Troy Taylor was walking toward us.

He carried an overloaded lunch tray. Three cartons of milk, a sandwich the size of a throw pillow, a heaping pile of French fries, Jell-O, I don’t even want to know what else. He walked with an ease and confidence that Ema and I would never have in this room.

“What the . . . ?” Ema whispered. “He’s not planning on—”

Troy stopped in front of us. He flashed a smile that almost made me reach for sunglasses and said, “Hey, mind if I sit with you guys?”

Before we could overcome our surprise enough to reply, Troy dropped his tray with a heavy thud and pulled out a chair. He sat as though someone had cut his legs out from under him. Then he picked up his sandwich with both hands.

“So how are you guys doing?”

He took a huge bite and started to chew.

Ema looked at him as though he’d just dropped out of a horse’s behind. “What do you want?”

“Who said I want something?”

“Well, you don’t normally sit here.”

“I’m trying to broaden my horizons. Is that a problem?”

“You usually sit over there,” Ema said, pointing at the “cool” table. “If you even so much as glance over here, it’s usually to moo at me.”

Troy put down his sandwich, wiped his hands on a napkin, and gave Ema the most solemn look I had ever seen on a teenager. “I wanted to apologize for that.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, Ema—can I call you Ema? Or do you prefer Emma?”

Caught off guard, she said, “Uh, Ema is fine.”

“Great, thanks. No, Ema, it is I who needs to be excused, not you. I was wrong.”

“You were wrong every day?” Ema asked. “Every day since, oh, sixth grade or so?”

“I was, yes. I was horrible. I have nothing to say in my defense. Sure, I could blame Buck. You know that he was the leader of all that kind of stuff. Maybe I felt peer pressure, I don’t know. You might think it’s easy being at that table, being—yeah, I know how this sounds—one of the kings. But like Mrs. Friedman taught us in European History, ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.’”

Ema and I sat there, mouths agape.

“So maybe it’s because Buck is gone now,” Troy continued. “Maybe recent events are making me see things more clearly. But really, Ema, I want to apologize and try to start anew.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Troy looked wounded. “I’ve never been more serious.”

“You must think I’m an idiot.”

“How so?”

“You’re a user, Troy.”

“Ema,” I said.

Her head snapped toward me. “What? You’re buying this?”

“No, but—”