“Mmmm . . .”

“I asked him if it could wait, but—Now, just a second, young man,”

“Kurt?” asks a new voice. This one is feathery soft, ready to blow away if I bark at it.

“He’s sick,” Patti snaps, nicking my earlobes. “Can’t you see that?”

“Shhhhhh, it’s okay. It’s fuh-fuh-fine,” I say, wanting only silence and more rest.

“Hummph,” Patti answers. My sleep-crusted eyelashes pull apart. Sunlight swarms past the curtains and sets on my eyeballs with stingers extended. A boy slips by Patti to stand before me.

“Kurt?” the boy tries again. He’s the one right out of that nightmare a few days ago. My throat tightens as I barely tamp down a groan, then wrap both ends of the pillow around my head. The sight of him—so small, so frail—starts the skin under my left eye twitching. A fever chill runs up my neck and escapes through a yawn.

“Wuh-wuh-what?” I ask, hoping he’ll just go away. Patti hovers by the dresser. “Patti, wuh-wuh-would you get me suh-suh-some wuh-wuh-water?”

“Sure thing, hon.” She leaves the room and her footsteps fade down the staircase. I force myself to sit up, ignoring the high-pitched ringing in my sore ear. The whole room shifts, and then rights itself, like when I was drunk at the football party.

Ronnie stands there without saying anything. He pulls a knit cap off his head and starts wringing it in his hands. He takes a step toward the bed, hovering too close. It makes me want to curl up toward the wall. But I don’t. Not yet.

“Thank you,” he says. “For what you did.”

I can’t have this talk now, not ever. Can’t allow it to come back up from the dead. “Got in a fuh-fuh-fight. Had nothing tuh-tuh-tuh do with you.”

Ronnie bows his head, already whipped. He’s got to toughen up if he’s going to survive. Brush it off. That’s how me and Lamar handled it.

“Duh-duh-don’t thank me. Juh-juh-just move on.”

“That’s what Bruce says.” He sighs. “Danny, too. Says he didn’t see anything, that I should just forget it. But they didn’t see it like you. Hearing them talk, I’m starting to think maybe I’m a little crazy, you know? Like, maybe, I imagined some of that stuff. But why would I?” Ronnie’s still wringing his cap, strangling it between his fists.

The front of my head, the part facing Ronnie, starts to boil, like he’s radioactive and causing it. “They duh-duhdidn’t see anything ’cause nuh-nuh-nothing happened,” I repeat dumbly, hoping he’ll leave me alone. Ronnie stops strangling his cap and starts picking at the skin around his thumb. His lips are so chapped they’re peeling. His tongue darts out, quick as a lizard’s, to wet them.

“The thing is,” he says as he brings a finger up to his mouth to chew on the already bitten-down nail, “I’m not sure anyone would even believe me if I told.” Not only is my head boiling but my stomach starts bubbling. Ronnie is spreading his germs all over my bedroom, sickening me, making me fight off his flu, too. “Maybe if you, like, maybe if you told—”

“Shut up,” I hiss. “Just shuh-shuh-shut up. Stop tuh-tuh-talking. You’re fuh-fuh-fine, now. I got in a fuh-fuh-fight. But yuh-yuh-you’re okay. Go home.”

“Kurt?” Patti calls, her footsteps climbing the staircase. She can’t return fast enough, far as I’m concerned. She needs to chase him out of my room, stop him from reminding me what happened. The walls keep shifting and my stomach sours. A pasty acid collects at the back of my throat. He’s making me sicker.

Patti comes back into the room offering Ronnie nothing but a stingy squint while handing me a glass of water. I down half of it in one gulp, wishing I could gargle it instead and spit out the foul taste Ronnie’s brought with him. “How you feeling?” she asks me.

“Bad,” I answer, telling the truth. I feel worse than bad. Ronnie, standing there, small and broken, makes me think of nothing but rottenness and how the world is sometimes so horrible that just staying under your bedcovers seems like the only right thing to do.

“Come on, you,” Patti tells Ronnie, never bothering to learn his name. He turns to follow Patti out of my room like she’s just slapped shackles around his wrists and legs, slowly winching him toward his destiny. We don’t speak another word to each other and that’s fine by me. I close my eyes and let the world slip away.

“Hmmm.”

“Coach Brigs called,” Patti says quietly. She lowers onto my cot, sinking the mattress in that spot so I tilt toward her hips. “Turns out there wasn’t no practice on Saturday. I don’t much appreciate being lied to, Kurtis. You understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And what did I tell you about calling me ‘ma’am’? Don’t call me that. You call me Patti. I swear I am about to call an ambulance for you or take your butt down to the hospital myself if you can’t get out of this bed by tomorrow.’Course they’ll accuse me of abusing you. I just know it. I don’t want that, Kurtis. I really wish you’d get better quick so I don’t have to take you to the hospital. You know child services will come knocking soon as I do that. And that’ll be it. I won’t get another chance to take someone in. I’ll starve.”

“I’m good. I am. Just nuh-nuh-need suh-suh-sleep. A little more suh-sleep.”

“Thank God, Kurt,” Patti says. “I been praying for you.”

“I ain’t guh-guh-going in today,” I say. I walk into the kitchen and open the fridge to get some OJ, but the fridge is empty. “I ain’t guh-guh-going in this wuh-wuh-week. I ain’t puh-puh-playing on Friday. Call Cuh-cuh-Coach for me. Tell him. I got the fuh-fuh-flu. Real bad. I ain’t fuh-fuh-fakin’.”

“I know, hon. I know. I’m just glad to see you up and about,” she says, smiling at me through the ribbons of smoke tailing up from her cigarette. Her bloodshot eyes rim with water. “And I’m not the only one. Some girl, Tina, called and asked about you. I said you were sick and best not to come by and catch it herself. When you’re better you can tell me all about this girl you been hidin’,” she says.

I don’t set foot into the school until the following Monday and so, except for the visit from Ronnie, I get away without thinking about the fight for a whole week. But I pay for it. I pay for it good, on Monday. That’s when the world, with all its claws extended, pounces.