Don’t you have flute? Joseph asked, throwing his words back.

On Mondays, I said. Most food.

Or Eliza? said Joe.

Ballet, I said.

What do you mean? George asked.

What should I do?

I don’t get it, said George.

I think there’s something wrong with me, I said, voice cracking.

George squinted, confused. Both he and Joe were weird-looking in junior high; their features kept growing at different speeds and falling out of proportion and at that point George’s eyebrows were so high and peaked on his forehead that he always looked either skeptical or surprised.

We reached the door to the house and Joseph dug around in his backpack to find his keychain. He was in charge of Wednesday afternoons and he had a new keychain he’d bought with his allowance-a solid silver circle with a clever latch that sank into the stream of the circle invisibly. He found it, let us in, and then attached the circle to his belt loop, like a plumber.

He turned down the hall to head straight to his room, but George lingered in the entryway.

You play flute? he said.

Just a little, I said.

Hey, George, Joseph said, heaving his textbook from his backpack and flipping it open. Race you on twelve. A speedboat full of villains is leaving a twenty-foot-high pier at a steady fifteen mph. A car full of cops is about to drive off the pier to catch the villains. How fast should the car be going to land on the boat, if the car leaves the pier when the boat is thirty-five feet away?

But George crossed his arms, the way he did sometimes when he was in and out of Joseph’s room, pacing. They’d copy extra physics questions from the library and settle in for the afternoon-Joseph at his desk, George pacing. They’d prop open the side door for fresh air and flick twigs and hammer through the extra credit that the teacher put up for them, that even the teacher didn’t really know.