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looking up at Christopher desperately. “Jeff told me to slow down, and he got all excited, but I didn’t know….” He shook his head so fast he looked like he was trembling.
    Christopher smiled. But it was the same unnerving smile Christopher used when he had to deal with something horrible. “And he just happened to have a rock in his pocket?” Christopher asked.
    “I….” Another frantic head shake. “I don’t know.”
    “Did you think it was odd when he unrolled the window? Climbed halfway out of the car while you were still driving?”
    “I didn’t…. How could you know that?”
    Christopher rolled his eyes. “I looked.”
    “I… I didn’t want him to….”
    “Did you do anything to stop him?”
    “No.”
    “And who was it that was laughing with him?”
    “That was me.” Nate dropped his gaze to the table. He was wringing his hands so hard, his knuckles were white. “Would it be all right if I talk to you alone? To both of you?” He looked at his father. “Would it be okay?”
    “You actually going to apologize?”
    Nate sniffled and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
    Marshall shrugged. “It’s fine with me.” He took the coffee cup Doug offered and raised it in a mock salute. “I’ll just take this out to the porch.”
    When the sound of his footsteps on the hardwood floors faded, Nate leaned forward earnestly. “Testify,” he whispered. “I really am sorry. I am so fucking sorry I don’t even know where to begin. Jeff is a dick, but he’s my teammate, and I’m supposed to ask you not to testify against him so he can keep playing. But you have to. He has to go to jail,” Nate hissed in a stage whisper.
    “Team?”
    “Nate’s the varsity quarterback this coming year,” Doug explained. “Kid, you’ve got to know, if the sheriff decides to press charges, you’re going to be in trouble too.”
    “I don’t care if I get in trouble. You have to do it.”
    “Even if it gets you kicked off the team, too?”
    “I don’t give a fuck about the team,” he snapped. “Jeff’s done this before, and he….” Nate ran his hands through his sandy-brown hair and tightened his knuckles around the short strands. “Please?”
    “He’s done this before?” Christopher asked.
    Doug eased himself onto the bench beside Christopher. “Do you mean that kid he beat up on the bus? The one who ended up in rehab?”
    The fidgeting stopped instantly. Nate began sucking in quick, panicked breaths. The panting seemed to leach the color from his skin, but he didn’t move.
    “Huh. Sounds like this friend of yours has got bigger problems than me,” Christopher said simply.
    “He beat up a kid on the bus the football team chartered for a tournament last year. Him and a few of his teammates ,” Doug said, glaring across the table. “The kid dropped out, got into drugs. Sheriff Daniels said he even tried to kill himself by overdosing on Tylenol.”
    Christopher drew back slightly. His smile didn’t vanish so much as drain, the color fading from his cheeks like his fake smile.
    Doug thought about how Christopher had sounded so hopeless this morning. He squeezed Christopher’s thigh beneath the table and focused on him. Christopher’s confession in the living room replayed in his mind over and over. He said he’d wanted to sleep, to sleep forever and never wake up.
    The only reason Christopher had come into his life at all was because Doug had been the one to cut Christopher’s brother down from the side of a cliff. Every now and then, when Christopher let his hair grow too long, or Doug caught a glimpse of Christopher from just the right angle, his fucked-up imagination tried to superimpose his memories of the corpse over Christopher’s face.
    Suicide was not a good topic for either of them at the moment.
    Christopher nodded slowly, his smile springing back to life in an instant. “It seems weird, doesn’t it? A drug overdose is the way most women try to kill themselves. Guess it seems like it’d