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"I don't. I don't, I'm just—" He shakes his head. "Forget it. I'm just asking. It's a weird thing to ask, I know."

"It's a weird thing to ask, Nico."

"Just don't do anything stupid, D."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Like whatever you're doing." He looks at me hard through the phone, and for a second, he looks so much older than twenty. "You get this way. You get quiet and you decide something and then nobody can talk you out of it."

"I'm fine."

"You always say that."

"I'm always fine."

He doesn't laugh. Behind him Priya says something I can't hear, and he turns his head and says yeah, one sec, and when he turns back, the thing on his face is gone, folded away.

"I gotta go. Physio tomorrow at eight."

"Okay."

"Love you, wall."

"Love you."

The screen goes dark. I sit on the edge of my bed with the phone in my hand.

He's still hurt. That's what that was. Six months later and he can't even hear the name without going white. He's being careful with me because he thinks I'll get upset, when he's the one who still flinches.

I put the phone face down on the nightstand.

I wake up at one-forty because of a sound.

It takes me a second to figure out what it is. It's coming through the wall. The wall behind my headboard, the one that's been quiet since May.

It's laughing.

Low. Muffled. Like he's got his face in the pillow. Then his voice, too quiet to make out words, just the rhythm of it, the way it goes up at the end like he's asking something. Then a pause. Then he laughs again, and this time it's not muffled enough, and it's not the laugh I know. It's not the one he does in the room, too loud, for an audience.

It's soft. It sounds like it costs him nothing at all.

I lie on my back and look at the ceiling.

Who is he talking to at one-forty in the morning? A girlfriend back home. A buddy from Harrow, one of the ones who still talks to him. His mother. Somebody.

It's not my business.

I turn on my side, away from the wall. I pull the pillow over my head. I can still hear it.

I put my hand flat on the wall.

It's warm. That's just the pipes. The pipes run behind the headboards on this side of the house; they always have.

On the other side, he says something, quiet, and laughs one more time. Then nothing.

I keep my hand there until the plaster goes cold.

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