A fifty-four minute class period is surprisingly long. We cleaned up, and I wiped the blood from his face and shoulders, and I stood at the sink for a while, running cold water over my latest mark.
Austin stood by me, shoulders hunched, eyes focused on the cut and never once shifting up to my face. When I turned off the tap, he grabbed a handful of paper towels and pressed them against the cut with a crushing grip.
“I’ve got Band-Aids in my bag,” he said in a low voice. “My mom makes me carry a few.”
“Thanks.”
“I—” He paused, bit his lip, and shook his head. “Man, I should not have done that.”
“What?”
“That.”
“I thought you were going to run away.”
“What?” For the first time, his eyes came up to mine. “God, no. I mean, I knew someone had done something awful to you. I’ve seen you without a shirt on. But what you’ve been through—fuck, I just, I want to—” His voice cut off, but the force in his hand increased as he struggled with himself.
“I’ve never told anyone that. No one. Not Gage. Not the social workers back in Oklahoma. Not the foster family that took me in. Nobody.” With my free hand, I tilted his chin up so our foreheads touched. “Not Emmett Bradley.”
He kissed me, and it was timid and unsure. “I didn’t want you to—”
“I wanted to. I needed to.”
The pressure on my arm increased again, and tension thickened his voice when he said, “I just don’t want you to think I . . . I liked it. I mean, that’s not what—”
This time, I kissed him, and there was nothing timid about it. Timid was about fifty miles off and running fast. When I broke away, I said, “I know. You don’t have to explain anything. I felt it too.”
With a frown, Austin rolled back the blood-stained paper towels. A trickle of blood ran from the cut, and he reapplied pressure and led me over to his locker. With his free hand, he dug out the Band-Aids and a travel-size tube of Neosporin. At my questioning look, he shrugged. “I told you, my mom. She would probably still pack my lunch, if I let her.” The contrast between what I had told him about my mother and what he had just said must have hit him because he blushed and stammered, “I mean—”
I chuckled. “I’m ok. You can still talk to me about your parents. I’m not any different than I was before. I just—I didn’t want to keep holding things back from you. I didn’t want you thinking I was hiding something.”
Austin peeled back the paper towels again. This time, with a practiced movement, he applied Neosporin with his thumb and then positioned the bandage. The cut still throbbed, but it felt distant now.
“You know there’s no way I can be ok with this,” he said, looking at the cuts on my arm. “I mean, I’ll try not to get mad. And I don’t want you to hide it from me. But Jesus Christ, if you knew what it felt like to watch you do that.” He stopped, struggled again, and finally said, “I want to find a better way to deal with things.”
I stooped, gathering up the fallen razor blades and nesting them in their white cardboard box. “If it gets to a place where you can’t handle it anymore, that’s ok. I’ll understand.”
Frustration furrowed his forehead. “That’s not what I’m saying. I—”
The door slammed open, and kids flooded the locker room, hurrying to change before the bell rang and we all rushed off to class again. Colton and Kaden were among them, and both of them gave Austin questioning looks. Austin ignored them. Kaden lingered a moment, then hurried to change. Colton, however, fixed me with a dark look and made sure that his shoulder hit me as he stormed past.
“Let’s talk after school,” I said. “There’s a lot you need to know about what’s been going on.”
Austin nodded, and the bell rang. I hurried to my next class: chemistry, Mr. Warbrath’s class. When I arrived, the other kids in the class huddled in small groups. Some of them were scanning the room, as though looking for signs of Mr. Warbrath’s death. Others talked in low whispers. As with most of my classes, I didn’t have any friends in chemistry, so I dropped onto a stool at the front lab table. When the bell rang again, the other students slowly settled into their seats. A minute ticked by, and then another.
“Fifteen-minute rule,” a guy at the back of the room called, and a titter of nervous laughter ran through the class.
Then, from the hallway, came the click-click of heels. I recognized something about that sound, it reminded me of something, but my head was still spinning from what had happened with Austin. The rawness of that moment, the way he had reacted to the truth about my past, it had set my head spinning. I had thought, for sure, that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had thought, for sure, Austin Miller would get the truth he wanted and then run away so fast he left skid marks. But instead—instead he’d stayed.
The door opened, and a woman stepped into the room. Her arrival hit the class like a blast of arctic air: heads swiveled in curiosity and then drooped, shoulders climbed, and stools squeaked as students clustered together. Her heels clicked as she made her way to the front of the room, and then I caught my first glimpse of her.
She was tall and built wide. Not fat, not really, just massive. If she’d swapped places with one of the linebackers, Vehpese High’s football team would have had a solid chance of winning state. Her hands, long and wide, could have scooped gravel or pounded a fence post into place or taken charge of a team of wild horses. She wore a flowery blouse that was buttoned all the way to its lacy collar, and even with the little I knew about fashion, I was pretty sure nobody had sold a blouse like that since the 1950s. Her hair, iron-grey, stood in stiff, short spikes, and that was the softest thing about her face.
“My name is Mrs. Troutt,” she said, planting those giant hands on the teacher’s desk and looming towards us. “I will be your substitute teacher. I understand that Mr. Warbrath’s death was a tragedy. I hope that you understand one very simple thing: we will not be discussing it. School is a place for school. Get out your textbooks.” Uncomfortable murmurs ran through the students. Nobody had expected a shoulder to cry on, but all of us had thought that some token words of consolation and support would be offered. As the moment dragged out, Mrs. Troutt raised one massive hand and cracked it against the desk. “Now,” she commanded.
The rest of class ran smoothly, although that undercurrent of discomfort remained. She wasn’t cruel like Mr. Lynch. She wasn’t even stodgily irritated, the way Mr. Warbrath had been. She was . . . distant, I guess is the best word, like she was a hundred feet tall and we were ants. For the moment she didn’t mind watching us, but if we made trouble, she’d just smear us across the sidewalk with one heel.
Towards the end of class, Mrs. Troutt turned off the lights and ran a series of slides about friction and heat. She sat on the edge of the classroom, and after a moment, a nervous prickle ran up my neck. I couldn’t say why, not at first, and I struggled to focus on the slides and block out the—much more pleasant—memory of my recent encounter with Austin. Warning bells kept ringing at the back of my brain, though, and I started looking for what was making me want to run or fight or maybe both.
It took me a moment, and then I realized what it was: Mrs. Troutt was staring at me as she lectured. She wasn’t looking at me, or glancing at me, or studying at me. She was staring at me. And she was smiling. She droned on and on about force and motion and resistance, but her eyes never left me, and her smile never changed.
As the bell rang, she passed in front of the projector, and a cord of electricity ran from my gut to the back of my brain. Run, that part of my brain said. Get off your ass and run. Because those stiff, short spikes of hair, when her shadow fell against the screen, looked just like horns.
“Class dismissed,” she said, flipping on the lights.
And for a moment, before the heat in the classroom made it vanish, a skin of ice glowed where she had touched the plastic panel.