Ben walked over and squatted between us. He looked up at Chloe. “I know Greg is right there, but if you could maybe get those out of my face for a minute.”

She rolled her eyes again. “They were here first. Maybe you should get a better handle on where you put your face.”

I shook my head.

“My house Friday,” Chloe said.

I nodded, and was surprised to find that knowing I would miss Brenna’s soccer game made me a little sad. I’d never had a big family, and I was stunned at how fun it was. I’d thought I would miss being alone—at least sometimes—but I didn’t at all. Maybe it was because it kept me from being alone with my thoughts about how my life was up in flames. So maybe that wasn’t exactly healthy. But, whatever.

“Want me to come with you this afternoon?” Ben asked. Gosh, he was such a good friend. I mean, who else remembered that this was my first time seeing my dad in prison? Chloe had probably already forgotten, and we’d talked about it two minutes ago. But, in fairness, Greg, with his wavy dark hair and killer accent, was talking to her now, so it wasn’t really her fault that everything else had probably flown out of her head.

“Don’t you have Key Club after school?” Ben was president of Key Club, a volunteer society that, let’s face it, we were all in because it looked good on our college applications. I was also in it to be a good friend to Ben, even though I wasn’t great at attending the meetings. But I did do the volunteer projects, which I kinda felt was the hard part. Sure, I partly did it because we had to have a hundred service hours a year. But I mostly did it because there was no one I’d rather be around than Ben.

“Yeah, but I can just message the GroupMe. We can do it tomorrow.”

“You would do that for me?”

He touched my forearm. “I would do anything for you, Ris.”

That made me feel sort of warm and tingly all over. He was such a sweet guy. I was surprised he didn’t have a girlfriend. But that was probably good because I would be super jealous that his attention was on her, not me. So I wouldn’t be, like, setting him up with anyone. “I don’t know if they’ll let you in. I had to do a bunch of paperwork and stuff.”

He shook his head. “But I can ride over there with you. Be your moral support since you haven’t seen him in there yet.”