Afterward, everyone is like, “You should fight him! You should fight him!”

I think even he’s expecting it, because he’s hanging with Wayne and his one other friend on the team. We’re all sitting on, hanging off, or standing around the bleachers, waiting for our marching orders for the game.

I’m standing with my usual group, off to one side. My ribs hurt, but I can tell they’re not broken. I can tell because I can breathe without stabbing myself in the sides.

“Just go over there and punch him out!” Jackson is saying. “We got your back.”

I look over at him and he means it. Even Chester is making fists with both hands, his glove on the ground in front of him. And the thing is, it’s tempting. It really is. I’m hurting right now, and I don’t mean my ribs. I mean I’m embarrassed and beat down, and pounding on Malfoy doesn’t sound so bad right now. But I’m not going to do it.

“Nah,” I say, but they’re waiting for more.

“Sometimes you squash the bug,” I add. It’s a saying we have and almost, like, a philosophy. The coaches are always telling us to “squash the bug” when we bat. It means to grind your weight down into the ground on that back foot as you swing, like there’s a bug under it. So sometimes you squash the bug, and sometimes the bug squashes you. That’s the rest of it. The bug can be the ball, the pitcher, the weather, your swing, whatever. It’s a baseball explanation that can excuse a lot. Today, the bug won.

“OK,” Chester says, still processing it. “After practice then?”

“Yeah!” says Tim. “After practice!”

“Yeah, yeah!” says Jackson.

And all of a sudden, it’s like I agreed to it. The coaches are still walking slowly across the field from where they’re huddled up, making their final decisions. In a few seconds, before they can get here, my friends will start telling other kids there’s going to be a fight. Then there will be no going back.

That’s how fights happen: just sheer momentum. It just snowballs all around you until it’s like you’ve got no choice. But it’s not what I want, and it’s not going to make one bit of difference.

I look over at Andy, and I guess he was waiting for that, for confirmation one way or the other.

“No, no, no,” he says. “He’s not gonna fight after practice. Give him a break, he just got drilled in the ribs.”

Everyone turns and looks at my ribs.

“Don’t do it, man,” Andy says, as if he’s talking me out of it.

“All right,” I say, fake-punching my fist into my glove.

Jackson makes the final decision. “Yeah,” he says, disappointed. “Now is not the time.”

And then the coaches arrive, turning the corner of the chain-link fence that separates the bleachers from the field. The first thing Coach Wainwright does is call out my name.

“Yeah,” I say, but what I’m thinking is: What now?

The second thing he does is call Malfoy’s.

“Yes, Coach,” he says.

Coach makes a V with his first two fingers and points to both of us, on either side of the bleachers. It’s like that gesture you make before you point at your own two eyes and then back out, meaning: I’m watching you.

“I don’t know what it is with you two, but you better get it sorted,” he says.

“What it is with me?” I want to say. I just got drilled in the ribs for no reason. And last time he knocked me down. That’s what it is with me. But I don’t say any of that. I just look at Coach when he looks at me.

He looks over at Malfoy, and that look lasts a little longer. Then he looks back at Coach Meacham, who doesn’t say anything. Even he can’t claim I was crowding the plate this time.

There’s no official lineup, like last time, no calling out one through nine. Coach just makes a few replacements. I’m the first.

“How’re the ribs, Mogens?” he starts.

“Fine,” I say.

He squints at me and then looks at my side, as if injuries came with labels.

“How about the coconut?”

“Fine,” I say.

I can feel a tear starting to form in the corner of my right eye. Not because of my ribs or my “coconut,” but because I know what’s coming next. I want to reach up and wipe it away, but everyone is looking at me and that would just call more attention to it. I just have to hope Coach gets this over with before the darn thing rolls down my cheek.

He sees it and does what he has to.

“Yeah, well, it’s been a pretty rough stretch for you,” he says quickly, rattling it off. “Better catch a breather. Kass…”

“Yeah, Coach,” Geoff says from the middle of the bleachers.

“You got the start in left.”

Everyone is looking at him now, and I reach up and wipe my glove across my face.

On the way home, I ask Dad whether we can go to McDonald’s.

A lot of times he would just say no to that. Or not a lot of times because, truth is, I almost never ask anymore. Not like when I was younger and asked all the time. On the few times I’ve asked since majors, it’s been about fifty-fifty.

Tonight, he takes one look over at me and says, “Sure, sport.”

He doesn’t ask why I want to go or why I’m being such a mopey lump or any of that. Open to mopin’ … no kidding. He just makes the next right.

Once we get there, I order the fattiest fat food I can find. You know they have those “healthy” options, and I usually go for at least one of those. Like I’ll get the apple wedges instead of fries and not even use the dipping sauce, or just a little, maybe.

Not tonight: I get the Big Mac meal and supersize it. I look up at my dad, because I sort of expect him to veto it, but he doesn’t.

“What the heck,” he says when it’s his turn to order. “Number one, supersize.”

He never does that. And I smile, just a little, as they start to fill up our trays. I carry my tray to a table by the window because we’re eating here. “Destroying the evidence,” Dad calls it, meaning Mom doesn’t have to know.

We start to eat. We have the same thing, and I’m half his size, but I finish first. I pig out, like I’ve seen other kids do here for years, kids who aren’t athletes. I look at my reflection in the window, two fries hanging out of my half-open mouth. What do I care?