The Book of David by Anonymous

later.”
    I tried to catch his eye as he turned and walked out of the cafeteria, but he didn’t look at me.
    That’s the worst part of this whole fiasco. I bet Jon’s mad at me for not standing up to Tyler. I’ll bet he thinks I’m a total tool now. Some dumb jock who runs around the locker room snapping towels and calling people “fag.”
    Why do I care? Why do I feel so worked up about this? Am I mad at Tyler, or am I pissed off at myself? What do I have to be angry about? Maybe I’m not angry at all. Maybe I’ve just gotten a glimpse of what Tyler is really like from somebody else’s point of view.
    Maybe I’m just scared. Scared that my best friend is an idiot. Scared that he knows about me. Scared that everything I’ve worked so hard to build for myself is about to come spilling out—over what? This freaking new kid?
    I can’t let that happen.

Tuesday, September 4
6:30 a.m.
    Woke up an hour ago and couldn’t get back to sleep. I was dreaming about Jon running down a football field that never seemed to end. He was being chased by Tyler, and I was watching from the stands. In the dream, I knew that if Tyler tackled Jon, something terrible would happen. I was trying toget down onto the field to run in between them, to tackle Tyler before he got to Jon, but there was a huge chain-link fence all the way around the field with razor wire at the top, and each time I tried to climb it, I cut myself.
    I woke up sweating, with my heart racing.
    Turns out Jon needs zero help from me defending himself. He posted his blog about our first football game right after school yesterday. I don’t remember ever hearing anybody talk about going online to read The Battalion before, but by the time I was walking out of practice yesterday, like, fifteen people had texted me about it.
    In the write-up, Jon called what was happening on the field Friday before Tyler got sacked “a slaughter.” He wrote that the only decent play Tyler pulled off was the fake out to me, and even that he managed to do only once before getting permanently sidelined. He wrote that everybody in the stands breathed a sigh of relief when I took the field and started nailing pass after pass. He ended with a comment about “the injured QB cussing a blue streak this morning in English class.”
    I decided to try to head this one off at the pass. I had a hunch Tyler hadn’t read it yet, and after practice, I drove straight to his house. His mom opened the door and gave me a hug. Downstairs in his room, I waited while Tyler read the article. Then he turned to me and said, “Dude. Why did you tell me to read that?”
    I told him because I wanted him to hear about it from me.
    He just shrugged. “Whatever, man.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘Whatever’?” I asked him.
    He stared at the screen of his laptop for a long time and then flipped it closed. “It’s all true.”
    â€œSo . . .”
    â€œSo what?” he said.
    â€œSo you’re not mad?”
    He shook his head once and snorted. Then he picked up one of his crutches and yelled louder than I have ever heard him yell as he threw it against the door of his bedroom. The foam part of the crutch that goes under your arm splintered a hole in the cheap paneled door and stuck there.
    I had never seen Tyler cry before last night. He didn’t even try to hide it; he just sat there and sobbed like people do on TV when somebody’s mom dies or something. Tyler’s mom was very certainly not dead, and she came running down the stairs, calling his name. When she burst through the door, the crutch fell out of the hole it had made and wedged itself down behind the door, effectively keeping her out. I finally wrangled the door open, and she just stood there, staring. She walked toward Tyler and tried to touch his face and his shoulder, and he just shrugged her off, then grabbed a pillow and