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ChapterSeven
Jonah
I should have seen him.
Somehow, I should have seen Miles and his new pack of cavemen before they rounded the corner outside the AP Chinese classroom. My spider sense should have tingled. Something. Anything. But nope, I was too obsessed with the way Tyler’s pink hair curled at the ends to be aware of my surroundings. Which was unlike me. Being a photographer, I prided myself on being tuned into the world around me because that Pulitzer Prize-winning image could be anywhere.
Tyler hit the brakes with such speed that I ran up his back. Miles sneered down at him, then his gaze flew to me, and the sneer became a scowl.
“Looks like the queer boy has a secret admirer,” Miles tossed out, which got a few guffaws from the other football players traveling with him. The four of them were a wall of muscle. “Is that it, Robinson? Are you letting the little fairy suck your dick?”
“Are you jealous?” Tyler flung up into his smirky face.
The fury that overtook Miles was both fascinating and terrifying all at once. It was like watching David Banner become Hulk. For a big guy, Miles was fast—must be the sprints the football players run—because he had his hand fisted and drawn back in a flash.
I heard someone shout as I moved around Tyler, shoving him into the AP Chinese classroom door as Miles’ fist met my face. My knees buckled, blood spurted, people in the hall screamed, and the door behind us flew open.
Mass bedlam broke out around us as I fell to my ass, the pain exploding throughout my face. I’d been hit in the thigh with a line drive once when playing baseball with my friends at my old school. This felt like that, only to my face. It was pure hell. The hallway went fuzzy, black edges crept into my vision as my dress shirt and tie soaked up the blood.
“Jonah, oh my God!” Tyler cried out, or I think it was Tyler.
He sounded muzzy as I fought not to pass out while trying to sort out the tossed salad that was my thoughts. I blinked a few times, the shock setting in now, and saw tiny Ms. Chen in a flowery fall dress with a bronze belt taking on Miles. And the behemoth was backing down, his gridiron goons nowhere to be seen.
“Here, oh shit, we need to get you to the nurse,” Tyler gasped as he placed a rolled-up wad of napkins to my face. I winced, the slight pressure of the paper to my nose making me feel sick to my stomach. “Sorry! Sorry, oh sorry!”
“M’kay,” I said as Ms. Chen stood over me like a Doberman while the school security officer raced up to escort Miles away. I let my eyes close to combat the nausea because tossing my cookies on top of being a punching bag for a douche was not on my agenda for the day.
“Let me call for the nurse to bring a stretcher,” Ms. Chen said after they led Miles off like the criminal that he was.
“No.” I coughed, bloody spittle flying into the wad of napkins. “I… make… walk.”
No way in hell were they carrying me on a stretcher. I could take a punch. Robinson men were made of steel, my dad always said. Right then, I felt less like steel and more like wet pasta. I held the napkins to my face, gently, and allowed Tyler and Ms. Chen to help me to my feet. I was wobbly as hell, sickly, and coated in my blood. But Tyler looked fine. More than fine. Cute. Worried too, like super worried. I leaned into him more than Ms. Chen because I liked the way he felt next to me. His arm around my waist felt… right. I took about ten steps, then had to stop to throw up in a trash can outside the Spanish lab.
“Why is everyone lurking?” Ms. Chen was asking as Tyler patted my back while I coughed up everything in my belly. “Go on. Nothing more to see here.”
The hallway emptied. I straightened, coughed, and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. Didn’t seem to me that a little vomit on top of a few gallons of blood on my shirt would matter. Mom would birth a bison when she saw my shirt. Well, maybe not. Maybe she’d be proud of me for taking that haymaker to protect Tyler.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Tyler was saying as I drifted back to the here and now. My face hurt like a mother. My nose throbbed steadily.
“Nope. Good.” I wobbled my way to the nurse’s office, drawing wide-eyed stares from the teachers who were closing their doors to go home. Ms. Chen was mumbling to herself in Chinese as we rounded the corner of the language labs to find the sparkling new medical office at the end of a long hallway. A long, long hallway. Five hundred miles, at least. “Face hurts.”
“We’re almost there. I can call for a stretcher,” Ms. Chen repeated.
I shook my head, then wished I hadn’t. “Nope, Robinson men… steel,” I lisped, then swallowed some blood. Gross.
Somehow, we made it inside the nurse’s office. My legs chose then to let me down; thankfully, there was a cot behind me. Ms. Chen and Tyler guided me to the bed, then moved aside to let the nurse, a cool dude by the name of Mr. Wright—no relation to the famous flying Wright Brothers, he liked to say—bustle in to tend to me, while Tyler was taken out of the room by Ms. Chen. My face hurt so badly I wanted to cry. Mr. Wright was a young guy, an LPN, who had joined the Chesterford staff last year right out of nursing school. A gangly redhead with a soothing aura, he asked me a lot of questions about silly things like the date, who was president, and where we were, while having me pinch my lower nose shut. I answered the way he wanted, I guess.
“Just like to check you don’t have a concussion. Now lean forward, not back. Blood will irritate your stomach and make you sick.” He eased me forward.
“Already puked,” I mumbled.
“Yuck. That’s the worst. You can close your eyes. Try focusing on your breathing. Slow, steady, in and out.” After a few moments, he had me sit back slowly, studied my face, and shone a tiny light into my eyes before applying an ice bag to the bridge of my nose. “Whoever clocked you did a bang-up job.” He tenderly touched my face. I hissed. “Sorry. I don’t think its broken, but you’re going to have some nice shiners for Thanksgiving. You should see your primary care provider anyway in case there is a need to realign. Your file states your parents are fine with you getting OTC pain relief, so let’s get a few of those into you.”
Oh shit. My folks were going to freak the hell out. Doctor bills we did not need. Stupid fucking Miles. I groaned. Mr. Wright ran off to get me some ibuprofen and a glass of water. I swallowed the tablets down. The room was dim, the lights low, and my head was pounding. I toed off my shoes and lay down now that the bleeding was done. I could hear the nurse talking to someone, a man, probably the assistant principal or even the principal. Breathing through my nose was impossible now, as both sides had clots in them. My mouth tasted like old blood. A headache the size of a mountain was starting behind my eyes. Oh, and my gut was still bubbling like a witch’s cauldron. But Tyler was okay. That was the important thing. Miles was done pushing my…shit…he’s notmyanything.
I must have drifted off—how I had no clue—because the door opening and my mother rushing in startled me.
“Oh, Jonah,” she gasped as the nurse and the principal entered behind her. She flew over to my cot, sat down beside me, and cried soft tears as she looked at my face. My eyes were puffy now, swollen and, more than likely, already turning purple. “Honey, what on earth happened?”
