Held (29 page)

“You hear me the first time, Boozer?” Dominic asked.

I considered not answering, just picking up my book and going on to class. But I knew they wouldn’t let that happen. They never let that happen.

“No,” I lied.

Dominic stepped closer to me, towering over me. “No what, Boozer?” His face was only inches from mine. This close, I could see the fuzz above his lip, and I knew he’d had sausage for breakfast. Not only was there a piece still caught in his teeth, but the smell was potent.

“No, I didn’t hear you the first time.”

“He heard you,” said Taylor. Of course he’d agree with him. If Dominic said the world was flat, Taylor would back him up.

“I didn’t,” I said.

Dominic pushed me. “Maybe you need to clean out your ears. Or we’ll clean them out for you.”

The bell rang. Dominic shoved his finger into my forehead, pushing my head backward and creating a small circle of pain on my skin between my eyebrows, and the four of them walked away.

I grabbed my book off the floor and went to class.

Everyone was already seated when I walked into the room.

They all stared at me when I walked in, but I was used to it. They’d been staring at me my whole life. It’d be weird if they stopped now.

I struggled through English Lit. I just didn’t get it. We were reading The Rhyme of the Ancient Sea Mariner. What did the albatross have to do with the story? And what was an ancient sea mariner anyway? And why couldn’t they translate this story into a more modern way of speaking so I could understand what I was reading? No one else complained about not getting it, so I figured it was just me. Dumb old me, once again not understanding something. So I suffered through it in silence.

When Mrs. Wayne gave us a pop quiz, I knew I’d failed it. We didn’t grade it in class, but we didn’t have to. Out of the five questions we were asked, I knew the answers to none of them. But I knew I got my name right. Although, now that we’d passed the papers forward, I couldn’t even remember if I’d put my name on my paper. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d forgotten to label the paper, letting the teacher know which idiot to assign the F.

I returned to my locker, hoping I wouldn’t run into Dominic or his buddies. I’d been trying unsuccessfully to avoid them since Kindergarten. I was getting tired of it.

Luckily, I made it to my locker, switched my English Lit book for my History book, and made it to class without incident.

We had to take turns reading sections out loud. I hated it. I wasn’t good at reading aloud. That wasn’t a surprise to anyone since I wasn’t good at anything. Except maybe pretending I didn’t hear the snickers and sneers as my classmates laughed at the way I stuttered and stammered while I read. They didn’t realize that part of the reason I read that way was because they made me nervous.

But I pushed through and was glad I’d had a short paragraph to read.

After History, I put my book in my locker and headed to Woodworking class. I didn’t drag my feet about getting there like I did to my other classes. It was one class I didn’t dread. I liked working with the wood. I liked the smell of the lumber, the hum of the lathe, and the feel of the tools in my hand. It was one of only two classes I wasn’t flunking.

Plus, I shared my worktable with Carly. I had a lot of classes with her, but this was the one where we talked the most. You didn’t have to be too quiet in Woodworking.

“Could you help me for a minute, Brian?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, putting down the planer I’d been using.

“I’ve measured this board three times and have gotten three different numbers.” She smiled.

I took the tape measure from her and measured her board. This close to her, I could smell the scent of her over the smell of the wood. Even mingled together, it was a wonderful smell.

“What’s it supposed to measure?” I asked.

“I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.”

I looked at her.

“You think I’m stupid?” she asked shyly.

“No. I’d never think you were stupid.” I said quietly.

She smiled at me. “Well, I feel stupid. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“I’ll help you,” I said. I began working with Carly on her project, a shelf for her mother. I spent more time working on her project than mine. That was fine with me. No one cared about my project anyway. Travis would probably just smash it during one of his drunken fits.

“Thanks for helping me,” she said after class as we walked to the cafeteria.

“You’re welcome. I don’t mind.” I looked at her. She looked back at me and smiled, and my heart pounded.

Of course, when we entered the cafeteria, she ran off to join her friends and left me to myself. I was used to it. But at least I had the time we spent together to think about.

I stood in line and waited to be served my food. I glanced around the cafeteria, happy not to see Dominic or his friends. I knew they’d be here, though. They always were.

With my tray, I headed out to the tables. There was no one willing to let me sit with them. I always sat at a table on the far side of the room, usually alone. The only time anyone ever sat at the table was if a new kid had no one to sit with. Usually, they had already made at least one friend by lunch, which made it even more pathetic that I’d gone to school with these kids my whole life and had none.

But it was okay that I didn’t have friends. Friends were trouble, work. If I had friends, I’d have to do a lot of explaining. ‘Hey, Brian. Where’d you get that bruise?’ ‘Hey, what happened to your eye?’ ‘Did you cut yourself?’ ‘Is that a cigarette burn on your arm?’ ‘Have you been crying?’

Yeah. It was easier to not have friends.

So I sat alone eating a chunk of dry lasagna with undercooked noodles, tasteless green beans, peaches that tasted a little too much like metal, warm chocolate pudding, and drinking my milk. It wasn’t a delicious meal, but it would fill the hole in my stomach. Besides, I wasn’t paying attention to the food. I was thinking of Carly.

A few times, I risked peeking up to get a glimpse of her talking and laughing with her friends. I was careful not to be noticed looking at her by anyone. If someone saw me, I had no doubt that what my life would become would make what it was now look like a breeze.

She was the prettiest girl in the whole school, and her attitude made her even prettier. I couldn’t remember a single time that she’d ever made fun of me like everyone else did. She talked to me when I talked to her, unlike the other girls. If I asked them a question, they ran off to tell their friends that Brian Boozer actually had the nerve to talk to her. Carly would even start conversations with me, which no one ever did. Carly was different. It’s the reason I’d liked her for so long.

Her warm smile, kind blue eyes, and adorable dimples made her cute. But the way she treated me made her beautiful.

I finished my lunch and walked over to dump my tray. Had I not been so preoccupied with thoughts of Carly, I might’ve seen Dominic rushing toward me with his tray. Before I noticed him, he slammed his tray into my chest, pretending to have tripped.

“Oh, Boozer. That sucks.” He laughed. The three buttholes behind him laughed too.

Dominic pulled his tray away from my chest, revealing the mess. Lasagna and chocolate pudding covered the upper half of my shirt. Here and there, a green bean was stuck to the goo.

“You did that on purpose,” I said quietly.

“Did I?” Dominic asked, stepping toward me. “Prove it.” He jabbed his finger into my forehead and walked away.

I looked at Carly, hoping she hadn’t seen what just happened. She was looking directly at me. So were all her friends. So was everyone else in the cafeteria. But out of all those people, Carly was the only one not laughing.

I stood in the restroom, trying my best to wipe the food off my chest with paper towels that felt more like thin cardboard than paper, hating Dominic more by the second. Why was he like this? Why did he single me out and pick on me the way he did? I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered for the millionth time if I looked that different from the other kids.

My hair was a very average shade of light brown. It was a little long; not I’m-a-hippie long, but I-need-a-haircut long. I kept it combed forward. Seeing nothing unusual about my hair, I moved on to other things, like my face.

I had a few freckles, but not nearly as many as Spencer had. Lots of people had freckles. So that didn’t make me different. My teeth weren’t horrible. There were a couple of crooked ones on the bottom, but it was only noticeable if I smiled, and that sure didn’t happen often. My lips weren’t too thick or thin. My nose wasn’t too big or too small. My ears didn’t stick out either. Seeing nothing wrong with my face, I moved on the rest of me.

I was shorter than Dominic, but was as tall as most of the other boys my age. It wasn’t like I was freakishly big or freakishly small. I wasn’t fat. In fact, I thought I was too skinny. My arms and legs weren’t too long or too short. My feet weren’t too big or too small.

I didn’t see anything about me physically that would make me the laughingstock of the school. And yet I was. I always was and probably always would be. The thought of going through this hell for the next five years made me want to cry. In fact, my chin quivered and my vision blurred, but I quickly stopped it. I wasn’t going to cry here, where anyone could walk in at any time and see. I never let anyone see my tears, especially the people that caused me to cry. I didn’t have much, but I had that.

Already late for Biology, I didn’t hurry. I didn’t even care. I was flunking Biology anyway.

Slowly, I walked to my locker and opened the door. At first, I thought I had gone to the wrong locker, but when I saw my backpack, I knew I hadn’t. Hanging beside my backpack was a t-shirt. Taped to the front of the t-shirt was a note written in a familiar scrawl.

It said: Brian, this is my gym shirt, but I think it’ll fit you. Carly.

I smiled inside, though my lips never moved. I put the note in my pocket and held up the shirt. It was a plain light grey t-shirt. There were no indications that this was a girl’s shirt. But even if it had been pink with glitter and unicorns, I would’ve still worn it. After all, it was Carly’s shirt.

Bringing the shirt to my face, I buried my nose in it and inhaled the sweet scent of Carly. Breathing deeply, I closed my eyes and for a second, nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that the whole school had laughed at me. It didn’t matter that I had a tray of food smeared across my chest. Nothing mattered except that Carly had thought of me.

I didn’t even bother going to the restroom. I was the only one in the hall now, everyone else having already gone to class. I yanked off my ruined shirt and threw it to the bottom of my locker, and then pulled on Carly’s shirt. It was soft and smelled good. It was a little snug, but not noticeably so. Besides, none of my clothes ever fit properly so I was used to it.

I grabbed my Biology book and headed for class, fifteen minutes late.

When I walked into the room, everyone was already in their groups dissecting their worms. The teacher, Mr. Wilson, placed me in a group. Of course, we were next to Dominic and his buddies. I always seemed to end up next to him. But at least I hadn’t been stuck in his group, so I counted my blessings.

I saw the way Dominic looked at my shirt, undoubtedly wondering where I’d gotten it. But then he turned his attention back to the worm. Apparently, slicing open dead things was more important than bothering me. I was happy to know that something was.

Standing there in my group, I watched as the other kids did all the work. They didn’t even acknowledge that I was there. No one asked me anything, no one offered to let me do any cutting, no one asked for my opinions or observations on anything. That was fine with me. I wouldn’t have known what to do or say anyway. After all, I was flunking this class along with all the others.

“Brian, are you participating?” asked Mr. Wilson in a low tone. I liked him. He was a soft-spoken man with white hair and a constant smile. He never singled me out in front of everyone the way the other teachers did. If he had anything to say to me, he said it quietly, to avoid embarrassing me.

I looked up at him. “Not really.”

“Well, you should. It would improve your grade.” He nodded once and walked away.

I looked at the other kids in my group, sure that one of them would now hand me a scalpel or ask me a question or something. Anything. But it was as if they hadn’t heard a word. No one offered to let me in on the dissection, so I continued to stand there, feeling dumb and useless, until the bell rang.

At my locker, I put my book on the shelf with the others and headed to gym class, both wishing the day was over and dreading when it would be.

Walking to the gym through the crowded hall, other kids bumped into me, knocking me this way and that. When I heard the squeak of tennis shoes on the floor behind me, I automatically cringed. It had become instinct to do so. Then, I was shoved forward. I fell onto the crowded hallway floor with just enough time to brace my fall.

Nose to floor, I lay there, knowing who’d pushed me without even looking. When I heard him laugh, I looked up and saw Dominic and his stupid friends walking away from me toward the gym, laughing as they went.