Empire Falls

now, are you? About that quarter? That was a shitty thing, John, I admit. We’re still buddies, though, right?”
    Again, nothing.
    “Just nod your head if we’re still buddies, okay, John Voss?”
    He nods.
    Zack doesn’t even see this because he’s looking back at Tick. He takes her hand and she doesn’t resist. “That’s great, John,” he calls, still looking at her. “Thanks for the second chance, John. I mean it.”
    “Let’s just go, okay?” Tick whispers, not wanting to look over at the other boy. Getting to her feet also gives her an excuse to draw back her hand. As if to second the motion, the bell rings, ending sixth period.
    “Okay, then, John,” Zack calls, picking up the plastic container. “See you Saturday.”
    Together, he and Tick start toward the cafeteria’s double doors. Hoping to prevent him from stopping at John’s table, she reaches out and tugs at his sleeve, but he easily pulls free.
    “I just got one question, okay?” Zack says, tossing the lunch container onto the table in front of the other boy. “Just what the fuck have you been eating?” And suddenly he’s laughing so hard he’s unsteady on his feet. “Because I have to tell you, it smells like something somebody already ate before you got to it, buddy,” he says. “I’d watch out for that in the future, John Voss. No pre-chewed food, okay? That’s my advice.”
    Outside in the corridor, which is already full of jostling students, Zack slumps against the wall. He’s laughing so hard that tears are rolling down his cheeks. Several kids witness this and begin laughing too, though they have no idea why. Which leaves Tick, solemn-faced, in the minority. She’s seen Zack in these moods before, though, and she knows the real danger has passed. He’ll stay manic now for a while, which means she can ask her question without fear.
    “Why do you always have to be such an asshole?” she says.
    Which Zack considers the funniest thing yet. He doubles over, laughing so hard he can barely answer. “I have no idea,” he wheezes, putting his arm around her so they can merge into the stream of bodies. She wishes it weren’t so, but it feels good to have his arm around her, good to be so close to so many kids all headed in the same direction. She knows better than to glance over her shoulder at the small rectangular windows of the cafeteria doors, but she does so anyway and regrets it immediately, wishing she hadn’t glimpsed John Voss taking a hungry bite out of her leftover sandwich.

CHAPTER 11
    J ANINE R OBY SAT at the end of the bar at Callahan’s drinking seltzer water with a squeeze of lime and practicing her new signature— Janine Louise Comeau —on a stack of cocktail napkins, while her mother changed a beer keg. Unless the damn courthouse in Fairhaven fell down, which it might, just to thwart her, Janine and the Silver Fox would be marrying soon, and she wanted her signature to be second nature when the time came, not like at the end of the calendar year when you kept writing the wrong year on your checks halfway through January. Or, if you were like her husband, Miles—correction: soon-to-be-ex-husband, Miles—halfway through March. Which made her smile. It was just as well he wasn’t the one who had to adopt a new name and signature, because she doubted he was up to it. If there was a worse creature of habit than her husband—correction: her soon-to-be-ex-husband—Janine sure hadn’t met him. A human rut was what he was, bumping along in his groove from home to the restaurant, from the restaurant to the damn church, from the church back to the restaurant, and from the restaurant back home (back when it was his home). One night, weeks after they’d separated and Miles had moved into the apartment above the restaurant, he’d turned up in her bedroom. It had given her a start, waking up like that and seeing him there at the foot of the bed, looming over her and Walt, and her first thought had been that Miles had come to kill them. Then she saw him pull his shirt over his head and toss it on top of the hamper, and she knew he’d closed the restaurant and made his exhausted way home by rote. He must’ve come to when Janine turned on the end-table lamp, because the light sent him scurrying after his discarded shirt like a burglar. Where another man might have taken advantage of his mistake by acting on the impulse to slit their throats, Janine could tell from the expression on his face that if he’d