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"I know, Owen."

A door opens down the hall. Nadia comes out, talking into one phone and holding the other one up, and she sees us and waves. "Rémy! Photos with the kids! Come on, they're waiting!"

"Coming," I call.

I look at Hale. He looks at me.

"Come over tonight," he says, low. "My place. We'll figure it out."

It's the first time he's asked me for anything.

"Okay," I say, and go back into the gym to take pictures under a banner that says PLAY PROUD.

Sorel catches me in the parking lot afterward, while I'm digging for my keys. The sun's already going down. It's that November dark that comes at four-thirty like somebody pulled a blind.

"Good speech," he says.

"Thanks."

"You made Adeyemi cry. He says it's allergies. It's not allergies."

I find my keys. I unlock the car. Sorel leans on the roof of it with his arms folded, the way everybody leans on everything.

"What was that in the hallway?" he asks.

"What hallway?"

"You and Hale. By the cat poster. You were standing really close to the cat poster."

"He liked the speech. He was telling me."

"He left in the middle of it."

"He needed air."

Sorel looks at me over the roof of the car for a long moment. He's my best friend on this team. He's the first guy who spoke French to me without making it a test. He brought me pierogi when I was sad.

"Okay," he says finally.

"Okay."

"You'd tell me," he says. "If there was something."

"There's nothing," I say. "He liked the speech."

It's the first lie. It's so easy it scares me. I get in the car and drive away and watch Sorel in the rearview mirror, still standing there in the parking lot with his hands in his pockets, getting smaller.

His apartment is the saddest place I've ever been.

It's on the twenty-second floor, and it's gray. Gray floors, gray couch, gray counters, gray blinds on a window that looks at another building. There's nothing on the walls. There's one plate in the dish rack. There's a treadmill in the second bedroom with a sweatshirt hanging off the handle, and next to it a big cardboard box that says OWEN — MISC on the side in a woman's handwriting, still taped shut.

"Wow," I say.

"It came furnished."

"It came depressed." I turn in a slow circle in the living room. "How long have you been living here?"

"Since June."