"He handled Dr. Whitcombe," he said. "I've seen grown men with doctorates fold under Dr. Whitcombe."
"He looked for me," Yolanda said. "When she asked him. He looked for me."
"I saw." Mr. Pryor turned the paper cup in his hands. "May I tell you something? Since we're standing here."
"Please."
"I have a daughter. Adaeze. She's forty-four. She lives in Portland and teaches high school chemistry, which I'm told is my fault." He smiled, briefly. "When she was Emmett's age, I was running a polymers lab for a company that no longer exists, and I believed, sincerely, that the most loving thing I could do was keep the lab running so she'd never have to worry about money. I missed her science fair. I missed two of them. I missed a great deal. She's forgiven me, mostly, which is a kindness I didn't earn all at once. We talk on the first Sunday of every month. It took about fifteen years to get there. It went one Sunday at a time." He looked at the doors of the auditorium. "Lucinda Ames is part of why I knock on doors. Adaeze is the other part. I'm telling you because you're going to want it to be over, Mrs. Carter. It won't be. It'll be better than over. It'll be ordinary."
"My mother said boring."
"Your mother," said Mr. Pryor, "sounds like a very wise woman."
Emmett placed third in the physical sciences division. A girl from Hartsfield with a bacteria that glowed in the presence of lead took first, which he agreed was fair, and a boy from up north with a seismograph made of a coffee can took second, which he said was "debatable." The bronze medal came on a blue ribbon. He walked up to get it and walked back and sat down beside his mother and looked at it in his lap for a long time.
Then he reached into his hoodie pocket and took out Dante's gold one, and held them side by side.
"They're not the same size," he observed.
"No," said Yolanda.
"His is bigger."
"His is a different thing."
He nodded slowly, as if she had said something scientific. "Yeah," he said. "It's a different thing."
*
They listened to the game on the radio for the last forty minutes of the drive, on the high school station, the one with the student announcer whose voice cracked on big plays. Fulton Heights was down eight at the half. The balls, apparently, were warm. Emmett leaned forward between the seats with his bronze medal around his neck and his brother's gold one clutched in his fist and said *come on, come on* at the dashboard like it could hear him.