Chapter 9: The Album

I stopped three steps from the lamp.

Tanner had a fleece zipped to his chin.

Clay had the album pressed to his chest with both arms.

Nobody said anything for a while.

Behind me the science building door opened and closed. Somebody's bike chain rattled.

"Where's Ford?" I said.

"At the hotel with Kenzie," Clay said. "She didn't want to be alone tonight."

Of course she didn't.

Tanner held out the bakery box.

"Pumpkin spice. From that place on Haywood you used to like. It got squashed in the overhead bin."

The lid had a dent in it the shape of somebody's carry-on.

"I don't like pumpkin spice."

His arm stayed out.

"Since when?"

"Since I was twelve."

"You ate it every year."

"Kenzie picked the cake every year."

He looked at the box.

Clay stepped forward and opened the album on the seat of a bike.

"I keep thinking about yours," he said. "The one you put on the table at the coffee shop."

"I remember it."

"There was almost nothing of you in it."

"Because I took the pictures, Clay."

He blinked behind his glasses.

It was the simplest answer in the world.

He looked like he was hearing it for the first time.

"So we made a new one," he said. "From the group chat. Tanner's mom's Facebook. Yearbooks. Anybody who'd ever pointed a phone at us."

He turned the first page.

Fifth grade graduation, the cafeteria stage. A small girl with a red barrette and a stiff smile, holding a certificate upside down.

Me.

Next page. Field day in sixth grade. I was crossing the finish line first, and three skinny boys were crowding me with water bottles.

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