Since I’m supposedly sick, I can’t let Dad wake up and discover me living like a frat boy back from college. So I grab the phone on the second ring and listen for his continuing snore. It’s late. Too late for telemarketers. Fish or Bruce would text my cell. The phone call has to be bad.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Danny?”

I can barely make out the voice on the other end. It’s wispy as my grandma’s the year she died. I remember her skin was thin and crinkly as cellophane.

“Hello?” I repeat.

“Is that you, Danny?”

“Yeah . . . who is this?”

“. . . Ronnie . . .”

Exactly the person I don’t want to talk to right now. Or ever.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about calling so late . . .”

He waits for me to say it’s no problem, but I don’t. Instead, I inch up the volume on the “Party Rock” radio station with the remote while reading the Top Ten list on TV.

“Sorry I wasn’t at practice today,” Ronnie says. “I . . . I stayed home.” That he’s apologizing to me for not going to practice after what happened makes my heart crumple, makes me want to weep into a pillow.

“Me too,” I say. “I’m sick.”

“Yeah . . . me too.”

“I ain’t going tomorrow, either,” I tell him.

“Danny? Were you . . . did you see those guys ... do ... that stuff to me?”

I stare at the TV.

“No,” I lie softly into the mouthpiece. “I was in the locker room getting water.”

“Oh . . . okay. I thought . . . maybe ... I saw . . . that you were in there ... but that wouldn’t make sense, either. Why would you be in the storage room watching?”

“I wasn’t there. I didn’t see nothing till Kurt beat them up good.” I think my lie will help make Ronnie feel better, let him think one less person saw him attacked. One less person for him to feel embarrassed in front of at school.

“I called Bruce,” Ronnie says. “He thought you saw what happened, but I guess he—”

“He’s wrong,” I cut Ronnie off, which is so, so easy to do. “I wasn’t in there. I didn’t see nothing.”

“Okay, it’s just that ... It’s just ... I think ... It’s not clear anymore. I feel ... I can’t wash it off. Bruce keeps telling me to act like nothing happened.”

“Sounds like good advice to me,” I say, tucking the phone under my ear and going into the kitchen. I pull out a big carving blade from the knife block on the counter-top and repeatedly stab the point into the wooden cutting board. The motion soothes me. I like how protective the weight of the razor-sharp steel feels in my hand. I hear sniffling through the earpiece as I keep stabbing the cutting board, lifting the knife higher and higher before plunging it, trying to get the blade clear through the wood. I wonder if this is what it feels like to stab someone and hit bone.

“I can’t get ... it’s like when you’re . . .” Ronnie flounders. “. . . like a poison ... need to boil it away . . .”

“What?” I ask, not that I want to understand him.

“. . . washing doesn’t help,” Ronnie says. “It’s inside!”

“It’s over,” I say.

“I’m not strong like you. I’ve—”

“Look, Ronnie, take Bruce’s advice. Nothing happened.” The image of Ronnie on his knees, gagging, pollutes my head until I think I can smell him right now in the kitchen. I drive the knife blade deep enough into the cutting board that it stands straight up by itself, handle quivering a little.

“But—”

“Stop it. Just stop it. Get over it.”

That’s what I tell him. Get over it. I despise Ronnie at that moment. I despise how small and weak he is, and I despise that it was only luck and timing that kept the two of us from switching places in those awful moments.

“Ronnie, I gotta go,” I say. “See you at practice.” I hope he gives up and quits the team. Even better, quits school. I don’t think I can stand the sight of miserable, pathetic Ronnie ever again.

“Yeah . . . okay ... all right.”

“’Night, Ronnie.”

“Good night, Da—”

I hang up on him before he finishes. I put the knife and cutting board away and go back to the living room. I adjust the settings on the video game so I can’t die and I have all the weapons and all the ammo and I start blasting everyone and everything: bad guys, good guys, innocent passersby, street signs, bar windows, cars, sky, planes, pavement. The Late Show returns from commercial and I wait for the audience to laugh on cue and trick me into thinking the world is still normal.