But eventually Ben didn’t go to practice at all, and two thirty to five thirty was a strange empty time. He knew he could probably find fifth- and sixth-formers smoking pot in their dorm rooms. Against his will he started longing to go to the courts and play.

Without all the kids, the campus was like an expanse of calm water. If he left St. James, would the water smooth over again as soon as his cab pulled away?

After lunch one Thursday, Hutch handed him a crutch and said overboldly, “I’m going to bag prac, man. Let’s do something in the cart.”

“Cool. Yeah, there’s totally something black market about driving around when everyone else is at practice.”

“Totally. Behind the library at two thirty?”

“Sweet.”

Ben forced himself to delay until 2:35 before driving up, and Hutch was there waiting. They drove through a cold, hanging fog just shy of rain.

A lot of times Ben just drove out to the blinking traffic light at the edge of campus and back. By now he could tell where the school’s hold on the landscape started to drift: the fields on each side of the road would begin to look half shorn instead of either rigorously cut or intentionally wild. There might be an empty soda can or a Lay’s bag or a nip bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the bracken.

“What do you want to do?” Ben asked.

“What do you usually do?”

“You know.” Ben couldn’t believe he hadn’t prepared anything. He considered making up a wild lie—that he met up with a female kitchen staff worker way out in the woods to make out. The noise of the electric motor and the tires in the grit and the passing wind provided the barest cover against having nothing to say as they drove along.

They came down the path from the Dish, past the library, and in Ben’s reverie of needing to think of something cool to do, he hadn’t slowed down in preparation to take the corner toward the PO, which they had to pass to get out to the Two-Laner. They were almost past the turn when Ben realized he had to make it.

Hutch held on to the little black plastic armrest, and the back wheels lost traction and skidded through the end of the turn, then whipped back into line as they continued on their new trajectory.

“Whoaaaah,” they both said.

And so they took that turn again. Even on the second turn Ben had improved, and then again, and each time Hutch laughed with a young, thrilling laugh. Soon it was time for Ben to drive Hutch back to Woodruff to get ready for Seated. As Ben went back by himself to Hawley he couldn’t believe that Hutch hadn’t once asked to take a turn driving. Ben would have told him no.

*  *  *