“With her? Not so much. We’re good. It’s awkward because… everyone on the show is older than me. Ronnie’s only two years older than me, but sometimes I just feel like a baby. I’m really lucky, I know. I get to be doing this thing that so many people want to do. But it’s a lot of work, and it’s not always fun. Sometimes I’d rather be… going to In-N-Out,” he said, eyeing an empty bag.

“That’s easy to do. I can take you there.”

“Excellent,” he said. “You’re supposed to take a right up here.”

He turned around to investigate the back seat again, and this time came up with my tennis racket—the same one that I had eventually pulled out of the garbage can after quitting ninth-grade tennis.

“You play?” he asked, fussing with the strings.

“Just for fun,” I said. “I used to play on a team, but I quit a few years ago. My dad’s still mad about it. He says I could have been great.”

“Is he right?”

“Maybe. I loved it, but the problem was I got too in my head. Now I’m just on the swim team with my friend Ros. Or Ros used to be on it. Then they quit.”

“Would you ever go back to it?”

“Tennis? No, I don’t think so. I’m not that into it.”

“You’re driving around with a racket in your car, in case there’s an emergency game of tennis you need to play.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Tennis left a mark on me, I guess. I still hear my coach’s voice in my head sometimes. But I don’t want to go back to playing competitively. Now it’s enough to just play for fun with my dad or with my friends.”

There was a beat, and then Oliver asked, “What are your friends like?”

I thought of how best to answer this. “You know how you were saying the other day, about how you wanted to play a different kind of character? That you have your role you play? I guess it’s like that. We’ve all got our roles we play.”

“So what are they?”

“What are what?”

“The roles.”

“Oh.” I stopped short, drawing a sudden blank. I’d never had to explain my friends to anyone; they’d always just been my friends. It was almost like I knew them too well to break them down into their component parts—it felt like having to describe breathing, or why it felt better to fall asleep on my stomach. “Touchstone is, like… a people person. He’s a schmoozer, almost. He loves theater, but I think he’d be a good therapist, too. He’s, like, good with people. He gives good advice. And Ros…”