When they reached the fifty-yard line, Dylan stopped. He turned up his head to ask, “Are you going to stay for the game?”

Joel took in the empty stands, the empty road, the empty Flats in the distance that bore him, now, no ill will. “If they’ll let me.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Dylan slipped his hand free. He pointed to the stands. Joel started across the field.

“I texted you Sunday night because I thought I could learn to be like you,” Dylan yelled.

Joel couldn’t bring himself to turn back. Be like him? A solitary man so broken he’d thought he deserved every minute of pain he’d ever received?

“I wouldn’t wish myself on anyone,” Joel said.

“You’ve always played yourself short, you know.”

Joel sat in the front row of the rusted stands. He looked across the pitch, hoping to catch some glimpse of Kimbra Lott or KT Staler or T-Bay Baskin or any other member of the idle dead. But there was no one. Only an empty cascade of bleachers charged with all the promise of youth and time and the thin, irresistible potential for glory.

“Did you really hate football?” Joel shouted to his brother.

“Nobody ever taught me how to ask for help.”

Before Joel could think how to answer this, Dylan bent low on the line, his back rigid, his helmet up. Joel broke off. There was only so much you could say, he realized, even to the dead.

The sun finally faded. The spindly field lights came on, one by one, each a little storm of hope and halogen thundering to life over his brother’s head.

“Out here I can still be everything I always wanted me to be,” Dylan shouted, his voice echoing against the empty metal and the flat horizon. He clapped his hands for the snap. “And I love it.”

Joel heard the smack of a rubber ball striking a leather glove and awoke in his seat with a start. He reached out to touch his useless arm and froze: a warm breath was stirring the hairs on the back of his neck.

It was enough.

Joel was adequate. He was loved.

For a moment—for a breath of a moment—he wasn’t alone.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While all published authors are inordinately fortunate, even fewer are fortunate enough to be represented by Ross Harris. Authors are infamous for describing the strains they put on their agents—frantic late-night emails about errant characters, sprawling lousy drafts, strained social calls that thinly mask a plea for news (any news!) about the fate of their novel—and all I can add to this litany is: mea culpa. This novel would, very literally, not exist without Ross and as such he gets my first and loudest acknowledgment. Thanks also, to Stuart and to everyone else at SKLA. I can’t believe it’s finally worked out.

Deep thanks are also due, in no order of preference, to Carter, James, Tom, Megan and Ed, for reading this book in manuscript form, providing dozens of notes and hours of encouragement.