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friend or not?”
    “Sure you are.”
    “A good friend should be willing to keep you company even when you’re doing things that you enjoy but maybe he doesn’t care so much about. I mean, I can’t expect to always do exactly what I like, and I can’t expect that you and I will always want to do the same things.”
    “We like the same things,” Colin said. “We have the same interests.” He was afraid Roy would suddenly realize how different they were and would walk away, never to be seen again.
    “You love horror films,” Roy said. “I don’t have any interest in that stuff.”
    “Well, aside from that one thing—”
    “We’ve got other differences. But the point is, if you’re my buddy, you’ll do things with me that I want to do but that you don’t like at all. So it works both ways.”
    “No, it doesn‘t,” Colin said, “because I happen to like doing everything you suggest.”
    “So far,” Roy said. “But there’ll come a time when you won’t want to do something that’s important to me, but you will do it because we’re friends.”
    “I can’t imagine what,” Colin said.
    “Just wait,” Roy said. “You’ll see. Sooner or later, good buddy, the time will come.”
    The scarlet light of the Pit’s neon sign was refracted in Roy’s eyes, giving them a strange and somewhat frightening aspect. Colin thought they resembled a movie vampire’s eyes: glassy, red, violent, two windows on a soul that had been corrupted by the repeated satisfaction of unnatural desires. (But then again, Colin thought the same thing every time he saw Mr. Arkin’s eyes, and Mr. Arkin was just the man who owned the comer grocery store; the closest thing Mr. Arkin had to an unnatural desire was a taste for liquor, and his red eyes were nothing more than the most obvious sign of a nearly continuous hangover.)
    “Just the same,” Colin said to Roy, “I hate the idea that I’m boring you with—”
    “I wasn’t bored! Will you relax? I don’t mind going to the Pit if that’s what you want. just remember what I said about those girls. They’ll hang on you a little bit. Now and then they’ll ‘accidentally’ rub their tight little asses against you or maybe ’accidentally’ brush their boobs against your arm. But you’ll never have any real fun with them. Their idea of a big, big night is to sneak out to the parking lot, hide in the shadows, and steal kisses.”
    That was also Colin’s idea of a big, big night. In fact, it was his idea of heaven on earth, but he didn’t tell Roy.
    They walked their bicycles across the lot to the alley.
    Before Roy could climb on his bike and pedal away, Colin got up the nerve to say: “Why me?”
    “Huh?”
    “Why do you want to be friends with me?”
    “Why shouldn’t I be friends with you?”
    “I mean with a nobody like me.”
    “Who said you’re a nobody?”
    “I did.”
    “What kind of a thing is that to say about yourself?”
    “Anyway, I’ve been wondering for a month.”
    “Wondering what? You aren’t making sense.”
    “I’ve been wondering why you want to be friends with someone like me.”
    “What do you mean? What makes you different? You got leprosy or something?”
    Colin wished he had never brought up the subject, but now that he had done so, he stumbled ahead with it. “Well, you know, someone who’s not normally very popular and, you know, not good at sports, you know, not really good at much of anything and ... well, you know.”
    “Stop saying, ‘you know,’ ” Roy said. “I hate that. One of the reasons I want to be friends with you is that you can talk. Most kids around here chatter away all day and never use more than twenty words. Two of which are ‘you know.’ But you actually have a decent vocabulary. It’s refreshing.”
    Colin blinked. “You want to be friends because of my vocabulary?”
    “I want to be friends because you’re as smart as I am. Most kids bore me.”
    “But you could pal around with any guy in