With cupped hands Dan chased a cricket along the retaining wall until it hopped toward the sewer grate. “Nah, I’m a really slow reader.”

They stood there in the gloaming, the day’s swelter leaching from the asphalt, until the square headlights of the O’Donnell family station wagon flashed around the bend. The tape deck was murmuring “Radio Free Europe” as the Nissan Stanza rolled up.

Dan peered inside the car. Sticky at the wheel and Rick riding shotgun. Rob grabbed the seat behind Rick, and with the car seat for Stick’s baby sister glued into the other backseat with a resin of Hi-C and Cheerios, Dan tumbled into the way back and sniffed. Christ, the smell is 4-H back here.

“Hey, asswipes . . .” Rick reached over and sucker-punched Rob in the chest.

“Son of a . . . ow.”

“That was for racking me before Latin.”

Sticky pulled away. It was a breezy Indian-summer night. Windows down, they glided through the halos of light along Forest Lane, Rick mumbling along with the music.

“So, gentlemen, what’s our plan for the night?” Rick was the crew’s unofficial social chair and the only one with any significant game—i.e., he could flirt with a girl longer than one slow song. Freshman year Rick had the same class schedule as Dan, and osmotically they had become friends. Before Jesuit Prep, Rick was a child actor (he played Spalding Gray’s son in the movie True Stories and was backslapped by Bobby Valentine in a Whataburger commercial), but his personality veered far from the philothespic pretensions of the drama nerds. His looks were a little elfin, like a young Jack Lemmon with ash-brown hair that had a natural part to its curls, followed by baby blues, freckles, dimples, and a jaw-drop smile. The girls fell for this big-time.

“I’m dancing with Jenny O’Meara, I tell you what.” Rob put it out there.

“Dude, she’s going with deMarini,” Sticky replied in a here-we-go cadence.

“So?”

“So, he can hurt you without even trying. And she is so out of your league.”

“We’ve got a thing. We went to camp together.”

“Jesus, McGhee, that was Bible camp five fuckin’ years ago.”