Chapter 10: Ninety Percent

Beau caught me on the dock on Wednesday, at dusk, while I was waiting for Griffin to finish practice.

He sat down beside me with an orange and started peeling it in one long piece.

"I'm not going to say anything," he said.

"Okay."

"I'm just going to say this one thing."

"Okay."

"He's different with you. But he's been like this since September."

I looked at him.

"Since September?"

"He was laughing at nothing," Beau said. "In the dining hall, in the locker room, once in the middle of a race briefing."

"Okay."

"I thought he'd hit his head. That was before you typed a word at him."

"Before I typed what?" I said, carefully.

"I don't know. I don't know what you two do. I'm just saying. It was already happening."

"What was already happening?"

A car horn sounded from the lot, two short blasts.

Beau popped a slice of orange into his mouth and stood up.

"That's my ride," he said, which was a lie, since he lived with the driver.

Griffin's old green Subaru sat at the far end of the lot, under the last streetlight.

Rain had started, a thin cold October rain that beaded on the glass.

I climbed in, and the heater smelled like wet wool.

He looked at me across the console with his hair still damp from the shower.

"Beau talked to you," he said.

"A little."

"What did he say?"

"He said you look at me funny."

"I look at you normally."

"You look at me like you're about to apologize."

He didn't answer that.

He reached over and found the lever on my seat.

He tipped it back slowly, until I was lying almost flat with the rain drumming on the roof.

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