AUGUST

And when football practice started in August, there he was, late in the month, just before classes started, trudging from the field house to the practice field. Ronny was on his way to Ehringhaus to see if Sheria had returned and there was the team. Ronny had been waiting for the phone to ring, heartsore, anxious, a constant flutter in his midsection. A shock, that moment of seeing—Ben marched through the pines with his helmet in his hand, had not known Ronny was watching—followed by despair, because Ronny could feel the wall between them. Ben had promised to call, but he hadn’t. He had said they would see each other in the fall but they wouldn’t. So it was over, whatever it had been.

Ronny walked back to Mrs. Delacy’s house, sat on his bed—he had kept the room when its former occupant decided not to return to school—and felt himself sinking. Ben had managed to come back for football. Whatever grief he had felt. Maybe he reconciled with his father, his sister; or maybe he just showed up at the door one day, and said nothing, just walked up to his room. Packed his clothes to return to campus. But he never called Ronny, not once, as, hour following hour, the days trickled past.

SEPTEMBER

In September there were classes. Ronny still needed to work if he wanted to pay his room rent and buy food. He had to study. That meant he had to leave the room. Moving like he was hollow, clutching a backpack, walking through the late summer, the early fall, avoiding the brick pathways, afraid to look up from the ground. Only in the Daily Tar Heel office did he remember who he was, do his job, keep the paper running, laugh, tell a joke, throw out an insult, a kind of performance, but it helped, because he could at least act it with conviction. That brought him back. In class he struggled with the long prosiness of Ulysses, the spare comedy of Muriel Spark. He had always been able to absorb hurt. A spark of anger, a feeling that Ben had wronged him, made it easier.

At dinner with Lily, he picked at his food. He had no appetite. He read nothing outside his class assignments, and struggled with interest in statistical analysis and news editing classes. He received his first C on a paper and he hardly cared. He wrote a long letter to his father, then destroyed it. On the phone, his mother told him in a raspy voice, “Love is stupid, honey, but so is sitting alone in your room.”

OCTOBER

At the South Carolina football game late in the month he stood in the student section watching the Tar Heels defending against the Gamecocks, the line of bodies on the emerald turf, the ringing of the announcer’s voice, the roar of the host in the stadium, a Saturday of blue skies and crisp air. There Ben was, doing the thing that he wanted. He was having a good day until he intercepted a pass and was knocked flat by a fellow on the other side who moved like a fighter jet; the tumble was vicious and Ben was a long time getting up, holding his rib cage and strolling off the field, his teammates hammering his back for the turnover, the crowd screaming, students standing on their seats, faces painted blue, the cheerleaders performing their pom shaking and leg lifting, the band striking up a measure of drums and trumpets. Ben hurt but shaking it off, trudging to the sidelines, breaking into a pained trot just at the last.