And that, more than anything, was what set my own heart knocking, because a boy who will not eat his favorite meal is a boy carrying something too heavy to swallow around.

I had learned, in four months of visits and months more of living together, to read the weather of him, and this was a weather I had not seen before.

His bad days had a shape I knew — the going-quiet, the inwardness, the way he pulled the world to arm’s length.

This was different.

This had fear in it, and something that looked almost like grief, and it was pointed at me in a way his dark moods never were.

He was bracing for something, and he was bracing against me, and that was new, and it frightened me more than any sullen silence ever had.