He didn’t look at me once.
He wrote all the words in blocky, stuttering letters, pressing the pencil so hard you could see the indent on the next page.
I copied them down, careful to spell each one neat, not making any mistakes.
When we finished, I tried to hand the sheet to him first, but he just shoved it back at me and said, “You’re supposed to turn it in, stupid.” He didn’t even say thank you. He didn’t even say my name.
The whole morning, I felt the blank spot between us get bigger and bigger.
I kept thinking about last year in the beginning of the school semester, about the dinosaur bandaid and how he’d carried my backpack, about the time he gave me boots in the winter, or the few times we met at the park, and I wondered if I had only imagined it.
Maybe I’d made up the whole thing because I wanted it to be true. Maybe my brain did that. Filled in the empty with stories, so it wouldn’t hurt so much when people went away.
During break, I watched him from down the hall.
He was with other boys now, ones who laughed at things that weren’t even funny and high-fived each other after every sentence.
Caiden acted like he was the general of an army, giving orders in a whisper and then marching them around the corners like he owned the whole school.
When he caught me staring, his mouth twitched, and then he turned away, like I was a bug crawling on the window and he was deciding whether or not to squash me.
That’s when I started to believe what they said about him. That he was mean, and colder than anyone.
That if you ever got close, he would either disappear or turn on you, and there was nothing in between.
I felt it settling into my bones, the way winter does when you first realize it’s going to last forever and I wondered how much of Caiden’s meanness was real, and how much was just armor he wore so the world couldn’t see the place where he was soft.
That afternoon, I saw Caiden in the hallway, hunched at his locker and clutching a fistful of crumpled paper like he meant to strangle it.
He was talking to another boy I didn’t know, a big kid with a neck that looked like it had grown around his t-shirt. Their laughter was mean and too loud, meant for hurting and not for fun.
When they noticed me, the big kid flicked his chin at Caiden, and Caiden made a face.
I thought about not walking past, but the only other way to my classroom was the long way, and I didn’t want to be late.
So I curved my shoulders in and drifted close to the lockers, barely brushing the wall.
“Hey, Langston,” Caiden called out, voice carrying. “You forget how to walk or are you just standing there to make the hallway uglier?” The big kid wheezed a laugh.
I kept my eyes on the cracks in the floor tiles and tried to move faster, but my boots caught on something and I tripped alittle, arms windmilling. The sound of their laughter chased me all the way down the hall.
I kept my head down for the rest of the day, but every time I looked up, I saw Caiden looking right through me.
I learned the shape of being alone: it was the empty seat next to you, the echo of your own voice in the bathroom mirror, the way the world kept happening when you weren’t even looking.
I started to think maybe I was made of glass, like Mom said, only all the cracks were on the inside, and no one could see them unless I broke.
I wouldn’t break, I told myself, not ever.
But little did I know that breaking had a way of sneaking up on you like a slow burn simmer, or like a long overdue dam pushing through a crackling wall.
39
CAIDEN
I was sinkinginto the deep end, and I wasn’t sure how to get out.
Amelia was slowly infecting my blood, crippling my control, devouring everything that I thought I knew, and twisting it into something completely different.
