Empire Falls

could, but she doesn’t know how. After a while, Zack won’t be content to belittle her and make her jealous. He will begin to treat her like shit, and there won’t be any way out, because by then she’ll begin to believe the things he’s saying. And even that isn’t the worst. Tick doesn’t even like to think about the worst, though last spring before they broke up Zack promised nothing like that would ever happen again.
    “Candace is going,” Zack adds, as if—who knows—this might be just the enticement needed.
    “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe.”
    “Maybe,” he repeats after taking a deep breath, as if the concept of “maybe” needed to be mixed liberally with oxygen before being swallowed. He picks up the plastic lunch container and pries up the corner with his thumb, and the air is suddenly rancid again. “I’ve changed a lot since last spring,” he says.
    “So Candace tells me,” she says, in case he’s wondering if his message was conveyed. The smell makes her want to gag, though Zack doesn’t seem to notice.
    “It just makes me really angry that you won’t give me another chance,” he blurts out. They’ve had this conversation before, of course. Zack believes fervently, devoutly, in second chances. Also third and fourth chances. Tick suspects this issues from his devotion to sports, where repeated losses and even the most grotesque behavior never prevent you from playing again. You can get suspended for a game or two, but there’s no such thing as a lifetime ban; so to his way of thinking, he’s served his suspension and now it’s her fault for trying to impose a greater penalty than the league has the authority to enforce. When he says it makes him angry, he isn’t kidding. She can tell. Nor does his anger strike the boy as evidence against him. Who wouldn’t be angry, is what he’d like to know. This is some kind of unfair, after all. A guy made you this angry, you’d knock him on his ass, and if he got up, you’d go at it. Later, you’d shake hands and it’d be over. With girls you never get anywhere because nothing ever really gets settled. They say maybe , which might as well be fuck you .
    Frustrated, he now wishes he hadn’t sent John Voss away, Tick can tell. “I got an idea,” he says. “Let’s invite your new boyfriend to come along. Hey, Dickhead!”
    No response from the boy.
    “Is he deaf,” Zack says, almost pensively, “or does he think there are two dickheads in here?”
    There are two, and Tick comes very close to saying so. Instead she says, “Don’t, Zack. Leave him alone.”
    “Hey, Dickhead,” Zack calls again. “Don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking to. Turn around.”
    The boy rotates in his chair without looking at them. As always, he studies the floor.
    “That’s better,” Zack says.
    “Zack,” Tick says, wishing that the sound of her voice didn’t contain so much pleading, “don’t be mean.”
    “What’s so mean about asking him if he wants to hang out after the football game? How’s that mean?”
    “That’s not what you’re doing.”
    “It isn’t?” he says. “You’re telling me I don’t know what I’m doing? You know what I’m doing better than me?”
    “Just leave him alone.”
    “Listen up, Dickhead,” Zack says. “No hard feelings, okay? What’s your name, anyway?”
    The boy glances up briefly, then down again.
    “His name,” Tick says softly, “is John Voss.”
    “Hey, John Voss! You want to hang with us after the game?”
    Does the boy make a sound? Tick can’t tell. Apparently Zack Minty can’t either, because he looks at her, then back at the boy. “Hey, John Voss. Was that a yes, or what?”
    This time they both hear him say, “Okay.”
    “You hear that?” Zack says to Tick. “It’s okay with John Voss.”
    “If you leave him alone,” Tick says, “I’ll go, okay?”
    Zack is about to call something else to the boy, but when he hears this he stops and looks at Tick with the kind of smile that almost dispels her misgivings. A smile full of … what? Something she needs. She’d like to think it’s love, and maybe love is in there somewhere, though she suspects it’s not the major ingredient. What, then? Gratitude? Relief that on third and long, things were going to work out after all?
    “Hey, Dickhead—I mean John,” he shouts. “You hear that? Tick’s going too! What a great time we’ll all have, right, John?”
    Nothing.
    “You aren’t mad at me