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Cassie. When I reached out to pet her, she snorted and backed up, her eyes wide open. She’d never done that before.
    I got work gloves and a shovel out of the shed and cleaned the corner where Cassie does her business. When I rolled the wagon across the field, I noticed something black against the brown, barely visible except for a glimmer of smudged yellow. I knew what it was even before I lifted it off the pile and shook it out. It was my football jersey. The rest of my uniform and pads were also thrown onto the heap.I started to pick them out, but by the time I found the left cleat, which was buried especially deep, I figured it wasn’t worth it. I threw the whole stinking mess in a garbage can by the shed and went to school.
    That morning at school was rough. I had the feeling everyone was looking at me and whispering about me, which they probably were. If it had been two other kids at the school who got in a fight and one of them busted the other guy’s leg, I’d talk about it. I hid behind books and pretended to take furious notes in every class so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone. Randy and I were in all the same classes, but he wasn’t in any of them that morning.
    I usually sat with the team at lunch, but that didn’t seem like a good idea anymore. I carried my tray past tables full of kids staring at me, nobody sliding over or saying, “Hey, Eric, right here.” Well, that was my own fault for not having friends outside the team.
    I ended up at a table of sixth graders, and they didn’t strike me as the cooler sixth graders. They looked back at me in shock. A popular football player like me was not supposed to sit with them. I realized that Allan from down the street was there. I’d never even noticed him in the halls. I didn’t know he was in sixth grade. I thought he was in fifth grade, tops.
    “Hey,” I told him. He looked down at his food and didn’t say anything back.
    As bad as the morning was, the afternoon was ten times worse.
    The science teacher asked me if I’d researched the mushrooms for my oral report, and I told her I had but I’d lost the notes. I didn’t say why, but everyone was looking at me like they knew it was connected to everything else, and they were right. I also didn’t have the sample to pass around, because even though mushrooms were all over my life like—well, like a fungus—they weren’t my number one problem anymore, and I’d forgotten to harvest some new ones.
    Then there was a surprise school assembly instead of last period. Everybody was muttering and whispering to each other, wondering what it was about. I myself thought it might have to do with the missing girl from Alden Academy—it’s the kind of thing that kids start rumors about. There was a computer hooked up to a projector on a cart, so whatever it was, it was going to involve multimedia.
    Principal Dahl coughed into the microphone, causing a squeal of static over the PA. Ms. Brookings, the guidance counselor, stood next to him, looking grim. Now I knew it was serious. The last time they had a surprise assembly with Ms. Brookings, she told us a girl named Gail Hendrickson had leukemia.
    “Okay,” Principal Dahl said after he got the microphone figured out. “We’re meeting today to talk about an incident that took place … It was not on school grounds but involved several students here, so …” He isn’t great at finishing his sentences. “To help facilitate this conversation, we’re …” He looked back at Ms. Brookings, saw she was there, and handed her the microphone.
    “Thank YOU, Mr. DAHL,” said Ms. Brookings. Shehas a way of overemphasizing certain words. She’s also big on exaggerated facial expressions. In the last assembly, she talked about “GRIEVING” and made a sad face like she was talking to preschoolers who wouldn’t know what that was.
    “I wonder,” she said now, making a stagey puzzled look, one outstretched finger to her lips. “I WONDER if