He turned the wheel sharply to the left and then slowed to a stop. We were still a block away from school. “Buck has been my best friend since we were six—since we had Mr. Ronkowitz in first grade.” He stopped the car and turned to me. “Do you have any friends like that, Mickey?”

I felt a deep pang in my chest. “No,” I said. “No one.”

“You and Ema. You’re tight, right?”

“Right.”

“Imagine if you’d been that way since you were six. I mean, I’m not saying friends have to know each other a long time. But since we were six. You get what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” I said.

Troy closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. “Buck was taking steroids.”

For a moment we just sat there, two guys in a car parked on a side street, not saying a word. We let the revelation hang between us. Finally I asked, “When did he start?”

“I don’t know. Last spring.”

“He just admitted it?”

“Not at first. I asked him about it, though. I could see he was getting bigger. He said I should do them too. I said I didn’t need to. Then after you showed up, he started pushing me a little harder. He started saying that I’d always been the leading scorer, but if I didn’t get a lot better, you’d take over. Stuff like that. He started getting angrier too. Roid rage, I think they call it, right?”

Roid rage, I knew, was one of the many side effects of steroids. You start losing your temper easily. You grow dark and violent and even suicidal.

Troy shook his head again. “I should have stopped him. I mean, I saw the changes but I didn’t do anything, you know? And then . . . then I saw the changes in how Buck was with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“My dad once told me that relationships are never fifty-fifty. He said the key was to understand that. Sometimes it’s ninety-ten, sometimes ten-ninety. But if you’re thinking it’s always fifty-fifty, you’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

“Okay.”

“With Buck and me, look, I was the leader, he was the follower. That’s just the way it was. I didn’t think anything of it. But the last few weeks, it was, like, suddenly that bugged him.”

“That you were the leader?”

“Right. I think it was the steroids. Buck started directing his anger toward me too.”

I thought about that for a few moments. “Buck wanted you to take steroids too.”

“Yes.”

“Was he upset when you didn’t?”

“Yeah. I mean, he said something like, you think you’re too good for them or something. I don’t remember his exact words.”

“So how was Buck getting the steroids?” I asked.

Troy closed his eyes and said, “Oh man.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to say.”