“Hey,” Simon said.
“Hey.”
For several seconds they listened to each other breathe. Noah remembered all the times they had sat together without needing conversation: tournament buses, the back of the training room, a curb outside the hospital while adults organized rides home.
“I should’ve called sooner,” Simon said.
“Me too.”
“I don’t want to spend the entire afternoon apologizing.”
“Neither do I.”
“Good. That leaves us with an afternoon.”
Simon told him something he had never said in the hospital. Before the exhibition match, the assistant coach had offered to withdraw him, quietly, without a public explanation. Simon had refused. He wanted the crowd to see him face an older athlete. Noah had seen the dangerous pairing and wanted to speak, but Simon had seen it too and made a choice he didn’t fully understand.
“Everybody keeps assigning that day to someone,” Simon said. “The organizers, the coach, the other kid. You took the whole thing and put it on yourself. I was fourteen, Noah. I wanted to be a hero. You were fourteen and had just buried your dad. Neither one of us knew what we were doing.”
Noah leaned against the fence. The old wood felt cold through his sweatshirt.
“I could’ve said no.”
“You weren’t the official.”
“I knew it was wrong.”
“So did I. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Knowing something isn’t right doesn’t mean you’re automatically in charge of saving everybody.”
“If I had spoken, maybe someone would have listened.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m here. I’m studying for a driver’s license, and I have a terrible band. We can be friends without making me your warning label.”
Noah pressed his free hand over his eyes. He had imagined a hundred versions of this conversation, none of which included Simon laughing about his band.
“Do you still hate judo?” he asked.
“Some days. Then I remember you teaching me to fall without smacking my head. I use that every time I slip on the ice.”
“You still fall a lot?”
“Gracefully. It’s an art.”
Simon asked about Brindle Creek and Lily’s class. Noah told him about the torn gloves, the meeting with Grant, and the uncertainty about the academy. He confessed that part of him wanted to return to the mat and show the three boys how little they understood about balance and control.
“That’s the part you should be worried about,” Simon said.
“I am.”
“Then you haven’t lost your mind.”
After they hung up, Noah remained outside until the shadows had shifted across the garden. Walt found him there, holding a bucket of damp leaves.
“Good talk?” he asked.
“Hard one.”
“Those are sometimes the good ones.”
At Brindle Creek High School, the viral challenge had become a rumor with several lives. One version claimed Noah was an expelled fighter from another state. Another said he had broken a teammate’s back and been forbidden to compete. A boy named Cameron Hughes insisted Noah had been arrested for assault, though he had no evidence and changed the story each time someone asked for it.
Maya interviewed Noah for the student newspaper, but he declined to have his comments published. She respected that decision and instead wrote an editorial about the difference between witnessing an event and sharing a fragment of it. Her faculty adviser, Mr. Lewis, required her to remove all names pending verification. The resulting article was thoughtful and less sensational than her classmates wanted. It received thirty-one views on the school website.
