“Please send Danny Meehan to the principal’s office.”

The students around me titter in unison.

Any student unlucky enough to get called in front of Oregrove’s school secretary will meet a stout old woman with an Aqua Net hair dome and puffy arms swollen up like boiled bratwurst. Mrs. Doyle harrumphs at you in greeting because she knows if you’re standing before her, chances are you’ve been up to no good. Fisher brags that he’s called down so often Mrs. Doyle now lets him address her by her first name.

Today Mrs. Doyle comes around her desk and welcomes me like a long-lost relative from the old country. She lays cocktail-sausage fingers on my forearm and pulls me into her pork-roast bosom.

“Oh, Danny, such terrible news. Such terrible, terrible news,” Mrs. Doyle repeats, hugging me tightly. She stuffs me into her chest, blocking out all sound and light. She releases me and then leans down to look me in the eye as she cups my neck. Tan makeup flakes her downy jowls and fills the crinkles around her eyes and mouth like flour, like she just baked a flesh-cake. “Principal Donovan and Coach Nelson wanted to meet privately with the team and see how you’re all handling things since the announcement last week.”

Mrs. Doyle leads me into Principal Donovan’s office and then into a side room I’ve never had the honor of entering. The room contains a large circular conference table. My teammates are seated around it like morose hobbits. Coach Nelson and Principal Donovan talk in low voices at the far corner while sipping out of “I’d Rather Be Fishing” and “Is It Friday Yet?” coffee mugs. Fisher glances up at me and for once he isn’t smiling. Gradley and Menderson doodle in their notebooks while Paul tattoos the side of his sneakers with a ballpoint pen. Steve picks out thread at the knees of his jeans. Pete Delray chews off a hangnail while training his eyes on the door as if waiting patiently to be excused. Only Bruce sits stone still, head dipping forward from the neck, awaiting a hangman’s noose. The rest of the guys all seem to be pretty focused on their laps.

“You okay, kiddo?” Mrs. Doyle asks Fisher, laying a hand on his shoulder as she stands behind him.

“Yeah, Maude, thanks.” Fisher reaches up and squeezes her hand as if she were his grandma. Maybe detention isn’t so bad, I think.

After Mrs. Doyle exits, Principal Donovan begins his spiel talking about “tragic event” this and “sudden loss of life” that and how sad we all must be feeling. His speech sounds practiced and fake and I tune him out. Instead, I concentrate on Bruce and his glazed, vacant eyes sunk into bruised sockets. A squadron of pimples sets up camp in the hollows of his cheeks while an oily nose shines with the cold fluorescence of the room. Greasy bed-head mats thick, black hair against his left ear while the right side swells up into a frozen tsunami. Basically, Bruce looks like shit. He looks like he’s been awake for the last four days, hasn’t showered or slept, and is surviving on Coke, chocolate bars, and corn chips.

Like me.

Principal Donovan punctuates his speech with loud slurps of coffee. He finishes with something about “persevering in the face of adversity” and “continuing to be strong.” I glance at Fisher, half expecting and half hoping he’ll mimic Principal Donovan under his breath, but Fisher just sits there, bobbing his head in agreement with the principal’s words.

“Guys, this is a hard, hard thing to grasp,” Coach Nelson takes up where Principal Donovan leaves off. “I encourage any and all of you to say something at the service, to let others know how special Ronnie was and how much we’ll all miss him. In fact, I think that might be something we’d like to do now, in this room, among friends and teammates.”

I look around the table at my teammates, knowing none of them—none of us—knew much about Ronnie except what he brought into the gym. He was a freshman and pretty shy and into reading quietly by himself. He’d worked hard, a lot harder than Pete, a lot harder than Fisher, and never complained about doing strength sets. He could’ve made a good gymnast in a couple years but who really cares about any of that stuff? He’s dead. I mean, he’s dead! That won’t change tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. He’s dead. Forever. No one knows him because his chance to show us is gone. And if it was me dead in his place, people would have the same problem trying to say anything special about me. What have I shown the world? Maybe Ronnie was a good friend to someone out there. His future, his promise, his potential had been taken away.

“Last year,” Pete Delray, our team’s other freshman, begins quietly.

“Go on,” Coach encourages.

Pete starts describing how he and Ronnie dressed as Aquaman and Superman for Halloween a few years earlier but some big kids jumped them and duct-taped them to a tree. Left them there all night. What kind of story is that? It’s basically a version of what happened to him in the storage room. Did he have “victim” stamped on his forehead? Why did everyone pick on him? He suffered enough. Without realizing it, I’ve got my hands over my ears and I’m humming to block out the rest of Pete’s memory. Gradley punches me in the arm to shut me up. When I unblock my ears, Pete’s stopped talking, but I still want to smack him in the mouth for even bringing up the Halloween duct taping.

“He was a gentle soul,” Coach says, and I can tell he isn’t very good at this type of thing because he pats Pete on the head like he’s dribbling a basketball. “Sometimes others take advantage of that. But I don’t think we should dwell on that part of him.”

He was weak, I think. ALL people will ALWAYS take advantage of that. Not just sometimes. Scott, Tom, and Mike smelled his weakness. Took advantage. Never be weak or gentle. You have to be strong to ward them off. Big and strong. Like Kurt!

“I killed him.” Bruce speaks so quietly it’s barely above a whisper. “It’s my fault.”

“No, son,” Principal Donovan corrects him as he lifts his coffee mug to his lips. “No one in this room killed that boy. That’s preposterous.” Slurrrrp.

“Feelings of guilt are normal,” Coach adds. “I keep asking myself why I didn’t spot signs in Ronnie sooner, why I didn’t see what he must’ve been going through.”

Because you didn’t stay to lock up the gym! I fume. You left us there, unprotected! Anger overtakes me as the meeting continues. I feel no sadness, not even fear, just a white-hot rage at everyone around me.

“I’ve been racking my brain over the whole thing,” Coach continues. “But I . . . and you . . . and all of us must understand that Ronnie’s death was not our fault. It’s not your fault, Bruce.”

Wrong! I think. Bruce started the whole thing the day he stood up for that stupid cross-country runner. Why’d he have to protect that dork? He wasn’t on our team. He wasn’t one of us. Let his stupid, skinny, cross-country teammates protect him.

“Funeral is set for tomorrow at noon,” Coach tells us. “You’ve all got excused absences to attend.”

By the time the meeting finishes, it’s the beginning of third period. I don’t feel much like going to algebra, so I skip. Schoolwork isn’t really a high priority at the moment. I keep thinking about how easily Ronnie and I could’ve switched places that day and now he’s dead. It could be me dead and not him. Just dumb luck separates us.

Those three still roam the hallways, laughing and shoving others around like nothing’s happened. They know they’re invincible. They can do anything they want. How am I supposed to go back into that gym? How am I supposed to ever go near that storage room again? Those three came in and they destroyed the one good place in school.

I skip practice that Monday. I find out later, so did Bruce.