Page 90 of Apparently, I’m Torture

He slumped in defeat, then stood, towering over me. The same old revulsion made me stand back and grimace up at him, but instead of reaching for me, he searched my face and nodded.

“Yeah. We’ll figure… something out.”

He brushed by me, leaving me to dissect the subtext in his tone.

Now

Chapter 33

Shawn

Friday Afternoon

Verra Convention Center

“I can’t fire Stacey,” I yelled after Mia as she stomped back to her desk. At this point, I didn’t give a shit about what the other teachers thought.

She whirled around and yelled back. “She helped Trevor fuck with Lilly’s career. I’d say that’s more than a good enough reason to fire her.”

“My cousin had nothing to do with–”

“SHUT UP STACEY,” Mia roared as she shoveled things into her bag and swung it on her shoulder. “I quit. Find someone else to manage the fucking entertainment.”

“Mia, you can’t just leave–”

“Watch me.” She leapt through the elevator doors before they closed, leaving me with a group of slack-jawed teachers.

I let out a breath, and felt like complete and total shit as I raised my voice. “Everyone. Be in the meeting room in fifteen minutes.”

As I turned my back on them, whispers erupted behind me. I felt every lost hour of sleep in that moment.

Shawn

As a boy growing up in Brooklyn, I was an only child living in a small, cramped, two-bedroom apartment. My ceiling had mold, our internet didn’t work for more than ten minutes at a time, and the hot water shut off after a half hour.

My family wasn’t well off. Not by a long shot. But my parents, who both had fulltime jobs, did the best they could. I could honestly, honestly say that the greatest thing they did for me was send me to our local private school.

As I grew, I became one of those kids who thrived in the classroom. I was popular and smart. My teachers gave me praise and helped me mature. I just fell for it. All of it.

But I didn’t know I wanted to become a teacher until I bumped into this kid at a downtown basketball court. I was there to practice. Try outs were in less than a week.

This kid, Jacob, wasn’t there for practice. He wasn’t there to play. He was there to throw rocks at passers-by as he screamed at them to fuck off, to leave him alone.

Nikki and Tristan were a huge influence on me. They were fair and kind, and were always there to help the people around them. But I think I had those traits in me before we’d met, because there I was, a seventeen-year-old who wanted to shoot hoops, standing in front of a kid who was about to throw a rock in my face.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, one hand on my ball, the other in the air.

His arm was bent back, ready to throw. But he paused, met my stare and said, “Just fuck off. Fuck off and leave me alone.”

I shook my head and came closer, watching him take a step back, the rock still in his hand. I didn’t think anyone had tried to stop him. Every time he threw a rock, the passers-by must’ve scattered. I could picture them now, muttering under their breaths, hands and faces buried in their coats as they walked away, maybe wondering if they should call the cops on this kid before he hurt someone.

I turned slowly, took my eyes from him and started dribbling. I could feel his squint on me, but the rock stayed in his hand.

The next time I looked at him, his anger was replaced with confusion. I gestured to the ball, then to the hoop, before throwing it in. It sank into the net, then hit the ground, bouncing and rolling on the court. He dropped the rock, jogged toward the ball, and started dribbling.

We played for a while before he broke the silence. He told me about school, his family, and about the problem with his grades. If he couldn’t raise them, his parents would ship him off to live with his aunt. He told me he couldn’t go; he couldn’t live with her. When I asked him why, the things he told me about his uncle made me sick. I didn’t know it at the time, but the things he said would burrow deep into my brain.

I was horrified, and I offered to tutor him. We met at the local library every afternoon once school finished, and I helped him understand the work from a different perspective.