Scraped Knees #2
I nodded with a false smile, pretending the sharp twist in my chest wasn’t there. It wasn’t crazy at all. In fact, I had been trying to ask him for weeks.
For the rest of the period, I couldn’t concentrate. The words I’d planned dissolved into silence.
“Hey, did you ask anyone?” The look he gave me was expectant, as if I’d already lined it up.
“No, I can’t go,” I lied. “We have uh—family thing that day.” It was sort of the truth, and it hurt a lot less than admitting I’d planned on asking him approximately a million times if only I’d been born with a spine.
“Oh. Sounds fun.”
I nodded, giving him a faint smile.
Friday arrived, and with it, my nerves once more.
I’d almost convinced my grandmother to keep us home, but she insisted it would be good for my brother and me to be distracted.
As if I wasn’t already distracted enough.
I sank into my usual spot in English class, beside Jude, stomach knotted as I checked the clock on the wall for the fifth time.
A few minutes later, I glanced again, pencil flicking back and forth in my hand.
“Hey, are you okay?” Jude leaned in to whisper.
“Fine.” My mom’s surgery started at eight-thirty and was going to be a few hours long. I couldn’t focus, so I checked the clock again.
Twenty minutes in, the phone rang. Ms. Bates picked it up, twirling the cord between her slender fingers. “Solace, you’re needed in the office.”
I froze. My heart caught in my throat. “Okay.”
“Can someone escort her?” she asked the class.
Jude’s hand shot up before anyone else could answer. “I’ll go.”
When we reached the office, my little brother, Milo, was crouched with his back against the wall, knees hugged to his chest. His eyes were red and puffy as he glanced up at me.
“What’s going on?” I asked softly, but he didn’t answer.
Our principal leaned out of the office. “Solace, can I have a moment?”
“Of course.” I rubbed a hand over the arm Milo held wrapped around his legs. “I’ll be right back,” I told him.
“I’ll stay here,” Jude added, sitting down beside my brother.
Mr. Schumacher’s expression was terse, arms held tightly against his chest as he leaned against the office desk. “Sorry to disturb your class time, but we’re struggling to get in touch with your family. Your brother has started not one, but two fistfights this morning.”
I winced, glancing over my shoulder to where I could see Milo through the glass. Jude had an arm slung around his shoulders, their heads ducked low together.
“He won’t talk to us and we can’t reach your parents.”
My throat closed. “My mom—she’s having surgery this morning. My grandparents are staying with us for a few weeks. He’s not doing well with all of it.”
Mr. Schumacher’s jaw ticked, as if he wasn’t expecting that. Hard to discipline a kid who’s already going through hell. “Is she—is she alright?”
“She has cancer.” I didn’t add that she’d already had radiation and despite her being a doctor herself, and assuring us she’d be totally fine—we were all a mess.
He looked pensive for a moment. “I see. I’m sorry to hear that Solace. Do you think you could call your grandparents for us? We need to let them know, and have them pick up Milo. I think it’s best if he goes home. What about you? Would you like to go home?”
I watched Jude and Milo through the glass where they were talking. Actually talking—hands and mouth moving. He’d hardly spoken all week to any of us.
“Solace?”
“Oh—um, yeah. I’d like to go home.” Mr. Schumacher handed me a phone, and I dialed my grandmother.
Afterward, I knelt beside my brother, wrapping my arms around him even though he hated being hugged.
Milo pressed his face into my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I held him tighter. “I’m going to go gather your things and then grab my backpack. Grandpa’s on his way to get us..”
“Am I in trouble?”
My lips thinned into a line. “No, I don’t think so. Let’s go home.”
Milo nodded, tucking his chin back into his knees. “I’ll wait.”
“Be right back.”
Jude hovered nearby, awkward in his concern, but he’d at least waited until we’d made it further down the hall and out of earshot to say, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged, words about the dance, and about my strange feelings caught in my chest. “I don’t know.
” Why didn’t I tell him? I told him everything.
Even the time I peed my pants in first grade, or the time Mrs. Laken made me help her shave her cat.
All things that had ranked on my Worst Days of My Life List and were far more embarrassing than my family crashout.
We walked back to class together where I gathered my things and Milo’s while Jude lingered.
Steps away from the office, he stopped me with a hand to my shoulder. “Solace, you should have told me.” Wrapping his arm around me, he tugged me into his chest. “I can cancel on Heather tonight, skip the dance, and come over after school.”
My heart died a little. He would do that? For me? “No, it’s fine. Go, you’ll have fun.”
“Say something next time. I won’t let you do this alone.”
And so that was the beginning—near-misses never stopping. For a moment, I let him close enough to brush the edges of collision, even as everything else spun hopelessly out of control because some near-misses don’t miss at all.