“Coach,” I try. “I gotta use the bathroom.”

“Me too,” he says. “Soon as we see Bruce, we can all go.”

“Coach, come on!” I’m about to start my superwhine when Bruce pops up in the crowd. Finally!

“Bruce!” Coach calls to him. Bruce sees Coach and looks surprised but not startled, not like he’s hiding a secret. When Bruce walks up to us, Coach lets go of me so he can get his mitts on Bruce.

“Now, look—” Coach is talking to Bruce but I don’t stick around for the lecture. Hoping I’m not too late, I slip behind the first two fat bodies mooing past me, then zip through a mass of people traipsing back to the stands carrying Family Pack snack treasures. The area is stuffed with slow-moving bodies. It’s easy for someone small as me to squeeze through the gaps and weave around bellies and butts unnoticed. I’ve had years of practice doing it.

Jumping off cliffs begins with a single superscary step into thin air. Only way to do it is to not think about it. That’s how I pep-talk myself while dashing toward the school entrance, rushing down the hallway, and arriving in front of the closed varsity locker-room door. Only way to enter that locker room is to open that door, take that first step no matter how terrifying, worry about falling only after you can’t turn back.

Problem is I’d way rather jump off another eighty-foot quarry cliff than walk through that door. Chances for bodily harm are much higher here tonight.

No mistaking it, I hear Kurt’s voice on the other side and then the recording. I hear Kurt’s voice but it’s locking up. Then that coach of theirs roars like a grizzly. I’m supposed to go in there?! Then Scott is shrieking, wild and raw, bringing back flashes of the cruelty he’s only too happy to inflict. My back presses firmly against the opposite wall.

I remain right where I stand, unable to move. The sounds coming out of the room—all heavy and brutish, could be from a cave full of bears about to square off. It’s no place for a pip-squeak like me. I mean, I’m just a little monkey. What the hell can I accomplish? My role in the plan starts to feel ridiculous. Kurt can handle himself in there. But me? Are you kidding? I know he said he’d protect me, but how’s he going to do that against thirty guys?

My feet move ... but they’re going in the wrong direction. I’m shuffling down the hall, away from the locker room. Kurt’s played the recording. That’s good enough. That’s truth enough. Let them know we have them recorded. That’s all that we really came to do. Expose them. He doesn’t need me. What good am I going to do at this point?

“Duh-duh-Danny!” It’s Kurt’s voice, and it doesn’t sound big or angry or tough. It sounds like a cry for help. It frightens me. How can I help him? If someone big as him is in trouble, I’m dead. My feet keep shuffling down the hall. The closer I get to the end of the hall, about to leave the building, get back out in the cold night air, put distance between me and them ... well, that should make me feel safer, make me feel better. But it doesn’t. My steps get heavier.

“Aaagh.” I jam both fists deep in my jacket pockets in frustration.

One step, a voice whispers to me. One step. Just take one step. Don’t think. Just step.

I turn around and take one step. Then another. Then another. My feet are light and my heart races the way it does when I know I’m about to leap off the cliff or let go of the high bar or hit the springboard and fly over the vault. My steps turn into a jog and then I’m in front of the locker-room door and I’m pulling it open and stepping inside, smelling the rank air. I’m in that moment of suspension before the speed and velocity of gravity overtake me, turn me into a missile. As I turn the corner, see the helmet and pads and body armor of the first players, I know the ground is racing up to greet me, promising a painful landing, no crash mats in sight. And then my mouth opens—not to scream but to fight. To protect Kurt. To be his and Ronnie’s voice.