Chapter 7 Dayton
DAYTON
You watch Farshid practically throw himself into his mom’s car when you call his name. You loaned him a pencil just last week. He let you borrow his notes. You’ve never had a problem with him, and he’s never had a problem with you.
All you wanted was to ask a question about your assignment in US history. He sits right in front of you. Now he’s avoiding you.
You thought, or maybe hoped, that people would forget about you over the weekend. Or at least have moved on. Now would be a great time for someone to go through a messy breakup in the middle of the cafeteria. Or start a fight in the halls. Or vandalize a teacher’s car.
Anything to get the attention off you.
ISS was quiet, and boring, except for the times when Ms. Anderson stepped out and you and Brody could talk a little. He’s a funny guy, Brody. You’re not glad to be in ISS, but you’re glad he’s there with you, because it doesn’t feel so bad being punished if there’s a friend with you.
Brody feels like a friend, even though you’ve only known him for one day. But seven hours spent hunched over a cubicle desk, quietly scratching away at your work, can bond two guys quicker than just about anything.
Not that you spent all seven hours actually working. There wasn’t actually seven hours’ worth of work. Most of it wasn’t that hard. Even the history worksheet wasn’t hard, you just wanted to ask Farshid what he put down for question ten.
When you finished your work, Ms. Anderson let you pick a book from the small shelf in the corner, but all the books were old and beaten up and written before you were born, not new ones like Mr. Clemens keeps on one wall of his classroom, crisp new paperbacks with the spines still unbroken and the pages clean and unfolded.
Not to mention they were all written this century.
Still, you picked up a book about some rich kid finding ways to still have problems at boarding school. It was so boring you skimmed ahead and found out this guy basically shoved his friend out of a tree, and then the friend died. So what are you supposed to take away from that, anyway?
You already felt like crap, and the book just made you feel crappier.
“You good?” Brody snaps you out of it. He’s standing next to you, squinting in the sunlight. After all that time in the windowless ISS room, it’s way too bright.
“I’m good.” You are. ISS sucks, but making a new friend kind of makes up for that. “Thanks.”
“Sure, bro. I gotta catch the bus. See you tomorrow?” He holds out a hand; you clasp and go for a bro hug. He claps you once on the shoulder and gives you a grin.
“See you.” You watch him go, picking at the cuticle on your left middle finger, which is doing that annoying thing where it sticks up.
Normally you’d take the bus—or ride home with Marshall, if he doesn’t have practice after school—but today you have to wait for your dad to pick you up.
He and Mom are convinced you’d try to get around your grounding if you took the bus.
What do they think you’d do? Get off at the wrong stop? Go egg a house?
You spot Cooper coming out of the side door by the science wing, and you wave at him, but he doesn’t see you. You scan the line, but there’s still no sign of your dad, so you jog over.
“Hey! Coop!”
He finally looks your way.
“Oh. Hey.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” You shrug. Your backpack smacks your lower back. “You?”
“Not much.” He bites his lip and looks around you, past you.
“How was Sephora? Find anything good?”
“A couple things.”
You wait for him to say more, but he’s still not looking at you.
“Everything all right?” you ask.
When he finally does look at you, there’s something in his eyes that makes your stomach do a backflip.
“You really have to ask?”
He sounds angry.
He is angry.
At you.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” you ask. “I told you I couldn’t make it—”
“It’s not about you being grounded and missing Sephora, my dude,” Cooper says, but when he says my dude it’s more sarcastic than ironic. “It’s about why you were grounded.”
“Come on, man, you know I didn’t mean anything by it. I wasn’t thinking, and Reggie bet me twenty bucks, and—”
“You don’t use a word like that without meaning it,” Cooper says. “That’s messed up.”
Your jaw is clenching up. You didn’t mean it.
You didn’t!
“It was just a joke.” How many times do you have to explain yourself? Like no one’s ever told a bad joke before. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” he says. “I’m sorry I have to explain to everyone I know that I’m not a homophobe just because I used to be friends with you.”
Your throat turns to sandpaper. “Used to be?”
“You know I got like a five-minute lecture from Mr. Cain the other day, just to make sure I would behave myself because my stand mate is trans?”
Cooper plays second violin in the orchestra. He’s really good. He’s been playing since fifth grade.
“I didn’t mean it,” you say again. “It’s not like I said—”
You don’t finish that sentence, though, because even as the words tumble out of your mouth you know they’re messed up. Cooper knows, too. His lower lip trembles. He runs a hand over his fade.
You’ve never said that word (r or no r), not even when Cooper did as you sang along to Lil Nas X. Cooper’s allowed to and you’re not. It’s not like you even want to say that word. You’ve never wanted to. Never even thought about it. You’re not racist.
And you’re not a homophobe, either.
“I didn’t mean it,” you say again, because what else is there? “It was a mistake.”
“I thought I knew you,” Cooper says, and your stomach drops into your feet when he blinks and a teardrop sparkles in the corner of his eye.
He does know you, better than your own family. You’ve been friends since forever.
You try to say something, anything, but your voice doesn’t work. You don’t think you’ve ever made Cooper cry before.
“I can’t be around you,” he says, soft but final, and then he’s moving past you. Away from you. Trailing some new woodsy, smoky fragrance he must’ve found at Sephora with Tyler. Without you.
You and Cooper went to kindergarten together.
You’ve been to his house more times than you can count.
He was the one you told when you got a crush on Julia Vostock back in seventh grade.
You were the one who went with him to his grandpa’s funeral.
And now it’s all gone?
Just like that?
Maybe your friendship wasn’t as strong as you thought, if he can throw it all away over one single word.
One word that doesn’t even affect him.
One word you didn’t even mean.
Your throat tightens. Your stomach churns. Not with nerves but with anger. How can Cooper just drop you like that? Not even give you a chance to explain?
You’ve only known Brody for a day, and he was cooler about this whole thing than your best friend in the whole world.
Former best friend.
Screw him anyway.
Brody’s with you your second day of ISS, but your third day, he goes back to class, leaving you alone.
And bored. Now it’s just you, the awkward silence stretching between you and Ms. Anderson as she types away on her computer, answering emails or writing reports or doing spreadsheets or whatever it is teachers do when they’re not teaching.
But today, when you finish your work and get up to find another boring old book to read, she stops you.
“Huh?” You flinch, imagining your mom correcting you again. “Sorry, what?”
“I’d like you to do one more thing today,” she says. That might be the longest sentence she’s said to you. Mostly it’s just been variations of “No talking.”
“Okay?”
She pulls out a piece of paper with the Meadowbrook logo (a forest-green cougar) in the corner.
“Dr. Matthews thought you might like the opportunity to write an apology to Mr. Markham.”
“Oh.” There’s that clenching in your stomach again, the hot shame you’ve gotten so familiar with the past few days. It stews in your gut. At least, it does when you’re not busy being mad at Cooper and Tyler. Betrayal doesn’t even begin to cover it.
But Mr. Markham didn’t do anything to you. You did something to him. You know it was messed up. And if you can say sorry to him, at least that will solve one of your problems. You can take accountability, like Marshall said.
And then things can go back to normal. Your friends will forgive you. People will stop avoiding you in the halls. You can start taking the bus again.
“Yeah. Okay.”
Except when you sit and click your pencil, you realize the last piece of lead is shattered, and you don’t have any refills. You turn; Ms. Anderson notices and raises an eyebrow.
“My pencil’s empty,” you say sheepishly.
You think she might be trying not to laugh at you. But she hands you a nonmechanical pencil, round and blunt at the tip and with barely any eraser left. You get up to sharpen it, then sit back down.
Dear Mr. Markham, you write.
And then you stare at the paper. It’s one thing to say you’re sorry, but another to write a whole letter about it. There’s all that blank space, and I’m sorry is only two words. One more word than the thing that got you into this whole mess.
And it’s not like he cares anyway, right? He doesn’t live here. He’s off in California with all the other fancy people with expensive haircuts and spray tans and fake white teeth and tight pants.
He’ll never see you again. So what does it matter?
You almost crumple up the paper. Rip it into pieces and toss it in the trash. You’re sorry, but do you have to spend the rest of your life being sorry? You’re not the only person in the world who ever made a mistake.
You almost give up. But something stops you.
Maybe it’s the look Marshall keeps giving you over the kitchen table. Or the way Cooper’s lip trembled as he broke off a decade of friendship with you. Or the fact Reggie never did give you that twenty dollars.
It was just a joke. You didn’t mean it. But still, it was wrong.
So you pick up your pencil.
My name is Dayton Reilly, and I wanted to write so I could apologize to you for what happened at your visit …
You’re relieved that Brody’s waiting for you at the pickup line.
You weren’t sure if you were really going to become friends, or if you were just friendly because you were stuck together.
But he smiles when he sees you.
“Look who’s finally made parole.” He reaches out to clasp your hand and bro-hug you. He just came from seventh-period conditioning. His forehead and hairline are damp with sweat, and his T-shirt clings to his neck.
“Look who needs a shower,” you joke back, and then wish you hadn’t, because what if he thinks you mean it?
But he cracks a grin and laughs. “Don’t act so superior. You’ll be back with us tomorrow, won’t you?”
You nod.
“Good. I better go.” He gestures to his bus. “See you?”
“Yeah. Tomorrow.”
He walks backward, giving you a funny salute before spinning around and running for the bus, arms flailing.
You laugh.
Yeah, the week has sucked so far. And yeah, you wish you could go back and not do what you did.
But you like Brody. He gets you. And being his friend takes the sting out of everything.
You breathe a little easier as you grip the straps of your backpack and wait for your dad.