

Holt’s hand dropped like a stone.

(Two days earlier, she had announced that she was instituting a limit on how many questions each of them could ask during a given period, with the intent of “reversing a tragic but predictable side effect of constantly drowning children in information, thereby leaving them with a falsely deflated perception of its value.” Conor had asked her to repeat it twice so he could write it down, and now, remembering it, found himself thinking of Devon, the older boy’s words drifting up in memory—facts out the ass. People be, like, giving them away.)

“Nine minutes, fifty-five seconds. Move.”

They moved. Standing, Conor took a step toward Holt, but was beaten by William, who looked panicked and slightly sick. All around him, students were pairing up, papers changing hands.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“Any idea how you spell ‘ignominious’?” asked Jennifer as he turned, holding up a sheet covered in neat, careful handwriting. “I heard my stepdad say it this morning. Didn’t have time to look it up.”

Her voice was light and cheerful, her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. Conor shook his head, slowly compacting himself back into his seat and handing over his own (slightly crumpled) paper. “Dunno,” he said. “What, um. What’s it mean?”

The girl grinned, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “No clue,” she admitted. “But it sounded bad, so I threw it in.” She glanced down at the page Conor had given her, and he felt a twinge of self-consciousness, his hand twitching as if to snatch it back. “Anything you want me to look for in particular?” she asked.

“Uh. Commas, I guess? And spelling.”

“Cool. Not, like, content, then?”

“Uh.”

There was a pause, and then Jennifer shrugged. “Okay,” she said.

Conor searched for something to say—

“What about you?”

“Just, like, whether it makes sense overall,” Jennifer said. “I’m sort of worried that it’s out of order, or something.”

Conor nodded, his cheeks warming as she smiled again. She turned away from him, setting his paper down on her desk and smoothing it flat with her hands.

(He felt an impulse to apologize, and squashed it.)

“Nine minutes, kiddos. Tick tock.”

He looked down at the paper on his desk. Jennifer’s essay was…

Pretty.

Okay, sure, but what did it say.

He spent several futile minutes trying to read it, the words oddly slippery. It was as if they weren’t really words so much as lines, curves, abstract patterns, his brain somehow stuck on the wrong level of zoom. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to focus, making it halfway through before running out of time.

“Here’s yours back,” Jennifer said. “I liked it! Your spelling really sucks, though. I fixed everything I could, but I don’t think I got them all. What’d you think of mine?”

“Um,” he said. “It’s, uh. It’s good. There wasn’t—wasn’t anything wrong with it.”

Jennifer quirked an eyebrow, and he winced.

“I mean, I didn’t spot any mistakes. I think. I’m, uh. Probably not the guy for that.”

She laughed. “Fair enough,” she said, reaching out to take the paper. “What are you the guy for?”

“I—”

“All right, eyes front,” called Ms. Palmano. Jennifer gave one last soft chuckle, seeming (thankfully) amused, and turned back to face the front.

Smooth.

I wasn’t trying to be sm—

“I realized this morning,” Ms. Palmano continued—

(Her voice cutting through the last bits of chatter and popping Conor’s thought like a balloon.)

“—that we sort of dove in headfirst, and never took the time to talk about the big picture.”

Grimacing, Conor again forced his unruly brain to buckle down, turning his eyes to the front. There were new words written on the board, which Ms. Palmano had apparently added while they were all busy working:

She reached into her desk and pulled out a shiny and official-looking folder, bringing it with her as she took up her usual post at the front of the room. Without preamble, she opened the folder and began to read.

“One. Students will use text to understand characters and themes, such as by citing textual evidence to support an analysis of what the text means, both explicitly and implicitly. Two. Students will understand word choice and usage, such as by analyzing how a particular sentence, chapter, scene, or stanza fits into the overall structure of a story, essay, or poem and contributes to the development of the theme, setting, tone, or plot.”

Conor cast a sidelong glance at Holt.

“Skipping ahead to seven. Students will produce clear and coherent texts in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience, such as by writing arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence that demonstrate a thorough understanding of the context surrounding a topic.”

Around the room, reactions ranged from strained attentiveness to open bewilderment. Up at the front, William was scribbling notes furiously.

“Skipping again. Students will gather and report information in writing, such as by conducting research projects which draw from multiple sources, require assessment as to the credibility of each source, and provide opportunities for quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing the data and conclusions of others, while avoiding plagiarism and developing proper bibliographic citation skills—I trust everyone is following this?”

“You trust wrong,” Holt blurted. Laughter rippled out across the room, stifled at first, then more open as Ms. Palmano cracked a sympathetic smile.

“Is that the, um. The state curriculum?” one girl asked shyly. “The goals for this class?”

“Is that one of your two questions for the day?”

The girl blanched.

Holt grumbled something under his breath that Conor didn’t quite catch, sedenta peenchase pregoontas ontray totos or something like that, and thrust his hand into the air. Ms. Palmano nodded to him.

“Are those the state goals for the class?” he asked.

“Ostensibly,” she answered, throwing him a second nod and an approving look. “Which is another word you should look up, if you don’t know it. This is what the district gives you, when you sign up to teach seventh grade English. It’s not as bad as it sounds—there are actually a lot of useful things in there, once you finish dying of boredom. The problem is, as goals, they don’t really mean anything. They’re a great list of whats, but they only get you halfway on the how, and they miss the why completely.”

She tossed the folder onto her desk, where it landed solidly, like a book. “And it’s the why that gets a student—of their own free will—to put forth their actual best effort in class.”

She leaned back against the dry erase board, careful not to smudge the words. “Honest question, no traps. Show of hands. Do any of you think English class should exist, for seventh graders? If you were inventing something like middle school from scratch, say. Raise your hand if we would be here in this room together, in your version.”

There was a thoughtful silence, and then something like seven or eight hands went up. Jennifer’s was among them.

“Can any of you say why? I’m not going to put you on the spot, I’m just wondering. Do any of you have a vision of what English class is for?”

Slowly, the hands crept down—all but two, Jennifer’s and another girl whose name Conor couldn’t remember.

“Either of you feel like sharing? ‘No’ is a fine answer.”

“There are, um. A lot of good books?” Jennifer said cautiously. “And like maybe for some people they need a little help learning how to, sort of…appreciate them? Like last year, when we read Hatchet. We did a poll at the end. Everybody in the class liked it. But most of us wouldn’t have ever read it if the teacher hadn’t found it for us and kind of…pushed us, I guess.”

Ms. Palmano nodded. “That sounds like an elective, though. Like art. Helping people find beautiful things that enrich their lives. In this world, English is a core subject—it’s something they think you need. From your perspective: are you getting something you need, here? Do any of you feel like you wouldn’t be okay, if you didn’t have English class?”

They looked at each other.

“How about school in general?”

More silence.

“Okay, I’m not going to defend school in general because that’s too hard. But I am going to try to defend English class in particular—at least, the way I plan to teach it.”

She swept her eyes around the room, weighing. “How many of you have an uncle or a grandfather or a next-door neighbor who has a garage that’s just absolutely full of tools? Like, easily upwards of a hundred different tools? And there’s lots of grease and dust and a million little glass jars holding all kinds of bolts and washers and things?”

About half of the hands in the room went up, and she nodded. “For those of you without your hands up—there’s a way those grandfathers can kind-of-sort-of do anything. Like, you come to them with a ten-foot wooden pole that’s two inches thick and you need it to taper down to just one inch thick at the ends, and you have no idea how to do that, but he disappears into the back and comes out with this terrifying mishmash of clamps and levels and spinning metal parts and like five minutes later the job is done.”

“Why would you need a pole to taper down like that?” asked a boy.

“Is that one of your two questions?”

The boy shook his head.

“Okay, well, to answer a slightly different question—the whole point is that almost no one wants a pole like that. That’s not a normal thing to want, or need—if it was, you could just buy them at Walmart. The thing that makes the grandfather special is that he can do all these things that aren’t normal, that nobody else knows how to do, that even he himself has never done before. He has the power to do brand-new things, by combining a bunch of different tools and techniques. Hands up if you’re with me so far.”

The hands went up.

“Words are like that,” she continued, pushing off from the board and beginning to pace. “They are exactly like that. Some words are like hammers and screwdrivers—useful for a lot of things, so you keep them in easy reach. Others are more specific—they only do one very particular job, but they do that job ten times better and faster than any other tool, because they’re made for it.”

“Ignominious,” Jennifer murmured—to herself, under her breath, quietly enough that almost no one else could hear.

“The more words you learn, the more tools you have in your garage—but you also have to practice with them, keep them polished and in working order. Because what good is your grandfather’s shop, without his expertise to go along with it? You wouldn’t know how to taper the ten-foot pole, even though all the tools are right there.”

She stopped pacing and turned to face them again. “That’s what English class is all about, according to me. A dictionary is like your grandfather’s shop—it’s got pretty much every word you’ll ever need. But a dictionary isn’t enough. You need the practice, to take what’s in the dictionary, and turn it into—MEREDITH! ABSOLUTELY NOT!”

The explosion came without warning, and all of them jumped, Meredith twice as high as anyone else. Instantly, all heads swiveled in her direction. Craning his neck to look, Conor saw the girl’s face flush red as she tried to shove her phone back into her pocket.

“Stand up,” Ms. Palmano snapped, her voice suddenly cold as frosted steel. “To the front. Turn around, face your classmates.”

Meredith complied, the red in her face deepening to purple as she buried her eyes in her shoes. The room was horribly, awfully silent.

“Meredith is not interested in today’s lecture,” Ms. Palmano intoned. “While the rest of you are working hard to keep engaged and follow along, Meredith is playing games on her phone.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Meredith has decided that this class is not worthy of her undivided attention,” Ms. Palmano continued, as if the girl hadn’t spoken. “Meredith has made her choice.” Stalking down the rows of desks, she swept open the door and gestured out into the hall. “Meredith is free to go. I will inflict no more knowledge upon her today. Take your phone with you, Meredith—I’d hate for you to be bored out there.”

“I—I’m sorry,” Meredith whimpered, as the rest of them looked on in horror. “I’ll put it away, I won’t—”

“Whyever should you be sorry?” Ms. Palmano asked, her voice like thunder. “You’re not being punished. I haven’t called the office. You’ve got—what—almost thirty-five minutes, to do absolutely whatever you want. I’m simply not allowing you to carry on doing it in my classroom, which is reserved for students of English.”

Conor’s eyes found Holt’s, each seeing that the other also saw, and understood.

(Whether by chance or by design, Ms. Palmano’s choice of punishment here was devastatingly correct. Many of their classmates—most, even—would have simply taken their teacher at her word, would have shrugged and left, possibly with an unspoken fuck you, too. But this peculiar style of shaming was custom-cut for Meredith, who was now choking back tears.)

“I’m a student,” Meredith whispered.

“Not today,” boomed the voice of judgment. “You would like to think of yourself as a student, to be treated as one. But you have refused to pay the price of entry. Perhaps tomorrow you’ll feel differently. Now go—you’re wasting valuable game-playing time.”

Meredith fled. The rest of them sat, petrified, as her sobs receded down the hallway, punctuated by the distant slam of the heavy bathroom door.

“Anyone else?” Ms. Palmano asked, her voice terrifyingly cool.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Apologies for the interruption, everyone,” she said. “I’ll try to speed things up, to make up for lost time.”

She turned to the dry erase board, uncapping her marker. “Language is at the center of everything,” she said, writing out the letters of the alphabet in the space between the four blurbs. “In a lot of ways, we can’t even think about something until we have words for it…”

The shift in her demeanor was abrupt, offhand, total. Unnerved, they listened attentively. But there was a new thread of tension in the room, manifesting itself in still hands, stiff backs, wary eyes, the students watching her like cats tracking the silhouette of a hawk.

“…I’m not going to pretend that all of language use falls into one of these four buckets,” she said, gesturing again at the board. “But a lot of it does, and that’s what English class is for. We use language to understand ourselves, to understand the world around us, to change ourselves, and to change the world around us.”

She punctuated each phrase by tapping the board with the tip of the marker, bulleting the four points. “You need to level up in English so that you can gain greater understanding and greater capacity for changing the world—particularly by getting the other people around you on board with your vision. Most things that matter require people working together, and being skilled with language is a huge part of making that happen.”

(Conor’s heart had not yet ceased to pound.)

She capped the marker and swept her gaze around the room, weighing. “Your essays,” she said abruptly. “Which category did they fall under?”

The whole class flinched. There was a long, squirming moment during which no one answered, in which everyone fought to be the least noticeable—eyes down, hands still, hardly daring to breathe—

“David,” called Ms. Palmano.

“Uhm,” David squeaked, his voice cracking.

(No one laughed.)

“I don’t—um. Maybe. Understanding the world?”

“Susanne.”

“Understanding yourself, I think. I mean, myself.”

“Ben.”

“Understanding myself.”

“Jennifer.”

Conor frowned. The teacher was clearly searching for something, some answer she hadn’t heard yet—

“Changing the world.”

“Makayla.”

“Understanding the world.”

“Conor.”

He hesitated, torn—

“Can it be more than one?” he asked.

“Is that one of your two questions?”

There’s not even half an hour left in class—

“No,” he said, surprised to find that his voice sounded firm and sure. “Because it can definitely be more than one.”

Ms. Palmano gave a somber nod, and the shadow of a wink. “Correct. In fact, it almost always is more than one. You’re a part of the world, and so your understanding of yourself is inextricably tied up with your understanding of everything else. And the act of understanding is a change, and that change almost always leads to other changes, which is why we still talk about authors like Erich Remarque or Harriet Beecher Stowe. Or Heisenberg, if you can’t resist the joke.”

The students looked at each other in bewilderment.

Ms. Palmano didn’t notice, or didn’t care—she had turned back to the board and was now drawing four large, overlapping circles around the clumps of words, creating a complex, flower-petal Venn diagram. Speaking over her shoulder, she continued.

“Long story short,” she said, “these are our goals—at least as far as reading and writing are concerned. Every assignment in this class is intended to push you toward at least one of these four guiding stars, and if you find that an assignment is not doing any of these for you, then you should change it. Any questions?”

Silence.

She glanced at the clock, and gave a small sigh. “Speaking of non-sequiturs,” she said, stepping over to her desk and pulling open one of its drawers. “How many of you have heard the word résumé before?”

Hands went up as she drew out a stack of papers and began counting them out to the students at the front of each row, gesturing for them to take one and pass the rest back.

Conor was the last to receive one. He looked down at the first box, where the words Name and Job applying for stood in front of a pair of blanks.

“How many of you know what it means?” Ms. Palmano asked.

Fewer hands, this time.

“Okay, well, easy enough to explain. A résumé is like a summary of your life, that you use when you’re looking for a job. It’s a list of all of your relevant experience, education, and skills. You could think of it like a report card, except it doesn’t just include grades. A grownup’s résumé will say things like where they went to school, what jobs they’ve had, and anything major that might make them look good—speaks a second language, won an award from the governor, has a black belt, et cetera.”

She swept her gaze around the room. “Your assignment for the rest of the period is to write one. All of your proudest accomplishments, all of your most impressive skills. Everything you’ve achieved up to this point in your life, and everything that qualifies you to achieve even more in the future.”

One of the boys near the front raised a hand. “Is this, like. A job we want when we grow up? Or like a job we think we could do right now?”

“Is that your—”

“Sure.”

“It doesn’t matter much, for this assignment. None of you have more than a sixth grade education, so a lot of real-world jobs would be outside your reach for a while anyway. Let’s say put down whatever you like—bonus points if you come up with a job you want that actually fits with your skills and experiences.”

“Does the job have to be real?” asked Holt. “And yes, this is my second question.”

“Give me an example of a fake one.”

“I dunno, dinosaur…chef?”

“No problem. Experience relevant to dinosaurs, experience relevant to cuisine. Just keep in mind—getting hired is a competition. Your résumé should highlight stuff that makes you a uniquely good pick, not stuff that’s true of everybody. Any other questions?”

She looked around the room, and Conor followed suit. He noted with some unease that his classmates appeared to be almost completely recovered from the incident with Meredith—half of them were already scribbling, and most of the rest looked like they were just waiting for the starting gun. Ms. Palmano’s lightning turnaround, coupled with the habit of compliance, had made the return to normalcy so seamless that the thought of Meredith sobbing in the bathroom already seemed slightly unreal.

“All right. You have—let’s see—twenty-five minutes. Work silently; work fast—your first draft is due at the end of the period. Get to it.”

There was the usual rustling of paper and pencils, and then the room stilled again, each student silent in the bubble of their own thoughts.

Conor looked back down at his own sheet. Under Name and Job applying for were three large boxes, labeled Experience, Skills, and Education. Besides that, there was nothing.

He looked up again. Although most of his classmates had dived in headfirst, a handful still had yet to begin. They were scratching heads and chewing erasers, their eyes hooded and downcast or glazed and staring off into space.

“Pssst.”

It was Holt, and as Conor looked over, the other boy jerked his head toward the front of the room, where an empty desk marked the absence of their teacher. She had slipped out through the door behind him without him even noticing.

Meredith? Holt mouthed.

Conor shrugged.

(It occurred to him that it was a rare teacher who could walk out on a class at East Binder without fear, and he wondered idly what Ashleigh would have done, in this moment.)

Returning his gaze to his paper, Conor considered the three boxes, trying to imagine which parts of his life belonged in each. He thought about his father, working in the shop in the garage, building props and sets—about his mother, who worked in finance, doing things with numbers he’d never bothered trying to understand. He thought of the jobs they put in children’s books, an endless stream of titles all ending in er, like a tribal chant—doctor, lawyer, teacher, mayor, driver, farmer, builder, baker. He closed his eyes, dropping his forehead into his palms.

(His heart was no longer pounding, but he still felt fragile, off-balance, a cup perched precariously on the edge of a table.)

Experience. Skills. Education.

He wasn’t one of those kids whose fathers took them out hunting in the mountains, or whose mothers insisted that they learn piano. He wasn’t obsessed with models or engines, and he’d never fallen in love with a sport that had a major league. There was nothing he could point to and say, this is mine. This is what makes me special.

Oh, please. Enough with the bullshit—it’s not like anyone’s watching.

He opened his eyes again, staring down at the sheet.

Scared somebody’s going to say you’re bragging? It’s a résumé—you’re supposed to brag.

His eyes drifted to the header box, where the words Job applying for were printed, his shoulder Ashleigh following along.

Is that what you’re afraid of? the imaginary voice scoffed. Holt’s putting down dinosaur chef. Write whatever the fuck you want.

Conor picked up his pencil.

There you go. Now write it down, under skills—I can jump from the auditorium to the gym.

He wrote, the words flowing down and out through his arm like blood.

And experience—let’s see. There’s the sewer, the warehouse, the quarry, the tower. Construction site and old folks’ home. Dry ice and napalm and Holt’s throwing stars. That time we picked the lock when my mom forgot to leave a key. And when we hacked the work zone sign on the highway.

(Reprogramming it to read OTTERS RAPE BABY SEALS, a fact with which Ashleigh had been morbidly fascinated—“To death, too, but that’s too many letters”—and a message whose shock value Conor had been unable to top.)

He wrote and wrote and wrote, each word coming easier than the last as he settled into the rhythm. Soon enough, he ran out of space, and began adding asterisks in the margins, pointing to appendices on the back. In ten minutes, he’d filled the entire page, front and back—all except for the blank next to Job applying for.

He stared at it, irresolute, the pencil tip balanced at the start of the line.

Is there something you’re waiting for, or…?

He wrote down Superhero.

Thirty seconds later, the paper was folded into a tiny square and dropped into the trash can beside Ms. Palmano’s desk, a fresh copy clutched in his hands. He felt dizzy—almost weak—and he imagined he could see Ashleigh out of the corner of his eye, shaking his head in disappointment.

Forest ranger, Conor told himself, and even in his own head he could hear the note of pleading. I could be a forest ranger. Forest rangers are cool.

Or a pilot.

Or a zookeeper.

Or you could just kill yourself now, and save the trouble.

He laid the new sheet out on the desk, picked up his pencil, wrote his name. Hovering over the second box, hand trembling, he stared at the words Job applying for until his eyes began to sting.

I can jump from the auditorium to the gym…

•••

“Well, now we know,” Holt muttered, as they passed through the doorway and out into the hall. “Ten cuidado—don’t fuck with Palmano when she’s on her period.”

“Poor Meredith,” said Jennifer, who was right in front of them. “Do you think somebody should, you know, check up on her?”

“Ms. Palmano left right after we started on our assignment,” Conor said. “She probably took care of it then, right?”

Nobody ventured a response. Behind them, William squirmed through the pack at the door and came jogging over. “Okay, so—wow,” he said, as the four of them walked slowly toward the bathrooms.

“Harsh, right?” Holt said. “I wonder if she’ll get in trouble. I mean, the whole thing with the papers was, like, last week.”

“I’m not sure she should get in trouble,” William said darkly. “It’s about time one of the teachers actually bothered to follow through on the rules.”

Holt frowned. “That was pretty far past following through, don’t you think? I mean, if that’d been a kid, it would’ve been bullying, straight up.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t a kid, was it? It was a teacher—they’re supposed to be in charge.”

“It’s not less bullying if the person has more power,” Holt pointed out. “Plus isn’t her whole deal that she’s not in charge of us?”

“Yeah, but that’s why she made it clear at the start—you can’t just float by. You’ve got to actually show up.”

“It’s not like Meredith was the only one, though,” Holt argued. “She—she—it’s like she wanted to, I dunno, make an example, or something.”

William shrugged. “Gotta start somewhere.”

Holt looked at him like he was crazy. “That’s fuckin’ cold, man.” He turned to Conor and Jennifer. “What do you guys think?”

Conor shrugged, looking to Jennifer, who sighed. “I don’t think it was nice,” she said cautiously. “But I think it was more like…fifteen percent too much, rather than three-ex, or something.”

Holt’s eyebrows climbed up to his forehead. “Seriously? After you tore into her the other day for the trash thing?”

Jennifer didn’t back down. “I’m not saying she isn’t a total bitch. But William’s right. At least this way we know what the actual rules are.”

“Plus, it’s not like it was some big misunderstanding,” William added. “Meredith was blowing her off. And it’s not like Palmano gave her silent lunch, or dropped a zero in the gradebook. She just kicked her out. She didn’t even call the office.”

Holt shook his head again, incredulous. “So you don’t think that was over the top at all?”

“I think Meredith got exactly what she asked for. Not Ms. Palmano’s fault if nobody’s ever given it to her before.”

“Conor,” Holt said. “Back me up.”

Conor swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. “I,” he began, hoping that the next word might appear of its own accord. When it didn’t, he followed up with “Um,” and then fell silent, the other three all staring at him.

What’s the matter, Bat-boy—cat got your tongue?

“I don’t know,” he said.

And then it was time for Spanish.

•••

Conor’s soreness hit its peak on the third morning after the window. He shuffled through the courtyard during break like a zombie, his arms and legs made of wood, every step agony.

You know, you didn’t have to be crippled today, Ashleigh whispered.

Yes, we have established this.

Man, imagine if there was an emergency right now. You’d be fucked, and all because you went nuts and started eating every wall in sight.

Oh, ‘went nuts,’ huh? Like it just…happened? For no reason?

Hey, don’t blame me. I’m just the clone.

Conor rolled his eyes—

—and then halted abruptly, stiffening.

In front of him, Guyler Stevens did the same.

(There had been multiple chances for Conor to speak with the other boy, in the days since his return to school—besides math and lunch, they passed each other regularly in the halls, and often stood close in the bus lines. They had even shared an uncomfortable hour at soccer tryouts, confined to neighboring benches, neither physically able to participate. Each time, though, Conor had hesitated, unable to feel his way forward into a conversation. Half of the moments had felt too intimate, and the other half too public; some of them would have been rushed, while others would have dragged on interminably. He had started to worry that his ability to come up with excuses might be inexhaustible—)

“So, where were you?” Guyler asked.

Conor blinked.

“What?”

“I saw you both go up, but only he came back down. Where were you?”

Guyler’s tone was level and serious, pitched for relative privacy in the crowded open space. There was a narrow line of sticking plaster running all the way across his forehead, covering the stitches just below his hairline, and Conor tried not to let his eyes linger on it.

“I was…trying to find a different way down.”

The other boy’s head tilted fractionally.

“Well, you missed the show,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Conor said, the words feeling like golf balls in his mouth. “About—about what happened.” He waited for a reaction, but Guyler said nothing, his face a flat mask. “If I’d known—if I’d been there—”

Guyler scoffed, quietly.

Conor broke off.

Seconds passed.

“How’s your rib?” he asked.

“How’s your mom’s asshole?”

Another pause. Oddly, there was no fire in Guyler’s words—the retort had been delivered tonelessly, almost dutifully, as if it were something the other boy was saying simply because the rules said he had to.

But there was something thickening in the air between them. Conor switched gears again. “You, uh. You didn’t tell,” he said, letting the question mark imply itself.

“What, and have that asshole come back here and brag about it?” Guyler scoffed again. “I’m surprised he didn’t turn himself in, just for the street cred.”

He did turn himself in.

But that was a whole other conversation, with its own set of unconnected dots. Conor had no idea what Ashleigh had actually said to Mr. Sykes, or even if he’d said anything at all…

He just kept crying.

Conor shook his head. Focus.

He decided to try being a little more direct. “What were you guys fighting about?”

“Other than whether or not my face needs more fist? Nothing.”

Something must have shown on Conor’s face, because Guyler shrugged. “Hey, you’re the one asking, sidekick.”

It wasn’t that Conor didn’t believe him—

(Well. It wasn’t that Conor did believe him, either.)

—so much that it wasn’t an answer, didn’t explain anything, why that one day had ended up so different from all of the others—

“You didn’t say anything first?” he asked.

“Of course I said something,” Guyler replied, his voice still flat and emotionless. “I told him that I owed his mom about three fifty and asked him where his boyfriend was.”

The usual, in other words. Conor frowned. Could he have been thinking along the wrong lines this whole time? Was the answer as simple as Ashleigh being fucked up on drugs and pissed about bailing on the Gap?

But it wasn’t that kind of drug.

…right?

The other boy was watching him closely. “That’s why you’ve been eyeballing me since I got back?” he asked, a note of incredulity coloring the edges of that dead, toneless voice. “You’re trying to figure out a way this is all my fault?”

“No, I—”

Conor started to speak, started to explain, but broke off as Guyler lifted up his shirt, revealing a hurricane of yellow, green, and purple bruises swirling around his midsection. A few of the nearby students turned to look, morbid curiosity on their faces.

“This is what your psycho butt buddy decided to do after he knocked me out,” Guyler snarled. He dropped the shirt and crossed his arms, leveling a glare at Conor. “Unless that was you, showing up fashionably late.”

“Wh—you—I’m the one who rescued you,” Conor spluttered. “That was my shirt holding your forehead together!”

More students were paying attention now, as the conversation rose in volume. “Yeah, nice trick,” Guyler said, his voice dripping with venom. “Perfect way to keep yourself from getting suspended. But you’re skipping over the part where you wouldn’t’ve had to hold my forehead together if your lord and master hadn’t split it open in the first place.”

“Which wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t sneaking around fuc—following us, waiting for a chance to pick a fight!”

(Conor could feel that he was picking up speed, accelerating, some sort of poise or balance slowly draining away.)

“Oh, you’re right, I was totally asking for it. I mean, when’s the last time you called somebody a faggot and didn’t end up in the emergency room?” Guyler spread his arms wide, an exaggerated expression of contrition on his face. “Poor Ashleigh. If only I hadn’t forced him to give me a concussion and then kick me while I was down. I mean, look at what it got him—two whole weeks off school! He’s the real victim here.”

The bell rang, and the larger crowd began pulling away, those closest drawing closer. Guyler continued, his voice thick and heavy with sarcasm. “What do you say, sycophant? Will you apologize to him for me? Will you tell him how sorry I am that he had to go through all of this?” His lip curled. “I’d offer to suck his dick, but I wouldn’t want to put you out of a job.”

All eyes turned to Conor, who was struggling to hold his expression steady even as he reeled internally. The sight of Guyler’s ribs, still livid and discolored, had had a raw and visceral effect on him, and half of him was planted firmly in the past, the other boy’s blood slicking his fingers—

(A shiver seemed to work its way through the assembled witnesses as the silence stretched, and stretched, and stretched, becoming more of an admission with every passing second.)

Conor opened his mouth—

“I’m sorry, Guyler.”

It wasn’t what he had meant to say. He’d meant to say something like You’re right, or It was fucked up, what he did, or maybe even I’m mad at him, too.

But there were rules. You didn’t throw your best friend under the bus, didn’t openly take the other side. Even if he was wrong. Even if he might not be your best friend anymore, even if it felt like he was throwing you under the bus—

He didn’t rat about the window.

It was almost nothing. A tiny scrap, a mere remnant of the trust that had held between them for four years and counting. But it was enough to bind him, bar him from speaking the full, unvarnished truth. Conor had been desperately hoping to find some reason, some excuse, something in Guyler’s account that would leave room for Ashleigh’s innocence, or at least justification—

“That apology and a nickel would be worth four cents,” Guyler spat.

Conor opened his mouth again—

“Heels!”

This from someone on the edges of the circle—the standard warning, presaging the heavy footsteps of a grownup.

(No one moved.)

“You don’t get to act all sad and nice and—and regretful, just because this one time turned out worse than you’re good with. You backed that psychopath all year, last year, and if you think saying sorry gets you off the—”

“All right, people, let’s go. Break it up, get to class.”

The transition was abrupt, and quietly violent. Conor felt dizzy, whiplashed, as the teacher swept them toward the doors. He let himself fall to the back of the group, feeling as though he were stumbling, his mind trapped twenty seconds in the past, trying uselessly to reconstruct the rest of what Guyler had been about to say, and what he should have said in response—

I think there might be something wrong with your brain.

Except there wasn’t, there wasn’t, it was the world that was doing this to him, of course his wheels were spinning, all the ground had turned to mud.

Skill issue.

Conor bit his tongue so hard it bled, and mercifully, the Ashleigh in his head said nothing more.

•••

By the time he climbed onto the bus that afternoon, Conor wanted nothing more than to collapse. For once, the rest of his morning classes had actually been tolerable—there had been churros in Spanish, an experiment on sound waves in Science, and a bloody video about the Aztecs in Social Studies, followed by a math lesson in which he miraculously suffered no public ridicule whatsoever.

But he’d felt Guyler’s eyes on him all through lunch, and had arrived at Activity buzzed and jittery. They’d done sprints and hurdles, which had genuinely hurt—

(Although in the end it had been good, had worked the soreness out enough that he was starting to feel normal again, was only in ordinary pain.)

—and he’d been utterly useless in Art, and had barely even registered the crowd around him as he waited to board bus 134.

It was perhaps not surprising, then, that he failed to notice Devon’s absence, or think about what it might unlock.

He awoke with a jerk as the bus lurched to a halt—had not even known he was asleep—his face and shoulder slamming painfully into the seat in front of him. He was immediately aware of several different kinds of shouting at once: the startled exclamations of other students similarly thrown off balance, the well-practiced bellows of friends talking across the aisle—

—and the high-octane roar of a fight.

Before he could collect his bearings, the massive body of the driver tore past him down the aisle, headed for the back, carving a path with the sheer weight of adult authority. Conor’s eyes followed, to a rowdy cluster of boys halfway to the back, and his heart sank.

This is what happens.

It was clearly far too late for him to help, but he stood anyway, watching as the driver snatched the shredded bookbag out of the hands of one teenager and the sobbing sixth grader out of the grip of another. Thrusting both of them behind him, toward the safety of the front, the man began to make his fury known, the back of his neck purpling as he shouted. Stunned, the bullies and their audience recoiled, retreated, the tirade sending them shrinking into their seats.

Squeezing his way past the kids crowding the aisle, Conor found Timothy sitting sideways on the floor between the two rows, head in his hands, his whole body shaking as tears streamed past his fingers. A horrible stench filled the air, and Conor saw that his shirt and pants were soaked in what looked like half a gallon of urine. Beside him, his brand-new bookbag lay in pieces, completely empty, the tag still dangling off the broken zipper.

Grabbing the younger boy by the arm, Conor half-pulled, half-guided him back up the aisle and straight off the bus, lifting his own bag out of the seat as they went.

(The driver took no notice.)

Stepping down onto the sidewalk, Conor saw that they had pulled over in the middle of a quiet downtown street, in the early part of the route. He knew the area, had trained there multiple times over the summer, and without thinking he steered Timothy down the block and around the corner toward the small neighborhood YMCA.

The woman behind the counter was instantly sympathetic, swiping them in to the shower room and showing Conor where to find spare shorts and t-shirts. Timothy had recovered enough to look after himself, and Conor left the younger boy to shower while he dug through the bins, looking for clothes that weren’t too big or too threadbare. Returning a few minutes later, he found the sixth grader sitting on a bench, wrapped in a towel, his expression vacant.

Say something.

Do not say something.

Conor threw him the clothes he’d found, and soon they were back out on the sidewalk, the feeble light of the September sun gleaming in Timothy’s still-damp hair. They stood in silence for a moment, watching the cars pass through the intersection.

“Thanks,” Timothy mumbled, without turning his head.

Conor tried clumsily to communicate, through stutters and hand-waving, that it was nothing. There was another long pause as he worked up the courage to ask for details—

“Eichardt,” Timothy said quietly, and Conor nodded, not wanting to press too hard. “Him and about six other guys. They had a jar. I think they’d all been—you know—using it. They got ahold of my bag—one of them pulled out my books. My homework…”

He trailed off, looking utterly dejected, and Conor felt a sharp stab of guilt. “Timothy, I—”

He hesitated, not sure how to put it into words, and filled with a nauseating sense of déjà vu. “I’m sorry.”

The younger boy shrugged, a slow-motion lifting of his shoulders followed by a cut-string slump. “Mom’s going to kill me,” he said flatly. “That bag cost thirty-five dollars.”

Conor began to feel a sort of rising panic as Timothy stood inert, passive, staring blankly at the ground. He felt an urgent need to do something—to accomplish something beyond just sitting there and watching as the younger boy finished falling apart.

“What time does she get home?” he asked.

“Eight. Maybe later. She locks up sometimes.”

They were perhaps an hour away from their neighborhood, walking. For a brief moment, Conor considered calling his parents to ask for a ride—

(Flinch.)

“Come on,” he said softly, taking Timothy by the shoulder. “I want to show you something.”

•••

There was nothing particularly patriotic about Freedom Plaza, as far as Conor could tell. The tiny courtyard was tucked away between the bank and the police station and held no flags, no eagles, no presidential monuments. Just a handful of marble benches, a collection of concrete walls, and a dry and empty fountain with a huge and beautifully abstract sculpture in its center.

It was one of Conor’s favorite places. The giant slabs and angled surfaces of the fountain provided almost limitless opportunities for jumping and scrambling, while the walls and benches were built in a range of sizes and shapes perfect for vaulting and striding. There was a water fountain over in the corner that ran pure and cold, and a pair of large (and climbable) oak trees that provided shelter from the blistering summer heat.

Unlike the bank itself, or the grocery store around the corner, he could practice there for hours and no one would bother him. The police came through regularly to chase off the skateboarders, but they left him alone, sometimes even stopping to applaud. Once, one of them had brought him a donut from inside the lobby, along with a plastic cup filled with lemonade.

It took Conor a while to get Timothy moving. At first, the younger boy could barely even be convinced to watch, the look of dead apathy on his face like a splash of cold water every time Conor caught sight of it. He tried to interest Timothy in pop-ups, switchovers, and vaults, grunting as he worked through his lingering soreness—all to no avail. His highest wall climb met with indifference, and he was disappointed to see that even the big running gap jump between the benches—which had taken him two
full weeks to work up the courage to attempt—left the younger boy unimpressed. It wasn’t until he dropped down from the fountain, tucking and rolling to absorb the shock, that the sixth grader showed any sign of life.

“Can you do that again?”

Holding in his smile, Conor nodded. He turned and clambered back up the fountain, crouching at the edge of one of the large, overhanging blocks, roughly seven feet up from the concrete below. Stepping lightly off the edge, he stretched his feet out to receive the ground, controlling his collapse and falling forward onto his hands as he tucked his head and tumbled over. The roll passed behind his left shoulder and across to his right hip, giving his movement a diagonal slant that propelled him back to his feet with one leg in front, already running.

He turned back to where the younger boy was sitting.

“How did you do that?” Timothy asked.

Conor extended a hand, pulling him off the bench and onto his feet. “Over here,” he said, jerking his head toward a small lawn off to the side of the courtyard. “You’ll want to start on something soft.”

He began to explain the mechanics of it, the principles that he and Ashleigh had worked out over the summer—stay tucked and tight, lean rather than twisting, let the point of contact pass over the spine rather than traveling along it. After a few tries, Timothy had the basic pattern down, and they moved back out onto the concrete.

“Hurts,” Timothy complained, rubbing his shoulder and his hip as he came up from his first careful attempt.

“It shouldn’t,” Conor said. “It won’t, once you get it right.”

He demonstrated again, and Timothy tried once more, managing to bypass the bones of his shoulder but this time hitting his hip even harder. Conor made him crouch down, his hands ready, and adjusted the positioning of his feet a little. “Now stay tucked,” he said. “Don’t straighten out, just roll over like an egg.”

This time, the younger boy came up smiling. “Hey, I did it!”

Conor smiled back. “Yeah—that time. Try ten more.”

They continued to roll around for the next half hour, Conor gradually progressing him to running starts, and then standing jumps off one of the lower stone walls. He noticed that Timothy was using his knee as he climbed up, putting his shin down on the sharp edge at the top of the wall and levering himself over, and he gave a gentle correction, showing the younger boy how to post off of his foot instead. “For emergencies only,” he said. “Only when you have to. You won’t notice it right away, but every time you put your knee down, you bruise it a little more, and by the time it catches up to you, it’s too late.”

(Ashleigh hadn’t been able to walk for a whole week, the first time.)

When they tired of rolls, Conor began teaching the younger boy vaults, the two of them crisscrossing the plaza in a game of follow-the-leader that left them both winded, but whooping. Timothy had trouble with the cat jump, but when practicing the pop-over he got it so quickly that he actually overtook Conor, tagging and passing him with a triumphant shout.

Next they went over to the handicap ramp, where Timothy watched, bug-eyed, as Conor leapt and spun on the metal railings, shifting his balance from one foot to the other in a complex dance. Eager to impress, he went faster and faster until eventually he slipped, barely catching the rail with one hand before crashing to the ground. Undeterred, Timothy clambered up, spending a tense minute trying to find his balance before Conor realized that he was standing on his arches instead of the balls of his feet.

They ended with the fountain, where a fearless Timothy ignored Conor’s words of caution and scrambled straight to the highest point, letting out another shout that echoed around the entire plaza. Conor grinned.

He’s really not a grumpy kid, he thought, watching as the sixth grader descended in a series of daring bounds, his feet sliding and scraping on the sloped concrete. They left the plaza as the shadows began to lengthen, following the line of the railroad tracks, making their way out of the city and into suburbia. They were tired, both of them—physically drained and emotionally spent. But they were far from silent, the thrill of the session fueling Timothy’s curiosity, which drew Conor out of his quiet shell in turn.

“So this is what the two of you have been up to all summer?”

“Mostly.”

“Where else do you go?”

Conor told him about the warehouse, the tower, the old folks’ home—everything but the Gap, which he felt for some reason was not his secret to tell, or at least not his alone. The younger boy drank it all in, his visible awe making Conor blush.

“But you don’t actually have to go anywhere,” Conor added. “I mean, it’s more fun if there’s more stuff—you can do more if there’s more stuff. But I spend a lot of time just practicing in my backyard, too.” He explained about his daily drills—the target jumps on the roots of the oak tree, the topovers on Mr. Baker’s wall, all of the little movements he’d practiced over and over until they flowed from his body like thought. “Stuff like that you can do anywhere.” He pointed to a crack in the sidewalk in front of him, planted both feet on it, and leapt lightly forward, landing on the next one with hardly a sound.

Timothy tried as well, making the distance with ease but landing with a heavy thud, flat-footed, his upper body tipping forward so that he had to take another step to steady himself. “Quieter,” Conor urged, and he jumped again, looking back as the younger boy squared off on another crack. “Try to land on your toes.”

“Why?” Timothy asked absently, this time making less noise but still stumbling forward. “What difference does it make, so long as you land it?”

Conor blinked. Ninjas were quiet, Batman was quiet—therefore Conor had always strived to be quiet himself. It was a decision he’d made early on, by instinct, and never revisited. “Um,” he said, filling the silence as he struggled to think of an answer.

He took another jump, landing with difficulty on flat feet, his well-trained muscles reluctant to execute the unfamiliar movement. He felt the impact in his knees and at the base of his spine—unpleasant, but certainly not painful, and no worse than the roughest of his normal landings. “I don’t know,” he admitted, turning back to the other boy. “It just…feels better?”

“Yeah, but it’s harder,” Timothy said. “It’s like you’re landing on a railing on every jump.”

Conor smiled. “Which means you’re practicing for landing on a railing on every jump.”

Together, they leapfrogged down the sidewalk, jumping until their aching legs could take no more and they reverted back to their ambling pace.

“I wish you guys had told me,” Timothy grumbled, as they turned a corner and entered the neighborhood. “Would’ve been better than sitting around bored all summer.”

Conor gave him a sidelong glance, again unsure what to say. In all honesty, he’d never even considered inviting the younger boy, because—

“He never lets me do anything,” Timothy continued, his voice growing dark with bitterness. “Never. Even though I cover for him all the time. Even though I’ve never ratted him out for anything. He wouldn’t even let me come along when you guys did dry ice bombs, and I’m the one who showed him the video in the first place.”

He kicked at a piece of gravel on the sidewalk, sending it spinning. Again, Conor said nothing. He hadn’t known that, and he doubted it would have made much difference if he had. He’d always sort of liked Timothy, but not as a friend so much as…

A friendly part of the background?

He winced.

The silence stretched.

“I hate him,” Timothy said, quietly and with sober finality. “He’s a terrible brother.”

That, Conor was honor-bound to respond to.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “How?”

“All he cares about is himself. Big brothers are supposed to look out for you, right? Help you along?” The younger boy gave a hollow laugh. “We went to Disney World one time, for Ashleigh’s birthday. You know, back when Dad was still around. We were there for like three days, on those passes that let you go to all the parks. On the first day, we rode that golf ball ride at Epcot, the one that’s all about the future and stuff. I kept begging and begging to go on it again, but nobody else wanted to, so we never did. On the last day, like two hours before we were supposed to leave, we’re eating lunch, the golf ball is right there, and Dad says Ashleigh can pick any ride he wants, any one at all. And he picks Splash Mountain, and we have to get on the monorail and go all the way back to the Magic Kingdom for this ride that he’s already been on seven times. And when I start to complain about it, he just goes, ‘Shut up, it’s my birthday.’”

Timothy kicked at another piece of gravel, this one skittering off the sidewalk and out into the street. “It’s always like that,” he said. “He’s always, like, just barely justified, so you can’t really do anything about it. We’ll be getting pizza, and Mom’ll be short on money, and he’ll point out that plain cheese is cheaper than what I want. Or he’ll do something stupid, like stick gum under the seat in the car, and Mom’ll find it and go berserk, and he’ll swear up and down it wasn’t him, and then we both get punished, because it’s either that or snitch, even though the whole keeping quiet thing only goes one way because I never do stupid stuff that gets us both in trouble. Did you know he got a new bike when I wrecked and bent his handlebars? And then I had to ride the broken one for, like, two years? And the only reason I wrecked it in the first place is because four times he didn’t show up to teach me when he said he was going to, and I had to try to figure it out all on my own.”

Conor’s throat was tight, and his jaw was tight, and his eyes were tight and stinging. There were feelings swirling around inside of him that he didn’t have names for, something awful slowly growing.

I didn’t know.

But he had—hadn’t he?

“That’s just brothers, though, right?” he asked feebly. “I mean—lots of guys don’t get along with their brothers. He still looks out for you. He punched Eichardt for you.”

Timothy gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, yeah, Ashleigh’s big fight scene. The one where he didn’t stop me from getting roughed up or getting all my books dumped on the ground but he did show up in time to stop you from getting pounded.”

Conor frowned. That…didn’t exactly seem fair…

“And then the next day, everybody’s talking about him like he’s some big hero, even though he threw one weak punch—not to mention that you’re the one who actually stepped up and put the whole thing on pause. Meanwhile, I’m stuck being that stupid little sixth grader who can’t take care of himself.”

“Come on,” Conor objected. “You can’t pin that on Ashleigh. It’s not like that’s the reason he stepped in.”

“Of course that’s why he stepped in,” Timothy shot back. “That’s the only reason he ever does anything, is to make himself look good, or show off. Or to impress you—though I guess that’s over, now.”

Conor swallowed. “So you’d rather take a beating than let your brother help you out?”

“I already said, didn’t I? I don’t want protection.”

Could’ve used some today.

(Conor held his tongue.)

“Then what do you want?” he asked carefully. “I mean, you can’t blame him for not taking care of you and then get pissed when he does.”

“It’s not about whether he’s looking out for me or not. It’s about the fact that he decides one way or the other based on what’s convenient for him. He doesn’t actually care about what happens to me. He doesn’t give a shit about what happens to anybody. He only sticks his neck out when he’s getting something out of it, himself.”

Conor felt his head shaking. It was like they were talking about two completely different people. It wasn’t much of a stretch to accept that Ashleigh was a shitty older brother—Conor had seen them together, after all—but even off the top of his head, he could think of at least half a dozen times when his friend had put his freedom or his reputation on the line without hesitation—taking the fall for this or that bit of mischief, making a fool of himself for the sake of solidarity, or to provide a distraction, or simply to make Conor laugh. There was the time in fourth grade when Conor had accidentally shattered the decorative clay turkey in the center of the cafeteria, or the time when Ashleigh had screamed and yelled at their asshole of a counselor at summer camp, or the time when he’d literally pissed himself to stop everyone from laughing at Conor over the apple juice he’d spilled on himself—

“Yeah, he’ll do that stuff for you. You’re his friend. I’m just his brother.”

Conor had no answer to that.

“Besides—what about the past two weeks? Hasn’t gone out of his way to help you much lately, has he? Doesn’t matter what you’re going through. I’m telling you, this is what he’s like with everybody. You just…aren’t immune anymore, for some reason.”

There was too much truth in that to ignore, and Conor’s brow furrowed as he fell silent, considering.

Was Ashleigh…bad?

Conor had never had reason to wonder, before. But Guyler, that morning—those awful bruises, wrapping all the way around his ribs—

This is what your psycho butt buddy decided to do after he knocked me out.

The carelessness that Timothy was describing…Ashleigh had always been the kind of kid who gave no fucks. He was notorious for it. In many ways, it was his superpower.

But was that a good thing?

There was a word for people who didn’t care about anyone, who lacked the basic building blocks of empathy. Guyler had used it more than once. But Ashleigh wasn’t actually a psychopath…

Yeah, he’ll do that stuff for you. You’re his friend.

Had Conor been giving him a pass, just because he was nice to Conor?

Once more, he traced his mind back over their adventures together, the myriad scrapes they’d gotten into, the rules they’d bent or outright broken. The lies they’d told together, without ever doubting the other’s word—some for their own protection, some as a means to an end, some just to see if they would be believed.

None of that seemed bad. Mean, maybe, some of it—but nobody was nice all the time. Selfish and immature, perhaps, but come on, that was normal, they were kids, everybody was selfish and immature sometimes.

But—

(He could feel himself flinching, the push like two magnets set wrong way to each other, sending his attention anywhere else. But he resisted, fighting the fear, refusing to let it drive.)

There was just one thing that Conor could not explain away, one act so monumental and terrible that it seemed beyond all possible defense:

Guyler.

There was no question that Timothy would point to that as clear evidence of moral bankruptcy. Guyler himself certainly thought so. And standing in the courtyard, looking at the aftermath still written on the other boy’s body, Conor had found it hard to disagree.

No one has ever made you do anything, said Ms. Palmano’s voice, rising up from memory. Somebody could put a gun to your head, and if you had a good enough reason, you’d still tell them no.

What had happened to Guyler—

(You mean what Ashleigh did to Guyler, some stern part of him corrected.)

What Ashleigh had done to Guyler, he’d done on purpose. Had chosen, freely—or if there had been some reason, some excuse that made it all make sense, made it all somehow okay, he’d chosen not to let Conor know it, for two weeks and counting.

That’s why you’ve been eyeballing me? Guyler had said. You’re trying to figure out a way this is all my fault?

No. Not Guyler’s fault, and not right, not a good thing, but there had to be some explanation that would cause it to fall short of outright evil.

…didn’t there?

Not to dig myself a hole, here, but you really sound like you’re trying to talk yourself into something.

Yeah. He was. And it was getting harder and harder to do so, with every passing day.

“Maybe you’re right,” Conor said softly, breaking the silence. “Maybe he is just a self-centered jerk.”

The younger boy glanced at him, saying nothing.

“But if so, he’s not the only one.”

Conor thought about the other kids in his grade, most of whom he’d known for years, none of whom seemed even half as real, half as alive.

“And I think—”

Conor swallowed, feeling the fear rise up once more, the sense that he couldn’t say that, that isn’t okay—that he couldn’t get away with it.

But it was the truth. And Timothy deserved that much, at least.

“I think I’d still rather be friends with him than with anybody else.”

(The knife sliding across their palms—Ashleigh’s first, and then Conor’s—the grin on the other boy’s face as they clasped their hands together, and the light in Ashleigh’s eyes, brighter than the setting sun.)

“Oh, were we talking about you?” Timothy asked sarcastically, though without much heat. “In that case, problem solved. Guess I’ll just get over myself—not like I can go swap him out for a new brother anyway.”

Conor winced. “Sorry,” he said, feeling sheepish.

Not the only self-centered jerk, indeed.

Timothy sighed. “Whatever,” he heaved. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like any of this is new. I should be used to it, by now. It’s just—”

He hesitated, and Conor held still, waiting.

“East Binder is nothing like Littleton, you know?”

Conor knew.

“And—and whatever, it’s fine, I can take care of myself. But like. You have a big brother, you kind of think that maybe might give you a little bit of a leg up on the whole situation. Friends in high places, and all that. Just once, it would be nice if Ashleigh pulled his head out of his ass long enough to make my life just a little bit easier. I’m not saying I expect it. I’m not saying he owes it to me, or anything. I’m just saying it’d be nice.”

Conor had no answer, and Timothy didn’t seem to be waiting for one. They covered the last quarter mile to the Falhanner house in silence, each alone with his own thoughts.

“Well,” Timothy said, as they paused at the foot of the driveway—

(There was a black plastic bag taped over the broken window, rippling gently in the wind.)

“—thanks.”

“No problem,” Conor replied. “Anytime.”

(He winced.)

“I mean—you know.”

“Yeah.” Timothy looked up at the house. “He’s coming back next week, you know.”

“I know.”

“You got, like. A plan?”

Conor shook his head.

Timothy’s lip twisted sympathetically. “Well, either way,” he said. “If you want to—you know, after—I mean, I wouldn’t mind jumping around some more.”

Conor nodded. “For sure,” he said, doing his best to inject confidence into the words. “See you later, Timothy.”

“G’night, Conor.”

And the boy disappeared into the house.

•••

It was six o’clock in the morning, and there were choices to be made.

Conor rolled out of bed, his body abuzz with a Christmas morning tingle of anticipation. He showered quickly, donning his uniform and slipping quietly into the kitchen, where he forced down a pair of frozen waffles and half a glass of chocolate milk, pouring the rest into the sink.

It was six fifteen, and he wheeled his bike out of the garage, pausing at the end of the driveway. In one direction lay Ashleigh’s house. In the other direction lay the school—the courtyard, the shed, the rooftop—a dozen places where the other boy might go, might wait, each tinged with its own special significance.

It was six thirty, and Conor was on the road, the morning fog whipping his cheeks bright red, his heart pounding as he pedaled as hard as he could. Six thirty-five, and he was chaining his bike up in front of the cafeteria, considering his next move.

It was a quarter to seven, and he was standing on the roof of the auditorium, looking out at Binder’s Gap. He paced back and forth, his thoughts moving in circles, the morning ahead playing itself out in his mind in a hundred different ways. He kicked out a second runway for the jump, heedless of the noise he was making, restoring the path to its summer shape.

It was five after seven, and he was sliding back down the pipe, bracing himself for the final, bone-rattling drop at the bottom, walking past the roots where Guyler had never really fallen and never hit his head. It was seven twenty, and he was standing in the courtyard with the other early birds, shuffling and stamping, their breath misting in the air. It was seven forty-five, and he was frozen with trepidation as he spotted bus 134 pulling into the parking lot.

Calm down. It’s just me.

And it was. There, emerging through the doors, two hundred yards away but utterly unmistakable, was Ashleigh. He sauntered across the blacktop, bookbag slung over one shoulder, his neatly combed hair disarranging itself in the breeze.

Conor took a deep breath. This was the first test.

He stepped away from the nearest clump of students, positioning himself out in the open, directly in the other boy’s line of sight. If Ashleigh pretended not to notice him—

Ashleigh waved.

So huge was Conor’s relief that several seconds passed before he managed to raise a hand in answer, and even from a distance he could see the other boy’s smirk. Blushing, he waited as Ashleigh closed the distance, unrushed and untroubled. He was suddenly hyperconscious of his hands, hanging awkwardly at his sides, and he felt no small amount of gratitude when the other boy raised a fist for their traditional greeting.

“Batman,” Ashleigh said coolly, brushing his knuckles against Conor’s.

Conor felt his mind divide in two, one half dissolving in celebration, the other sharpening into a tense and wary vigilance. After fourteen days, sixteen hours, and nine minutes, Ashleigh had acknowledged his presence—smoothly, effortlessly, without even a hint of hesitation or unease. It was better than Conor had dared to hope, and worse than he’d steeled himself to expect—out of all the angles Ashleigh might have chosen, he’d settled on pretending like nothing was up.

“Hey, Ash,” Conor replied, matching the other boy’s tone exactly. Calm. Casual. Carefree.

“What’s our spot this year?”

“There isn’t one.” Conor gestured vaguely toward the flagpole. “Holt and them usually chill over by the bushes, but there’s nowhere to sit.”

“Lame,” Ashleigh pronounced, dropping his bookbag on the spot and plopping down on top of it. “So, what’d I miss?”

Conor twitched. This wasn’t just carefree—it was careless, the other boy’s tone almost offensively nonchalant…

“A lot,” he heard himself say, dropping his own bag and settling in beside the other boy. He began sifting through the events of the previous two weeks, lifting out memories and shaping them into stories, filling Ashleigh in on rumor, suspicion, happenstance. As he talked, he studied the other boy’s face, furtively, looking for clues and finding none.

“—there was a ton of crap going on with the new kids from Central, graffiti and bullying and stuff, but that’s quieted down a little. They kicked a bunch of people out in the first week, and Mr. Sykes is nailing anybody else he catches to the wall.”

“How good is he at catching people?”

Conor grinned in spite of himself. “Not very,” he admitted.

“You said we’ve got English and Activity together?”

Conor frowned. That was right, but he didn’t remember mentioning it. “Yeah,” he answered slowly. “First and sixth.”

“I’m in second lunch. You?”

“Third.”

“Dang. What’s your locker number?”

“Four four nine.”

“I’m four eighty. Bottom—that’s going to suck.” Ashleigh glanced around at the students in their immediate vicinity. “Wonder who’s on top.”

Conor shrugged, feeling more unsettled with each passing moment. The conversation between them was flowing too easily—was almost unnaturally smooth. Every time a promising pause appeared, Ashleigh filled it, leaving Conor no openings into which he might insert a statement of substance. When the bell rang, the other boy sprang lightly to his feet, holding out a hand; taking it, Conor was irresistibly reminded of a moment two weeks earlier—Ashleigh, lying flat on his stomach on the roof of the equipment shed, his arm dangling down as Conor leapt up to grab it. The grin on his face looked exactly the same as it had then, the intervening chaos having left no visible mark.

They set off for the doors of the front office together, Ashleigh drifting slightly ahead. Sixty more seconds, and their reunion would be over, a critical window closed.

Say something!

It was his own inner voice, Ashleigh’s having disappeared from his head the moment its owner stepped into view.

Like what? he shot back. “We need to talk”?

Well, don’t you?

Conor looked at the other faces in the crowd around him. Most were preoccupied, incurious, but every now and then he thought he caught a flicker of interest, of cool hostility—the legacy, perhaps, of Guyler’s speech. The other boy took no notice, head up and eyes forward, his attention fixed firmly on the path in front of him, never drifting to one side or the other.

He came to me, Conor thought slowly.

Not to Holt, not to Nolan, not to fucking Eddie—Ashleigh had made a beeline straight for the place where Conor was waiting, had greeted him as a friend and ally, shown no desire to go anywhere else. He was back, and if he needed to pretend—if he needed this first day to feel normal—

Well, Conor could play along. For a while, at least. It was little enough, compared to everything else.

It was eight o’clock in the morning, and Conor walked down the hallway toward his locker, his best friend Ashleigh Falhanner beside him.