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Sorel takes another bite. He looks at me, chewing. Then he looks at Owen's bed, at the comforter missing from it. Then he looks down.

I stop breathing.

He looks back up at me.

"Okay," he says, very slowly. "Well. I'm going to go."

"You don't have to go."

"I think I do." He closes the pizza box and stands up. He's careful where he puts his feet. He's very, very careful where he puts his feet. "I'll leave the pizza. In case you get hungry later. Or in case anybody gets hungry later."

He puts it on the desk. He walks to the door. He opens it and stops.

"Hey, Rémy?"

"Yeah?"

"I hope the ice machine's okay," Sorel says, and closes the door behind him.

The room's silent. I lean against the door and slide down it until I'm sitting on the floor.

The comforter moves. Owen's head comes out of the top of it. His hair's sticking straight up.

"He saw," he says.

"He didn't see."

"He looked right at me."

"He looked at the comforter."

"Rémy. He said anybody."

I put my hands over my face. I start laughing. I can't stop. It's the kind of laughing that isn't really about anything funny, the kind that just comes up out of you because the only other choice is crying. After a second, Owen starts too, lying on the floor half wrapped in a comforter, holding his ribs.

"The pillows in Columbus are very thin," he says, and loses it all over again.

We laugh until my stomach hurts. Then I crawl over to him on the carpet and lie down next to him, and we look at the ceiling together, and the laughing slows down and stops.

"He's my best friend," I say.

Owen doesn't say anything.

"He brought me pizza. At one-thirty in the morning. Because I said on the bus I wanted jalapeños." I turn my head and look at him. "I lied to him. Again. That's twice now."

"I'm sorry," Owen says, quiet.

"It's not your fault."

"It is, though."

I don't answer that. I don't know how.

He reaches over and finds my hand on the carpet between us. He holds on.

"Want some pizza?" he says after a while.

"Yeah," I say. "Yeah, okay."