Cornered (20 page)

The other children were bleating, their eyes gibbous and red with glee. He barely realized he had been biting his tongue, hard, until with every swallow, the metallic taste of blood replaced the nothing taste of saliva. It was this taste that brought him back into his body, into the reality of his small plastic chair.

It was a reality he could no longer bear. Something was wincing in him, threatening to snap.

His father watched this day, too, watched as his son escaped his too-small plastic chair, belly jiggling prodigiously, and ran to freedom. As he beelined it for the door the other children ran to block his way, creating a sturdy wall of No-Go. The teacher rose from her desk like very slow smoke, rapped again at the blackboard with her sturdy silver ring, hoping that perhaps this time it would have some effect.

Which, of course, it did not.

The only way out now was in the other direction—the window—and Jean-Carlos pushed his way through a crowd which tried to hold him back again. But he would not, could not be contained for he was a torpedo, a whirling jet with sweat-slick hair. When he reached it, he lifted it easily with both hands and hurled himself to the snow. The other children and the teacher came to the window, watching him squirm; his arm was hurt and he struggled to his feet in the slippery ice and mushy snow.

“Are you hurt?” the teacher called down, and with no response she continued, “Well, say something, Jean-Carlos! Do
you need the nurse? Jean-Carlos. Answer me! Jean-Carlos! JEAN-CARLOS!” She kept repeating his name in a frenzied kind of yelp.

But all her voice did was propel him forward, across the wide lawn of the school, the arm he'd landed on throbbing as he tried to run. Her voice echoed his name across the snow until he could hear it no longer, until he collapsed, breathless, between a row of bushes on the far edge of the school grounds. He lay there and did not move, did not wish to ever move again.

Everyone walked past him at the end of the day as he hid, still lying between the prickly, snowy bushes. He lay there so long he missed
Jeopardy!
that night, which he'd never done before. When he finally snuck home, he threw all of his turtlenecks into the trash and cut his own hair in the bathroom. Parts of it he cut too short. They looked like bald spots, which made him look sort of mean and deranged.

Which is what he wanted.

His mother did not try and stop him, but she dug his turtlenecks out of the trash later that night and tucked them into a dark corner of his closet because they could not afford to throw away perfectly good clothes like that.

• • •

Norman's eyes are open wide and they stare up at Jean-Carlos, who has come back for reasons he doesn't understand. He steps backward and stares into Norman's peeled-open eyes and
does not know what he's done. He does not understand it, though some part of him can't help but liken it to that day, to the hours he'd spent shivering alone in the snow. Something inside him crumpled, like the paper balls his classmates once threw at his soft-haired head.

He has carried that day with him in, deep in his gut, even as he flirted with Lisa-Mo Leesa who thinks he's sixteen though he's only thirteen and in possession of the finest of mustaches. Even as he's stuffed jeans he could not afford into his bag, sprinting out of the store on a dare that wasn't even a Double-Dare.

He remembers the dizzy feeling in his skull as he ran, wildly, through the cold streets toward the grocery store where his mother had worked stacking waxy produce in pyramids all day long. He remembers when his mother had work and the dinners they'd eat, side by side at the small wooden table, and how she'd hold him near her as they watched
Jeopardy!
together. She would murmur in awe as he got every answer right.

And he's got that same dizzy feeling right now as he stares at the snow which should be white but is brown and red, clumped up in weird little fists sticking out of the dirt. Norman's hands. One is clenched and one is open wide, pressed out as though to put a stop to what has already happened. No one is around. No one has stopped this.

He thinks of his mother's gloved hands lifting the cool fruit, separating perfect from bruised, smoothing the labels
flush. He thinks of the baskets of ruined fruit that used to fill their dining room table and how they would sit there, uneaten, until they melted into each other. Rotten.

He looks at Norman's mouth, flung open. At the snow, now a curtain of blood beneath his back. Jean-Carlos stoops in the snow and lets the wetness soak through to his knees as he pulls Norman's head onto his lap, not knowing what he has done because it makes no sense.

Norman's head lolls in his lap. His sister is gone, and Jean-Carlos realizes she doesn't know where Norman is. She doesn't know his face no longer looks like a face. She doesn't know that he's still breathing but barely, and she doesn't know that Jean-Carlos dials 911 on his cell phone, says what he needs to say and runs, runs like some fanatically trained action hero through the snow and back down Forsythe Ave, past the sheet-metal shacks and the high school he now attends, where he knows Norman has his lunch stolen and the shit beat out of him every single day.

When Jean-Carlos hears the yowl of the ambulance his legs stop working, and he falls again, back into the snow. A thin dog creeps from the shadowy triangles of an alleyway and sits beside him, nuzzling into his shoulder and whining softly. It's then Jean-Carlos realizes he's crying into its coat and the dog is letting him cry. He thinks that Lisa-Mo Leesa would know he was only thirteen right now if she saw him, but he doesn't even care.

In the rush of the wind through the fracture-branched
trees, there's still the sound of the ambulance. It's not far. He could go back. He could explain about the notes Norman gets in his lunches and his own mother, always in bed. He could tell them about all that fruit, rotted in bowls on their kitchen table and his father, dead so long.

But instead, he stays, and he waits. And then, when the whine of the ambulance grows too distant to hear any longer, he runs.

BY
B
RENDAN
H
ALPIN

Y
OU WOULDN
'
T THINK
fifty minutes would be so tough. I mean, you can pretty much endure anything for less than an hour—except that I spend the whole time just waiting for Kruzeman to go off on me, which he does, every day without fail. So when I have him after lunch, I have
The Sour Stomach of Dread
, which prevents me from eating even the cafeteria's chocolate chip cookies, their only edible product.

My mom works two jobs so we can keep the house, and she's never around when I get ready for school. So I just throw on whatever and leave, which is apparently not cool at Boston Classical High School, where the West Roxbury kids—even the boys—spend like an hour getting ready and making sure their sneakers match their flat brims. They all get new clothes from Hollister or Abercrombie while I rock last year's clothes from Target. And I'm not especially good about making sure things are tucked in and straight and all that stuff, because I guess I don't really value order all that much. But I know someone who does.

So I walk into class. I take a squirt from the hand sanitizer mounted on the wall and try to scoot around the crowd at
Kruzeman's desk so I can slip quietly into my seat. No such luck, though. “Mr. Michaels!” he calls. “No word from the
What Not to Wear
crew yet, I see. Well, fear not. We've sent them photos. They're bound to call.”

A few people laugh just to kiss his butt, but really, this couldn't possibly be funny anymore. He says it like every single day.

The bell rings and today—like every other day in Kruzeman's class—we're all in seats, a black ink pen in hand and a blank piece of paper in front of us. Kruzeman looks up from his desk. “Heading,” he says.

We all begin to write our headings in the top right corner of the paper. His name, our name, and the date. They must be one inch from the top and a half-inch from the right side. As his ritual, he walks through class with a ruler and every once in a while, he'll slap it down on someone's desk to measure whether their heading is in the right place. “One inch from the top. Very good, Mr. Flaherty.”

“Ms. DiNuzzio. One point five inches from the top?” He picks up Toni DiNuzzio's paper and rips it in two. “Fail. Better luck tomorrow.” I can only see the back of Toni's head, which is mostly her long black hair, but off to the side of her ponytail I see her ears getting red.

Kendrick sneezes, and Kruzeman's head whips around. “Mr. Hazelton!” He yells. “Garbage!” Kendrick gets up and throws a tissue in the trash and starts to return to his seat.

“Sanitize!” Kruzeman says. Kendrick walks over to the
sanitizer and takes a squirt, rubbing his hands together. “Fifteen seconds, Mr. Hazelton,” Kruzeman says.

Of course he reaches my desk and slaps the ruler down. He picks other people at random, but he's never missed me. “Mr. Michaels! Your heading is correct! If only you could bring that level of precision to your shoe tying.” I look down. My right shoe is untied. A couple of people titter. I reach down to tie my laces as he walks away, but he flips around.

“Reaching into your shoe for answers, Mr. Michaels? I'm disappointed, though I can't say I'm surprised. Fail—” He grabs my paper from my desk and tears it up. “And demerit. Academic dishonesty is a serious offense. You will, of course, be brought up before the dean for an academic tribunal.”

I grit my teeth.
Don't say anything stupid. Don't say anything stupid.

“I was tying my shoe,” I say. “Look.” I take off my shoe and sock. “There's nothing in there but my foot.”

Kruzeman looks down at my foot and wrinkles his nose. “Mister Michaels. You must think me an idiot. You know as well as I that you could have thrown your cheat sheet far across the room in the moments when I wasn't looking. In the meantime,” he gestures down at my foot, “I believe the air quality of this room will no longer be safe for breathing if you do not encase the offending appendage.”

I look around the room. Nobody says anything, laughs, or even looks at me. They're all busy being thankful it's not them, and I don't blame them.

I can't punch him in the face, as much as he deserves it. I can't cry, even though I kind of want to. So I do the only other thing that makes sense. I remove my other shoe and sock and stretch my bare feet out in the aisle between the desks.

I take out my iPod, pop the earbuds in, and start blasting the metal backing track I put together on my computer to shred over, as soon as I actually learn to shred on my guitar. It calms me down. My eyes are closed, my shoes are off, my headphones are in, and I just breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

My fists unclench after a minute or so, and then I open my eyes to see Kruzeman standing in front of me wearing a surgical mask and purple latex gloves. His face is red and his glasses are starting to fog up. Maybe he's yelling, but I can't tell. I look at him, but I don't remove my headphones.

I glance around the room. Everybody is laughing. I reach down and pause the iPod to hear this muffled-through-the-mask rant. “—cheating, and now violating the school electronic policy
as well
as endangering the health of your classmates with unsanitary behavior! Put your shoes on and get out of my classroom now! And place your iPod on my desk!”

I stand up, throw my bag over my shoulder, and grab my shoes and socks in my hand. I start walking toward the door, feeling better than I have in months. As I reach Kruzeman's desk, I pull the iPod out of my pocket, drop it in a sock, and toss it all on his desk.

For about ten seconds, I feel fantastic. I stood up to a bully, and yeah, I failed the test, but instead of me getting upset and
yelling,
he
was upset and yelling. And with my sock on his desk, he's probably going to have to disinfect his whole room.

• • •

My big victory lasts only until I get to the guidance office. My guidance counselor, Ms. Williams, gives me the standard lecture about the tradition of Boston Classical High School. “As one of the oldest public high schools in America and one of the very few public schools that still follow the classical curriculum, we have high standards for our students' behavior as well as their work.” It goes on and on like this. I'm not really sure I get the point, but at the end she asks, “Do you have anything you would like to say in regards to today's incident?”

“I wasn't cheating. I didn't have any answers in my shoe. He told me my shoe was untied, and I went to tie my shoe. Is it against the rules to tie your shoe?”

“I think you know it's against the rules to listen to an iPod and take your shoes off.”

“Yeah, but I was already in trouble by that point!”

“Well, right now you're clearly having some anger issues. Do you think you might benefit from anger management classes?”

“I mean, when you get accused of something you didn't do, doesn't it kind of make sense to get angry?”

“Well, is anger ever an adaptive behavior in school?”

“I don't know. Maybe you should ask the guy who was yelling in my face five minutes ago. Now
there's
a guy who
could benefit from some anger management classes. Have you ever recommended that to
him
?”