“I’ll catch up,” he said as Kane headed toward the house. He turned to me. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better.” I sighed. “You got your SATs back, didn’t you? What did you get?”

“Fifteen-sixty,” he said, smiling, clearly pleased with himself.

Ugh. I shouldn’t have asked. This day probably couldn’t suck more.

His smile dissolved. “What? Why? Oh, hey. Yeah, Kane said he got his results. Didn’t do so well?”

I shook my head. Suddenly, someone shouted, “Eight-fifty!” behind us. Kane was doing a triumphant Rocky jog on the front porch. He was such a loser.

We both shook our heads at him, while Declan said, “Well, the PSAT is hard. You’re getting used to the format. I didn’t do too well on that either.”

Something told me Declan “not doing too well” couldn’t have been less than a 1400. “Well, Kane sure seems happy with his score. I didn’t do much better than him, honestly. And I tried.”

“That little brother of mine can be a real twit sometimes.” Declan smiled. “But there’s something else bothering you. What are you thinking about? Your grandmother?”

I shrugged. It was scary how perceptive he could be. Like he knew me, even though he didn’t really know me. “I was just thinking that you never know when you’ll see someone for the last time. If I’d known that family ski trip was going to be the last time I saw my grandmother, I would’ve done things differently.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. Eaten her cookies. Things like that.”

As ridiculous as I sounded, he nodded with understanding. I occurred to me he must’ve been thinking about his dad.

“Do you ever regret not doing things with your father?” I asked him quietly. “I mean, not having him to talk to?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Whenever I do, I pray.”

“Oh.” Of course. I hadn’t ever prayed like that before. Most of the time, my prayers were like wishes. I turned back to go into the house, but I had to admit, I was curious how he could have lost the most important person in his life and still remain so together. Here I was, about to fall to pieces about a lady who gave me cookies. Gnawing on my lip, I asked, “Can you show me how?”

He raised an eyebrow. “What? Praying?”

I nodded, blushing. “I’ve never really…you know.”

He grabbed my hand and led me to my old swing set, and he knelt behind it, secluded from the rest of the world, facing the retention pond. I followed and dropped to my knees in my pink tights, feeling stupid at first.