“I tried to tell you in other ways,” he says, a pleading edge to his words. “I wanted to leave flowers in your locker for Valentine’s Day, but I was so allergic to them that I never got to properly place them inside, and all I’d managed to achieve was attracting bees. I would make up these ridiculous excuses just to talk to you, and I’d deliberately leave my homework unfinished so I could ask to look at yours. I would join in on your games, thinking I could impress you if I won them all. But I kept messing up, like always. Everything I did to pull you closer only ended up pushing you further away. And then you were gone—” He takes a deep breath, resting one shoulder against the gray-tiled wall, like it’s costing him everything to stand here and keep speaking. “I swear, I begged the teachers to change their minds. I did everything I could to convince them that it had been a huge mistake, but they thought I was only lying to cover for you because I felt bad. And everybody else was so certain they had seen you push me …”

I stare at him. I stare and stare and attempt to wrestle my thoughts into order but I can’t, everything’s changed irrevocably, and I don’t even know what to say except: “You never apologized.”

Now it’s his turn to blink in rapid confusion. “I did. I must have apologized thirty, forty times over in my letter … I wrote it so many times I ran out of ink.”

“Letter?” The ground seems to wobble beneath my feet, my mind racing faster and faster like a bullet train, threatening to throw me right off its tracks. “What letter?”

“I wrote you a letter,” he says.

“You did what? It’s the twenty-first century, Cyrus. The human race is alarmingly close to developing literal mind-reading technology. You couldn’t have just gotten out your phone and texted me?”

“You blocked my number,” he points out.

A very good point. I clamp my teeth together.

“Besides, I—I thought a letter would be more sincere than sending a simple text. I begged you to give me a chance to explain everything, but then you never replied, and I figured you just didn’t want to hear from me at all, which would have been entirely fair …” Understanding trickles into his expression the same time I feel it wash over me. “You never received it.”

“No,” I whisper. “It must have gotten lost in the mail or something—I had no idea—”