Page 18 of The Corruption of Hollis Brown

Mr. Feehan leaned forward, curious. “Will urgent care have a record of this?”

“Urgent care has cameras in their parking lot. You can literally watch Annie and Yulia dragging me in there. Hospitals should have cameras too.”

Hollis turned to Jorge’s parents, then stood up and peeled off his sweater. The bruise on his stomach from Jorge’s fist was still purple and green. James’s marks were also there but fading yellow. One of the sophomore girls gasped and turned away quickly.

“Jorge punched me so hard I almost threw up because he thought I stole his girlfriend and I still carried him on my back out of that house and into the hospital.” Hollis seethed. “He’s a fucking dickhead, but I’m not going to just let another kid bleed out in a filthy basement. Why don’t you start asking everyone who was there why they didn’t stay to help?”

Jorge’s mom started crying, but Hollis didn’t care.

“We stuck around the hospital until two a.m., checking to make sure he was all right.” He continued louder. “Stephanie spent an hour calling people, trying to get your phone number, so that you’d know where he was. I can’t believe I have to sit around defending myself. That Tim and James, who truly don’t care whether I live or die, have somehow decided to defend me too. But it’s still easier for you to believe I sprinted to the pond and back to stab Jorge and then felt bad enough to take care of him. It’s fucking insane.”

“Hollis!” Mr. Feehan yelled. “Put on your shirt and sit down.”

Hollis wrestled his sweater back over his head but didn’t stop talking.

“Also, Jorge punched me only once. James punched me like eight times into a brick wall, and he’s sitting there extremely unstabbed,” he spat.

“Maybe if you weren’t a bitch, people would punch you less,” James muttered.

“Exactly!” Hollis cried. “I get punched way too often for that to even be considered a viable motive for anything.” He folded his arms. “Besides, Annie and I aren’t dating, and Jorge probably would have figured that out in about forty-eight hours. He was just mad and confused. It wasn’t even a punch with intention, unlike James, who was punching me for a reason.”

“And what reason was that?” the principal asked.

Hollis paused in his rant, deflating a bit.

He didn’t know how to articulate what happened between him and James without making himself look bad.

James rescued him again. “He called me stupid. Don’t like being called stupid.”

“And I feel worse about that now that you’re . . . here and all,” Hollis admitted.

Mr. Feehan held up a hand. “Jesus. Give me a second to think.”

Hollis glanced back over at James, who rolled his eyes and shifted his chair to face away from him. Timothy was staring at his shoes, hands clasped beneath his chin. Jorge’s parents seethed at him from across the room. Jorge’s ma was still crying quietly.

“All right. It will take a bit of time for the authorities to corroborate your story. The police will need to pull the security tapes from the hospital and urgent care, as well as probably send some officers to the scene to check for footprints around the pond. But in the meantime, the school can’t move forward without disciplinary action of some kind. Two days in-school suspension for you, James and Timothy. Stephanie and Annie will be receiving the same.” Mr. Feehan paused and looked at Hollis. “A week’s suspension for you, Hollis. Out of school. We can’t have you on the school grounds during an investigation.”

“What?” Hollis stood up fast.

“And—” Mr. Feehan continued, undeterred. “I highly suggest you don’t leave town. If your claims are verified by the police, we’ll have the suspension scrubbed from your permanent record. You’ll have a week to make up any classwork or tests you may have missed. It’s the best I can do, under the circumstances.”

Jorge’s parents looked smug, but Mr. Feehan wasn’t finished.

“And you two. If it comes back that this child had nothing to do with your son’s injuries, I would strongly suggest giving him and his family some sort of apology. Because if this situation happened as he described, it would be a considerable wickedness to pin your own child’s foolishness on the only person who was brave enough to save him. Now get out of my office.”

Rage

Hollis pushed through the door and walked quickly down the hall to the exit.

“Hey, where are you going?” Timothy called. “We have to sign some shit with the front desk.”

Hollis disregarded that and stepped outside.

If he stayed in that room any longer, something bad was going to happen. When Hollis got this angry, he got reckless, and he was smart enough to try to avoid that.

The blood was pounding in his head. He felt like he was looking down at himself from above. Hollis didn’t get his books from his locker or tell Annie and Yulia he was leaving.

He walked straight into the woods.