“Music to my ears,” I reply, already hobbling along the raised guardrail that circles the rink, heading for the exit. It’s an indoor facility, with a bunch of small tables and a greasy-looking concession stand to one side. I claim our seats while Gunnar gets the food, and it’s only a few minutes before he joins me again, lumbering over the rubberized flooring in his skates.

He sets down a tray bearing two Styrofoam cups of something pale and brown, and a cardboard container of tortilla chips covered in bright yellow goo. “I’m pretty sure this stuff is supposed to approximate cheese, but I wouldn’t swear to it in court, and the hot chocolate is just a powdered mix—I actually watched her rip the packet open myself.”

“Made fresh!” I return enthusiastically, stirring it with my plastic spoon. Scummed with foam the color of dirty sand and just shy of boiling, it tastes like burned dried milk that someone watered down while whispering the word chocolate. “I haven’t had this since middle school.”

“Probably for good reason. Also, you have a little…” He leans over and swipes a finger across my upper lip. I freeze, my nerves going haywire, and Gunnar shows me a dollop of foam on the pad of his index finger. His eyes still on mine, he licks it off. “Yum. The best part.”

Breathless, I struggle to come up with a reply. “The foam is not the best part.”

“I wasn’t talking about the foam.” He grins—well beyond his advanced smile—and my brain turns upside down. I take another sip of my grotesque hot “chocolate,” forgetting that it’s only slightly hotter than the surface of Venus, and cough a little while pretending to act cool. Folding his hands on the table, Gunnar states, “So. Here’s what I know about Auggie Pfeiffer: He likes to make his friends laugh, he maybe failed a history test recently, and his mom has a cursed doll that will someday be bought at a garage sale and kill an entire family of good, God-fearing folk somewhere in Oklahoma.”

“It might kill them as close as Indiana.” I pluck a nacho from the tray.

“Tell me three things I don’t know about you, and I’ll tell you three things you don’t know about me,” Gunnar suggests—and I realize for maybe the first time that I know almost nothing about him. I’ve been so worried about making a good impression, I didn’t even think to ask.

“Um, okay. So, first … my mom is super allergic to bees—”

“That’s not about you!”

“Hold on,” I protest. “Mom is allergic to bees, and when I was, like, ten, I declared myself her protector. My dad made me a suit of armor out of cardboard, and I scared bees away from the garden with a plastic sword and a spray bottle of water. I called myself Spider-Bee-Man.”