“We had fish sticks back in my day,” Dan says. “You’d think San Diego could do better than that with seafood.” That Dan is from California is news to me. I try to picture him surfing on a Saturday morning or hitting up the skate park in the afternoon. Or bumming a ride out to Tahoe on the weekend to snowboard. I just can’t see it. He seems so much more at home in his ties with the crossword puzzle tucked under his arm.

While I’m squinting at him, trying to picture him with sunglasses and a tan, he hands me a small plastic card that looks like a credit card. It has my name printed on it and the same gold crest as the school.

“This card links to your student account. You can use it to get lunch, anything out of the vending machines, and clothes or school supplies from the Bird’s Nest.”

I stare at it. My very own kid-size credit card. I wonder how much Dan put on it and how I will ever pay him back.

“What’s the Bird’s Nest?” I ask instead.

“Don’t worry about it,” Well says, not looking up from my new phone, where he is adding himself as a contact. “It’s the school pep store. I am not letting you buy a single thing with a crest or a bird on it. Ridiculous.”

“Why a bird?”

“We’re the Chickering Sparrows. That’s our mascot,” Dan explains, pointing to the giant gray bird painted above the doors leading outside to the picnic tables.

“Worst mascot ever,” Well says, and swipes the card from me. “Come on, Lou. I’ll take it from here, Coach.”

“You kids have fun. And keep an eye on the clock. Fourth period starts in twenty-eight minutes.”

“Oodles of time. Let’s go.”

I follow Well between the tables and try not to make eye contact with anyone. But most people are texting or doing homework, so nobody looks up.

“Lunch is the only time we can have our phones out during school,” Well says when he sees me staring. Am I the only kid here who didn’t own a phone until today?

We wind our way past the smoothie and salad bars, the baked potato and soup stations, and a prepared-food line. It’s like a tiny supermarket. We stop at the end by the cash register, and Well grabs two Snickers ice cream bars from a deep freezer and a bag of Doritos off the rack. He piles them all up in front of the lunch lady and hands her his card.

“My treat,” he says.

“Oh no, I can’t.” Just one of those ice cream bars is four dollars at the gas station. How much more can I possibly owe people?

“Oh please,” Well says, waving me off as I try to hand the cafeteria lady my card. Which, if I think about it, isn’t any different than Well paying. I’m loaded down with everybody else’s money. At least when I sang, I earned the quarters and dimes and dollars. “That’s money to your name, Lou,” Mom would say.