IT WAS A NICE DAY, with three perfect cotton-ball clouds in the sky and the sun in the corner, radiating squiggly beams and, if you looked closer (though you shouldn’t), wearing sunglasses. It shined upon two houses: one red and one blue, next to each other on a street that didn’t have any cars on it. 

In the red house, there was Timmy, who, having just tied his shoes all by himself for the very first time, was feeling like a pretty big deal. His smile stretched from ear to ear, and maybe even a little past his right ear if you looked closely at it. His mother, tall and patient and wearing a pearl necklace even though she’d never leave the house, affixed his primary-colored windmill hat to his head.

“Why do I have to wear this, mom?” Timmy asked, as he pulled on his backpack, which was the same exact color as both the house next door and his mother’s pants.

“Don’t ask questions, Timmy, it’s unbecoming,” she replied, giving the hat’s spinner a twirl. She gave him a dollar bill, green like the grass in their yard, and sent him on his way. “Have a great day at school!”

In the blue house, Billy (of the complicated life and striped t-shirt) was taping his shoes back to his feet. He’d never learned to tie them, and in a rage had ripped out the laces and used them to do some unspeakable things to the rats in the basement. 

He headed to the kitchen, which was only a table and a fridge, to look for his lunch. 

“MA!” he yelled to wherever, “where’s my lunch?” No response. He looked through the fridge. All he saw were eggs, and so he said a quick prayer that they had been hard-boiled and pocketed one. He wished there was a way to tell from the outside, but there wasn’t. He put on his purple backpack and gray beanie and headed for the door.

The school bus, yellow like the sun and Timmy’s shirt, picked them both up. Timmy and Billy used to be buddies, but once Billy grew taller and turned to a more muted color palette, their friendship had similarly faded. 

Billy missed having playdates at the red house, where life seemed to be simpler and the kitchen, though also just a table and a fridge, was always full of food. Apples, bananas, bread, eggs (hard boiled?), and water bottles sat on the table, which always had a single mom’s-shirt-pink flower in a vase at its center.

When the bus dropped them off at school, Timmy and Billy went their usual, separate ways to pass the time before they had to line up for class. Timmy joined his friends in their usual recess game, which had no clear rules but a fair bit of running. Billy stood near the brick wall where the other tall kids liked to stand, always with bad posture.

In this sense, the morning was very normal. But things started to go south when Timmy, doing his part of the running so seriously that he didn’t take note of where he was going, left the dollar-green grass of the field and careened into Billy on the asphalt patch near the brick wall.

They both fell to the ground. Timmy scraped his knee, its surface turning pink as the flower on his table. This, he thought, must be the most pain. He started to cry, tears leaving his eyes and arching up and away from his face until forming house-blue puddles on the ground.

Billy was upset, too, but not because of the fall itself. When he hit the ground, falling on his front side, he felt a wet patch appear over his right thigh.The egg, as it turned out, was not hard-boiled, and had shattered when he hit the ground. He wept too, but his tears were very small and nobody took notice. His friends, after all, had to focus on other pursuits, like pointing at Timmy as he tended to his knee, which was now bleeding house-red.

Billy opened his mouth to say something to his ex-friend, but before he could, Ms. Bernard blew the whistle and it was time to line up.

Timmy thought he had caught a break, but when they got in line, he found Billy right behind him, towering over him with that bad posture that he knew, from his mother, meant trouble. Billy looked angry. Timmy was scared. He tightened the straps on his backpack. What’s going to happen to me?

Billy was nervous. He really needed something to eat for lunch, and without his egg, he really didn’t have a backup plan. And then he saw it: a bright green corner of something sticking out of the outside pocket of Timmy’s backpack. Based on its shape and his limited knowledge of the world, it could be either spinach or a dollar, either of which was an absolute score. He reached out to take it, but stopped himself.

Stealing? Is that who I am?

In his early days of being tall, wearing stripes, and getting angry, Billy had dabbled in bullying. He took lunch money, gave noogies, and even stood as a lookout while his associates administered swirlies. But a life of crime had left him feeling empty, and he had sworn off of it. Turning back now, and worse, secretly taking from a boy who he considered his friend, would be unconscionable.

But by the time he was done pondering this, the green thing was already in his hand. He looked down at it. There was a telltale dollar sign in the center. He stuffed it into his non-eggy pocket. His altruism would have to wait for another day. 

By the time lunch rolled around, neither Timmy nor Billy was feeling great. Timmy was on edge because he knew Billy was coming for him. Billy was struggling to carry the weight of his own moral turpitude and couldn’t stand to look at Timmy for too long, lest he begin to crumble. Both knew they needed to do something.

“Hey Billy!” Timmy had decided to stand up for himself. “Or should I say, Bully.”

Billy was scared. Timmy realized what he had done and was eviscerating him with wordplay. He stood. 

“I know you’re mad at me for running into you, but I’m not scared of you!”

Timmy was wrong on both counts, but Billy let him continue, respecting the value of civil discourse.

“So you know what? You can have my lunch money. I’m giving it to you. You can’t take it from me anymore!” He took out another bright green dollar bill and slapped it down on the lunch table. All the other kids’ mouths turned to little circles.

“Timmy, I don’t want your lunch money,” Billy said, too quietly. Timmy gulped. This was what he was most afraid of. But then Billy continued: “not anymore.” 

Billy laid the dollar bill he had swiped on his end of the table. “I took this out of your backpack earlier. I only did it because my lunch broke. But that’s not what friends do to each other, and I want us to be friends. I’m sick of the fighting, and the fear, and the distrust. I’m breaking the cycle of negativity that has come to define our relationship. I hope you can forgive me.”

He turned and walked away from the table. Before he could get to the lunch monitor (he needed permission to go sulking), Timmy tapped on his shoulder. He turned to him.

“Wait, don’t go yet,” Timmy said, bravely, “we’re not done.”

He opened up his backpack. It was stuffed with dollar bills. Timmy’s mother really did spoil him. He rifled around in there for a while before pulling something out. An egg.

In front of the whole class, he cracked the egg on Billy’s forehead. 

“I know eggs are your favorite, and I wanted you to have this one. I was pretty sure my mom hard-boiled them, but-”

And the friends said in unison: “there’s only one way to be sure.”