“Everybody’s cautious,” Grayson said. “They just don’t know you. You know how people are, especially these days. Nobody likes strangers.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “These are a bunch of college kids. I bet if they knew what your family did, they’d warm up to you real quick.”

I looked at a rock on the bank, wondered how far I could kick it.

Grayson was quick to notice. “Did I say the wrong thing?”

“It just didn’t exactly work out for me that way back in school.”

“Well, high school is stupid.”

“So is warming up to someone for what they can get you. Which I can’t even get anymore.”

Grayson fell silent, studying the camp. I waited for him to say: You could grow it.

But he didn’t.

I shouldn’t have been hard on him. I knew he wouldn’t strike back, he wouldn’t have said something to make me feel bad on purpose—he wasn’t like that. I couldn’t really say that about many people. I thought of his flowered sheets, crumpled on the couch at his folks’ house; his ham radio that we couldn’t get to work. He had taken his turn driving, even though it must have hurt him to shove his injured foot into the cramped space between the front seats and drive on his left, but he did it. He did more than his share. He drove slowly and cracked jokes that were so terrible I almost laughed.

I needed coffee. I was about to say that and apologize to him when he said, “I think the world is just going to be like that from now on. It’s going to be about what you can do, how you contribute to the group, or whatever.”

I thought of Skate State: men at the windows of my truck, demanding to know what we could offer them in exchange for our lives. I thought of Jake standing outside the shed, snow filling his flip-flops, his skin chapped and flaking, telling me I hadn’t done shit for him.

“It’s going to be all about the group,” Grayson said. “Your group, whatever it is.”

“Skate State was freakish,” I said. “It was bad even before the weather turned—Jamey told me. That’s not how the world’s going to go.”

“Maybe not. But look at this place. People all have their jobs. Mica and those women guard the fence. Other people repair it. Some people cook. Some people do construction. They’re making something here. Something new. Look.” He pointed above the bank.