Chapter 66

“Don’t remind me,” Ryan says. He doesn’t want today to be over—it feels like weeks since the quarterfinals, years they’ve spent together now, he’s not ready to give that up. You’ll see him again tomorrow,he reminds himself. And then next weekend in Atlantic City, it’ll be just the two of them, no one else. They’ll share a room, they won’t haveto say goodnight.

The apartment looks like Ryan thought it would, a cramped, two-story brownstone with steps leading up to a stone stoop, one in a series of identical buildings that look as old as the earth itself. The sidewalks are cracked and covered with chalk drawings, hopscotch boards—the brick walls are crumbling, sprayed thick with illegible graffiti. When his mother eases the van to a stop at the curb, Ryan hears breaking glass, angry shouts, the distant wail of a siren. He doesn’t like it here and he grips Dante’s hand almost painfully—he doesn’t want to let him go, he doesn’t belong in a place like this. “Dante,” he begins.