"I probably won't go to Harrisburg. The canal lock kid from Tamaqua is going to Harrisburg. He made the water work."
"If you go." Mick swallowed. "You put him up. Both of them. Next to each other. The guy who said I was the foreman and the guy who said I don't recall. Otherwise it's just the same thing again backwards. Otherwise it's just picking a different guy to blame." He wiped his fingers on his sweatshirt. "That's what I'd do. If it were me. Which it's not, because I'm getting a D in Agard's class."
"You're getting a D?"
"Don't." Mick almost smiled. "I'm in the 1-section. American History II, third period. We're on the Progressive Era. She keeps making us read about Ida Tarbell. I can't remember any of it. I sit there and the words go in one side and out the other." He shrugged. "I don't know why. I just don't care about guys in top hats."
"Ida Tarbell wasn't a guy in a top hat."
"See, that's the problem right there. You know that." He slid off the tailgate and stood up and stretched, his big shoulders cracking under the sweatshirt. "We gotta take the tables down at four. Coach'll kill me if I'm not there. Meet me here after?"
"Okay."
Mick started to walk away toward the building, and then he stopped and turned around and stood there in the cinders with his hands back in his pocket.