He grunted, frustrated, as if he wanted to say something else, but then he thought better of it and started limping away from me again.

“And for your information, I’m not afraid,” I said to his back. He stopped, turned. I kicked at the manila envelope. “It’s the written test. I can’t pass that. You know how my grades were.” What he didn’t know was that it was the distraction of my synesthesia that made my grades suck. And what neither of us knew was whether or not I could use it to my advantage now that I’d learned how to rely on it in the right ways. But what I didn’t want to know was if I sucked just as bad in the real world as I did in school. You suck at school, you get an F; you suck at the real world, you get a shitty life; you suck as a cop, you get dead.

“Sounds like you’re afraid,” he said. “Afraid of taking a test. I don’t know what to tell you. I, personally, think you could pass it without a problem. But I’m not the one who has to go in and take it. Already did that. And, yes, I do remember taking it. You want, maybe I can help you study for it. Or not. Entirely your call.”

I felt irritation well up inside me—piping-hot ink with steam—and I clenched my fists. The rah-rah-you-can-do-it Chris was annoying, but this Chris was . . . well, he was just an ass.

“No, I don’t need your help with anything,” I said. “I’m not taking it.” I bent and picked up the envelope. “And I can study on my own.”

He smirked. I realized what I’d just said, how it made no sense that I could study alone for a test I wasn’t taking, and the fact that he’d reduced me to idiocy only served to enrage me further.

Still, it was kind of good to see the old Chris come through a little, even if just with that maddening smirk.

“Got it,” he said. “It’s good to see you, Nikki. I missed you. You shouldn’t have stayed away so long. I could have used a friendly face in that therapy room.”

I frowned, cocked my hip to one side. “Does this look like a friendly face to you?”

“No, not exactly,” he said. “But when you’re around, something inside me remembers that it can be.” He opened his car door and tossed his cane across to the passenger seat. “Don’t be such a stranger,” he said, then got in, started up, and pulled away.

I stood in the shade of the cottonwood tree, listening to the warning cries of a mother bird above me, and held the manila envelope, which felt heavy and impossible in my hand. I watched him go.

At least he remembered something.

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