I settle myself on the curb outside the shop and open the Cheetos. My fingers are immediately atomic orange. I offer the bag to Elijah, who sits down next to me. I take a long sip of Coke and let the burning powdered cheese flavor drift down my throat.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back to the football team?” I ask him.

“I’m not.…” He takes a deep breath. “Last night didn’t really feel like the right time. Or this morning. You just… you seemed pretty angry. With me. Or something,” he says. I can feel him tense up beside me, like he wants to say something else. Instead, he clears his throat and shifts uncomfortably on the warm concrete.

“Do you know why I seem angry?” I refuse to look his way. I don’t know what I’m going to say next.

Elijah is quiet for a long time. I can hear him fiddling with the cap on his Coke bottle. “Is that a trick question?” he finally asks.

Does he even remember? Did it mean nothing to him at all?

It was after a particularly grueling football practice our freshman year, the day before he broke the window. I stood in the locker room under the lukewarm shower longer than usual that night, letting the water wash away every inadequate feeling that had built up over the course of the last few hours. Coach Marcus had been yelling at me at practice for weeks, and it had finally culminated in a night when nothing I did seemed to be good enough. I was ready to throw it all away. Throw my hard-earned Crenshaw Guardsmen jersey with the bright blue number eight on the back right into the trash can and join the chess club. Or the show choir. The freaking fishing team. Anything to get me away from football.

I finally turned off the shower and loped toward my locker, dejected. When I heard a locker slam shut a few rows over, I went to investigate, stepping carefully on the wet floor in my slides.

“Elijah?” I asked, coming around the corner. He was sitting on the bench in front of his locker, his head in his hands.

He jerked his head up quickly, surprised to see me there. “I thought I was the only one still here,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. His eyes were bright and rimmed with red.

“You okay?” I asked, sitting down next to him on the bench.

He shook his head no but offered up a little smile. “You okay?” he asked back.

I shook my head no and smiled, too.

We sat there talking in the empty locker room for almost an hour.

“Remember that game at Liberty Middle last year?” he asked me.

I laughed at the thought. “When the mascot accidentally wandered onto the field midplay and you mowed him down?”