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"I figured he would, eventually." He rubs his eyes. "Dane. Does Theo know you're here?"

I don't answer.

He looks at me.

"He doesn't want anybody to say anything," I say. "Not until after the series. He's trying to protect them. He's doing it alone. He always does it alone, and I can't—" My voice cracks. "I can't sit there and watch him do it again. I stood there once. I can't stand there again."

Halvorsen doesn't answer right away.

"If I take this to the conference," he says, "they're going to want to hear it from Theo."

"Then let them."

"Son, you just told me he doesn't want to⁠—"

"He doesn't want to because he's scared Marrack will go after his friends. If you go to the conference, if the conference goes to Harrow's AD, Marrack can't touch anybody. Right? That's the point. It takes it out of Theo's hands."

Halvorsen looks at me with an expression I can't read.

"It does," he says. "It takes it out of his hands."

"So do it."

He drinks his coffee.

"I'll make some calls," he says, finally. "Today. Quietly. Before the game." He stands up. "And then I'm going to have to talk to him, Dane. You understand that. I'm not going to the conference behind that kid's back."

"I know."

"Do you?"

I stand up. My chair scrapes on the floor.

"Thank you, Coach."

"Don't thank me," he says. He doesn't look happy. He looks old. "Go stretch. You've got a game tonight."

I walk out to my car. The sky's going pink over the lake. The air smells like spring for the first time all year, snow melting, wet pine. I sit in the driver's seat with my hands on the wheel, and I feel lighter than I have since April.

I took it out of his hands. He doesn't have to carry it anymore. I'm the one carrying it now.

I start the car.

Back on Birch Street, he's still asleep in my bed with his arm flung out across the place where I was. His phone's on the nightstand where I put it, face down.

I don't wake him. I get in next to him, careful, and lie there, and watch the light come up on his face.

25

THEO

Iwake up in Dane's bed at ten, which is the latest I've slept since August.

He's there. Lying next to me on his side, awake, watching me. The window's open and the light's coming in yellow, and the air smells like wet snow and something green.

"Hi," I say. My voice is all gravel.

"Hi."