Like Charlie, David was an only child. His father was a textbook “busy dad.” David couldn’t picture him without his earpiece and laptop. That was fine with David. Mr. Sun worked hard to give his family nice stuff, like David’s new Caddy, which was so black and smooth light seemed to slip right off it. What got to David was the way his father looked at him sometimes, like he was a bug in the system.

“What do you do all day, anyway?” Mr. Sun would bark after the second pre-dinner cocktail.

“I connect with the future,” David would say, which was the Sun Enterprises slogan.

But he couldn’t talk that way to his mother, who had feelings. She’d cried when she found his cigarettes, and cried again when he said they belonged to Lupe, the housecleaner.

“Oh, Davie. Why do you want to break my heart?”

Mrs. Sun was into spiritualism. Her twin had died a few years before, and she’d begun doing séances and buying crystals. She listened for a message from her sister, but so far nothing.

“Mom, you’ve got to be joking with this stuff,” David would say.

“Oh, Davie. Why do you want to break my heart?”

It was the same conversation, over and over again.

One Wednesday morning, David was summoned to the counselor’s office. The old school shrink had quit Monday. Probably they’d hired another old biddy like Dr. Lightly, who had legs like chicken wattles.

When he knocked on the door, a man’s voice answered. The new doc was young, with tight tan skin and hair slicked back with oil.

“David,” he said, standing to shake. He had a voice like cocoa butter. “I’m Dr. Roger.”

“Is that a first name or last name?” David asked.

Dr. Roger chuckled.

Dr. Lightly had hung family pictures on the wall, but now Dr. Roger’s diplomas loomed like an array of television sets. David read the names — Harvard Medical, the Child Study Association of America, and something called the Center for Young Adult Relations (signed by the director and founder, Dr. Froy). The goofy posters of cats and turtles were gone, too, leaving pale patches on the wall.

“So what’s up, Doc?”

David sat in one of the squeaky leather chairs. Dr. Roger folded his hands. Dr. Lightly’s rainbow-haired trolls had been replaced by a blotter, a telephone, and a little red wooden bird, the kind that dipped its nose over and over again into a glass of water. Dr. Roger touched its beak, and it started to bob.

“So, David. How are you feeling today?”

“Not bad.”

“Good. I’ve asked your parents to join us.”

David’s chair squeaked. “Huh?”

“Hello, David,” said the speakerphone on Dr. Roger’s desk. “It’s your father.”

“Dad?”

“Hello? Is this working?” The voice on the phone was different now. Higher. David’s mother. “I don’t know if I’m doing this right. Hello?”

“I’m missing a lunch meeting for this, David,” Mr. Sun’s voice cut in. “It’s that important.”

The little lights flashed insistently. David glared at the doc. “What is this? An ambush?”

Dr. Roger put up both hands. “Whoa, there. Nobody’s ambushing anybody, David. Your parents are concerned, and we all think an open dialogue is best at this juncture.”

“Hello?” Mrs. Sun said. “David, baby, if you can hear me, this is your mother and we love you very much.”

“Jesus, Evelyn,” Mr. Sun said. “Fourteen years in that house and you still can’t work the phones?”

“George? Is that you? I can hear you, but I can’t hear David.”

“I’m here, Mom,” David said.

“Hello?”

Dr. Roger cleared his throat. “David, we’d like to talk to you about last Friday.”

“What happened last Friday?”

“Perhaps you’d like to tell us?”

David did a quick inventory of all the rules he’d broken. Smoking, speeding, staying out past curfew . . . He shrugged.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did you watch that girl kill herself?” Mr. Sun’s voice crackled on the small speaker. “Did you?”

David hadn’t thought about the suicide vid since Friday. He swallowed. “How did you know . . . ?”

“That’s not really important,” Dr. Roger said. “What’s important —”

“I read about it on G-news and checked your browser history,” Mr. Sun said.

“You went on my computer?”

“What did he say, George?” Mrs. Sun asked.

“Your computer?” Mr. Sun said. “Paid for it with your paper route, did you?”

“I think we’re getting off point,” Dr. Roger said, his smile tight. “David, what’s important isn’t that you watched it. It’s natural to be curious about death. It’s that you didn’t intervene.”

David started to defend himself but trailed off. Intervening had simply never occurred to him. He felt a vague shame, the way you would if you got to school and realized you’d forgotten to wear underwear. But that made you a spaz, not a bad person. And that seemed to be the implication, that he was bad.

“What was I supposed to do?”

“What about calling the police?” Dr. Roger offered. “Or her parents? You knew the girl, didn’t you?”

“Well, I know she went to Saint M’s . . .”

“So why didn’t you do anything?” Mr. Sun crackled.

It was an ambush.

“Hey, people do weird shit . . .” David started. Dr. Roger scowled. “Stuff,” he continued, “on the Internet. There’s probably another sad chick mixing herself a death cocktail right now. I didn’t make her depressed. I didn’t force the pills down her throat. Why are you all acting like it’s my fault?”

There was silence on the telephone. Dr. Roger folded his hands.

“David, how much time would you say you spend on the Web per day?”

“What does that matter?”

“Just estimate.”

“Like, maybe six hours?”

“Is that counting school?”

“My classes are online,” David said. “What? Am I in trouble for that now, too?”

David felt his skin grow hot. He loosed his tie.

“I keep telling you, David. You’re not in trouble.” Dr. Roger leaned forward, his features softening. “We ask because your parents and I feel you’re too removed from real life. We’re worried you didn’t think to help that girl because you’re disassociated.”

“Disassociated?”

“Disconnected.”

“I think we lost Evelyn. . . .” Mr. Sun said.

“I’m here, George, but I can only hear your half of the conversation.”

“OK, so I didn’t do anything,” David said. “But neither did anybody else! If there’s something wrong with me, there’s something wrong with everybody.”

“If everyone you knew jumped off a bridge, would you too?” Dr. Roger asked.

David had heard this before, and knew you were supposed to say no. But was that really true? If everyone jumped off a bridge, maybe there was a good reason. Maybe the bridge was on fire. If anything, the guy who didn’t jump was the crazy one.

He crossed his arms and scowled. Mr. Sun went on about “responsibility” and Dr. Roger kept repeating “our modern age.” Finally, Dr. Roger said, “David, if I were to recommend a treatment, would you be open to trying it out?”

“You mean like drugs?”

“No. More like a learning tool. It’s very new, revolutionary in fact. It’s designed to help young men like yourself learn to reconnect. It will help you forge strong human relationships.”

“I already do that,” David said. “I have mad friends.” It was true. His Friends List was the longest at Saint Seb’s.

“I’m talking about a more substantial, empathetic connection.”

“So what is it?”

“Show him the catalog,” Mr. Sun said.

Dr. Roger pulled a magazine from his desk. David flipped through the glossy pages. There was a photo of a guy and girl walking hand-in-hand into the sunset. There were graphs and charts and a schematic of intersecting lines.

And then it hit him.

“You’re shitting me,” David said.

“Does he love it?” Mrs. Sun asked. “Hello? Am I still on? Oh, damn it. I think I lost them.”

Because instant messaging was forbidden in class, the boys passed notes. Charlie’s desk was in the center, and a hub. Justin Hoek, who sat behind Derek Fini, was best friends with Sean Lafferty, who sat two seats ahead of Charlie. Justin never folded his notes, so Charlie knew what percentage of Justin’s virginity was lost from week to week. Orson Orlick, who was, according to Justin’s notes, “the biggest fag this side of Horizon Lake,” passed notes of his own to Paul Lampwick (Rebecca’s little brother), though these were folded and Charlie didn’t snoop. He’d given up trying to ignore the taps on his shoulder and now mutely passed communiqués without looking up.

When David Sun was pulled from class, the disruption inspired a barrage of notes, clogging the pipes, so that John Thomas’s note went to Mark Curley and Mike Butkus’s note wound up with Artie Stubb, who boldly flipped Mike the bird and said across the room, “Why don’t you mind your business, fat ass?” The class’s adult moderator looked up from his newspaper and gave Artie a week’s detention.

Orson tapped Charlie on the shoulder. He’d neglected to fold, and Charlie read without thinking: Hey, Lampwick. Do you think Nuvola banged your sister?

Flames licked Charlie’s collar. He tore the note to pieces. An idea seized him. He scribbled a proposition, signed Orson’s initials, and passed it to Paul. The pale freckled skin of Paul’s neck turned pink. He turned, glared at Orson, and hissed, “I told you that was a one-time thing. Now leave me alone about it, fairy.”

Tears stuck to Paul’s blond lashes, and Charlie’s snicker died in his throat. Both Paul and Orson went home early with stomach cramps.

That night, David spent three hours on Stadium, an interactive virtual games arena. He met Artie’s avatar near the Doom Room. Artie was swinging a battle-ax at a family of terrified dwarves when David floated by.

AxHole1992 would like to chat with you, David’s computer told him.

David didn’t want to tell Artie about the meeting. He wanted to talk about it, but couldn’t let the guys know that his parents thought he was disassociated. He didn’t want to end up like Nick Smalls.

Nick Smalls had been part of their crew freshman year. Clay knew him through football, and he was quiet and amiable. Then something happened over Christmas break — Nick was in the hospital for a few days. It came out that he’d been in a mental institution. He’d suffered an “episode” and now had to take medication. Happy pills. The pills made Nick different, sometimes mopey and sometimes loud and obnoxious, like he was drunk. His moods were totally unpredictable.

He’d been Clay’s friend first, and it was Clay who’d always invited Nick to hang out. When Nick stopped showing up on Fridays, Clay said, “Yeah, I don’t know. I guess he couldn’t make it.” But he said it so Artie and David knew Nick could make it but wasn’t invited. David was relieved. It was hard being around a crazy. Also, it was creepy the way Nick just went nuts. It was like he’d been struck by lightning — at random. Nick was a conductor for misfortune, and standing too close was dangerous. So nobody was friends with Nick Smalls anymore.

Artie was talking about a bot they’d run into last weekend. Bots were simulated avatars created by Stadium’s designers to make the site seem more popular. They were automated, without any real people controlling them.

David didn’t feel like watching. He set his avatar to auto-respond and watched some television.