It’s been a long, strange day, and I’m not sure I’ve got the chutzpah to finish what I started with him at the lunch table. I turn, moving toward the street at what I hope looks like a casual pace, jogging over the crosswalk with my backpack beating my backside—very slick, nice form. Down the sidewalk, trying to look like I have a destination, checking over my shoulder once all the buses have roared by, contorted faces and flailing hands beyond the filthy windows like some view into hell’s furnace room.

Kincaid follows at a distance. Riding the flat gray horizon, not waving or calling for me to wait up. Just tailing on his board.

Despite my mood and the doom creature riding my shoulders, that damned smile is back, the one I can’t keep off my lips, and I turn on the speed—won’t run, but neither will he, pushing off and coasting, keeping that long stretch of sidewalk between us. I’m ready for this role reversal, letting him be the one in pursuit for a change. My mind’s scrambling—where to go? I don’t want to walk all the way to the Terraces. Main Street it is. Straight shot down the hill.

The wind’s fierce, but I keep up my barely restrained speed walk past the post office, Song’s, and the gas station, ending up in the lot of D&M, where the Blazer sits in its usual spot. Good enough—how does Kincaid know I don’t need antifreeze and scratch tickets?

Inside waits the usual old convenience store stank—stale cigarette smoke, coffee, pizza congealing under heat lamps. The cashier, a guy with a mop of reddish hair, glasses, and an immobile expression of snark, barely lifts his gaze from the pages of a college chemistry textbook on the back counter.

I wander over to the two-bags-for-a-dollar gummy spinner, warmth returning to my face and hands, counting silently, waiting to see what Kincaid will do next.

A couple minutes later, a jingle of entrance bells, and Kincaid’s beside me, gusting in on cold air. “Hi.” He’s out of breath, smiling.

“Hi.” Now that I’m caught, I can hardly keep the laughter out of my voice; it’s tight in my lungs, making me feel buoyant, ready to float up to the water-stained ceiling panels.

“You came all the way down here for gummies?” Kincaid nods to the cashier, who nods back. “Thought you were trying to lose me.”

I clear my throat, keeping my gaze on the selection. “What do you think? Sharks, watermelon slices, or hedgehogs?”

“Easy. Hedgehogs taste like Pepto.”