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cavalier.
    “That’s so cool,” Alicia said. “Wish I could do that.”
    “Come with us,” Win said.
    Not that I actually believed that Alicia was any more interested in camping than she was in, well,
us
, but Win’s open invite freaked me out a little. Chrisandwinandalicia? Not a chance.
    “Yeah, right,” she said. “My parents would kill me. Plus, I haven’t ridden a bike since, like, middle school.” She uttered the last sentence without trying to hide her disgust.
    At that moment Dave Anders, who was sitting another row ahead, turned around in his metal folding chair. “Ten bucks says they don’t make the state line, Alicia.”
    I shot him the same dirty look I’d been sending his way since eighth grade. That’s when he’d developed to his freakish size and decided it was his birthright to lord it over the rest of us who were actually normal. He was a football player and going on a scholarship to some backwater division-three school in Florida. That’s not to say he wasn’t smart. He was actually one of only five of us who’d opted to take AP physics during senior year. Win and I were also in there. Me because I was already thinking that the more AP credits I could score, the less my parents would have to shell out for tuition if I decided to go to college. Win because his parents made him.
    But since there were only five of us, they couldn’t actually give us a teacher, so Mr. Booker had us meet in the supply closet attached to his classroom for the entire year. He’d come in once or twice a week for a few minutes when he could get away from the class of regular kids he had at the same time, but we were mostly on our own. Win was way more intent on trying to get Dave to punch him, so any studying we did was punctuated by Win making comments about Dave’s mom, or Dave’s beloved Dodge pickup, or phony theorems about the density of Dave’s skull after all those hits he’d taken on the football field. I admit it was pretty entertaining for a while, watching Win yank Dave’s chain, but after we bombed a couple of practice tests, it became clear that Win’s idea of fun wascosting us a lot more than we expected. Most days when we should have been working, I was listening to Dave and Win tear into each other, wondering whom I should be rooting for. Sometimes I wished Dave would just break Win’s jaw so we could do whatever problems we were supposed to be working on.
    In the end none of us even signed up for the exam.
    “We’re going the whole distance, Dave,” Win said coolly.
    Dave snorted. “You don’t have it in you. Don’t have that killer instinct … the drive,” he said, sounding eerily like the future physical-education teacher he was destined to become.
    “How would you know?” I asked.
    “’Cause guys like you just don’t,” he said.
    Guys like us? What was that supposed to mean?
    “And what are you doing this summer?” Win asked him.
    Dave was quiet a moment. “Working,” he said finally. Alicia was watching us all with interest.
    “Working?” Win’s voice sounded playful. “That sounds exciting—mature, even. And where will you be
working
?” he asked, stressing the last word, like the concept was completely alien to him. For a guy who’d never so much as taken out the trash, it sort of was.
    Dave shifted back in his seat, pretended to listen to the vice principal’s threats of Breathalyzers tomorrow night. “My grandparents’ farm. Setting tobacco, mostly … it’s good conditioning for football next fall,” he added, but the swagger had gone out of his voice.
    “Well,” Win said, “good luck with that, Davey. I hope you find it very fulfilling.
Guys like us
, however”—he hooked a thumb at me—“well, we’re just not cut out for that kind of summer.”
    But Dave retained a shred of that idiot obstinacy—the same quality that allowed him to think of football as the only real sport. “You’ll never make it.”
    “I’ll take that bet,” Alicia