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“We don’t have a candle.”

“Somebody down the hall has a candle.”

“Somebody down the hall is not wearing your sweatshirt, walking out of our building.” He tips his head on the pillow and looks at me, slow. “I saw her. She had your sweatshirt on her back, Kennebeck. You branding them now?”

“It was cold on Friday.”

“It’s eighty degrees today.”

“She liked it.”

“I bet she did.” He goes back to his phone. “Twenty minutes. I timed it from when I left. That’s generous, for you.”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m complimenting you. Last time it was ten.”

I drop into my desk chair. My laptop wakes up to the assignment I left open this morning, two pages on organizational leadership due Friday, four hundred and twelve words that don’t say anything. I read the last paragraph, delete two sentences, read it again, and it’s worse, so I put them back.

“Berwyn texted you,” Rafe says.

I look up. “How do you know?”

“Because he texted Greeley. Greeley’s roommate told Pennock, Pennock told Koda, and Koda told me at dinner with his mouth full.” Rafe smiles at the ceiling. “Eight a.m. You and the choirboy in the principal’s office.”

“Yeah, because he can’t run practice.”

“He doesn’t need to run practice to ruin your life. He needs a chair and a door.” On the screen, the bike clips the edge of the pool, and the guy goes over the handlebars into the water. Rafe watches it twice without reacting. “Somebody talked.”

“I know.”

“You want to know who?”

“No.”

“It was Raygoza. The D who follows Greeley around. I watched him in the dining hall. He looked at you like a dog that pissed on the rug.”

“I don’t care who.”

“You should.” Rafe’s jaw works. “Dannebrog said nothing happened. That’s supposed to be it. Somebody on this team decided Dannebrog’s word doesn’t count, so now you and Greeley get hauled in, and Dannebrog looks like a captain who can’t run his own skate.”

“And?”

“And somebody should do something about Raygoza.”

“Somebody meaning you.”

“Somebody meaning somebody.”

I look at the crack in his stick.

“Greeley got your reps today,” he says before I can say anything, lazy, to the ceiling, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. “Second unit, on the breakout, while you stood at the boards like a traffic cone.” He looks at me with a slow, mean little smile. “Dannebrog ran it five times. You know how many times he put you in?”

“Don’t care.”

“Zero.”

“Still don’t care.”