If You Were Wondering - Chapter Four

Chapter 4

I stayed with the Fosters for about two weeks. By then, people had heard about what happened between me and Hugh, and they stared at me even more. Even in class, I’d be writing down notes, and I could feel the burn of their eyes staring right into the back of my head. Sometimes I’d tell the teacher I had to go to the bathroom and leave, just so I didn’t have to feel my peers watching me.

Amy helped me a lot more than she probably should have. She walked me to classes, sat with me at lunch, and sometimes she’d tell people off who brought up what had happened:

 

A*****e #1: Hey, Larson! I heard your daddy likes to slap you around!

A*****e #2: Yeah, are you his b***h or something?

(A******s laugh)
                Amy: That’s really funny, coming from two delinquents who take turns being Big Bubba’s b***h every Saturday night.

               

                Looking back, I think she was my only friend during that time. No one else even paid attention to me, except when they talked about Hugh. But Amy knew how to handle it. She knew about being fragile.

                When she first moved to Laurens in third grade, she was shy. I mean, really shy. She didn’t talk to anybody for the first week she was there. Sometimes she’d go under the big table in the classroom during recess, and she’d just read a book. Everyone else thought she was weird.

                One day she was under the table, reading a book as usual, and I decided to go talk with her. I crawled under the table with my toy cars and sat next to her. She looked at me like I was a wild animal, until I gave her one of my cars. And that, as they say, is history.

                I thought about that a lot as she helped me that couple of weeks. It was a different circumstance, but we were still the same; two kids alone, under the table, against the rest of the world.

               

                As Amy and I picked at what they called lunch, two boys, Arnold and Matt, came bounding toward our table with stupid grins on their faces. I immediately put up my defenses, but Amy seemed not to notice. Mark slid next to Amy and put his arm around her.

                “Hey there.” he said, “What are you doing sitting all alone?”

                Amy forced a fake smile, and I could see that she was trying hard not to roll her eyes. “Does it look like I’m alone?” she asked.

                Arnold standing behind me said, “Well, we just wanted to come by, just in case Larson here was in the mood to beat somebody.”

                Both boys laughed, and Amy’s fake smile slid right off her face.

                “That’s real cute.” she said. “Do you even know what happened?”

                “Yeah,” Arnold said, “Larson beat his dad because he was dishing out some discipline to his b***h mom.” He laughed, but Matt just took his arm off of Amy’s shoulder. I closed my eyes and tried to control my breathing. Amy wasn’t having any of it.

“Discipline?” she cried. “Are you joking right now? He beat her! How could you even have the balls to say that when you weren’t even there? You don’t even know what it’s like to have a parent who does that s**t to you!”

 I could hear the gears clunking in Arnold’s head as he tried to calculate what she had just said. He look confused, until Amy said, “You probably will, though. It’s a******s like you who grow up to be those kinds of people.”

“What did you just call me?” Arnold said. Matt’s eyes got wide, and he started to say something, but Arnold shoved him away. “Say it again, tramp!”

Amy leaned in and said, “Arnold, you’re a s**t smear.”

I almost laughed, and it looked like Matt did too, until Arnold took a swing at Amy. She ducked, but Arnold still got her in the ear. He swung again, and managed to land one on her. Amy fell off the bench and onto the ground. Matt rushed over.

“Hey, man, be cool!” he said, but Arnold wasn’t even listening. He got up and put up his fist again.

The impact of the punch was harder than I thought, and my hand started to throb. Arnold had a look of surprise on his face as he stared at my hand around his fist, and Matt stared too. I think the whole cafeteria was staring, but I could only feel Arnold’s eyes looking into mine.

“You’re just like him, you know that?” I asked. The room was silent now.

Matt snapped out of it and rushed to help Amy up.

“Don’t lay a hand on her again, or else you won’t be able to use it after I’m done with you. Got it?”

Arnold didn’t answer. He just jerked his hand out of mine and stepped back. I looked back at Matt, and he understood. He started walking Amy out of the cafeteria, and I walked the other way. I would’ve walked out of there no problem, if Arnold had kept his mouth shut.

“How about I lay my dick on her?”

I stopped dead in my tracks and spun around to face him. “Excuse me?”

He had that grin on his face again.

“Or are you saving her for yourself?” He started to laugh, and everyone’s eyes simultaneously turned on me.

I have to be honest; I wasn’t mad that Arnold said that. Usually, if he’d had said that to me in the hallway, I would’ve ignored it. But the fact that he had thought of saying that here, after I’d just threatened him, and he said something as juvenile as that. It was so stupid, it made me angry.

Without thinking, I took a deep breath and grabbed an empty tray from a Kindergartener sitting at the table next to me. Arnold was laughing so hard that he was almost leaning back, and he didn’t see me coming until it was too late.

                Thwack!

                I slammed the tray against Arnold’s jaw, and his head snapped to the side. He stumbled back, and I hit him in the kneecap. His scream of pain was muffled when he hit his head on a table as he fell. The sound of the impact seemed to echo through the room. I dropped the tray and met everyone’s eyes as they stared at me from across the room.

                I didn’t say anything. I just turned around and walked out of the building.

 

                I got back to the house around twelve thirty, and Mrs. Foster was sitting in the living room.

                “Oh, hi!” she said. “What are you doing back so early?”
                “I don’t want to talk about it.” I said. I went upstairs and into my room, leaving her confused and concerned.

                Matt came home with Amy after school. They didn’t know what exactly happened; all they knew was that Arnold had a nasty bruise on his jaw and a concussion. 

                “Everyone was talking about it.” Matt said. “Most of them said that Arnold deserved it and that you shouldn’t get in trouble.”

                “What about the others?” I asked. That was the only thing I cared about.

                Matt looked down at his feet. “The rest were Arnold’s pack. They said they were gonna beat the s**t out of you.”

                I looked over at Amy, but she was staring off into space.

                “Mike, I’m really sorry about today. It was stupid, and I shouldn’t have said anything.”

                I didn’t respond. Matt kept going. “I don’t know about what’s going on with your stepdad, and I honestly don’t care. It’s none of my business. I don’t even know why I’m friends with Arnold. He’s an idiot.”

                “I get it.” I said. “It’s fine, really.”

                “I’m sorry, Michael.”

                “It’s okay.”

                Matt looked back down at his feet and turned to the door. Amy had a quiet look on her face, and she gave him a nod as he was leaving. She closed the door and sat down on the bed next to me.

                “Are you okay?” she asked.

                I almost laughed. “No, not really.”

                Amy nodded, and for a while, we just sat there. We seemed to do that a lot; just sit in silence for a long time. Then she grabbed my hand, and I put my head on her shoulder. Then she put her hand through my hair and glided it back and forth.

                That’s what it was; a chain of small, beautiful things that lead up to one big, beautiful moment. I kissed her. I don’t know why, I don’t know what I was thinking, I just did. And she kissed back. I put my hand on her face, and she felt so good. Her hand was still gliding through my hair. I felt all of that, except for the kiss.

                I tensed up, and she pulled back. Her eyes were dark, like she knew she’d done something wrong.

                “Michael? Are you okay?”

                My mind was racing as I tried to remember what Amy’s lips felt like on mine, but I grabbed her hand and smiled, saying, “A little better.”

 

I didn’t sleep that night. I just laid in bed and thought. Thought about Amy and how her hands felt good. Thought about the sound the tray made when it landed on Arnold’s jaw. Thought about what his friends might be thinking now, and his parents. Most of all, I thought about the look on Hugh’s face when I stood up to him, and how my own mother had turned away from me.

As quiet as I could, I got dressed, stuffed everything I had in a duffel bag, and wrote a note and put it on the bed. I can’t remember what it said, probably something like, I’m so sorry, or, Thank you for everything. All I remember was putting the note on my bed and walking out of the house.

It was snowing lightly, and I was glad that I’d brought my jacket. I made it about fifty feet before I turned back. The house was old; paint was chipping off the sides, and the roof looked like it hadn’t had new shingles in years. But it was my sanctuary for two weeks, and I felt a twinge of sadness looking at it for the last time. But I turned my back on my old life when I thought I saw a light turn on in Amy’s room, and I looked my new life right in the eye.