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Because I’ll never see Marcus’s bedroom, here’s what the inside of his car reveals about his personality.

Marcus’s car: Luxe leather backseat littered with empty packs of Marlboro reds, wadded-up balls of notebook paper, and no fewer than four crushed sixty-four-ounce 7-Eleven Super Big Gulp cups. Caramel droplets trapped in straws chewed and bent beyond any successful suction. On the front seat, amid more crumpled paper, but still in plain sight, a teensy, quarter-inch bit of wrapper printed with the letters ROJA, instantly recognizable as the heart of the word TROJAN, as in condom.

Conclusion: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He cleared the clutter. If he noticed the condom wrapper, he didn’t let on.

I didn’t have trouble maneuvering myself into the car. There was ample leg room. I placed my backpack on the seat between us and slammed the door, making a yellow palm-tree deodorizer swing from the rearview. The car smelled like coconuts. The beach. Suntan oil and brown skin.

Marcus wasn’t saying anything as he drove. I felt like one of us needed to break the silence. So I said the first thing that came to mind.

"Uh, nice car," I said.

"I love this car."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it belonged to one of the coolest fogues I know," he said. "I work at an old fogies’ home."

I almost said, I know, until I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to know that.

"Really?"

"Yeah, he’s dead now, though," he said.

"Oh. That’s too bad."

"It is," he said. "But he left me his car."

"Oh."

"And all the eight-tracks that go with it."

"Oh?"

"That’s why I love this car," he said. "It’s festooned with all the trappings of the elderly."

I laughed out loud. That was one of the funniest things I had ever heard in my life. It’s festooned with all the trappings of the elderly. Then it suddenly occurred to me that Marcus and I were actually having a conversation. A real, two-sided conversation. I felt the heat creep up from the middle of my chest and spread red across my clavicle.

Roja. "Red" in Spanish.

Since school began, I’ve sat in front of Marcus Flutie in six out of eight classes. When he isn’t jiggling the back of my chair, he often stretches his long legs out into the aisle, so I can see his feet without having to turn my head around. Until this afternoon, I could say far less about his face than I could about his feet: no socks; faded blue Vans; the big toe wearing a hole in the canvas of the foot closest to me; the left one, rubber sole coming undone, opening and closing like a puppet mouth every time he taps his heel to the floor, which is quite often.

I knew that sitting beside him in the Caddie could be a one-time-only opportunity, so I looked him full in the face for the first time ever. This is what I saw, in the order that I saw it: adobe-red buzz cut, no more dreads; feline eyes; sunburnt skin peeling off his nose; two thread-thin lines bookending his mouth.

He lightly poked my shoulder with his index finger and I involuntarily twitched like a spasmodic. We were already at my house.

"Twelve, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

He stopped the car and turned off the ignition.

"I figured that I’ve been a good boy long enough to talk to you without arousing suspicion," he said, flicking a cigarette lighter open and shut. Open and shut.

"Uh-huh." I chewed my lip.

"We could be talking about homework." Open and shut.

"Uh-huh." Chew.

"Comparing notes." Open.

"Uh-huh." Chew. Chew.

"Making a study date." Shut.

"Uh-huh." Chew. Chew. Chew.

Marcus threw the lighter in the backseat and spun in his seat to face me. He paused long enough for my skin to get all electric and tingly in anticipation, like every hair on my body was standing on end, but wasn’t.

"I never read The Seagull’s Voice because I think it’s a big, steaming turd," he said. "An opinion that has only deepened since my literary contribution was rejected."

I knew all about this. Havisham had discovered Marcus’s lack of participation on the paper and assigned him a story about the improved nutrition guidelines for the cafeteria. He turned in