FIVE YEARS EARLIER
Dad’s car has disappeared down the street within a second of me closing the door, but I like that he never sticks around. The quicker he is gone, the sooner I can breathe a sigh of relief. My shoulders sink as my body relaxes from its tensed state and I fall into step next to Dean as we make our way across campus. We still have ten minutes until first period, so everyone is sort of milling around, leaning against lockers, waiting for the bell to ring. I only have a couple friends, but I still smile at the other kids in my classes whenever I pass any of them, and they sometimes wave back. I’m pretty good at the whole smiling thing. I find myself doing it even when I don’t want to.
“There’s Jake!” Dean says, pointing off toward the main office. He seems to speed up, so I keep up with him while I search for Jake, and when I spot him, he’s already walking toward us.
“I’ve been here since seven thirty because my mom had to start her shift earlier,” he complains as he comes to a halt in front of us, but there’s something different about him today. I tilt my head to one side as I study him, but his hair is still the usual shaggy blond that covers his eyes, and he’s wearing the same old blue hoodie that he always wears. But when he adds, “I had to speak to that weird kid from gym class,” I hear the lisp to his words and I see the shine of metal on his teeth.
“Did you get your braces?” I ask.
“Oh yeah,” Jake says, as though he’s totally forgotten all about them, despite only having them for less than twenty-four hours. He grins wide to show them off. “What do you think?”
“Why did you choose green?” Dean questions.
“Because I like green, idiot,” Jake answers, and then thumps him on the shoulder.
We’ve only known Jake for a little over a year, since we first started middle school, but we may as well have known him forever. It feels that way, at least, and I like that there’s three of us now instead of two. We all love football, we hate math, and we play too much Madden NFL on PlayStation 2.
“They, like, totally pried my mouth open!” Jake tells us as we begin to walk, headed inside toward our classes, though I’m not listening too closely. I feel far away again, that disconnected feeling surrounding me. “But my dentist is rough as hell, so my dad started yelling at him, telling him to stop tearing my mouth apart. Now I have to eat nothing but soup all day.”
I glance over at Jake. He always talks a lot, always rambles on about pointless stuff, but this time, he has grabbed my attention. “Your dad wouldn’t let you get hurt?” I quietly blurt out without thinking. I am always curious about everyone else’s parents. If it was me, Dad would have rolled his eyes and told me to man up.
“Uh, no. Would yours?” Jake shoots back, then dramatically presses his hand to his face. “My jaw was in agony! I could barely breathe! I shouldn’t even be at school today. I’m in pain.”
I tune back out and tilt my head down, my eyes on the ground as we navigate the school hallways. It’s loud. People are yelling, people are laughing, people are nudging me, pressing against that deepening bruise on the back of my shoulder.
Jake doesn’t know pain. Jake doesn’t know how hard it is not to physically flinch whenever someone touches you. Jake doesn’t know what real agony feels like. I am jealous of him and Dean, of every other person laughing around me, who get to go home at night and not feel as though their heart is going to beat straight out of their chest whenever their dad comes anywhere near them.
“Aren’t you at science?” Dean asks, and I glance up from the ground to realize that we are passing my class. I can’t remember the past five minutes. That seems to happen a lot.
“Crap. Yeah.” I grind to a halt and turn for the door of my class, that bruise on my shoulder still throbbing. “Catch you guys at lunch.”
* * *
Science is okay. It’s the easiest class to fade into the background in, mostly because every twenty seconds someone has their hand in the air, asking Miss Fitzgerald for further explanation on points she’s already covered at least five times already. So I sit at my seat by the window with my elbow propped up on the table and my chin resting on my palm, my stare boring through the dusty glass and over to the sports field. It’s empty, but the sun is shining on the patchy grass and after a while, I stop looking. My eyes are open but I’m not really there, not really seeing. I zone out entirely as Miss Fitzgerald’s voice drifts off into silence until silence is the only thing that surrounds me, but I like it this way. I like the quiet and the still, because it makes me feel alone. It makes me feel safe.
I think about Dean’s dad, Hugh, again. He’ll be waiting for us outside school in his truck a few hours from now. A smile on his face and his hand up in the air, waving just in case we haven’t spotted him as he gets out of the truck to greet us. Dean doesn’t like it when he does that. He thinks it’s embarrassing, but I love seeing Hugh waiting for us. He always pats me on the back the same way he does to Dean, and as crazy as it makes me feel, I like to pretend, even just for a second, that Dean and I are brothers and Hugh is my dad. That would be pretty sweet. Hugh wouldn’t get angry if I messed up my homework, I’m sure of it. He wouldn’t raise his voice, nor his fists. I would know that he loved me.
I love Dad, but not always. I hate him a lot of the time, actually. Maybe I could run away. I could sneak out of school right now, grab a bus to Union Station, hop on a train to wherever the hell I could get to for five bucks. Which is absolutely nowhere.
“Tyler,” Miss Fitzgerald’s voices echoes from my right, and I snap out of my daze, pulling my attention back to her. She is towering over my desk, hand on hip, her face set in a disapproving frown. “Would you like to share with the rest of the class what exactly it is that you find so interesting outside?”
“Uhh.” Everyone’s eyes are on me and they are all collectively smirking with glee at my misfortune of getting caught out. I rack my brain for an answer, but what can I tell her? I glance around the expectant gazes of my classmates, and I know what they’re waiting for. They’re waiting for me to break under the pressure, but I refuse to. I never do. Not here, not at school. I refuse to be weak here.
Slumping further down into my chair, I shrug and lazily glance back up at Miss Fitzgerald. “I can’t help it that the grass is more exciting than your class,” I finally tell her, my voice flat. I don’t care, I think, and the hushed wave of laughter that makes its way around the room fills me with satisfaction. Distract them so that they can’t figure out what you’re really thinking.
Miss Fitzgerald purses her lips. I can see it in her eyes, that flicker of disappointment that I am all too familiar with. Most of my teachers have given me that exact same look recently. A year ago, I was quiet. Kept my head down. Scribbled down notes as fast as I could. Tried my best. But lately? I don’t see the point. Dad is never happy, no matter how hard I work. It’s just so much easier not to care.
“Then perhaps you’ll enjoy waiting outside,” Miss Fitzgerald says. Her lips twitch now, and she gives a pointed nod toward the door, folding her arms across her chest.
On the outside, I roll my eyes and smirk, but inside I feel guilty. I like Miss Fitzgerald, so I can’t look at her as I get up out of my seat and weave my way around the desks. The faces surrounding me are lit with amusement, and to keep everyone even more entertained than they already are, I even close the door a little too harshly on my way out.
The hallway is silent, and it reeks too. There’s only fifteen minutes to go until class wraps up, so I pace back and forth for five of them, praying that Dad won’t find out that I’ve just been kicked out of class. A couple months ago, Mr. Tiller sent me out of his math class for back-talking him too. At the time, I thought I was funny. I thought I was cool. But what I didn’t know was that later that afternoon, Mr. Tiller called Dad. He was waiting for me when I got home, his anger brimming.
It was a bad night.
I have a scale now, one that I’ve invented.
There’s the awesome nights, the way every night should be, the ones where Dad grins at me across the living room and slips me extra cans of soda when Mom isn’t looking. The nights that I actually laugh with him. It’s the kind of night that’s rare, the kind that makes me wonder if maybe things are changing for the better.
But then there’s the good nights, where nothing really happens at all. A good night is when Dad keeps to himself, usually huddled over paperwork at the kitchen table, a pen between his teeth and his foot tapping a relentless beat.
There’s the bad nights, too. They’re the nights that happen too often. A bad night begins the moment I mess up, the exact second I do anything that isn’t good enough for Dad. I can handle a bad night now. I am numb to them. Usually, I close my eyes so that I don’t have to look at him. I stare into the darkness instead, wondering if Mom is okay working late by herself down at her office; wondering if Jamie has beat the next level on his game yet; wondering if Chase is laughing at his cartoons. Before, I would wonder when Dad was going to stop. Now I just don’t bother.
And then there’s the highest point of my scale: the really, really bad nights. The kind of night where I don’t even recognize Dad. He doesn’t usually scare me, but on the really, really bad nights, the crazed, wild look in his green eyes is always enough to send a stab of fear straight through me. There’s no stopping him on those nights. The last time one of those nights went down is still fresh in my mind. It was only a month ago. It was the night Dad broke my wrist for the second time. I can’t even remember why he was so furious at me, because I blacked out for most of it. Mom thinks I fell down the stairs. If only. It would break her heart if she knew the truth.
I glance down at my hands. Lift my left one, roll my wrist a couple times. It still hurts sometimes, but it’s improving. I sigh and lean back against the wall, sliding down to the ground, closing my eyes. I’m so tired. Tired of overthinking. Tired of inventing distraction techniques. I draw my knees up to my chest and force all of my thoughts out of my head, focusing instead on the sound of footsteps in the distance. They grow closer, louder, nearing me. Until they stop.
“You got kicked out of class?” a voice asks.
I open my eyes and look up. Rachael Lawson is staring down at me with curiosity from behind her big round glasses, her blond hair wrapped up in a high ponytail, loose strands framing her face. We share some classes. We hang out sometimes. We’re friends, I guess.
“Yep,” I say. Back to being Tyler the cool kid. Not Tyler the overthinker, not Tyler the kid who gets thrown around. That guy is lame. I don’t like being him. “I talked back to Miss Fitzgerald. She isn’t impressed.”
“You’re crazy.” Rachael shakes her head at me, then laughs as she walks away.
“You bet I am!” I call after her. Yeah, right. Crazy for acting like someone I’m not, more like. I can’t remember when I first started doing it, but it’s starting to feel comfortable. I’m starting to like this Tyler better, but yet, as soon as Rachael is out of sight, I am back to being myself.
Sat on the floor, my back against the wall, the bruise on my shoulder aching, my mind in overdrive.