Page 269

Kennebeck: My eye is closed.

I look at it for a while. It’s the first thing Barnes has said since the second period.

Me: Shut up.

Then, under it, a separate thread. Berwyn. Sent at five fifty-nine.

Berwyn: My office. 6am Monday. All three of you.

We’re fucked.

And under that, a second one from him. Sent a minute later. Longer.

Berwyn: Also. Another club called last night after the game. Want updated film and a conversation with whoever’s advising you. Told them I’d get back to them. You need to make that decision, Rafferty. Soon.

I read it twice.

Another club. After they watched me sit in the box for twelve minutes with a towel on my face. They called anyway.

The kid who went over the top of five because he wanted to hit somebody. The kid on a list in the forties that a team called about at midnight.

Both of them are me. I don’t know how to be just one.

She moves under the comforter. Her hand comes out and finds my chest and stays there.

“Who is it?” she mumbles.

“Coach.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“Yeah.”

She makes a sound that might be a laugh.

“Good,” she says and goes back to sleep.

37

Money I Made While I Was Asleep

Tessa

The sticky notes come down first. There are twelve of them on the inside of my closet door. I didn’t know there were twelve until I started taking them off. Ship by Tuesday. Return library book (OVERDUE). Aid email — Jan? That one’s been there since October, the yellow gone soft at the corners. Grandma bday 3/14 — card. I sent the card. Don’t buy anything polyester. Mom with nothing after it, which I wrote in November and still don’t know what I meant.

I peel them off one at a time and stack them in my palm like a deck of cards. The door underneath is cleaner where they were. Little squares of white paint that haven’t been touched by anybody’s hands since August.

It’s the last week of April. Finals start Monday. Behind me, Kylie is on the floor in the middle of our room in a sea of open boxes and doing absolutely nothing useful, which she has been doing for an hour and a half.

“Do I keep this?” She holds up a lanyard from orientation.

“No.”

“It has sentimental value.”

“It has a coupon for a free smoothie that expired in September.”

She looks at it for a long time. She puts it in the box.