When I look up at him, he’s watching me, as though he’s asked the easiest question. As though that would be the easiest question for me to ask of Sibby. As though when you ask people things—the really, really hard things—you don’t have anything to fear from their answer. You don’t have anything to fear from how you’ll react to it.

“Not in so many words,” I say, and it’s terrible, the way my voice cracks. I blink back down at my legs, mortified.

And then, after a long pause, Reid speaks again. “I don’t suppose I know how it is, with a friend like that. That you’ve had for so long, I mean. I had my siblings, but not really—not friends I grew up with, I guess.”

I don’t know how to explain what happens in those few seconds after he finishes speaking, except to say that it’s as if a piece of my heart breaks off and leaves my body. It’s as if that tiny, vulnerable piece beats its way right across the bench and attaches itself to Reid.

All because of this gentle confession, this effort at making me feel better.

I clear my throat, watch as he looks back toward the signs.

“No one from school?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “It’s my own fault. I was . . . difficult in school.”

Difficult? I try to picture it: Reid launching spitballs, mouthing off to teachers, not doing his homework. I can’t see it, and something must show on my face, because when he looks over, he smiles briefly and speaks again.

“I was bored. Always done with my work early. It frustrated my teachers, and obviously . . . ah, did not endear me to other students.”

I can picture that better. Serious, studious Reid. Probably cracking whatever code they gave him, and getting no reward for it. Getting the kind of mystified, slightly put-off responses that’d make a kid feel small, embarrassed. That particular mouth-pulling on Reid’s little-boy face.

Pendulum swing, firmly to the murder feeling. Basically for all of Reid’s former teachers and any kid that did not . . . feel endeared to him. I should probably be extremely worried about how fully endeared I am, except that I’m too invested in asking more questions. It’s not a game anymore; it’s not for inspiration. But it still feels so, so important.

“But it must’ve been better,” I say. “When you went to college? Or—your graduate school?”

Reid looks up at the signs again, waits a long moment. “I was fifteen when I went to college.”

“Fifteen?! ” I still slept with a stuffed animal at fifteen, which I have the good sense not to say out loud.

“Community college for the first semester. An extension program through my high school.”

“Oh, sure,” I say, still processing my shock. “That makes it better!”