Paul. Stocky. Baseball player. Catcher, I think. Straight brown hair. I seem to remember him having some issues with drugs that got him kicked off the team.

Yeah, I say. I remember him.

Did you ever meet his dad?

I shake my head.

Adam’s eyes go misty and he says, Well, Paul’s dad in New York Presbyterian. He’s my favorite uncle, and I don’t think he’s going to make it. I told him what you’d written, and it made him cry. He said he didn’t know that anyone our age was even paying attention to what’s going on.

A chill goes through me. Being afraid of some enemy you can’t see, regardless of how big or deadly, is one thing. Starting to recognize the people lying dead on the battlefield is something else entirely.

Unlike Connor, I don’t deliberately out myself to my parents. That task is left to Ms. Davis, who is, I guess, just doing her job.

I find this out when I come home from school on Friday. When my mother, drinking sherry out of a thimble-sized glass, tells me in grim voice, Your father is on his way home.

A list of the immediate casualties caused by my writing sixty-six words into a language lab wall:

• One bruise on my arm.

• Fourteen pieces of broken glass from the old Christmas picture over the TV that fell when my father threw a pepper mill at it.

• A hundred of my mother’s tears.

• An infinite number of shards from the shattered metaphorical closet door.

I try to ride out my father’s anger and hope that, at his core, he doesn’t really want to kick me out.

The next morning, a Saturday, I creep out of my bedroom and approach him while he’s eating breakfast.

I didn’t do this to piss you off, I say. It’s just who I am, and I can’t ignore what’s going on in the world. People are dying. How can I just stand by and watch?

How could anyone?

My father eats his toast and boiled eggs. He doesn’t look up from his food for a very long time.

When he does, he says, I always knew that nothing would come from your brother. But I had hopes for you, Michael, and you’re throwing them all away just to spite me. How do you expect me to face my friends? Our neighbors? What is your mother going to say to the women at church? Why couldn’t you have just kept your mouth shut?

This has nothing to do with either of you, I reply before I can stop myself.

My father’s face goes a familiar shade of red, and I picture how things might have gone down with Gabriel and his father. I’m bringing a boy home for dinner, Gabriel might have said. Tell him to be here by six, his father might have replied. That scenario will never play out with my family, and I just can’t do it anymore. It’s completely clear that it isn’t about whether I’m having sex or not or who with, it’s about needing to breathe. I’ve never understood my brother more.