“Good,” Garrett said. “Let’s go.”

Insects thrummed in the balmy night. Luke, still fighting a retch, followed the three boys across the house’s overgrown yard. Garrett rapped on the front door.

A woman answered, wearing nothing but a bathrobe. Half her face still bore the lines of a corduroy cushion. Luke had heard stories about KT’s mother. He was surprised to see that most of them were true.

“Excuse us, Mrs. Staler,” Garrett said, still smiling, the picture of courtesy. He held Luke’s empty beer bottle behind his back. “Is Kyler Thomas home?”

Mrs. Staler seemed too exhausted to stand. She propped herself against the door frame and said, “Ain’t nobody come in this house.”

“What is it, Garrett?”

KT appeared on a dim staircase behind his mother, dressed in basketball shorts and a baggy shirt that read MAKING MONEY MOVES. He carried himself down the steps the way Luke had seen boys drag themselves from the field with broken wrists, shoulders popped loose like cherry pits.

“KT!” Garrett said brightly. “We missed you, brother. Want to throw a few?”

Stevey Turner held up a football he’d brought with him. Luke did his best to smile at this bony boy who bore only a passing resemblance to the KT who’d been at school four days before.

“Just a few passes,” said Stevey.

Garrett caught the ball. “For old time’s sake.”

“I ain’t playing no more,” KT said.

“Get these boys out of my face.” Mrs. Staler groaned, blocking the door with her arms.

There was no fence to stop them. They found KT standing on a wide porch around back the house, surrounded by bright plastic toys, faded folding chairs, a grill so rusted thorny creeper had twisted itself up through a hole in the lid. A single bare bulb screwed into the porch’s overhang did its best to light a yard that had gone badly to seed.

Garrett and Luke and the twins stood in the yard and gestured for KT to join them. “Come here, son,” Garrett said. “We was worried shitless for you.”

Ricky Turner tossed Luke the ball. Luke caught it at the last moment, hesitated, took a few steps back and tossed it into Stevey’s waiting hands. The narrow scar over Stevey’s brow gleamed where it caught the moonlight.

“I didn’t tell them nothing,” KT said.

Luke felt the grass around his ankles tremble, heard a faint shh rise up from the dirt. Was this what the start of an earthquake felt like? He opened his mouth to say something but saw that none of the other boys seemed to notice. Luke told himself he was imagining things.

Even when it happened again.

Garrett said cheerfully to KT, “We had an agreement, man.”

“It ain’t my fault I’m back.”

Stevey jogged to the side of the yard and caught the ball from his brother.

Garrett bent to run his hand through the grass. “Yet here you are.”

“The charges in Dallas is getting dropped,” KT said. “Soon as that’s done I’ll have my car back and I’ll go. You ain’t never seeing me—”