I leave on my bike, pumping my legs hard because I’m angry and I don’t know how else to work it out. Milo is at Fuller’s right now and I need him. Mark is going to relieve him any minute and I want Milo to spend what’s left of the day with me.

I bike across two streets and cut through an alleyway and round the corner off the main street. Fuller’s comes into view. The place is busy. Two trucks and a car. I recognize one of the trucks. Roy Ackman’s truck. It’s taunting me, tempting me. Let’s go again. You call that last one a hit? I speed up, pumping my legs hard, harder until I can feel it in my heart.

I just keep moving—

Until Roy Ackman rounds the side of it and I screech to a halt so hard I almost fly over the handlebars, but I don’t. He stops, surprised, and then he smiles at me.

And laughs.

“Funny, Eddie,” he says. He taps the side of his head. “That’s funny.”

He gets into the truck. He doesn’t ask me how I’m doing. How my mom is doing. I want to shout after him. My father is dead. He’s dead.

But I don’t.

I throw my bike on the ground and I walk into Fuller’s, where Missy, with her long, tanned, perfect legs, leans against the counter and talks to Milo. My heart goes into my throat a little bit, but when Milo sees me, he smiles warmly, like I’m the only person there is to see and that he wants to see, which keeps me where I am.

“Eddie,” he says. “Hey.”

Missy turns. “Hi, Eddie.”

“Hi,” I say.

“So I was just asking Milo if he wanted to waste an afternoon at Jenna’s again,” she says. Her voice is impossibly friendly. “Everyone’s going to be there. You in?”

“No thanks…”

“Actually, I think I’ll rain check it too, Miss,” Milo says.

He’s still looking at me.

“That’s cool,” she says. She straightens. “Okay, well. If you guys change your mind, you know where I’ll be.” She pats my shoulder on the way out. “I’ll see you.”

And then we go. Me and Milo. Together. Milo walks my bike for me. We go to the Ford River, where the water is still so painfully low and the grass next to it is still yellow and thirsty. I sit down and tilt my face toward the sun. Milo is next to me, stretched out. I can feel his eyes on me and there is so much between us that needs to be said.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “For what you did for me.”

I’ll start there.

But the rest—I think it has to wait.

“You’re my best friend,” he says.

I bring my hand to his face. I run my fingers lightly across his skin. My index finger traces his lips.

I just want to feel that he’s here.

I lay down next to him and rest my head on his chest. He tenses just for a second, surprised, and then he relaxes and puts his arm around me. I don’t want to talk. I just want to be quiet with him. Listen to his heart—that constant.

He kisses my forehead.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

I think you could walk across the river and not get your feet wet. I think I’ve caused a shift. People are changing, slowly becoming different. I see the beginnings of it in them. I think I made it happen—or maybe it was just something that was always going to happen.

But I’m still the same.