“I don’t want people saying he’s the reason I got interested in science,” Nathan told me.

“He doesn’t even know what I built.”

“Then tell them what you actually built, and who helped you,” I said.

He brought me the exhibition abstract the next day.

The acknowledgments mentioned his science teacher, his brother, a university lab assistant who had mentored him online, and me.

No one else.

Zachary, meanwhile, struggled with something quieter.

One evening he confessed that part of him wanted Brian to attend a match just so he could be the one to say no.