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“What?” Something Bren hadn’t expected slipped out with the question. He thought it might have been anger, but there was too much hurt there to call it that. “You want me to go back?”

His sharp laughter was strained, but he couldn’t keep it in.

“What?” Arlo said, in a tone that was eerily similar. His cheeks flushed as he shook his head. “No, I just—Bren, if you don’t get, like, perfect grades, you’re going to have to go home in December and try to catch up a semester in, like, two weeks.”

A part of Bren felt it was his job to reach out as Arlo’s eyes filled with tears in the middle of his monologue, but the rushing in his ears made it impossible to care.

“And even if you get to stay, you have to fly back, sit the SAT’s on crack, and ace those so you can barely scrape a pass, then fly back and do finals here. That’s, like, thousands of dollars, and just so much work.”

There wasn’t any part of Bren that wanted to reach out when Arlo had stopped talking, which was good because his hands were balled into fists right now.

“So, lemme get this straight,” Bren said, trying to keep the growl he felt out of his voice. “I’m too dumb to stay here, too dumb to pass the Certs, and too poor to afford a couple of plane tickets? Is that it?”

“What? Bren. No, I didn’t mean—”

“Well, maybe I am fuckin’ stupid!” Bren said, ripping his seatbelt off so he could tug at the collar of his T-shirt. “’Cause I thought my boyfriend would be happy that I turned my life upside down to be with him.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that!” Arlo said, looking like Bren had slapped him.

“Fuckin’ fine!”

Bren threw the door open and flung himself onto the side of the road. He was already halfway towards a path that wound down into the valley when Arlo called out.

“Bren, come back. You don’t even know where you’re going.”

A scoff forced its way out of Bren’s throat as he flipped Arlo off without looking back, able to bury the pang that doing so caused him beneath the roiling ball of lead in his chest.

“Yeah, I do. The fuck away from you!”

11

“You’re off your game, Age.”

A.J. sighed as he collected the halves of what had moments before been a single piece of metal. It hadn’t stretched even a little before it snapped right along the weld.

“Guess I’m just tired,” he said, stepping out of the way so Yu could use the machine.

“So you haven’t been glaring at everything all morning?”

“I’m glaring at you now, anyway,” he replied, flipping down the cover of his welding goggles so he could work in peace.

Yu shrugged and loaded his weld into the tester. The machine whirred to life and the metal stretched out like a piece of taffy before breaking in two an inch from the join.

“That’s what it looks like when your welds don’t suck.” He pulled the pieces out and set them on the sheet of paper labeled Yu-Jin. “Nat said you were bitchy in history too. What’s up?”

“I was not,” A.J. said, not willing to accept that Nat had seen through his smokescreen of smiling and nodding.

They headed towards the bin at the back of the shop and the sounds of shifting metal added to the general din of the class.

“Something happen with Bren?”

Yu wouldn’t have been able to hear his sigh even if the room wasn’t full of the sounds of clanking metal. Of course he was asking that. He’d have to be stupid not to connect the dots.

A.J.’s gloved hand curled into a clumsy fist at the memory of Bren flipping him off as he stormed into the valley. He was not going to cry in welding.

“We had a fight.”

Was that what they’d had? And if so, why was his brain set on telling him that it had been something closer to a breakup. And why was a part of him OK with that?