I nearly gagged, but instead swallowed so much that it gave me the hiccups. The idea of Mrs. Johnson working for us in our kitchen, having to call my mother Mrs. Bowman, or even worse, “ma’am,” made me sick.

The hiccup saved me from having to respond. Leo poured me more lemonade and I took a long draught, not just to quell the hiccups, but to let the subject change, so I didn’t have to say what an insult it would be to her if she had to work for us.

“My hands are full already,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I’ll send along the recipe.” Mercifully the conversation switched to the mundane: movies, sports, and weather.

Then, after dinner, almost on autopilot, I opened the door to the basement.

“What are you doing that for?” Leo asked.

“I dunno. I just thought we’d go downstairs and hang out.”

Mrs. Johnson looked at me funny. “The basement? Nothing down there but laundry and bugs gone to Jesus.”

I sheepishly closed the door.

Once his mother was out of earshot, Leo gave me a smirk that was as pained as it was amused. “Don’t tell me—where you come from, I got a whole rec room down there.”

“So you remember?”

“Hell, no! Just why else would you want to go to the basement? I suppose I got a Beemer like you, too.”

I shook my head. “No—you have your dad’s old Subaru.”

He took a moment to weigh it in his mind.

“Subaru . . .” he said, then took a shot in the dark. “Was it . . . green?”

“It was!”

He grinned. “Damn. So you think if I smacked you upside the head hard enough, it’d knock us all back there?”

“It’d have to be really hard,” I told him.

He considered it and shook his head. “Naah,” he said. “Can’t hit a friend like that, ’less he deserves it.”

And I smiled. It was good to hear him call me a friend.

“Tell me about it,” Leo said. “Tell me about this world you want me to believe in.”

Not an easy request. It’s like when my great-uncle, who hadn’t seen me since I was three, came over and asked, “So what have you been up to?” I mean, where did I begin?

“Well . . . like I said, in my world, you didn’t drop out,” I told Leo. “In fact, you were waiting for scholarships—and not just football, academic too. You were waiting on USC, but a scout from Clemson—”

“No!” He put up his hand to stop me. He looked away, closed his eyes, grimaced like he was in pain. “Don’t do that. I don’t want to hear that.”

All at once I realized how insensitive it was to keep telling him all the dreams he’d never get to have here.