"I'll sign it," she said. "I'll sign it right now."
"Good," said Mr. Pryor, as if that settled everything, which they both knew it didn't. He uncapped a pen and held it out to her, and she signed, and her signature looked strange to her, too fast, the signature of a woman signing a delivery slip.
"I have to go," Emmett said. "I already missed the bus. Priya's mom can take me if I go now, she leaves at seven-thirty."
"I'll drive you," Yolanda said.
"You have work."
"I'll drive you, Emmett."
"Priya's mom is already going." He hitched the backpack higher. He walked past the island, past his brother, past Mr. Pryor, who said, "Congratulations, son. I'll see you at the lab Tuesday," and Emmett said, "Thank you, Mr. Pryor," in a voice so polite it made Yolanda want to sit down. He didn't take the score sheet. He didn't look back. The front door closed behind him, not a slam, just a click, and she would have preferred a slam.
In the kitchen, Dante had taken the medal off. He was holding it in one fist, the ribbon wrapped twice around his knuckles.
"I didn't know," he said. "I didn't know it was a whole thing. He didn't—" He stopped. "The ball dies in January? What does that mean?"
Mr. Pryor tucked the signed form into his folder. "That," he said, "is a very good question, and I think you should ask him." He picked up his folder. "Mrs. Carter, would you walk me out?"
On the porch, the cold came at them sideways. The maroon sedan was still blinking at the curb. Mr. Pryor buttoned his jacket and stood with her on the top step, looking out at the street, not at her, which she appreciated.
"I'm not here to scold you," he said. "I want to say that first, because I suspect you're braced for it. I've been to forty-some houses doing this. I do every finalist in the district, have done for eleven years. The district doesn't require it. I just do it."
"Why?" she said.
He considered that.
"There was a girl named Lucinda Ames," he said. "This was a long time ago now. She built a soil-salinity model out of a fish tank and a hair dryer that I still think about. She qualified for the state finals. She didn't come. I called the school, the school called home, nobody called back. A year later I found out her family had never heard of the finals. Not once. The letters went in her backpack and stayed there. She'd decided, I think, that it wasn't the kind of thing her people did, and nobody was in a position to tell her otherwise." He looked down at his hands. "She'd be about forty now. I don't know what she does. I hope something good. But I made up my mind, after Lucinda, that every child who qualifies for this gets a grown man in a suit on their porch at least once, saying the words out loud in front of the family. Sometimes it's all a child needs. Sometimes the family needs it more."
Yolanda wrapped her arms around herself. "And sometimes you walk into the middle of something."
"Sometimes," he agreed. "Most times, honestly. Mornings are hard in every house." He went down one step and turned. "He's a remarkable boy, Mrs. Carter. He's also twelve. Those are both true. In my experience it's the second one that gets forgotten."