They walked out together. Jordan walked a half step behind, the way you walk behind someone when you don't want them to look at you. Past the paper flowers in the hallway — it was spring, so flowers now — and out the double doors into the parking lot, where it was cold and bright and the sky was the hard pale blue of a gas flame.
Caleb didn't know what to say. He'd never not known what to say to Jordan. Usually what he said was go away or move or that's mine, which hadn't required much thought.
They crossed Fremont. They passed the Dollar General. At the tracks, Jordan stopped.
"Don't tell Mom I threw up," he said. His voice was scraped and small.
"She's going to know. Mrs. Halvorsen definitely called her."
"I know. Just don't tell her it was a lot."
"Was it a lot?"
Jordan looked down the tracks, where they went silver into the distance and disappeared. "It was in the hallway," he said. "By the drinking fountain. Everybody was coming in from recess."
Caleb thought about the hallway by the drinking fountain at Eastbrook, which was right by the gym doors. He thought about everybody coming in from recess. He thought about being eleven. He could feel it in his stomach, the whole thing, like an elevator dropping.
"Okay," he said. "I won't tell her it was a lot."
They crossed the tracks. They walked another block without saying anything. A dog barked at them from behind a chain-link fence and then lost interest.
"What's lunch bunch," Caleb said.
Jordan didn't answer for so long that Caleb thought he wasn't going to. Then he said, "It's like a group. With Mr. Okafor. For kids who don't — who have trouble with lunch."