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and opened all the windows. Then I crawled out onto the fire escape and sat outside my window, just watching the city go by underneath.
    I watched cabs bunch up and then go again, heard them honk their horns. I watched people bustle by down there, and heard the sirens of fire trucks or ambulances I never saw. Sometimes I could smell the cigarette smoke all the way up on the third floor. The exhaust smell was constant. You almost forgot you were breathing fumes after a while.
    The air never really moved out there. It felt thick and heavy, like there was barely enough to breathe.
    I heard Frank’s voice say, “Radical new haircut.”
    I looked over and saw he was on the fire escape outside his window. I don’t know how long he’d been there.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Another bright move. Just about as smart as the cat.”
    Speaking of the cat, I hadn’t seen him since I got home. I’d have to be careful he didn’t scoot out the open window.
    “Sorry you did it now?”
    “Yeah. Kind of. I had to eat shit for it at school.”
    “Yeah, school is like that.”
    “I got called a queer.”
    “Oh.”
    “I’m not.”
    “I wouldn’t care if you were.”
    “I’m not!”
    “Okeydokey.”
    Then we just sat quietly for a long time. It was starting to get dusky. It gets dusky fast in the city, inside that maze of tall buildings. I felt like I could just sit there and watch the light get dim.
    “And the worst part is,” I said, “I have no friends at school. Not one. I’ve been there one whole day, and I don’t know anybody. Days like this, it sucks to have no friends.”
    Which was a very weird thing for me to say, because I’m not a huge fan of people, and I usually prefer being alone over spending time with people, unless I know them really well or unless I’ve known them for a long time.
    I guess I’m one of those people who don’t make friends all that easily. My best friend in middle school, Rachel, once got me a shirt that said DOESN’T PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS . But I never wore it. Because it was too true to be funny.
    “This might be a stupid thing to say,” Frank said. “I know you’re talking about friends your own age. So I hardly qualify. But if you ever get so desperate for a friend that even an old guy starts looking good to you … I’m a good listener.”
    A good listener. What a concept. That idea was so foreign to me that I just sat a minute, trying to picture how that would go. We definitely never kept any good listeners around my house. My old one, I mean.
    “Thanks,” I said. “I may actually take you up on that. I mean, stranger things have happened.”
    “So, listen,” he said. “Is your kitchen unpacked yet? I mean, could you even find a fork if you needed one?”
    “I thought I’d go to the deli later.”
    “Molly just made a batch of her homemade chicken noodle soup. You’re welcome to some. You can eat with us, or I’ll just bring you over a bowl. Whatever you want.”
    Ah. So that was the other half of “we.” A woman named Molly. I’d been kind of thinking maybe Frank was gay. Something about the gentleness of him. Sort of the opposite of macho. Thatand the way that he was so quick to tell me he would be okay with me being gay. But back to the issue of this invitation at hand. I really wanted to say no. But I really love homemade chicken noodle soup. My grandmother used to make it before she died. I hadn’t had food like that for years. Mother made food like shrimp cocktail or chilled soups.
    “Does she even make the noodles from scratch?”
    “Yup. Even the noodles.”
    “I’ll be right over.”
    Molly made her homemade chicken soup with whole-wheat noodles. I wasn’t used to that. But it was good. It had lots of big chunks of chicken and fresh tomatoes and big pieces of vegetables, almost like a stew.
    “The thing that sucks the most,” I said, “is that Donald totally knows when my birthday is. And Mother knows he knows. So it’s this really stupid game.