You know the boy who once called me in high school? That was Chip Reardon. He called because he knew I had been talking to his girlfriend, Diann Briedenbach. They were having trouble. He wanted advice, some inside information. He felt comfortable asking me—we’d had a lot of classes together and he knew how carefully I observed things. Once, in fact, after an essay of mine had been read aloud in English, he stopped me after class to compliment me on my perceptiveness. I treasured that small event, carried the memory of it home from school like a wrapped gift. I even decided, foolishly, that had the bell not rung, that conversation might have led to something more. I remember getting home and looking at myself in my parents’ full-length mirror, wondering if I’d finally worn something right, something that would make a boy like him really see a girl like me. I’d worn the same outfit a week later, down to the same color tie to hold my hair back, but of course nothing happened.

Anyway, when he called that night I told him only that he shouldn’t worry, Diann loved him, I knew that for certain. He thanked me, though it seemed to me that his relief was not so great. But then I decided I was only making that up, trying to make him less invested in her than he really was. After we hung up, I put my fingers to the place his voice had come from.

As there is one of me in every high school, there is one of Chip Reardon, too. Other end of the spectrum. Every girl’s dream boy. The handsome star athlete with a good head on his shoulders, too. And a genuinely nice guy. Everyone fighting over him for college.

He went west. That’s what he said, to keep from bragging about Stanford—nobody from Ashton High had ever gotten in there. But now he’s back here. I know because I got a message from my agency, asking if I could possibly fit in another client. A man called Chip Reardon. Fifty-one years old. Brain tumor, end stage, apparently; not too much to do. Probably home to die—he’d only need comfort measures.