“He did not have five hundred dollars when the school trip to Chicago came up in April,” I said.
“That was different,” Dustin said, his tone turning sharp and defensive as he pulled his sleeve down to cover the plastic. “This was important to him.”
He did not elaborate, and I did not push him further before we reached the gravel lot of Oak Creek Hardware. He was out of the passenger door before the tires had fully stopped rolling, his lunch bag clutched in his left hand.
I watched him walk toward the loading dock, his shoulders slightly hunched under his denim jacket. The five hundred dollars bothered me, but the cash itself was only a symptom of a larger equation I could not yet solve.
At three in the afternoon, I pulled my car into the driveway of Stephen’s split-level suburban house. The driveway was wide, poured with stamped concrete that Stephen had put in himself two summers ago to match the stone facade.
