“Leave it,” I said.
He put it back in the hallway.
We didn’t talk in the car. The radio played a song about summer, which felt like a joke. When we pulled up in front of Lincoln High, he sat for a second with his hand on the door.
“Are you picking me up after school?”
“Yes.”
“Are we going to the rink?”
“No.”
He nodded. He didn’t argue. He got out, and I watched him walk across the front lawn with his shoulders hunched up around his ears, and I thought about how small he had looked on that bench when he was eight.
That afternoon, instead of going to work, I called Coach Dawson and asked if he had a few minutes.
He met me in the bleachers before the four o’clock practice. The Zamboni was going around the ice, smoothing it into glass. I watched it go and wondered if Greg was driving it. I couldn’t see the driver from where I sat. I made myself look away.
