Chapter 5 Dayton
DAYTON
You’ve never been suspended before, in school or out.
You’ve never even gotten detention.
The worst trouble you’ve ever been in was that one time in fourth grade where you collided with this girl—you can’t even remember her name anymore—and you both got demerits for playing too rough at recess.
You don’t even know where the ISS room is. You go to the attendance office and the admin, who you never talk to because you’ve never needed to before, doesn’t even look up from her computer as she tells you where to go.
You’re almost late. You didn’t know Meadowbrook had a G Hall: a short cross hall connecting the E and F Halls down past both gyms. You open the door and step inside right as the bell rings.
For a second you think you’re in the wrong place. This isn’t a classroom. This is a broom closet.
Not literally—there aren’t any brooms or mops or whatever—but it’s tiny.
Four desks, though they look more like cubicles, against the far wall; two more at the corner, making an L shape.
There aren’t any windows, just the usual “motivational” posters that look like they’ve been hanging since last century.
There’s one teacher’s desk but no teacher behind it. No one else is here.
You’re about to back out and keep looking when the door opens again, bumping your backpack and shoving you forward.
“Sorry, man,” a voice says. It’s low, but kind of pinched. “You have to sign in.”
“Huh?” You correct yourself. Your mom’s always on you to speak properly. “What?”
You turn and find the voice’s owner. He’s in your conditioning class, but you don’t remember his name. He’s always at the far end of the gym during warm-ups, and you’ve never been teamed up with him for anything.
He’s white but super tanned, and stocky, built like he should be on a farm in central Missouri instead of here in the suburbs of Kansas City. His black hair is cropped short, like someone did it with clippers. His brown eyes are deep-set above a long, triangular nose.
“The sign-in sheet.” He points to a clipboard on the teacher’s desk, and sure enough, there’s a lined paper, but the string attached to the clipboard doesn’t have a pencil at the other end.
“I got you.” He pulls out a mechanical pencil, clicks it ostentatiously, moves in front of you to sign, then hands the pencil over to you.
He’s in bright yellow gym shorts and a black tee with the logo of some band you don’t recognize.
You’re not sure if those are supposed to be bull horns or devil horns. You’re too nervous to ask.
“Thanks.” You sign your name—Dayton Reilly—right below his. Brody Connors, frosh.
You add 9th grade to yours, too.
Brody goes to take a desk, and you move to take the one next to him, but he stops you.
“No homo, but bathroom rules apply here.”
You blink at him. What are bathroom rules?
“You know, skip a spot. You don’t pee right next to someone, do you?”
“Oh. Yeah. I mean, no. Duh.”
So you skip a desk and take the next. Brody pulls a folder out of his backpack and flops it onto the desk. His chair’s metal legs screech against the floor as he sits.
You copy him, but you don’t have a folder. You don’t know what you’re supposed to do.
“First time here?” he asks when he notices you looking.
“They didn’t give me a folder or anything.”
“Ms. Anderson will be here sooner or later. She can show you the ropes.” He angles himself to sort of lean against the wall of his cubicle. “What’d you do to land in here anyway?”
Your face flushes, and you hate when that happens, because everyone can tell with your pasty complexion.
“Disrupted the assembly last Friday,” you say.
Brody’s eyes go wide. “That was you?”
You nod. Brody must’ve heard. Or seen the email that went out. But that email didn’t have the whole story, so you tell him yourself.
“And you didn’t even get your twenty dollars?” he asks when you finish. “That’s cold.”
You shrug. “I haven’t even seen Reggie since then.”
Brody rolls his eyes. “No surprise. Reggie thinks he’s better than everyone.”
“Maybe.” He’s not exactly your friend. You only met him this year, when you got seated next to each other in ELA. But maybe Brody’s right.
You crack a tiny grin.
“Seriously, though, that’s kind of epic,” Brody says. “You’re gonna be a legend.”
You don’t want to be a legend. You just want to survive freshman year. Pass your classes. That kind of stuff. Maybe get a girlfriend? You’re not 100 percent sure on that just yet.
But you definitely don’t want to be the guy everyone thinks goes around shouting slurs at strangers, like some sort of … walking hate crime or something.
It wasn’t even a crime. And you don’t hate anyone.
It was just a word. A word you shouted because you weren’t thinking.
You don’t know how to explain that to Brody, though. Especially since he finds the whole thing funny. He makes it feel less serious. Less like the world has ended.
You didn’t know how much you needed that.
“What about you?” You mirror his lean against your own cubicle, but the walls are flimsier than you thought, and you nearly topple over when it fails to hold your weight.
“Careful,” Brody says, lunging forward to grab your knee before your chair tips. He releases you with another “No homo.”
“Thanks.” You didn’t think it was homo. But anyway. “So? What’d you do?”
Brody rolls his eyes again. They’re big and brown and expressive, but the shadow of his heavy brow makes them look a little mischievous, too.
“Ah, nothing as good as yours.” He sighs and rests his hands behind his head.
“Ms. Wilson heard me and Chris joking about whacking it. Well, she heard me joking about him doing it too much, so he got off scot-free and I got ISS.”
He blows a raspberry.
“Three days, same as you. And no offense, but how is that fair? I didn’t even offend anyone.”
“Yeah. That sucks,” you agree, though your insides squirm.
Brody and Chris aren’t the only guys who joke about that kind of stuff.
Everyone’s making jokes and hand motions whenever the teachers aren’t around.
You don’t remember that being a thing, back in eighth grade.
Well, except for that rumor about Bentley Morris doing it at the back of the bus on the way home from a field trip to the Nelson-Atkins. But you don’t think that was true.
Still, Bentley isn’t here this year. He transferred to a private high school.
“Right? Everybody does it,” Brody says. “It’s not like … sexual harassment or something.”
You don’t do it. Should you be?
You don’t even know how. You’ve touched yourself, sure, but nothing really …
happened. Maybe you’re doing it wrong, but there’s no one you can ask, not your parents and definitely not Marshall, who would never let you hear the end of it.
Though now you think about it, he did start spending a lot longer in the shower back when he first started high school. You snicker.
“Yeah, my older brother likes to take long showers these days.”
Brody laughs, a wild, free sound that eases the tightness in your stomach. It’s not from hunger or anything: Your mom and dad finally got groceries this weekend, so you managed to grab a granola bar before school. But the ISS room makes you feel … weird.
Trapped.
Brody’s laughter makes you feel better.
“You get me,” he says. “We’re guys. It’s not a big deal.”
Somehow it feels like one. You’re not sure why.
Brody laughs again, and you find yourself laughing, too, because he’s right, you are just guys.
You’re still laughing when the door opens and Ms. Anderson walks in, holding a stuffed folder.
“No talking,” she says automatically, even though you and Brody both went silent as soon as she came in. “Face forward, please. Dayton, this is the work you’re missing today. Be sure to stop by the main office tomorrow morning to get your new one. You’ll do that every day you’re here.”
Three days. It’s only three days.
You won’t be here again after that.
You’re not a bad kid.
But then, Brody doesn’t seem that bad, either. Maybe he jokes a little too much, but he’s harmless. So maybe ISS isn’t for bad kids. Maybe it’s just for whoever they’ve decided to punish that day.
And for the next three days, that’s you.
So you nod and take your work. There’s no making up the rehearsal you’re missing in choir, so you pull out your English homework.
A reflection on last Friday’s talk. That you missed most of.
Great.