Laura doesn’t say anything to me. The seats in the row behind her are free so I sit there, next to the window. Then Mabley comes on the bus, looking around, like everybody does, to see who they want to sit next to.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” I tell her. “What team are you on?”

“I’m a Latin nerd. Eamus, Crabrones!” she says loudly, almost like she’s talking to people at the back. But then she explains to me: “Crabrones means hornets,” and walks past me. A hornet is our school mascot. I look down the aisle to see where she’s sitting—with Pete and a few other kids at the back of the bus. Nobody sits next to me, so I spend most of the ride staring out the window or at the seat in front, where I can just about see the top of Laura’s hair. She has black hair. It’s only a fifteen-minute drive.

LBJ High School looks a bit like our school, a big white building with a lot of green around it. We park in the parking lot, where there are a bunch of yellow buses lined up like number two pencils. Somebody behind me, one of the boys sitting with Pete, says, “Who’s going to get off the bus first?”

“There’s no way I’m going to get off . . . the bus,” Pete replies, and everybody laughs. “Hey, Ben. You going to get off . . . the bus?”

Mr. Hauser, one of the other teachers, stands up and says, “All right, guys. Cut it out. Let’s . . . exit in an orderly fashion.” It’s like he’s sort of going along with the joke but at the same time pretending not to. He has a badge hanging around his neck, and wears a brown shirt all buttoned up and tucked into his pants, even though he’s a little overweight. His hair is short and you can see colored patches of what looks like dried skin underneath it. He teaches science.

There’s a flat roof over the school entrance, with words written along the side: LBJ Purple Pride. And underneath that: Preparing today to conquer tomorrow. This seems like the kind of thing kids make fun of, and since Mabley is sort of near, just a few kids away, I catch up to her and say, “Preparing today to conquer tomorrow,” in like a teacher’s voice, like I’m being serious, even though it’s stupid.

“What?” she says.

She didn’t hear me, and so I have to repeat myself, but it’s not even worth it. “Purple pride,” I say in the same dumb voice, and she kind of sidles off with me, I think she puts her hand on my elbow, as we’re walking into the school—you can already feel the air-conditioning coming at you through the double doors.

“You know what they were joking about, right?” she says. “Back on the bus.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s just stupid,” she says. “It’s not even really mean. It’s just a dumb boy thing, but I guess if you don’t know what they’re talking about . . . Anyway, you probably know anyway.”