A few weeks later Jed asked, “Should we invite him over?”

We were sitting on the rocks underneath the big pine tree at the edge of the playground—this cluster of five big fat sandstone boulders that had been cut in half so they were smooth on top and made good tables and seats. Every year it was the unspoken rule that only the sixth-grade kids got to hang out at the rocks.

I looked where Jed was pointing and then quickly turned away.

“Fred, do you—” Jed started again, but I shook my head no.

Jed, Aidan, Keira, and I were sitting together, while most of what was left of the sixth grade were playing football on the playground. Sam was sitting by himself on a low bench outside the brick classrooms, on the other side of the playground.

“It’s cool if you want to go get him,” Aidan said, as he bit into his sandwich. He kept talking as he chewed. “If it’s just him it’s not too bad—but the other babies can’t come over.” The “babies” was what Aidan wanted us to call the fifth graders.

Anika and Sam moved to Sorrento two years ago, and Sam had been at PNP that whole time. But I never paid him any attention, not even after Anika and Luca met at one of the parent-teacher evenings and started going out. I guess I kind of remembered him playing with other kids in his grade, but older kids don’t pay attention to younger ones, so I didn’t know for sure.

Keira rolled her eyes. “Stop pressuring her!” she said to Aidan. “Do you think if you were stuck in a classroom with your sisters, you would want to hang out with them at lunchtime too?”

I didn’t correct Keira about Sam being my brother, but only because she made a good point. Aidan had two younger sisters—the twin terrors, we called them—in third grade.

He shuddered and shook his head at Keira, but then looked back to where Sam was sitting. “I dunno, maybe I would if they looked that pathetic?”

I remembered Luca’s words from a few weeks earlier, after the awful thing I’d done to Sam at Arthurs Seat. He had said he knew that I could be better and kinder, like it was a choice.

But being better and kinder is like being one big happy family—it’s one thing to say it, another thing to be it.

“He walks with us to school and home every day. That’s enough,” I said. “He doesn’t need to sit with us too.”

Mr. Khouri was quiet and serious and young—easily the youngest teacher at PNP—but he acted like he was older than my pop.