“You’re my first visitor, did you know that? My parents and my sister won’t even take my calls. I think they hate me.” His voice catches. The sick feeling in my stomach expands. He doesn’t deserve to be upset. He doesn’t deserve to have feelings.

The partitions on either side of me narrow my view. He’s the only thing I can see.

I swallow. My head aches. I grip the cold phone and force my mouth open, force air down my throat.

“Ple-ease.” My voice breaks on the word. What a dumb word. What a dumb asshole I am for having said that word. To him. My body shakes. I clear my throat. “I’m here because of your letters. That’s the only reason.” I’m pitiful. Light glares from the ceiling; my armpits sweat through my shirt. My stomach lurches. “In your letters. You said you had something to tell me. About Jordan. You said he told you something, that day.”

David bows his head for a moment. His hair is tangled and unkempt. He looks up at me, and I recognize the wild, empty expression in his eyes from when he’d stare at me in school. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I said that to get you to come visit me. I didn’t want to disappoint you, but I didn’t know how else to get you here.” He’s talking fast, his words tumbling over each other, like he’s out of practice.

“What?” My voice is small. A high-pitched buzzing starts in my ears. I try to stand, but my knees buckle under the weight of my body and I land back on the stool, hard. “What do you mean?”

He’s quiet for a moment, and then: “You’re looking at me like I’m a monster.” He sounds sad. Bile leaps into my mouth. He shakes his head. “I didn’t think you’d be so scared of me. I lie in bed at night, and the memory of your face is the only thing that keeps me going. Our conversation that night at the pool. You, sitting there all alone, crying. It was fate that I was there to help.” He pauses. “You know, I only went to that party to see you.”

“That party.” This room is stifling. I’m struggling to breathe.