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He shakes his head. “I know. But I just want things to go back to the way they were.”
I know that feeling all too well. “What do you want me to say to her?”
“Just find out what I can do to fix things.”
There’s so much desperation in his voice that I agree. I’ll try. He’s got to know he’s already in a pretty bad way if he’s coming to me for help in matters of the heart. There’s no point rubbing it in.
* * *
In the morning I am crossing the quad, hoping the coffee I drank in the common room will kick in soon, when I pass my ex-girlfriend, Audrey Dolan, in a clump of her friends. Her copper hair gleams like a new penny in the sunlight, and her eyes follow me reproachfully. One of her friends says something just low enough for me not to hear, and the rest laugh.
“Hey, Cassel,” one of them calls, so that I have to turn around. “Still taking bets?”
“Nope,” I say.
See, I’m trying to go legit. I’m trying.
“Too bad,” the girl shouts, “because I want to put down a hundred bucks that you’ll die alone.”
Sometimes I don’t know why I am fighting so hard to stay here at Wallingford. My grades, always determinedly and consistently mediocre, have really taken a dive in the last year. It’s not like I’m going to college. I think about Yulikova and the training my brother is getting. All I would have to do is drop out. I’m just delaying the inevitable.
The girl laughs again, and Audrey and the others laugh with her.
I just keep walking.
* * *
In Developing World Ethics we talk a little bit about journalistic bias in reporting and how it influences what we think. When asked to give an example, Kevin Brown brings up an article about my mother. He thinks that too many reporters blame Patton for being an easy dupe.
“She’s a criminal,” says Kevin. “Why try to act like Governor Patton was supposed to be prepared for his girlfriend to try to curse him? It’s an obvious example of a reporter trying to discredit the victim. I wouldn’t be surprised if that Shandra Singer had gotten to him, too.”
Someone snickers.
I stare at my desk, focusing on the pen in my hand, and the sound of chalk scraping across the board as Mr. Lewis quickly launches into an example from a recent news story about Bosnia. I feel that strange hyper-focus that occurs when everything narrows to the present. The past and the future fade away. There is only now and the ticking moments, until the bell rings and we hustle out into the hall.
“Kevin?” I say softly.
He turns, smirking. People rush around us, clutching bags and books. They look like streaks of color in my peripheral vision.
I hit Kevin’s jaw so hard that I feel the impact right down to my bones.
“Fight!” a couple of kids yell, but teachers come and drag me back from Kevin before he can get up.
I let them pull me away. I feel numb all over, the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, nerves sparking with the desire to do something more. To do something to someone.
They take me to the dean’s office and leave me with a slip of paper pressed into my hand. I crumple it up and throw it against the wall as I am shown inside.
Dean Wharton’s room is stacked with papers. He looks surprised to see me, getting up and lifting a pile of folders and crossword puzzles out of the chair in front of his desk and indicating that I should sit. Usually whatever trouble I’m in is so bad I get sent straight to the headmistress.
“Fighting?” he says, looking at the slip. “That’s two demerits if you’re the one who started it.”
I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“Not really, sir,” I say. “I hit him. I just—I wasn’t thinking straight.”
He nods like he’s considering what I said. “Do you understand that if you get one more demerit for any reason, you’ll get expelled? You won’t graduate from high school, Mr. Sharpe.”
