“What is it with you and the black girls?” he asked. “You know what? I think I’m going to go over to Beau’s now and tell him I just discovered your special wimp power. Getting black girls to save you from ass kickings.”

I had no idea what Mike was talking about, but my entire chest split open at the mention of Beau. Beautiful Beau Prescott, who I’d never had the guts to talk to myself. The boy whose football buddy I’d settled for. Thinking of Beau, I watched Mike walk away, out of the yard, and through the white picket gate. All casual, as if leaving was exactly what he’d been fixing to do all along.

When he was out of eyeshot, I relaxed and turned to Colin. “You alright?” I asked him.

“You’re an idiot.”

Not quite the answer I’d been expecting after saving his bacon, and I stared at him, blinking, I was so taken aback.

Another thing I remember clearly about that night: the way his eyes glittered in the moonlight as he snarled, “You shouldn’t have interfered.”

I took a step back, but just like with Mike, I stood my ground. “I was only trying to help.”

“What makes you think I needed some idiot girl’s help?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I guess you being maybe a buck forty soaking wet up against a state champion football player made me think that?”

“I weigh a lot more than that,” Colin shot back as he went to pick his Urkel glasses up out of the grass. They were, like the violin, bent at an awkward angle, but he jammed them back on his face anyway.

And that made me feel sorry for him all over again.

Because the truth was, if I hadn’t intervened, Mike would have kicked his ass. Probably would have broken a few fingers, too, just because.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said, letting some apology creep into my voice. “I thought I was helping.”

“You didn’t help me,” Colin spat out. “You just gave him something else to lord over me. So thank you for that, Beaumont girl.”

“Colin, I was only trying to—”

“Get out of here,” he said, voice vicious as a thunderstorm. “I’m sick of looking at your idiot face.”