“You’re doing it,” Andrew said. “Right now. By telling your side. If people still don’t believe you afterwards, you did all you could do.”

I nodded, obediently, but I was unconvinced. “You know what drives me crazy most of all?”

Andrew bit into his slice, releasing a shiny rivulet of oil that trickled all the way to his wrist. He caught it in his mouth before it disappeared under the cuff of his sweater, sinking his teeth into his flesh. I watched the white bite marks recede from his skin.

“The Dean Stalwarts,” I said. “I think I hate them more than I hate Dean. Especially the women. You wouldn’t believe the crap they send me. Still.” I adopted the stern voice of a midwestern church lady with multiple chins and hairy knees. “The Lord knows what you did and you will answer to him in your next life.” I ripped apart the crust of my pizza. “Fucking inbred Jesus fuckers.” I cowered at my own words, immediately regretful. Luke might laugh when I said stuff like that, but that was not what Andrew wanted from me. Broken, I reminded myself, that’s what works on him. “Sorry. It’s just, if they even knew what Dean did to me.”

Andrew took a sip of his soda. “So why don’t you tell them?”

“It’s the one thing . . .” I sighed. “It’s the one thing my mom doesn’t want me to talk about. Luke doesn’t either. He knows what happened with those guys, of course, but I don’t want his parents to know about that night. It’s humiliating.” I found a piece of crust without any red and nibbled on it. “It’s not just for my mom or Luke though. I’m hesitant to go on the record about this too, especially when it comes to Liam. It’s a serious allegation to make against someone who is always going to be fifteen in everyone’s minds.” I watched a group of teenagers tease each other on the sidewalk, Starbucks cups in their hands. Coffee tasted like gasoline when I was that age, now it’s lunch. “A fifteen-year-old who was chased into a classroom and shot in the chest. Something about it sits funny, even with me. I don’t know. Haven’t his parents been through enough?”

Andrew sighed. “That’s a tough one, Tif.”

I wrapped my hands around my shins. “What would you do, if you were me?”

“If it were me?” Andrew dusted crumbs off his lap and shifted so that his knees pointed at me. “I think there is a way you can be honest but not speak ill of the dead. And I certainly wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to expose Dean for what he really is.” The edge of his knee grazed my thigh by accident, and he quickly pulled it back. “There is no one in this world who deserves that honor more than you.”

I let the tears rise to the surface and turned to him to let him see. It didn’t take much. My chest felt like a washcloth, wringing, wringing. “Thank you.”

Andrew smiled at me. He had arugula in his teeth, and I loved him more.

I took my shot. “Want to drive by Bradley and see if anything’s going on tonight?” I had pictured us doing this, of course, I just didn’t think I would actually ask. But the sky was losing its fight against the dark and there was only the crust left on Andrew’s pizza and I couldn’t let him go yet. Andrew said yes in a way that made me think he had been waiting for me to ask, and my heart extended its beat to every limb in my body.

Andrew offered to drive. He had a BMW, but it was the perfect amount of weathered to convey that old money nonchalance I will never naturally project. There were golf clubs in the backseat and an empty Starbucks cup in the center console. Andrew reached for it. “Hand me that, would you?” he asked. As I passed the cup his way I caught ‘Whitney’ scribbled on the side. There was a line struck through the boxes for latte and nonfat milk. I couldn’t think of a more apt description for Andrew’s nothing-burger wife: Whitney is the type of woman who drinks Starbucks nonfat lattes.

Andrew chucked the coffee cup in a nearby trash can and climbed behind the wheel. He turned the car on, revealing he had been listening to the nineties station on Pandora. Third Eye Blind wailed, eerily. How many times had I driven these same streets, listening to these same songs? So long ago that this situation, Andrew and I next to each other in his car, would have aroused concern. It still did now, just for different reasons.

It wasn’t a long drive to Bradley. A left onto Lancaster Avenue, another left onto North Roberts Road, and a right onto Montgomery. Bradley kids frequently walked to this Peace A Pizza before they passed their driving tests. I used to do it with Arthur all the time.

The soccer field stretched out on our left, empty and stubborn summer green. Andrew’s large hand flicked the turn signal, and we waited patiently for an opening in traffic. Then we were blazing alongside the soccer stands, passing the opening to the path I used to take to Arthur’s house. Mrs. Finnerman never moved away, remained visible as the mother of the boy who gleefully plotted the death of his classmates at the prestigious Bradley School. The media lamenting, “How could it happen here?” and, for once, really meaning it. School shootings belonged to the Midwest middle-class, strip-mall towns where there was no Ivy League legacy and guns were given as stocking stuffers. The car sputtered at the curb, and Andrew turned to me. “Wanna break in?”

I looked out the window at the school’s black eyes. More times than not, I had entered Bradley with vomit roasting in my throat. I should have felt it now, a sort of Pavlovian response to the place, but Andrew was like a net, keeping the dread out. I was vaguely aware that this was something Luke had done for me once, when we first met—reminded me that hope and warmth resided in me, so that even sleep was possible—when Andrew reached for me and I started out of my seat. “Sorry.” He smiled, and his fingers fiddled with my seat belt buckle. “This sticks sometimes.”

“No, sorry, you just surprised me,” I stammered. I heard a click, and the pressure on my chest lessened.

The Athletic Center was unlocked. “Way to go, Bradley,” I muttered, and Andrew murmured his agreement as he held the door open. Bradley should have better security measures in place after what happened, but the school stood strong against state and media pressure to erect metal detectors and hire armed security guards. As far as the administration was concerned, this was a one-time incident and there was no reason to further terrorize students by infringing on their privacy and subjecting them to random pat downs by trigger-happy rent-a-cops. They had the support of the parents too, as so many of them were graduates of Bradley themselves, and no one wanted to see the institution that J. D. Salinger’s first wife attended held to the same security standards as an inner-city public high school.

We descended the stairs into the basketball courts. “Pretty sure shoes like that are not permitted on these floors.” Andrew nodded at my suede flats, the ones with the clunky silver heels, and started for the carpeted flooring that ringed the court.

I ignored him, stepping onto the polished maple. My shoes ticked off a few beats, and Andrew stopped and watched me drag my heel along the surface, drawing a fuzzy white line that ended with an ear-piercing squeak. He stepped off the carpet next to me, grinding the heel of his loafer into the floor, matching my mark.

The gym deposited us in the Science wing, where a brass framed poster of the periodic table of elements made me smile. “You know Mr. Hardon?” Mr. Hardon was the Honors Chemistry teacher. He had a mustache that twitched involuntarily, and due to his unfortunate name and odd disposition, he was mostly known as a pervert and referred to as Mr. Hard-On.