Her hand gently squeezes my arm. “Hey. Please don’t be embarrassed. It’s okay. I understand weird parents. Trust me.”

I look at her. “Yeah. It was my dad. He wasn’t happy about how I played Friday.”

“That’s why you canceled?”

“Yeah. He says I’ve got enough on my plate. I need to stay focused.”

We sit there in silence for a while, while she eats her sandwich. I take a few bites of the apple.

It’s getting more and more awkward by the second. Why did she ask me here? What else does she want me to say?

“Friends?”

“Yeah,” she says as she stuffs the empty sandwich bag into her backpack. “I mean, with Benny in the hospital, you could probably use a good friend. Right?”

I hand her the water bottle. As she takes a drink, I think about that. Friends. With a girl. Nothing else.

“Do you think that’s possible?” I ask.

She nods. “Absolutely.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” she says confidently.

“I don’t think I’ve been friends with a girl since, like, second grade. This girl, Vy, lived across the street from me, and we’d run through the sprinkler together in the summer. And eat Popsicles. And play with potato bugs.”

“Oh, yeah. I love potato bugs. The way you pick them up and they roll into a ball? So awesome.”

“Yeah.”

She looks at me. “So, is that a yes?”

I shrug. “Sure. Why not? Benny’d probably give me hell for it, but whatever. I guess he doesn’t have to know. For now.”

“How’s he doing, anyway?” she asks, like a friend does.

“Okay, I guess. I saw him yesterday. Sometime soon, they’re going to move him to a rehabilitation center. The one they want to get him into is in Atlanta, but it’s going to take a lot to make that happen. Financially, I mean. I wish there was something I could do to help them.”

“Then let’s help him,” she says. “You and me. We could do a fund-raiser, right? I bet people here at school would get behind it. I think everybody’s dying to do something to help, they just don’t know how.”

“What kind of fund-raiser? Like a car wash or going door-to-door . . . ?”

Her eyes are big and bright. “I know. We’ll have a gigantic bake sale. Like, the biggest bake sale ever. I can ask Mr. Curtiss to donate some doughnuts from the shop. And we could make stuff, and ask a bunch of other people to make stuff.”

I hold my hands up. “Whoa, hold on. The only thing I’ve ever baked was an angel food cake where all we had to do was

add water to the mix. I don’t think you want me making something I’d probably have to pay people to eat.”

She shakes her head. “Colby Pynes, are you serious? You’ve never baked cupcakes or chocolate chip cookies or brownies?”

I shrug. “No.”

“That is so sad.”

“Well, when you don’t have a mom around most of your life . . . But you know, I could ask my grandma to make something. And I can help you with other stuff. Advertising. Setting up. Whatever.”

“We’ll need to do all of that, of course, but we will make something. It’ll be more fun than playing with potato bugs, I promise.”

“Wait, I know,” I say. “We could put potato bugs in whatever we’re making. Now that would be fun.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Gross. You’re such a . . . boy.”

I hold my hands up. “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to be friends with me, remember?”

“I remember,” she says as she grabs a notebook and a pen from her backpack, opens it up, and starts writing.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Making a list. We have a lot to do.” She looks up and must see panic in my eyes. “Don’t worry. Football comes first for you. I get it.”

“Just so you know,” I say as I look down at the field, “I wish it didn’t.”

I gotta admit, she is pretty easy to talk to.

Now if she wasn’t so easy to look at, this being friends thing would be a piece of cake.