“Going to see Rudy,” I say. My voice is like I’m apologizing.

“Mm-hmm,” says Mom, not really looking at me.

It feels like there should be something more, but there’s not. Mom may not want me to hang out with my friends, to go back to all of that, but what’s the alternative, locking myself in the basement? I push through the front door and let the warm, bright air smack me in the face. Halfway across the front lawn, I pull out my phone and reread Rudy’s last text. He’s downtown already, probably out behind the CVS. I type with one hand: On my way \m/

I have to walk. One of the great indignities of being away all summer is that my learner’s permit hasn’t had a chance to emerge from its cocoon as a license. I’m in the bike lane, and a green minivan blows by me, doing about sixty and kicking up a plume of dust and dirt. A little chunk of something, a pebble maybe, whizzes past my head. I hear another car coming and take a few steps up onto the Franciscos’ lawn until it passes.

The CVS is the center of things downtown, the only recognizable brand we’ve got now that the Subway closed. I stop and look around once I reach it. I’m half looking for Rudy and half checking to see if there’s anything new in town. The verdict: Rudy’s not there, and there’s never anything new around here.

This town excels at the old, though. As if to prove the point, Mr. Jesperson bangs through the front door of the CVS with a copy of the Stanton Standard under one arm and a CVS bag in one hand. The bag looks ready to burst, and I figure it must contain all the pills he has to take to continue to function at his age.

“Jimmer!” he says, spotting me as we head toward each other on the walkway.

“Hi, Mr. J.,” I say. I’ve always called him that, because when I first met him, I was too young to manage Jesperson.

“Where you been?” he says. “Haven’t seen you around hardly at all.”

I can feel my eyes narrow, and for a second I think maybe he’s screwing with me, like he knows exactly where I’ve been and he’s just making me say it. But then I get a grip. Mr. J. isn’t giving me a hard time. He hasn’t given me trouble even once in his very long life. But he’s looking at me, waiting for an answer.

“Aw, you know,” I say. “I am a man of mystery.”

That’s either good enough for him or he realizes that’s all he’s going to get. He looks down and begins rummaging through the overstuffed bag in his hand. Oh no, I think. Please, for the love of all that is not impossibly lame, no. But, yes, he’s searching through his bag for candy. He’s going to give me candy, like I’m still five years old and can’t say his name. And he’s going to do it right here on this walkway in the absolute center of town. I look around to see if anyone is coming, and of course they are. The sidewalks are getting busier. There’s a stream of dressed-up families emptying out of the church at the end of the block.

It takes him forever. Even when he finds the little plastic bag of candy, he still has to open it. I watch the veins shift and the liver spots stretch as he maneuvers the bag and pinches its top. People are passing us on either side, nodding at Jesperson, who they all know and trust. I’m sure they wonder why he’s wasting his time on me.

“That’s OK,” I say. “Really.”

“No, no,” he says. “You always loved these things.”

They’re butterscotch hard candies. They’re one of those old people’s candies, like gumdrops, but it’s true, I loved them — when I was five.

“Can I …” I start, but it doesn’t seem like I should say “help,” for some reason. “Do you want me to …”

Finally, the bag pops open — and he gives me one piece! All that, and I get one piece. I mean, I don’t like them as much as I used to, but all that for one butterscotch?

“Thanks,” I say, more for the effort than the candy. His face is red from wrestling with the bag, and I imagine him sitting alone later, dentures out and slowly chain-sucking the rest of the butterscotches to death.

Normally I’d walk through the CVS now. That’s where I was headed, but I feel like I’ve interacted with the general population enough at this point, so I turn and walk around the side of the building. Sure enough, there’s Rudy Binsen, my best friend since forever. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says HANG OUT WITH YOUR WANG OUT and sitting on the old, beat-up bench, on the side farthest from the garbage can.

“What’re you eating?” he says when he sees me.

“Butterscotch,” I say.

So that’s it, the first words we’ve said to each other all summer. I sit down on the bench, not too close to him but not too far away either, because there are four or five bees buzzing around the top of the garbage can on this side.

“Geez, man,” says Rudy. “It’s been forever.”

“Seriously,” I say. I look over at him. “Nice shirt. Solid advice.”

Shirts like that are kind of his thing, but I haven’t seen this one before.

“Wearing my Sunday best,” he says. “So how was ‘upstate’?”

He actually makes the air quotes with his fingers. I ignore them.

“OK,” I say. “Boring.”

“Yeah, right. Because you were ‘at your aunt’s house’ or whatever?”

He doesn’t make the air quotes this time, but I can hear them.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to sound casual.

“Dude, that’s ridiculous. They don’t ‘send you to the country’ when you already live in the middle of nowhere.”

I look up at the sky. It took, what, thirty seconds for us to get into this again? “Yeah,” I say, “but this was, like, the turbosticks: no Internet — my aunt doesn’t even have a cell phone.”

“Yeah, more like everyone up there is in a cell,” he says, then laughs at his own joke.

“Mom thought it would be good for me,” I say. “Get me away from all the bad influences around here.”

He makes a fake wounded expression, like I’ve hurt his feelings.

“You seen Janie?” he asks after a while.

Perfect, I think, the only topic more uncomfortable than the last one.

“Nah,” I say. I want to stop there, but I can’t help myself. “Is she, you know? Is there someone …”

“You mean someone else?” he says.

“Dude, man, I don’t even know,” I say. “I don’t know if ‘someone else’ really enters into it at this point. I just mean, is she, like, seeing anyone?”

Rudy looks over at me for a second. I know him, so I know that he’s thinking about making a joke, maybe something about “entering into it.” But he thinks better of it, because he knows me, too. “I don’t think so,” he says, shrugging. “And I haven’t seen anything online.”

“Yeah, OK,” I say. I’m sort of wondering if that means he was checking out her profile, but I guess he might mean in his news feed. We all have “mutual friends,” even if we don’t necessarily like them. “I just thought you might’ve heard something.”

“Nope,” says Rudy. “You should just call her or something.”

Which is obviously true, but I haven’t yet. The last time we talked, it didn’t go so well. Which is like driving a car into a train and calling it a wrong turn. “Yeah,” I say. “Hey, speaking of all that” — I wave my hand around to show that I’m talking about more than one person now — “I haven’t updated my status or anything. So don’t tell anyone I’m back yet, OK? I need to get my bearings or whatever.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” says Rudy. “Because it’s too late.”

“Who’d you tell?” I say.

“Mars,” he says, holding up his phone. “Right before you got here.”

“Yeah, Mars.” That’s Dominic DiMartino. “So Aaron will know, too.”

“Yeah, probably. What’s the big deal? Those guys are cool. You know, usually.”

“Yeah, yeah, course,” I say.

“I’ve been hanging with them a lot,” he says. “Not like you’ve been around.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s cool.”

“Well, I don’t know why you’re being a freak, but I think we’re supposed to head over to Brantley tomorrow. You in?”

“Not sure I can handle the excitement,” I say.

“Seriously, man …”

“Yeah … Course … What time?”

“Don’t know … I’ll text you.”

“Cool, cool,” I say.

We just talk for a while after that, and he catches me up on some of the nothing that happened around here. We roam around downtown a little, because there’s only a little of it to roam around. Then I tell him I have to go.

“Sure, man,” he says.

“It’s good to see you, man.”

“Yeah, you, too.”

And it is good to see him. It’s good to talk to him, and I sort of feel like he let me off the hook easy and we’re pretty much back to normal. So that’s all good, but I feel uneasy and on edge as I head back home. Brantley tomorrow, with all of them … It’s like I haven’t been gone at all.

I guess that’s the problem.