After the football season ends, Scot finds himself without anything to talk about at our weekly dinners, so he makes himself the expert on cell phones and colleges, but I’m too busy to think about college, and I don’t need a phone to remind me that I am the worst person in the school and that I will never have any friends again. But I humor him. Since Mom is busy with her career, Scot takes on the job of finding a college that will accept a bad bet like me. He never had a chance to go, he says, so he doesn’t mind. I say I’m willing to go to the same college as Allegra, but Guidance thinks that someone with my GPA should aim low, prove myself, and then consider applying to a place like that. So Scot takes a couple of weekends to drive me deep into the puckerbrush to tour campuses that are very far from civilization and still too close to Colchis. I try to be nice about it. One morning at breakfast, he’s looking through a catalog, sees the tuition, and almost chokes on a donut. I pound him on the back and ask him if he needs me to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

“No, I’m all set,” he says. “I just—I had no idea.”

“Allegra got a scholarship,” I said.

“It’s okay, we’ll figure it out.” But that’s the last college visit we go on.

Weeks are going by, and I still have no friends. I get used to it. Winter starts and the snow comes and stays this time, and Allegra comes home for Thanksgiving and then Christmas, and I work my way straight through both vacations. On a cold day in January, I’m sitting on our bench in front of the high school, just like the old days, waiting for the bus. Suddenly there is Grimshaw walking toward me, and guess what she’s dragging along behind her.

“That damn suitcase,” I comment.

“Yeah,” she says. “I haven’t used it in a while.”

She sits down, lights two cigarettes, and hands me one. We haven’t talked to each other since the day after homecoming.

“Mike’s picking me up here,” she says. “He has a job for me.”

“Is he going to kill me?”

“Not today,” she says.

“Nobody was in Western Civ today but me.”

“Rack had a doctor’s appointment,” she says.

“Angel wasn’t there, either.”

“She’s switching to evening classes, remember, because she’s starting that program for a nursing certificate.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.”

“I saw your name on the honor roll,” she says.

“The high honor roll,” I correct her.

She laughs. “I know. I just said that so you’d correct me. Otherwise, you’d pretend you didn’t care.”

I shrug. “Foundations was more fun.”

“The job is in Los Angeles,” she says. “California,” she adds.