After the Moment (20 page)

People were screaming and standing on chairs, and the school's one security guard hauled Leigh up while Mr. Wynne, the strict firster, grabbed hold of Preston.

"I will kill you!" Preston screamed, although it was not clear if he was talking to Leigh or Mr. Wynne.

Leigh, somewhat shocked to have been picked up with such ease, felt his blood cool as the other man's chest pressed against his back. Nothing would be gained by involving a stranger who outweighed him, and Leigh took his satisfaction in the swollen and bloodied face that stared at him.

Preston, bruised, furious, and not at all happy at the limited damage he'd managed to do, broke free of Mr. Wynne, charging for Leigh. As Preston's head hit him in the stomach, Leigh felt the man holding him stagger back. He had one clear thought—
Kill him!
—before grabbing on to Preston's back as the guard's arms dropped away.

Released from all doubts and uncertainties, Leigh let himself be brought to the floor, and got hit in the face three times before rolling over and banging Preston's head against the floor. Leigh could feel the side of his own face swelling up and his mouth oozing with blood; Preston's nose and shirt were covered in it.

Later, Leigh would learn that the guard had hit his head against a table edge, and that Preston, while breaking Mr. Wynne's hold, had dislocated the man's jaw. There was no one to stop them—to stop him—until Preston, who had been banging his knees into Leigh's back ribs, became, suddenly, still.

Leigh, already having sharp pain when he drew a breath, looked behind him, then back at Preston.

The heaving chest did not move, and the sound of wet, ragged breathing that had been driving Leigh crazy had stopped.

Someone ran over to them and knelt on the floor next to Preston.

"What is wrong with you?" a furious voice demanded.

The someone was Maia. Leigh tried wiping his eye—the one not swollen shut had something in it. He peered at his hand. Blood.

"God, I trusted you," she said, turning to Leigh, her face a mask of disbelief. "I trusted you."

Maia put her ear to Preston's mouth. People moved around the three of them. Mr. Wynne, an ice pack pressed against his jaw, was on a cell phone he'd had to borrow from a student. The security guard told Maia to move. To Leigh, he said, "I wouldn't be young again, no, I wouldn't."

Maia moved over to Leigh and touched his face, her hand coming away sticky as he probed his mouth for where he was bleeding.

"Don't," he said, meaning don't touch, he was covered in blood, he would get it on her.

It hurt to talk, and his mouth felt funny.

"Your lip's split," she said.

Behind her, men in uniforms moved into place. A man felt Preston's pulse, and opened his eyes to peer at them with a pencil flashlight. Somebody else wrapped a band around his arm. The men shouted numbers at each other.

"This was so stupid," Maia said. "What were you thinking?"

"Honey, move out of the way," one of the men said.

They had put a brace on Preston's neck, had an IV bag going, and were getting ready to move him onto a stretcher. Maia stood up.

"I wasn't, really," Leigh said, but no sound reached his ears. The pain when he moved was not that different from when he'd bruised his ribs last year, only it was sharper, more intense.

"I didn't want this," Maia said. "This makes everything worse."

"Can you move?" one of the men asked Leigh. "Hey, how many fingers?"

He held up three, the number the hand in front of him had extended. A pin of light flashed in each of his eyes.

"You're coming with us," the man said. "That eye needs stitches."

Leigh nodded. They would find out soon enough that he was going to need help standing up. Maia stood to get out of the way, and what was left of his good eye froze while his hand shot out to hold her leg still.

There was blood seeping across her socks, and the sight of it scared him. Over the past three months, Leigh had expended a lot of effort in trying to take off her socks, but she removed her bra more readily. She knew he wanted to see her scars and she wanted to hide them.

"I would never have told you," she said once, "if I'd thought we'd ... you know."

"Fall in love?" Leigh had asked her, running his hand up her leg. "Fall madly in love?"

"Right," she had answered, giggling. "I'd never have told you about my stupid feet if I had known we'd wind up stupidly in love."

"Desperately," he said.

"Truly," she said.

"Forever."

"And ever."

He had, in the end, left her socks alone, allowing them to protect her hurts and injuries. But on the day that he shattered Preston Gavenlock's right cheekbone, blinded him in one eye, and gave him a concussion, Leigh understood that while it hurt to breathe, far worse than anything else was the blood all over Maia's ribbed yellow socks.

It was probably Preston's, from when she had knelt by his head, but Leigh had bled from his mouth throughout the fight, so who knew whose blood it was staining her feet, ruining her socks. The medics squirted saline into Leigh's open eye.

"Inflamed vessels, but pupil's clear," one of them said. "What's your name?"

Leigh opened his mouth but decided not to answer. His tongue, which would need three stitches, was too clumsy to work.

"It's Leigh Hunter," Maia said. "Is he going to be okay?"

Whatever the man who was taping Leigh's ribs said, it didn't much matter.

The answer was no.

Millie, who insisted on going along when the medics helped Leigh into the ambulance, called her mother, who met them at the county hospital.

Janet, after saying
Jesus Christ, what were you thinking,
was very helpful, explaining that the pain was because, yes, he'd bruised one rib, but broken two others. They didn't think his eye needed stitches after all, but his tongue did.

She would talk to the floor nurse about getting him some painkillers.

Somewhat reluctantly, he asked about Preston. Leigh's hands felt sore and he was oddly upset at how easy it had been to damage Preston's face. Knocking someone out was harder than it sounded but easier than it should have been.

Janet said that Preston had come to in the ambulance, thrown up, gone under again, and now had a fever. The fever was a bad sign, but the vomiting a good one. She was going to call Clayton now. Did Leigh have any questions? Did he want a mirror? They'd done a good clean-up job, she told him, but he was going to have a hell of a bruise along his right temple.

When Janet left him to go in search of a place where her cell phone would work, Millie came to stand beside her brother.

"I wish you'd done it to Oliver too," she said. "And Kevin."

~~~

It took three days for doctors to give Preston an all-clear. He had flatlined twice, would need reconstructive surgery on his face, and had a detached retina, permanently damaging his vision. Rumors flew around school, parents phoned each other, and lawyers were hired. Leigh remained at home while the administration debated his fate: suspension or expulsion.

Thanksgiving, at least in the Hunter household, was skipped over, save for some cupcakes and bowls of cold stuffing. Leigh, his mouth full of stitches, ate Jell-O, broth, and slices of soggy toast.

No one called Lillian, and Leigh had the impression that his father was afraid of telling her anything until he could present it as an entire story. At the hospital, Clayton had asked what had possessed him, and all Leigh had to say was "He shot the video."

There were no more questions from his father, as if he accepted what had happened without being able to judge it. Although when Janet said they should do any and every thing to prevent Leigh from getting expelled, Clayton said, calmly, "He beat a boy unconscious. I'm not sure he should get a pass on that."

Clayton still felt that it was only Maia's choice whether to tell anyone about what had happened to her.

"Unless the Gavenlocks think about pressing charges," Clayton said. "Then I'll have to tell them. They won't want his involvement entered into the legal record any more than I want an assault and battery conviction for you."

Maia's despairing and repeated phrase
I trusted you
rang through Leigh's mind.

"She doesn't want anyone to know," he said. "I'd rather go to jail."

"You'd get anger management," Clayton said. "Expulsion is more of a worry right now."

~~~

By the weekend, Leigh's face looked fairly normal, if one ignored the blue and yellow marks along his eye. His tongue had reduced in size and he could speak, although the impulse to scratch at his stitches made it hard to think. He had eaten almost no solid food for three days, and while Leigh had no appetite, his body was screaming for a meal. He wondered how in the world Maia's mind had managed to beat her desire—her body's will—to eat.

Taking what was left of his nerve and the fragments of his bravery in hand, Leigh walked over to Maia's house. Charles Rhoem answered his knock and they studied each other for a minute. Leigh was afraid that Maia's second stepfather might try to keep him out of the house.

"Looks like you're healing up," Charles said. "She's out back teaching that monster-size dog how to fetch."

Leigh walked into the garden, trying not to think of all the time he'd spent there, when it had been easy to see her. D.C. happily trotted away from Maia and the Frisbee she was holding. Leigh held out his hand so the dog could lick it, remembering how he and Millie had found success and failure when training Bubbles. Maia's dog licked his hand, sniffed at his crotch, and then lay down on the ground.

"You know how small dogs think they're German shepherds?" Leigh said. "Maybe D.C. thinks he's one of those tiny poodles that nap all the time."

"Maybe," she said. "How's your mouth?"

"It's okay," he said. "Weird, but, you know, fine."

Silence, and then awkwardness grew as neither of them spoke.

"I wish you hadn't done it," she said, finally.

"I know," Leigh said.

"You know," she said. "Well, that's great. I'm glad that you know."

Leigh tried desperately to think of the exact right words to explain that he meant he
also
wished he hadn't done it, that he would chop off his foot—even the good one without the stress fracture—rather than hurt her. And that he would give, or do, or give up anything in order to erase the sound of her voice saying that she had trusted him.

"And to do it to Preston, God," Maia said, all her unhappiness bursting out. "He had the least to do with it, and, I mean, who cares, but at least he felt bad about it. At least he was sorry."

Leigh's entire body braced at the mere mention of Preston's apology, alerting him that he had not spent all of his rage in the fight.

"If you had to pound the crap out of someone, why not Oliver Lexham?"

Leigh spoke quickly, relieved to have words and slightly surprised she hadn't already guessed.

"Preston's the one who knew better."

"Of course," she said, but sounding even angrier than she had before.

Perhaps Leigh had explained himself badly, and he added, hoping to get it right, "I'll never be like Oliver or any of those guys. But Preston, sure. Preston's not so different from me. He's a friend of mine."

He saw her lips press together and considered the possibility that she was thinking that he'd put his "friend" in a coma.

"
Was
a friend, or I thought he was, or, that's not it," Leigh said. "Preston could have stopped them. He knows that, and he should—"

"You made this all about you," Maia said. "What I wanted was for it to be private. And all about me."

He stood still, sure she was wrong, but afraid she was right.

"I am not some totally innocent victim here," she said. "But I'm not totally at fault for that bad night, and, God, I wanted to figure it out."

She tossed the Frisbee into the faded decorative grasses that Leigh remembered having moved a few times over the summer. She clicked her fingers at the dog and paused on the steps leading up to the deck.

"I needed to figure it all out," Maia said. "By myself and in private."

"No one will know," Leigh said.

"I don't know what to say to you," she told him. "I know you didn't mean it. But now ... now I don't know."

"Listen, even if Preston's parents press charges, I will never say why I hit him. I'd go to jail before I told anyone."

Maia's head tilted slightly as she studied him. Leigh couldn't read her expression. Amused? Annoyed? If he'd once felt closer to her than anyone else, he no longer did.

"I'd never let that happen," she said. "I don't even want you suspended."

"No one will ever know," he said. "I promise."

Her hand reached out and touched his face. Gently, although it was gone before he felt it.

"But
I
know," she said. "And that's bad enough."

Leigh watched her and D.C. go into the house. It was not particularly gratifying that only the dog looked back at him.

~~~

On her first day back at school after the holiday, Millie came home saying that Oliver Lexham and Kevin Staines were playing dumb about what had happened. They'd been called in, along with Jonathan Kimber, to the headmaster's office and sworn up and down that they had no idea why Preston Gavenlock and Leigh Hunter had tried to kill each other in the cafeteria.

Millie told Leigh that this was horribly unfair and wrong.

"If they expel you, you won't live here anymore," Millie said, sitting on his bed, her shoulders slumped.

Leigh remembered, with more shame than he felt about putting Preston in the hospital, that he had moved to Calvert Park to be near his sister, whose father had died only eight months ago. How had he let things fall apart this fast?

"I'll go to public school," he said. "Don't worry."

"Clayton's already told Mom that the minute Lillian finds out about any of this, she'll yank you to Maine really fast."

"She won't find out," Leigh said.

"Unless you get expelled. Then he'll have to tell her."