Frohmeyer tells Ernie and Ma Elena to go back to their dorms but beckons me to follow him. I’m confused. “What about Chaz?”

The officer shakes his head. “He’s with me. I shouldn’t have left you two alone to begin with. I need your statements separate, no comparing notes. You can see each other later.”

Ms. Silverthorn gives me the tightest, deepest hug. She whispers in my ear. “I’ll be here when you’re done.”

During the interview, two things become obvious: Officer Danny absolutely believes what I am telling him, and Officer Danny also thinks it’s just a very bad case of “boys will be boys.” He keeps asking if I believed Gordo meant to kill us. There is no complex answer he likes: When I say, “Maybe not, but he could have easily,” that’s not good enough. Pointing out that any part of it (a rock in my face, a wrong move on the ledge) could have killed me is also not what he’s looking for. I’m so frustrated, I could cry, and Officer Danny doesn’t seem any happier about it. “Listen to me,” he says, “I am asking a direct question that has legal ramifications. Do. You. Think. He. Wanted. To. Kill. You.”

No. No, I don’t. Hurt me? Yes. Make me go away? Yes. Calm some fire in him that I never started? Absolutely. But kill me?

“No.”

“Okay. Okay.” He sits back. “What happened to you was not nothing. But the law has very different categories for things, and you don’t accuse someone of attempted murder if all they did was assault.”

If “all they did” was stone you and drop you over a ledge …

Officer Danny sees the mix of anguish and judgment on my face. “They’re in trouble. Don’t you worry. We just don’t want to ruin a whole life over dumb behavior.”

Dumb behavior. They could’ve ended a life, and the best he can muster is “dumb”? The word is so puny next to what we’ve been through. It defangs the hatred, sprinkles sugar on the pleasure they took in our fear and pain. It’s so gross, I could vomit.

And then I do. All over Officer Danny. I guess I’m not “all right.”

Blue Monday

Blue Monday

When I wake up, everything hurts. I don’t have to look at my cheek to know that it will be a canvas of bruises. Ms. Silverthorn put some horrible goo on it last night, promising it would keep the cut from becoming infected, but gash-eraser doesn’t exist, so I’m going to be monstrous. My knee looks like someone used a cheese grater on it, which is expected, but I didn’t expect the tenderness around my chest from the climbing rope or the aching shoulders from trying to pull myself up over the ledge.