Cassidy High, of course, was the high school in North Cassidy, Massachusetts. It was the kind of school where the science team got more funding than football, and there were just enough kids for us to avoid being a regional high school. My classmates and I knew everything about each other, from who farted in music class back in third grade to who farted in biology class this morning. North Cassidy was where we’d all get married, stay forever, and then our kids would be friends too. Except me—I was holding out for a soccer scholarship, but that was a long shot anyway (pun intended).

“Yo, Nick! I want to hear that ghost story again,” Robert Maxin, the only senior on the soccer team who had never kissed anyone, called to me.

“Promise not to pee your pants this time?” I said.

Robert sat on a bar stool at the counter and had spun around to face the rest of us. He held a slice of pepperoni that was so greasy it dripped onto his lap. He wiped it, staining the jeans his mom had just bought him. Robert was an obvious choice for this year’s ‘best dressed’ yearbook superlative.

I winked at the girl on the bar stool beside him: Hannah Green, the brunette beauty, and one of the few cheerleaders at Cassidy High with straight As. Robert wanted me to tell the ghost story (about how our high school was haunted and one of the teachers turned into a vampire at night) as a last-ditch effort to keep her sitting next to him, but I was occupied with trying to keep my undefeated air hockey record.

Austin Banks, the man, the myth, the legend, and part of our bro trio, lasered the air puck at my goal like this was the most important game of his life. It wasn’t, but Austin always played that way.

“Trying to hit a man when he’s distracted . . .” I said. My shot glided back with expert spin. Before Austin could register what had happened, the puck clanged sweetly into his metal goal.

“Ten to nine. And the crowd goes wild! Ahhhh.”

“Whatever.” Austin adjusted his thick, black frames and pulled up the hood on his Cassidy soccer sweatshirt, despite the still summer weather outside. Austin was also famous for wearing basketball shorts after a snowstorm. We all have our things.

“Good game, Nick.” Austin held out his fist to bump mine. We slid onto plush, red seats in the nearest booth, across from the third member of our bro triumvirate, the bleached-blond Carter O’Connor.

If Austin were LeBron James, Carter would be Michael Jordan—the OB (Original Baller). ’Course, you’d have to ban soccer everywhere but on Pluto for Austin or Carter to switch to basketball, but we’re trying to make OB a thing so I use it whenever I can. Our mothers are very proud.

Carter had taken over his half of the six-person booth with a calculus textbook and a notebook’s worth of scattered paper. He leaned over them, tapping his pen absentmindedly between his teeth. He’d colored them blue only the one time.