But I’m not practicing anything, I thought. Or, if I had been: What was it?

“Also,” he said, “and this gets back to the article, if you feel like there are differences between you and other people, how much you want to play them up is really your decision. Obviously, not in every case, but in most cases. Even Devin will say kike this or Jew you down or whatever. And I don’t say anything, because what would getting pissed off achieve? He’s just talking.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “You’re Jewish?”

“On my dad’s side. Which is technically the half that doesn’t count, but with a name like Sugarman-”

“Sugarman’s a Jewish name?”

“It’s the English version of Zuckerman.”

Cross was Jewish? Never once had this occurred to me. But he was so popular, he was senior prefect. (Did other people know? Had that always been part of the reason Dede had liked him?)

“I’m just saying that-” His tone softened. “That I bet things would be easier for you if you either realized you’re not that weird or decided that being weird isn’t bad.”

The gym was quiet. I was so flattered and so embarrassed that I couldn’t make eye contact with him.

I heard him swallow, and then-all this time, he had been holding the basketball against his right hip-he leaned down and set the ball against the floor. When he was upright again, he said, “Lee-” and when I dared to glance at him, he was looking at me in a way that was both predatory and tender (I do not think it’s an exaggeration to say that my life since then has been spent in pursuit of that look, and that I have yet to find it a second time in just that balance; perhaps it doesn’t, after high school, exist in that balance) and it was because whatever he was about to do was exactly what I wanted while also scaring the hell out of me that I folded my arms and said, “I’ll have to take this all under advisement.” I knew immediately that I’d sounded sarcastic, and I did nothing to correct the impression. I guess that I had meant to sound that way, because this was the most terrifying thing in the world: that he knew me-he did know me, after all-and that knowing each other, we were going to kiss.

(And this is how I know that it’s all just words, words, words-that fundamentally, they make no difference. I wouldn’t have been your boyfriend, he was saying, and, it ended between us because of this, and I was saying, no, this, and a good ways through that conversation, he’d still have kissed me. Our relationship, for as long as things were good, and in that moment when they could have been good again, was about the irrelevance of words. You feel what you feel, you act as you act; who in the history of the world has ever been convinced by a well-reasoned argument?)

And after I’d folded my arms, after I’d used that terrible tone, his stance-inclining slightly forward-reversed. He exhaled through his nose, then crossed his own arms. “Okay,” he said. “You do that.”

It still wasn’t too late. (Of course it wasn’t too late! But it was so hard to believe that just because he’d have kissed me thirty seconds before, he still wanted to now. Look how easily I’d dissuaded him, or maybe it was that I’d misinterpreted his original intent.) No, it wasn’t too late, but, as with the fire drill, it felt too late. And so, deciding that the moment had passed-just like that, with me helpless in its tide-I let the sarcasm come surging in.

“But enough about me,” I said. “How about Melodie-fish or cheese?”

“Jesus Christ, Lee.”

“Aren’t we friends? I don’t mean Melodie and me, I mean you and me. And don’t friends share secrets and closeness? But you’ve never told me any secrets at all. I feel kind of shortchanged.”

“Don’t be like this.”

“Like what?” I laughed, briefly and bitterly. “Don’t be myself? I thought we just established how funny and businesslike I am.”

“Act however you want, but don’t bring Melodie into it.”

It injured me that the weight of what he’d just said rested on her rather than on me.

“So you admit you’re-well, if you’re not officially going out with her, I’m not sure what to call it. Fucking her? Or I guess, since it’s Melodie, I should say butt-fucking her.”

“This is ridiculous.” He scooped up the basketball and walked toward the hoop. Over his shoulder, he said, “I doubt you’ve ever talked to her, but she’s actually a very nice person.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I haven’t talked to her.” The fact that he’d walked away was by far the worst thing that had happened in the conversation. I raised my voice. “I can’t comment on her niceness, but I do think she’s attractive. She might even be attractive enough for you to associate with in public.”

He had begun dribbling in front of the basket, his back to me; at this, he stopped, turned to the side-I could see that with his upper teeth, he was biting his lower lip-threw the ball so it slammed against the door I’d entered, and glared at me. “You want to know?” he shouted. “You really want to know? Fish! That’s what you taste like!”

The door he’d hit the ball against was still reverberating; otherwise, the gym was absolutely quiet.

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

“You asked me!”

“Yeah, I guess I did,” I said, and I knew that I was stunned partly because I could hear it in my own voice.

“Lee,” he said. “I didn’t mean to-”

I shook my head, cutting him off. I was about to cry again, but I wasn’t crying yet, and I wanted to use the time I had left. In a very tight voice, I said, “When I was in junior high, I used to think I would turn out to be one of the guys, and boys would say, ‘Oh, you’re so great,’ but they wouldn’t date me. I thought I wasn’t pretty enough. But then I got to Ault and first of all, I’m not really friends with any guys. And then, with you this year, I thought, if Cross will keep hooking up with me, maybe I’m okay after all. But time passed and I never became your girlfriend. And so then I thought, not only was I wrong, but my life turned out the opposite of how I expected. Meaning, it wasn’t my appearance-that’s not the bad thing about me. It’s my personality. But how do I know which part? I have no idea. I’ve tried to think about if it’s one thing in isolation or everything together, or what can I do to fix it, or how can I convince you. Then I thought, maybe it is my looks, maybe I was right before. And I never figured it out. Obviously, I didn’t. But I’ve spent a lot of this year trying. And the reason I’m telling you all this is that I want you to know no one in my life has ever made me feel worse about myself than you.”

Was this a pathetic thing to tell him? Was it even entirely true? It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s what I said. Then I said, “So I guess I’ll go now,” and I walked out of the gym.

“Lee!” he yelled.

It’s hard to say if I should have turned back. The fact is, I didn’t, and he didn’t chase me, and he called my name only once.

In the phone booth in Elwyn’s, I lifted the receiver from the hook. On one of my thighs I’d set Angie Varizi’s business card, which I glanced at as I dialed, and on the other thigh I’d set the roll of quarters I would use to pay for the call. On the second ring, a familiar voice said, “This is Angie Varizi at The New York Times.”

“This is Lee Fiora,” I said.

She hesitated.

“From Ault,” I added.

“Of course. Good to hear from you, Lee. Forgive me if I seem distracted, but I’ve got a million and one things going on today.”

I opened my mouth before it occurred to me that I was unsure what to say.

“Do you want some extra copies of the article?” she asked.

“No. That’s okay.”

“What can I do for you?”

“The article-” I stopped. “Why didn’t you tell me it would be like that? I thought I was just telling you stuff for context.”

“Lee, unless you specifically identify your comments as off-the-record, everything you say when you’re being interviewed is fair game.” Then she said, “No, you can leave it here.” To me, she said, “So are people giving you a hard time?”