Page 54

The old man in the back calls out, "Theo, you good up there?"

"I'm good, Hank," he calls back. Then, lower, to me: "Go home, Dane."

"Truth," I say.

He looks up then. His eyes are angry and tired and a little scared.

"We're not in there."

"I don't care. Truth. Why are you working nights at a gas station when you're on a full scholarship?"

He looks past me at the door, at the parking lot, at my car by the air pump with its lights on. For a second, I think he's going to tell me to leave again.

Then his shoulders come down.

"My mom," he says. "She works days at a nursing home in Ashby and nights cleaning offices. They cut her hours at the home in October. Budget thing. And my little sister needs braces, and our landlord's an asshole, and—" He stops. "The scholarship covers school. It doesn't cover rent in Michigan. So I send her what I make here. It's not a big deal."

I stand there with my water bottle in my hand.

I didn't know he had a sister. I didn't know anything. Four months living next to him through a wall, and I didn't know his mother cleans offices at night. I thought the hoodie with no coat was a style.

"How much is rent," I say.

"Don't."

"Theo—"

"Don't." His voice cracks. "Don't, okay? You don't get to fix this. I don't want you to fix this. I want—" He breathes. "I want one thing that's mine. One thing nobody's handing me because they feel bad. Okay?"

I don't move.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay." He wipes his face with the back of his wrist, fast, like it's nothing. "So go home."

"When do you get off?"

"One."

I go out to the car. I don't go home.

I sit by the air pump with the heat running for an hour and forty minutes, and I watch him through the window. He sweeps. He wipes down the coffee station. He helps Hank carry a case of something to the back. He rings up a trucker and two high school kids buying energy drinks and a woman in scrubs who buys a lottery ticket and a coffee and talks to him for ten minutes, and he listens to her the whole time like she's the only person in the world.

At one, he comes out the door, pulling his hoodie up.

He sees my car. He stops.

I lean over and open the passenger door.

He stands there in the cold. Then he walks over and gets in, and shuts the door, and holds his hands up to the heat vent.

"You're an idiot," he says.

"Yes."

"You have practice in five hours."

"So do you."