Chapter 31 #2
A couple of kids were picking on Amelia, calling her “junkie girl” and “trash baby.” I knew those words already, because my dad said them all the time about her family.
The boys weren’t even doing it to make her cry. They just wanted to see who’d win the contest for being the biggest asshole.
I kind of wanted to go over and tell them to knock it off, but I didn’t. Instead, I watched, knees tight to my chest, and tried to pretend I didn’t care what happened to her. I tried to pretend I was anywhere else.
But then one of them pushed her, just hard enough to send her sprawling into a puddle, and that was when I got up. Not because I wanted to, but because my feet went before I could stop them.
I shoved the kid who did it hard enough to make him fall. He called me a freak, and then I hit him.
I’d never punched anyone before, not really, but the second my fist landed on his face, I felt a sick zing of relief. I hit him again, and this time he bled.
Not a lot, just a nosebleed, but it felt important. He cried, and that was even more important. I wanted to keep hitting him, but a teacher finally yanked me off, her hands wrapped around my arms like cable ties.
They put me in the office with a bloody knuckle. Amelia sat across from me, her jeans wet and stiff, hands folded in her lap. She didn’t say anything, just stared at the floor, and I did the same.
The nurse came in and dabbed at my hand with a wet cotton ball. She called me “sweetheart,” which made me want to smash my other hand just so she’d stop.
Amelia looked up at that, just once, and we held eye contact for exactly three seconds before I dropped mine. Three seconds is a long time if you count it slowly.
The counselor came next. He was a small man with glasses and a voice like a wheeze, and he kept saying, “Now Caiden, can we talk about our choices?”
I wanted to tell him nobody made any choices here. The world just crunched you up and spit you out, and sometimes you landed on your feet, and sometimes you didn’t.
I didn’t want to talk about choices. I wanted to go back to the slide, or better yet, backward through time, to the minute before I watched Amelia get pushed.
But that was not a choice either.
The counselor kept at it, his words clumping together like wet bread, asking about “home environment” and “conflict resolution.” I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and let the scab on my knuckle grow tacky under the Band-Aid.
After an hour or a year, the principal came in. She had a tight face and wore her hair in a helmet, and talked in a way that made every sentence sound like a punishment. She explained that I was suspended for three days. She said the word “violence” like it was the taste of soap in her mouth.
The thing I learned is that it’s better to be violent than dead, like a feral dog. I’ve been living with violence, and it’s all I knew at this point.
“You know you’re a smart boy, Caiden,” she said, leaning down to my level, “but you have to make good choices, especially when it comes to your temper.” I nodded because that’s what you do when grown-ups stare at you like they’re waiting for a trick.
She wanted me to say I was sorry, but all I could think of was how the other kid had looked at me, like I was something to be afraid of, instead of just another kid. I liked it. I liked it more than anything.
After, they sent me home with a note in my backpack. The vice principal offered to call my dad, but I said he wasn’t home, and she just sighed and handed me a bus pass.
I didn’t take the bus. I walked. I liked to drag my feet out, make the day longer, let the wind scrape away what happened before I went back into the house.
Later that night, when my dad returned, I told him I was suspended because I punched a kid. I didn’t dare to tell him I punched a boy because he pushed Amelia.
That was a secret, just for me.
I said, “I got suspended for punching a kid,” and tried not to let my jaw shake.
He finished his beer and looked at me, red eyes glassy and wet, like a wolf caught in the high beams.
For a second, I thought he was going to backhand me just for existing, but then he laughed.
“That’s my boy,” he said, and the words felt like a reward. He smacked my shoulder, and it didn’t even hurt, not like usual.
I think maybe it was supposed to be a compliment.
He raised the can like a judge passing a sentence.
"World's full of little shits who want to see if you got any fight in you," he said.
"You gotta show 'em you do. That's the only way they ever stop.
" He looked at my hand, the one I’d used to punch the boy, and there was something almost proud there, a twisted up smile I didn't know how to wear.
We sat on the couch together, him with another beer, me with the TV remote. He let me watch whatever I wanted, so I clicked through cartoons and car commercials and once, for a full minute, a woman in a tight dress.
He didn’t care. He just stared at the wall, sometimes making a noise in his throat when the TV went loud, but mostly he left me alone.
I wanted to ask him what it meant that I was his boy. If that meant I had to do things I didn’t want to do, or if I could just be like the kids you saw in movies.
But if you asked him stuff like that, he’d get annoyed, and then the whole night would turn sour and heavy, and I’d have to run and hide in my room.
So I kept my mouth shut.
When I was seven, I still wanted to be good. I wanted it so hard I could touch it, like an invisible badge on my chest nobody else could see.
I wasn’t sure what it meant to be good except that teachers and TV shows talked about it, and sometimes, if you were good enough for long enough, someone would give you a pizza party or a gold star, or maybe just not look at you like you were a stain they couldn’t scrub out.
Being good was impossible at home, but I kept trying anyway. I tried by eating all my food even when it tasted like the inside of a boot, by keeping my room neat, and by brushing my teeth with cold water so I wouldn’t make a noise waking him up.
I tried by not crying when it hurt, and by never, ever talking back, even if I wanted to tell him he was wrong about everything.
I thought if I was good enough, my mom would come back.
Or maybe not that exactly. Maybe she would just call, or send a letter, or have one of those TV moments where she showed up at the front door with a suitcase and started crying and said: “I’m sorry, I was wrong, I didn’t mean it.
” I would say it was okay, even if it wasn’t, and then it would be.
Once, I asked my dad if he thought she’d ever come back. He was in a good mood. His eyes were clear, and he let me eat dinner at the real table instead of the counter.
He looked at me over the rim of his glass and said, “The only thing that comes back is bad news. Nothing good ever comes back.” He said it like a joke, but it felt like a punch. I tucked my fork under the plate and didn’t say anything else, because I could tell he was almost done being nice.
That night, I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, trying to trace the shape of the shadow on my wall to see if it was a monster or just a jacket hanging on the closet.
My hand throbbed. I pressed it to my chest and counted the beats, waiting to see if it would ever slow down. It didn’t.
My brain was stuck in a loop: the sound of the boy’s nose crunching, the look on his face, the way it felt to be stronger, just for a second, than anyone expected.
My dad’s voice too, bouncing around my skull. That’s my boy.
I guess I’d thought that when you finally did something right, something that made your dad proud, you’d feel happy, or at least full instead of empty.
But it didn’t feel like that. It felt weird, and also like maybe I was going to throw up, and also like maybe I wanted to do it again.
I wanted to be good so badly, but that hope was slipping. All I wanted was to make my dad proud, make him like me.
I drifted off thinking about Amelia, how she watched me from behind her hair, how she always seemed to know what I was going to do before I did.
Maybe we were the same kind of animal, the kind that waits in the ditch and watches the world go by and only bites when it has to.
Maybe I could be her friend, in secret, and she could fill this hole in my heart.