Then my mom spoke up. “Honey, you’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with this,” she said to me. “You can’t expect us to get there in a single day.”

My father’s phone vibrated, and he took his frustration out on it, hurling the defenseless iPhone into the family room, where it skidded on the coffee table, right between two porcelain candlesticks, and onto the floor.

“Goal,” I said flatly. No one was amused.

“Do you have any idea what this means for you?” my father said.

“I get the feeling you’re more worried about what it means for you.”

“Ash, you’re being unfair,” said my mother.

I heard a creak, and turned to see Hunter sitting on the stairs, watching. I tried to figure out how much he’d heard, then realized it didn’t take much to know the gist of things. He’d already heard all he needed to hear—maybe he had even seen the video, too. My parents demanded he go upstairs to his room. He grumbled, but left.

Once Hunter was gone, Dad sat down, took a long, slow breath, and looked at my mom. So what do we do now? said his gaze, but he didn’t speak the words. I didn’t catch what my mom gazed back. Then she turned to me.

“I want you to stay away from that boy,” she said. And here I thought she was being the sympathetic one. It made me furious, but I didn’t yell. That would have only made things worse. I had to stay calm and exist within the shell shock of it all.

“That boy has a name,” I said. “And it’s not like he did this to me—you can’t blame Paul.”

“You know what?” said my dad. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Do whatever the hell you want. Be with whoever the hell you want. Go take a goat to homecoming for all I care.”

“Robert, enough!” said my mom.

It was a horrible thing for him to say, but the good thing about shell shock is that you don’t feel things in the moment. You just feel them later. It was then that I made a poignant and important observation.

“No offense, Dad . . . but you’re a fucking asshole.”

I thought that would set him off, but it didn’t. He didn’t even deny the charge.

“You’ve set yourself on a difficult path, Ash,” he said. “I hope you’re ready for it.”