“You ever wonder which ones are already dead?” he asked, after another minute. “Like the light takes so long to reach us that some of them probably burned out centuries ago. We're just seeing the echo.”
“Yeah.”
“Bit depressing, honestly.”
“Or the opposite,” I said. “Means something can be gone and still leave a mark that long.”
Soren went very quiet. I felt his shoulders drop slightly, like something in him unclenched. He didn't say anything for a while, and neither did I, and we just stayed there with the cold settling slowly through both of us and the valley lights blinking below and the stars above doing whatever stars did at the end of things.
Eventually the cold won. It always did.
I felt him sit up, and the warmth of his weight against my shoulder disappeared, and without it the night felt noticeably colder.
“Better get you home before your mom sends out a search party,” he said.
“Probably.”
He drove me back to the school lot without turning the radio on. His fingers drummed against the wheel in that restless pattern he fell into when his brain was running too fast to sit still. I watched it out of the corner of my eye and tried to think of the right thing to say and didn't find it.
He pulled up next to my car and left the engine running.
“See you at graduation,” I said.
“Yeah. See you there, Rook.”
The daysbetween the championship and graduation were quiet in a way that should have been a warning.
Soren was present. He showed up to school, made his jokes, gave me the same grin he always had. We ate lunch on the steps outside the gym on Tuesday and he talked for twenty minutes straight about some band he'd found, playing a clip on his phoneand watching my face to see when I'd admit it was actually good. He looked fine. He sounded fine. And because I wanted him to be fine, I let myself believe it.
Thursday afternoon I found him at his locker, clearing out the last of his textbooks with the kind of cheerful disregard for school property that only made sense on your last day of real classes.
“Tell me you're not going to the after-party at Jensen's,” he said, not looking up.
“Why would I go to Jensen's party?”
“Because you feel obligated to show face. Because you're the captain.” He shoved a textbook into his bag and finally looked at me. “I'm giving you permission to skip it. You can use my name if you want.”
“I wasn't going.”
“Good.” He zipped the bag. “So graduation, then the rink. I still need to clear my gear out of the locker room, and you probably have about forty years of tape residue and stick wax to deal with.”
“I'm not cleaning out your locker.”
“You absolutely are. It's the last act of captaincy.” He swung the bag onto his shoulder and pointed at me. “Four o'clock. Don't make me wait.”
He made it about three steps down the hallway before I called after him.
“Hey.”
He stopped and turned, bag still on his shoulder, eyebrows up.
“You actually going to show up this time? Because I seem to remember you telling me you'd be at the bus at six thirty for the Brampton game and I stood in the parking lot for forty minutes.”
“That was one time.”
“Forty minutes, Soren.”
“It was twenty and you know it.” He pointed at me again. “Four o'clock. I'll be there before you.”
