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out here, son,” he said in his normal voice, which was his asshole voice. “I need to know what the hell you were thinking, shoplifting. Shoplifting? And from Jerry’s of all places?” Dad had that disappointed look on his face—the same face he used to give me before I joined ROTC, the same face he made whenever he talked about Spoony.
    â€œI didn’t steal nothin’,” I said, suddenly feeling too tired to explain, even though I just woke up.
    â€œWell then, why did the cops say you did?” Dad replied, narrowing his eyes and taking a sip of his coffee. A slurp.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou don’t know?” Dad scoffed. “Really, Rashad? You don’t know?”
    I felt a cough coming on and did everything I could to pinch it back, knowing that if I let it out, my entire body would feel like it was being hit by a million tiny hammers on the inside. I managed to get it down to a single, closed-mouth grunt, and guess what? It didn’t matter. Every bone still seemed to tremble, and my head suddenly felt full of helium.
    â€œNo, I don’t know,” I repeated after getting through the cough.
    â€œLook, baby, just tell us what happened,” my mother said, calming my father down as usual. “From the beginning.”
    I started the story but didn’t get very far before the nurse came in, interrupting everything with breakfast.
    â€œGood morning,” she said in a singsongy way after a light knock on the door. My mother greeted her pleasantly. My father forced a hello.
    â€œGot you some oatmeal, and some orange juice, and a little bit of fruit cocktail.” The nurse set the food on the tray by my bed. “Is everything else okay?”
    â€œWhat’s your name, hon?” my mother asked.
    â€œClarissa.”
    â€œClarissa, everything is fine, thank you,” Ma said. “But do you think we can raise the back of the bed up just a little, so he’s not lying so flat?”
    â€œOf course,” Clarissa said, sliding the tray away and coming to my side. She pulled out a remote that was wedged between the mattress and the frame. With the push of a button, the bed started to reposition, which meant my body started to reposition, which meant . . . ooooouch!
    â€œIs that good?” Clarissa asked. I just nodded, which was hard to do because now my chin was smashed into my chest. I had literally been folded up.
    She moved the food tray back so that it was close enough for me to reach, and after telling us that the doctor would be in shortly, she left, and my mother helped me situate myself on the bed so that I could look and feel normal. As normal as possible. Normal enough for my father to get back to business.
    â€œSo walk me through this, son. You got to the store . . .”
    â€œI got to the store, just to get gum and chips. I picked the bag of chips I wanted, and then I bent down and dug in my bag to try to get my phone so I could call Spoony. This lady didn’t see me squatting behind her, and tripped over me. Then I lost my balance, and the bag of chips went flying. The cop assumed I had done something to the lady, which I didn’t. The dude who works the register looks up and thinksI’m trying to put the chips in my bag, but I wasn’t. Then the cop rushed me and yoked me up all crazy.” I paused, then added, “And that’s it.”
    My mother sat quietly and my father paced back and forth, from the door to the window. Ma was clearly horrified. But Dad, he had on that Son, you aren’t telling me everything look. It was clear that to him, I had to have done something wrong to bring this on.
    â€œWere your pants sagging?” Dad interrogated, now back over by the door.
    â€œWere my pants sagging?” I repeated, shocked by the question. “What does that have to do with anything?”
    â€œOh, it matters. If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a