Chapter 10: Test

Dash skipped Econ 340 for the first time in three years, and he did not feel sorry about it at all.

He woke at ten with a weight on his arm and a smear of blue on his hip.

Wilder was asleep on his stomach, face turned into the pillow, one bare shoulder out of the blanket.

The gray pad lay on the floor where it had fallen in the night.

Dash looked at it for a while.

Then he got up, found his jeans, and made coffee on the hot plate that was against house rules.

By the time Wilder woke, there was a mug on his side of the desk and Rory in the doorway holding a bag of bagels.

"I knocked," Rory said. "Twice. Then I used the spare."

"Why do you have a spare?"

"You gave me one in sophomore year, in case you drowned."

Rory looked at the second bed, which was in its new place.

"Hi, I'm Rory. I was at the pantry thing. You were choking."

"Wilder." Wilder sat up with the blanket at his waist and pushed his hair flat. "On a chicken bone."

"A nasty one."

"The worst."

"I like him," Rory told Dash.

"Get out of my room," Dash said.

"I brought bagels."

"Get out and leave the bagels."

Rory grinned and set the bag on the desk.

He sat on the arm of Wilder's chair, as easy as if he'd lived there.

He talked about rowing, a lake in Vermont, and a dog he'd had as a boy.

Dash watched Wilder watch him.

Wilder looked at Rory's face the whole time, at his mouth and the creases at the edge of his eyes.

He laughed in the right places, a hair after the others.

When Rory turned toward the window to point out something on the Green, Wilder's smile slipped, just for a second.

His eyes went to Dash, and the fixed attention he had been holding came loose.

Then Rory turned back, and it was all in place again.

"You're easy to talk to," Rory said, getting up. "Most people look past me. You look right at me."

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