“It’s not about what happened,” Swanson said, waving his glass of scotch around. “There was no video footage. We have nothing but your word, a dead girl, and a bunch of eyewitness accounts that vary wildly.”

“They vary?” I asked. This was the first I had heard of this. Bunny crossed her arms over her chest, pushed air through her nose.

“They vary substantially,” Swanson said, turning to me, warmed by a new audience. “We have some people claiming the punching went on and on, Bunny was like a wild dog, no one could get her off the girl. We have some people claiming it happened in a flash, was like a scuffle, they became aware of it and it was over before they could look. No one agrees how many punches, no one agrees who started it, everyone agrees Ann Marie was running her mouth about that gay kid.”

“He’s the gay kid,” Ray said, gesturing at me.

“Oh, sorry,” Swanson said. “But you know what I mean.”

“Do you think it would make any difference that I was later attacked?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Swanson said.

“Well, the girl who Bunny hit, her boyfriend and his friends jumped me. I was in the hospital for a little over a week.”

“No, no,” Swanson said, “I think that might look bad, make Bunny look even more guilty. Everyone is going to forgive the grieving boyfriend for getting wild after his girlfriend kicks the bucket, I mean, come on. You got any food around here, Ray?”

I felt like I’d been hit in the head, dizzy and blind. Everyone is going to forgive the grieving boyfriend for getting wild after his girlfriend kicks the bucket.

It was like getting my heart broken, somehow. That what happened to me could be framed that way, casually, to my face, in a house with Oriental carpets and marble.

* * *

—

Later, in her room, Bunny and I did face masks.

“It feels like fire ants are crawling all over my skin,” I said.

“It feels like my skin is literally burning completely off.”

“Oh, I love it,” I said.

“The pain is how you know it’s working.”

We were quiet. Skin care was a bond between us because both of us longed to be beautiful, even as we feared we were not and could never be, even as we were suspicious of the urge to be beautiful in the first place. What was that power? You were supposed not to want it, not to crave it, not to pursue it. Beauty was just supposed to land on you like a butterfly, showing the world that you were special, worthy of love, attended by magical birds who folded your laundry. But here we were, trying to burn our skin off for that.

I could tell she was upset. How could she not be? The possibility of a trial, homicide charges. “Why…” I began, not certain what I was going to ask until I said it, “do you think that Ann Marie’s boyfriend jumped me? I always assumed it was because I was gay, but maybe it was because I was your friend, and it was more because of Ann Marie.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe because he was afraid of being seen as beating up a girl? So he couldn’t beat me up directly?”

“Or he was afraid you’d overpower him.”

“Or it was Jason who made it all happen and it was because you’re gay.”

“Or it’s all of those things.”

“Do you ever get freaked out because you do things without planning them?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said.

“I mean, like, sometimes I’ll reach to get an apple off the counter, and then I’ll get freaked out because I didn’t plan to reach out and grab the apple. I just did it. And maybe as I’m doing it, I have a thought like, mmm, apple. But I didn’t plan it. And yet other stuff we do plan and then do on purpose, but it’s like a small, small percentage. At least for me. And I get freaked out about that, and I get afraid that basically I’m sleeping even while I’m awake.”

“I know exactly what you are talking about,” I said. “And I feel exactly the same way.”

And then we washed our faces and went to bed.

* * *

—

I texted Anthony: So did you really break up with me at the hospital while I was totally out of it?

He didn’t text me back for three days.

Then he texted: No, I don’t remember breaking up with you per se, but I feel very guilty because I do think we should stop seeing each other.

I didn’t write back. I didn’t want to seem weak by showing him my anger or my hurt. Yet I mentally composed texts that I refused to send every hour of every day. I just feel ashamed, I imagined writing. Why? Don’t feel ashamed, he would say. For having such a coward and Cyprian man, such a stretched-out, gaping old asshole, as my first love. My rage was incoherent. I didn’t even know what I wanted from him exactly. Probably for him to be someone else, and for me to be someone else, and for the situation to be an entirely different situation than it was. Probably something along those lines.

Meanwhile, I was afraid to leave the house. I didn’t want to run into Jason or Aunt Deedee. Tyler and his friends had not been arrested or charged as far as I knew. I had gotten an unclear phone call from Principal Cardenas telling me to take as long as I needed before coming back to school, with no mention of any formal procedure for resuming my attendance, but I knew I was never going back. It wasn’t exactly that I was afraid they would jump me a second time. In a rational sense, I didn’t expect we would be playing Tom and Jerry, banging each other with hammers all over the town or something. But I did feel like if I caught sight of one of their faces without being braced for it, that I might lose my voice and never be able to speak again. Or perhaps go blind, or turn into a pillar of salt. If I saw them, even for an instant, I would lose the coherency of self, such as I still possessed it.

Aunt Deedee, in particular, was extremely miffed at me for moving out. I could not explain myself. I could not tell her that it was Jason, because I did not know for sure that it had been Jason. What if I were wrong? Or worse, what if I told her and she didn’t believe me? I could not afford these realities. And so I told her that Ray Lampert had insisted, that they had a spare bedroom with an actual closet, that it “just made sense.” And she let it happen because it made her life easier too, but she was still insulted. There she had gone, treating me like her own child, taking care of me like one of her own, and what did I do? Move in with a friend who had a pool, like I wasn’t part of her family at all, like she wasn’t the closest thing I had ever had to a mother. She had actually said that part. “I’ve been like a mother to you, Michael, and I suppose I would have expected a little bit of gratitude.”