They walked out into the corridor, and the door clicked shut behind them. For several seconds, neither of them said anything at all.
"They are starting us," Rafa said at last, in a small, dazed voice. "In the derby."
"Yes."
"Because everyone else is broken."
"Yes."
"I do not care," Rafa said, and then his face crumpled slightly. "I do care. But I do not care." He ran a hand through his hair. "I do not know what I am saying."
"You are saying that you are afraid and happy at the same time." Matteo opened his paperback and then closed it again without reading a word. "That is the correct response."
"You sound like a doctor."
"I am only precise."
A slow grin spread across Rafa's face, wobbly at first, and then wide. "You are impossible."
"I have been told."
They stood for a moment in the empty corridor, two boys who had been handed something very large and very heavy, and who had not yet decided how to hold it.
