“No,” Wyatt said.
He stood up.
“No. No way.”
He dropped the paper on the edge of the fountain and walked away from both of us. Fast. Across the courtyard. Out the side gate. Onto the sidewalk.
Into Philadelphia. At ten o’clock at night. Fourteen years old.
“Wyatt!”
I ran after him. So did Graham. By the time we got to the gate, he was half a block away, walking fast under the streetlights.
Graham was faster. He caught up with him at the corner just as Wyatt stepped off the curb against the light. A delivery van came around the corner fast, horn blaring. Graham grabbed the back of his hoodie and yanked him back onto the sidewalk so hard they both stumbled. The van missed them by two feet.
Wyatt shook him off.
He didn’t grab him again after that. He just walked beside him.
I stopped twenty feet back. I let them walk.
