“Oh, my God,” Kelly Brandt said as we came to the main doors. She and Chad had made up and exchanged “friendship rings.” She kept flashing hers around, wanting everyone to ask about it. “What is be doing here?“ ”I told you Caitlin had a big weekend,“ Rina said slyly, poking me in the side. I'd told only her about our date, and as much as she might have wanted us to both date football players, she loved the idea of me with Rogerson. It was just forbidden and wild enough to appeal to her. ”That was him you were talking about?“ Kelly said incredulously. Outside, Rogerson flicked his cigarette and turned around, leaning his head back to look up at the gray November sky. ”I mean, Caitlin, he's ...“ ”He's what?“ Rina said, as a pack of soccer players crossed between us and Rogerson, jogging. They were all blond or dark-​haired, tall and athletic, moving in perfect synchronicity. When Rogerson came back into view he was watching them pass, his hair blowing in the wind, an expression I couldn't make out on his face. ”Tell us what he is, Kelly.“ ”Well,“ Kelly said, lowering her voice and brushing her hair back with her friendship ring hand, ”I've just heard some stories, that's all. He's been in trouble, you know. Like with the police. I mean, I have this friend at Perkins Day, and she said ...“ But I wasn't even listening, already pushing through the doors into the cold air. Rogerson stood up from where he was leaning when he saw me. He had told me himself about his ”long stories,” and I didn't care. I myself had no stories of my own yet, but I was ready. More than ready. That first week, whenever I thought about him, I remembered brushing my finger over his eyebrow, tracing the hurt, trying to give back what his father had taken away. Now I'd take that bit of Roger-​son and hold it close to me. That fall, as I struggled to leave Cass's shadow behind once and for all, he was just what I needed. From that day on, Rogerson was suddenly just there. He drove me home every day. He came over from Perkins at lunch to take me out and called me every nightusually more than once and then again before I went to bed. On Fridays he came to my games, home or away, and stood off to the side of the bleachers, watching me cartwheel and cheer while he leaned against the fence, smoking cigarettes and waiting for me. We never really went on “dates,” exactly: With Rogerson, it was all about being in motion. Going from party to party, place to place. Sometimes I stayed in the car, but more often now I came in and was introduced. To the college guys in the dorm room with the huge Bob Slarley poster and the couch that smelled like rancid beer. To the woman who lived in that trailer and her little boy, Bennett, who sat quietly on the floor, playing with a plastic phone as she weighed bags of pot on a digital scale. And to so many others, whose faces and names I would never remember. They blurred together, weekend after weekend, as Rogerson made his rounds. Sometimes I missed the whole movie-​restaurant-​mini-​golf-​basketball-​game kind of dating lifestyle. But this was just how it was with Rogerson. He had a lot of nervous energy, business to attend to, and frankly I couldn't really picture him standing in front of a windmill at Jungle Golf, lining up his shot. That was more of a Mike Evans thing, and I'd made my choice there. So I was happy to be with Rogerson, in transit, always with a bit of a buzz and his hand on my knee. It was just fine. “So what do you guys do, anyway?” Rina always asked me. Her quarterback was a date kind of guythey were always going out to dinner, or to the movies, or double-​dating with other couples. I couldn't see Rogerson doing that, either. “I don't know,” I told her. “We just hang out.” That was the only way I could describe it. Most of the time spent with Rogerson was in the car, him driving and me in the passenger seat, his fingers, spread across my knee. He'd take me to McDonald's and buy me chocolate shakes, which he already knew were my favorite, or drive us out to Topper Lake, where we'd take the car onto the flats and listen to the radio. The only time we ever argued was about music. Rogerson liked classic rock. Pink Floyd, his favorite, depressed the hell out of me. So whenever he left me alone in the car, engine running, I'd change the station to G103, cranking it up to fill the air around me with bouncy pop tunes, the kind that get stuck in your head all day and all night long, like a soundtrack in your dreams. Rogerson would come out of the Quik Zip, or down the stairs of someone's apartment, and head for the car. I'd watch his expression change as he got closer, hearing the strains of one of my baby-​baby-​oh-​please-​baby songs. “Oh, my God,” he said to me once as he flopped into the driver's seat, pulling the door shut behind him. “What is this shit?”

“Number one in the country,” I told him smugly, even as he reached forward, hitting one of the preset buttons. Suddenly we were surrounded by the sound of funereal gonging, interwoven with some woman moaning. “See,” he said, pointing to the radio, “now that's music.”

“No,” i told him, hitting another presetthe one I'd changed a few days earlier, when he'd been busy pumping gas“this is.” But it wasn't. Instead, it was some woman singing about dandruff control. “Nice,” he said, snapping his fingers as if it was just so catchy. “Better than most of the stuff you listen to.”

“Shut up,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I don't even know why you like that,” he said, cranking the engine. “I don't even know why I like you,” I replied, as the dandruff song finally ended. “Yes, you do,” he said, turning his head to back us out of the parking lot. “I do?”