Page 48 of Her Passionate Hero

“Nothing. Go away.”

“Is it those bitches? What did they do?”

He knew that they had been calling her a fat, ugly foreigner. He knew they passed notes and crude drawings of her around the classroom. Stuff like this had been going on all through elementary school, but Hunter had been able to intervene. Seventh and eighth grade, she’d had to go through it alone. Heather and Lupita were vicious, she had the bruises and the bad grades to prove it. But sometimes Hunter would be waiting to walk her home. Those were the best days.

Ninth grade things escalated and brought Theresa into the group. Hunter being a Junior was able to see it first hand, and he got involved almost every day. But he couldn’t help now, there was no way she could ever tell anyone about this humiliation.

“You have to tell me.”

She kept her face shoved against her folded arms. That was when he did something that hadn’t happened since elementary school, he put his arm around her and started to rock her. It made her cry harder.

“Shhhh, it’s going to be all right.”

But it wasn’t. It would never be all right again. She shuddered against him. She was so cold, and he was so warm. She shivered some more and tried to pull away. God, if he ever found out, he’d be disgusted just like the girls were. She needed to get her crying under control. She needed to get home somehow. She couldn’t walk home. It was windy. She needed her father to come drive her home because he had their only car, but he didn’t get off work until an hour after school got out. She’d just hide here until then.

“Please, go away.”

“If I go away, I’m going to go find Lupita and Heather and demand to know what went down.”

Her head jerked up. “No! You can’t!” They’d show him. Then he wouldn’t be her friend anymore. “Promise me you won’t.”

“Then, Alia, you have to tell me what happened.” Sometimes he used his grown-up voice. Since she came to high school, she noticed he did it now and again. It must have happened when he got the tattoos. She liked them, and she didn’t like them. She knew it meant he was involved with a gang. She didn’t like that, but he was still her gentle Hunter. Her protector.

“Please don’t make me,” she said in a last-ditch effort to stop the inevitable.

“I’m just going to go ask the bitches.” He sounded so different. So harsh.

Maybe if she spoke in Spanish, it wouldn’t seem as real. It would be as if it happened to someone else. “

I went to the girl’s restroom after the lunch period was done. I waited until it had cleared out. I always wait until everybody is pretty much gone.”

“Why?” he asked in Spanish.

“I don’t like being in there with the other girls.” She didn’t want to tell him why.

“Why?” he persisted.

“Because,” she burst out,” they always call me fat. They make fun of my clothes. All right?”

“Do they touch you?”

“They used to pull on my hair. That’s why I wear it in a bun now.”

He nodded like he wasn’t surprised.

“So you went to the bathroom. Then what happened?”

“I heard Heather outside my stall telling someone to keep watch. I was still…you know… I tried to hurry. But then I thought I didn’t want to go out there.”

He looked at her, he was angry, but at the same time, he was soothing as he kept his arm around her shoulders. She appreciated the fact that he didn’t prod her along, he waited for her to tell him at her own speed. She remembered the crash of the stall door banging open, the metal door hitting the inside wall. She was still sitting on the toilet. She squeezed her legs together, her panties around her ankles, she had her long skirt covering herself.

“I screamed at them to get out. It was Theresa and Heather who crowded in with me, Lupita was outside the stall, laughing.”

Even when the dirt had suffocated her back in the first grade, she’d never been so scared. The two girls loomed over her. She stared up, grateful she had stopped peeing. She needed to wipe.

“Fatty’s going to cry,” Heather said in a singsong voice.

“Who cares. Look, it’s just like you said. Look at those ugly undies.” Heather bent down and yanked her panties over her shoes. She held them up by the tips of her fingers.