“Was that your bike money?” I asked.

He nodded, fast.

“Yeah.” “That looked like a lot of money, Caleb.”

He gave me an explanation, ready and smooth, too ready.

“Sal pays me in small bills,” he said.

“Ones and fives, mostly, from the register.

So it just looks like more than it is.

It’s not really that much.” And then he gave me a small nervous smile, the smile of a boy who badly wants a conversation to be over, and added the two words I had heard so many times.