25

BEFORE, NO ONE WAS TALKING to me.

Now, no one was talking around me, either.

And I don’t just mean Mom or Dad or Eric or Kirsten. I mean everyone.

Now that my dad had “taken a leave of absence” --that was how Mr. Morris said he’d describe it to the media--I had to ride the bus to school. When I got on, the bus was totally silent. Maybe everyone was just groggy—it was 7:30 in the morning—but that’s not what it felt like. This was a different kind of quiet. A thicker quiet. The kind of quiet that happens when someone’s been talking loudly about someone else then shuts up just as that person enters the room.

After fourth period, I saw Jake Nichols. I thought he was waiting for me, but I was wrong. I watched his hair bob down the hall, past the library, toward the cafeteria.

Eric sat at our usual spot in the lunchroom. He had his baseball glove on and threw a ball into it over and over again. A girl sitting at a table five feet from him flinched every time the baseball smacked into the glove. I didn’t blame her.

He was concentrating so hard on what he was doing, he didn’t notice me. I walked right by him and headed for the hot lunch line.

He kept tossing the ball into his glove as I set my tray down across from him. He must have heard the silverware clatter on the tray because he finally acknowledged my presence.

“Mikey! How are you?” His voice was loud. When I didn’t answer, he said, “I saw the article. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Would you keep your voice down?”

Truthfully, it wasn’t the volume of his voice that was the problem. It was the concern in it. The seriousness of his voice made it impossible not to think of the situation as serious.

Which is exactly what I’d been trying to do all day.

“It’s just a big misunderstanding,” I said, my voice even louder than his. I felt the need to make a public announcement: It was all a misunderstanding people! Please resume your regularly-scheduled lives. I wanted to reassure everyone: Eric, the others in the cafeteria, even myself.

“Yeah. I mean, that’s what I assumed.”

“Assumed? What does that mean?”

“Nothing, Mike. All I meant was—”

“You’ve known my dad your whole life.”

“No, of course, that’s not what I was saying—”

“Just drop it,” I said.

Eric lifted his shoulders and let them slump. “Sure, Mikey. Absolutely. Whatever you want.”

It was almost funny. All day I had been unintentionally muting people the second I got near them. Then someone finally talked to me—and it was my so-called best friend—and all I wanted him to do was shut up.

Next thing I knew, he had his backpack on his lap and took out the Baseball Encyclopedia. “Maybe the prophets have something wise to tell us,” he said, risking a smile.

He took the notebook out of his backpack and slid it halfway across the table.

“They’re not prophets,” I said. “They’re baseball players.” They weren’t even that, really. They were bad players. They were nothing but Zeros.

Eric’s smile went away. “Sorry,” he said. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”

I didn’t say anything.

His hand remained on the notebook, and he slid both back to himself. We sat there silently for a while, then Eric opened the Encyclopedia and buried his head in it. Which also pissed me off, even though I knew it wasn’t his fault. The kid couldn’t win. I didn’t want him to ask me about my dad. I didn’t want to help him with his Encyclopedia. And I didn’t want him to read the damn thing, either.

At some point, Eric looked up from his book and said, “Hey, do you want to go to the batting cages after school with me and my dad?”

“I have practice.”

“I mean after that.”

“I probably shouldn’t,” I said. “Mom and Dad probably want me home.”

“Yeah,” Eric said. “You’re probably right.”

Even that pissed me off. I didn’t want him to sound so understanding. It felt condescending or something.

When he went back to his book, I got up and threw away my entire tray of food. Tray included. Which I immediately regretted. Doing something so drastic wasn’t normal. How could I convince myself that everything was normal, except for this one misunderstanding, if I acted so abnormally? I wanted to reach in and grab my tray, but what if someone was watching? That would just be another chance for people to judge me.

I headed for the cafeteria exit and wondered when my best friend would notice I was gone.

I checked my phone for the billionth time. Earlier, I’d texted Kirsten—u ok?—then immediately regretted it. Obviously, she wasn’t okay. And why did I write the message like I couldn’t be bothered to spell out the full words?

I wanted so badly to talk with her, to be there for her—but maybe she didn’t want to talk to me.

No, not maybe.

Definitely.

I looked at my phone one more time.

No messages. No texts.