But then she wonders: maybe the poem is about someone. Some boy who died. And maybe Housman loved this boy. And used the poem to justify it, to find peace and meaning in death.

“You’re probably just making shit up,” Chris tells her.

She shrugs. “Ain’t that how poetry works?”

Chris laughs. “I guess so, yes.”

Later, they’re hanging out at Chris’s house. Just the two of them. Shane says he doesn’t like to go by Chris’s place. Got caught in the cross fire of some rant by Bill Coyne, Chris’s father, about how at the factory where he works the “Mexicans” came in and took a bunch of the jobs, and worse, now they sent a bunch of jobs to Mexico. Standard racist angry white-guy stuff, but Shane wasn’t really ready for it.

They go into the house through the garage—the house isn’t much to look at, certainly doesn’t match Chris Coyne’s own fireworks dazzle and panache—and it’s there that Atlanta meets Bill Coyne. She almost runs right into him as he enters the garage, overalls gunked up with motor-oil stains.

He sees her and smiles. His eyes flash. This isn’t lust. She knows the lust look.

This is something else.

“Chris,” he says, not taking his eyes off her. “Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?”

And then she gets it. That look is hope. He thinks she might be a girlfriend. Or at least a heterosexual experiment. She’s not really sure how much Bill Coyne knows—Chris doesn’t like to talk about it—but it’s not like the boy’s homosexuality is particularly repressed. Two days ago he got detention for making out with Danny Corley outside the math wing.

Even still, hope springs eternal.

Chris introduces her. He says nothing more than “This is Atlanta Burns,” but it’s got that sullen-teen sublayer, that hidden text of God, Dad, shut up, no, she’s not my girlfriend, so don’t even ask. Might be something else there, too: a wariness.

Bill Coyne’s mental antenna clearly doesn’t receive teenage subtext. He just keeps smiling, shaking her hand too long. “Atlanta Burns. That’s a . . . unique name.”

She’s surprised he doesn’t recognize it from the news. “Thank you?” she says.

“Where’d you get it?”

“My parents gave it to me,” she says.

“That’s great,” he says, nodding, still shaking her hand. “Just great. You two kids go on and play.” Like they’re going to whip out Monopoly upstairs. Or maybe he thinks they’re going to get all sex-monkey—a far looser definition of “play,” but there it is. And Bill all but confirms that: “Don’t worry, I won’t bother you two.”