“Yeah, of course I do.” He’s gripping his cup so tightly I’m worried hot chocolate will start flowing out of the top and burn his hand. “But I can’t just stand by and let other people get harassed.”

“I’m not saying you should, but that doesn’t mean that it’s your job to handle it. You should have just gotten a chaperone or something.”

“I know it’s not my job,” he bites, “but I couldn’t help it.”

“What do you mean?” I demand. I know I’m being obnoxious—like a dog with a bone—but something about this conversation is rubbing me the wrong way and I need to get to the bottom of it. Caleb’s free hand is clenching and unclenching on top of his thigh and that’s when I realize why I’m so worked up. He’s lying. Or, at the very least, he’s hiding something. Whatever it is, he’s not telling me the whole truth, and that stings.

“What do you mean you can’t help it?” I ask again when he stays stony-faced. “You’re sixteen years old, Caleb, I’m sure you can resist punching a classmate in the face.”

“It just—it hurt too much and I lost track of what I was doing,” he spits out. His face suddenly goes pale, like he only just realized what he said, and before I can even ask what the hell that means, he jumps in again, defensive.

“Never mind, you wouldn’t get it,” he grinds out, looking straight ahead and across the park toward nothing. Apparently, no one else thought it would be a good idea to sit outside in below-freezing weather in a park where all the plants died months ago. The bitterness of the air is making me impatient and irritable and I either need Caleb to start being honest with me or I need to leave.

Instead, I just poke more.

“I’m never going to understand if you don’t tell me,” I say, trying to keep my voice as even as possible. “I don’t get why you’re freaking out about this. What do you mean it ‘hurt’?”

“I’m not freaking out, I’m—” And then he does that infuriating thing where he stops himself from speaking, snapping his mouth shut like he’s trying to trap his own words.