Someday. David Levithan

a doctor and heard the shouting from his office. He checks me out and gets me to stand. We go to his office and he stops the bleeding, explaining that it’s just a cut, that I’m going to be okay. It looks worse than it is.

      Then he checks my side and tells me I may have broken a few ribs. Tells me to lie down. Asks me for my parents’ number.

      I try. But I don’t know it.

      I explain about my phone, and I probably seem incoherent at first, answering What’s your parents’ phone number? with something about rice. But eventually the bag of rice is retrieved from my backpack. They take the phone out—too soon. It doesn’t work.

      I tell them to call the school. To ask for Ms. Tate.

      When they think I can’t hear, the doctor and his assistant say they can’t believe that kids today don’t know any phone numbers. I want to go to sleep. But I force myself to stay awake.

      The ambulance arrives and I’m taken to the hospital for X-rays and for treatment. About ten minutes later, Ms. Tate comes in and says my parents are on their way. I look behind her and see my sister in the hall, crying. I wonder if she’s going to blame herself, for letting me walk home alone even though I told her it was going to be okay.

      When my parents arrive, my sister stays in the hall. My mother is focused on how I’m feeling and what the doctors have said. My father is seething, and tells me that the boys who attacked me are being arrested as we speak. Apparently the video caught all their faces.

      I should be comforted by this. But there is nothing that feels like comfort to be experienced. There’s only pain and guilt and sadness and monumental remorse.

      I used to think I was good at this.

      I am not good at this.

      I am dangerous to anyone I’m in.

      Moses’s mother studies his face. The next time the doctor comes in, she asks her if it’s okay for me to sleep.

      “There’s no sign of a concussion,” the doctor says. “Let’s just finish here, then you can take him home and he can sleep.”

      So at least I protected my head.

      No, not my head.

      Moses’s head.

      They give me painkillers. I take them. As soon as I get into bed and my mother turns out the lights, I crash.

      I wake up in fits and starts over the next few hours. Either my father or mother is watching over me. My sister has expressed sympathy but has kept her distance.

      I don’t have the energy to say anything, or even the energy to figure out if there is anything I could possibly say. Sleep pulls me under soon enough.

      This body is done with me for today.