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peculiarly irritated.
    I’m about to tell him to scram , but then he says, “You’re right, you know. If it was just an accident, he wouldn’t be in jail.”
    I look over at him. He’s grinning like a fool. Goddamn Ditty.
    “You’re supposed to be on my side,” I say, watching as the light above us changes from green to yellow to red.
    WALK.
    We step off the curb. “Dude, I am on your side. Always. It just seems that you’re…I don’t know, getting worse. Not better.”
    “It ’s called giving a shit. Kinda what happens when everything around me is a reminder of what happened.”
    He looks at me, his face sobering and that stupid mallard’s head he whittled out of balsa bouncing against his belt. “But you should stop giving a shit.”
    We veer to the left, and I pull open Agudelo’s door. “Give me one good reason why, and I’ll consider it.” Ditty thinks about this for a minute, blocking the door with his gigantically stuffed backpack turned askew. Shelby Moore, with her phone attached to her ear, sighs loudly from a few feet away. Ditty holds up his finger, signaling her to wait. She rolls her eyes.
    He looks back to me, still pondering the Question of the Day. “Because your best friend wants you to,” he says finally.
    “Not good enough.” I release the door and find my seat. Ditty sits sideways on my desk, scowls down at me.
    “Have you tried counseling?”
    Yes, but over my nonexistent mother will I tell him about that. I grit my teeth and say, “I’m fine .”
    “It might help, yeah?”
    I snort. “Talking to some Dr. Phil type isn’t going to fix this, Dit. I can’t change what my dad did.”
    He chuckles and pulls his s tatistics book from his backpack. “I was thinking a hot blonde with tits like grapefruits that insists you lie on her couch while she talks in her soft, sexy voice to you.”
    Ha. Pathetic, virgin Ryan Ditty would be so disappointed at what they really look like— a hideous brunette with a front butt who hassles you in her raspy, I’ve-smoked-too-many-cigarettes voice saying you won’t get over what happened to your father unless you talk about it.
    “Can we just drop it?” I say to him. Surprisingly, he nods and lowers into his chair then reaches across the aisle and snatches the paper from my hands. It isn’t until the thin , white sheet—ink still fresh from the printer—leaves my fingers do I silently curse myself that I didn’t stash it before I left the library.
    “Evan Bencich?” Ditty holds up the newspaper article, scowling. “Not showing up to lunch is acceptable when you’re having a sesh with Jess…but not for this.” The paper rattles. The picture from Evan Bencich’s obituary crinkles. “Why would you need this?”
    I ignore him, focus on how Mr. Agudelo’s thick lenses magnify his eyes. The comical enormity of them delays this thought: You know Jess has physical therapy Monday afternoons for a few seconds. This one, too: And we don’t have lunch seshes anymore, prick.
    “Not sure it’s healthy to keep dwelling on this,” he says. More students shuffle in. Agudelo turns on the Smart Board and dims the lights. “It’s like you’re obsessed.”
    “Thanks for the advice.” I squint at the corner of my folder where Jess once scribbled her name inside of a little heart. We weren’t even together when she did it; we’d broken up weeks before because according to her she was getting in the way of my healing.
    Not sure how one heals from a dad in jail, but whatever.
    “Why?” Ditty moves to the seat in front of me. A groan rumbles in my chest as I reclaim my printout and shove it into my folder.
    “Would you drop it already?”
    “Tell me why you printed that out and I will.” He raises his eyebrow, daring me to. Damn, he knows me too well. Too bad I’m not in the mood to play.
    “There’s a concert tonight in Woodbridge. Care to join me?”
     
    ~*~
    T HE U NDERGROUND the sign says, flickering back and forth between blue and