Page 47 of My Own Kind of Person

I fix my eyes on Mazzei. “He said one or two.”

“It’s fine.” Mr. Mazzei couldn’t sound less interested. “You can both go. Please sit down.”

“We can score the stories too,” I say. “Why not practice scoring which story is better?”

Jay chants, “Score! Score! Score!”

“Good lord, fine.” Mazzei presses his palms into his temples. “Will you both please sit down?”

Jay looks back at me and raises his eyebrows, and I’m disappointed to discover I am not capable of murdering someone with my eyes.

“When preparing for a performance,” Mazzei explains, “don’t try to memorize every line. There is no point to a live performance if it’s simply recitation. Jot down bullet points of the main ideas so you know where you’re headed, and then speak from the heart.”

Hot blood pulses through me.

The bell rings. Everyone files out of class, with Elijah and me at the back.

“You’ve just challenged Jay to a pissing match,” Elijah says.

“And I will pee all over him.”

“Because of whatever he was talking about in our group?”

Kaye is already pressed against a locker with Jay’s hands at her sides. She watches me as he says something I thankfully can’t hear.

“He was making fun of me for a failed sexual encounter.”

Elijah holds his notebook behind his back and weaves from left to right. “And do you care what he thinks?”

Of all the people to hear about what happened with Christy, it’s Jay? I thought I’d moved past caring about this, but seriously—Jay?

I ride the flood of anger and shame and start talking before I know what I’ll say. “Last year, my English teacher hung up one of my essays on the bulletin board, and while I can’t prove it was Jay, I know he’s the one who added next to my name, is a penis. In a video project about Jude the Obscure, he filmed a boxing match on the theme of ‘Fate versus Free Will.’ The other guy thought it would be a play fight but Jay actually beat him up. The whole class had to sit and watch, and that guy had to pretend he was in on the joke. In the next video project, Jay drove up to people walking on the side of the road, all of whom had brown skin, and he threw cups of ketchup at them. I don’t even remember what theme that was pretending to be about. Our teacher tried to stop the video, but Jay argued his First Amendment rights were being infringed, and we all had to sit and watch to the end.”

“Are you serious?”

“For days all anyone talked about was whether his project was funny or not.”

“What did they say?”

I roll my eyes and we push our way into the main hallway. People trudge through the halls around us but I’m only aware of my rage. “One girl told me that Jay’s dad died when he was little, and my whole concept of him shifted. I felt for him so much. Then the next day he bragged about how in a wrestling match he jammed a finger in the other guy’s asshole and dragged him across the mat.”

“Jesus.”

I spit out, “This is why I don’t like men.”

“Jay is not what a man is.”

“Is he not?”

“He’s a monster.”

I look Elijah in the eyes. “What else is a man?”

“I know what you mean, but…”

He stops at an intersection and people crowd past us in both directions.

“I go this way,” he says.