“I thought you understood. I thought of all the people in their own worlds, you understood my world.” My mom and dad pass again, and I wipe my eyes quickly, as if jamming my fingers in there can keep the tears back. “I don’t think you know me at all, and it’s better that way. I just wish I never told you anything—”

“Cham.” Abigail’s voice is behind me, and the next thing I know, she’s standing beside us. “What’s going on?” Her face is a contorted tissue.

“Hey,” I say. “Nothing. It’s just that Brendan changed the event and—”

“What? I’m the one who asked school to change it,” Abigail says, looking between the two of us. “In your driveway yesterday, you said it felt better talking about your dad’s Parkinson’s and like airing all that shit out, so I thought—”

“So you thought, Hey, let’s get the whole school here?” She winces at the sarcasm in my voice, but I don’t care. “How could you think this is something I’d want?” I ask incredulously. “It just blows my mind.”

“Cham, you’ll feel better if you face things,” she says, shifting back and forth, nervously adjusting her ponytail. “When I was talking to your mom, she said you guys wanted to be more proactive as a family, and, I don’t know, I wanted a grand gesture to prove to you that we’re here for you. I feel like a terrible friend for not knowing what was going on. I just want you to be okay, and I thought that if—”

“That if you forced everyone from school to come here without telling me that I’d somehow be grateful for all the ‘support’?” I put air quotes around the last word, my mouth tasting more and more like bile.

“I’m sorry that you’re pissed, but isn’t it better not to hide anything?” Her face is desperate for me to say yes, but my body is populated by nos. “You don’t have to keep doing this alone, Cham.”

I shake my head at her. Way in the back of my mind a voice is saying Let her in, but the anger has piled up like bricks, and it’s hard to get even her genuine kindness through. I look over at the track, trying to locate my parents among so many chipper bodies. Brendan has been silent the whole time, the iPad limp in his hands, but now he raises it. “I should go check on things,” he says, breaking the awkward silence.

“Wait,” I say to his back. My brain feels like it’s overheating. He turns around, his face uncharacteristically solemn. “I’m sorry I blamed you. I just figured—”

“Why did you think it was Brendan?” Abigail asks. Her voice is deadly quiet now, which it is every time she’s about to burst into tears. I take a deep breath that honestly feels quite shallow. “Why would he know anything?”

I look at the two of them, feeling caught between them or caught in a lie or caught in something I don’t fully understand, but it’s something I can’t break free of. It’s stretching me out in every direction, and I don’t know where I’ll rip first. “He—he found out by mistake a couple months ago,” I stammer, my voice strangely high-pitched. “I’m sorry, I know I should’ve told you, but—”