“What? And get me in foster care? Make my dad pissed at me for more than just breathin’?” He shook his head again. “That shit gets out, it’ll make all the kids pity me or say jack to me, which would not go down too good so other shit would go down and I’d get suspended or expelled. Dude, when it’s over and I’m gone, I won’t have much, but I stick with my plan, at least I’ll have my degree.”

“I see you’ve thought this through,” the man remarked.

“Only thing on my mind since I was eight.”

That and Carissa Teodoro. But she hadn’t entered his mind until he was thirteen.

Mr. Robinson closed his eyes.

He felt that. He didn’t like that.

Carson couldn’t help him.

He had to focus on helping himself.

“I’ll get through,” Carson declared and the teacher opened his eyes. “Got neighbors who look out for me, so it isn’t as bad as you think. Means a lot, you give a shit, but I got it under control.”

“Then if you take nothing from this, take from it that you have a teacher who cares and will look out for you, too. More than just me, we all believe in you, Carson. So if you take nothing from this but that, it won’t make me happy, but it’ll be something.”

“That means a lot too,” Carson returned, his voice weird, like thick and gruff, a sound that echoed what he felt in his gut.

While Carson was feeling that and, not getting it, before he got a lock on it, Mr. Robinson swooped in for the kill.

“One day, Carson Steele, you’re going to be a magnificent man. I don’t know how that will be. You could be president. You could eradicate disease. Or you could be a master mechanic who builds amazing cars. But whatever it is, it will happen. I believe it. And one day, you’ll see past what you’ve been taught and you’ll believe it too.”

Carson didn’t share that he probably shouldn’t hold his breath about that either.

Then again he couldn’t. The thick in his gut was growing, filling him up like he ate way too much, but not in a way that made him need to hurl. In a way that made him want to take a load off, sit back, and just feel the goodness.

Since it was all he had in him, he just again muttered, “Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” Mr. Robinson muttered back.

Carson moved to the door.

“Carson?” Mr. Robinson called when he was almost out of the room.

Taking in a deep breath, he turned back.

“Don’t forget this conversation,” the teacher ordered. “Any of it.”

Like he ever would.

“Got it,” he confirmed.

Then, fast as he could, he took off.

* * *

Carson stood with his back to the pole at the bottom of the bleachers at the high school football field. He did this listening to the posse of girls sitting above him.