Chapter 13: Three Apologies

The second message had come two minutes after the first.

I read it standing in the principal's office, with four adults and my brother watching me do it.

"Just make them stop looking at the stage. I'll owe you forever."

I read it again.

Then I held the phone out toward Colin, screen first, so nobody could say I had only imagined it.

"I asked you to do something," Colin said. His voice cracked on the last word. "Anything. And you did."

"I did."

"And then I stood in the lobby and let Mom pull your head off."

"You said it was fine," I said. "You said I was only trying to help."

"I know what I said."

The door opened, and Mom and Dad came in together.

The principal had called them at eight about the badger head, and they had parked badly and walked fast.

Nobody explained anything to them.

Colin took a deep breath and put one hand in his coat.

"I wrote you something," he said to me. "In the car. I want to say it now, before I lose it."

He held out a card.

It was a stiff white sympathy card with a lily on the front.

"It was the only one the pharmacy had open at midnight," Colin said. "The other aisle was Get Well."

Inside, the printed line said "With deepest sympathy for your loss."

Under it, in his small neat piano-student handwriting, he had added: "of your dignity. I'm sorry. Colin."

Mom made a sound into her hand that could have gone either way.

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