That’s when he got to know Ann. They were at a track meet in Wautoma, at one of those hotels with a dome over the pool. Everyone else had a room to sleep in. But Michael couldn’t afford one, so he told his coach he had family in town. He went to sleep in the lounge chair by the pool. Ann found him there. She said she couldn’t sleep because her roommate snored. She sat next to him in the watery green light and they started talking.

Before he knew it, Ann told him about the long history of tensions between her and the girls at school, the false rumors her old boyfriend Nick Maddox had started about her “putting out” when he was upset she wouldn’t sleep with him, the difficulties of attending a school where your father was a teacher, how she thought her mother favored Poppy and her father cared more about his students than he cared about her.

He told her that his dad, a boxer, got hit in the head too hard in a fight and ended up in a home. “He can’t even spread peanut butter on a piece of bread or say his own name,” Michael said. “After my dad, my mom had this boyfriend. Marcus. He worked at the Red Star yeast factory. He smelled like a moldy piece of bread.”

Ann laughed—until Michael lifted up his shirt and showed her a dark brown stripe across his abdomen. “This is from when he hit me with an extension cord. And this?” He pointed at a lump on his shin. “This is from when he kicked me so hard I couldn’t walk for a week.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ann said. “How could anyone hurt you?”

Michael shrugged. “People hurt each other all the time.”

He couldn’t believe that he’d confided in her, and he couldn’t believe that Ann, Miss Popular, was so sincere in her concern. He’d always thought of her as someone who was totally inaccessible. She was confident and pretty. He saw how the boys tried to get her attention and the girls tried to keep up with her. He’d heard girls talk shit about her, like she thought she was all that, but he found her to be sincere and direct in a way other kids weren’t, which was why, that night, he’d told her more than he’d told anyone else when she asked him about his mom.

“She was a partier. But after Marcus left, she swore she would change. She did. She got a job, cleaned up. But then she got sick. She was tired all the time, had these pains in her gut. At first, I was happy. Her being sick meant she was home with me, and I could take care of her. I thought she’d get better, but remember when that bacteria got into the Milwaukee water?”