He leaned his head back against the cold metal and sighed wistfully. “Feels like just the other day when you were an innocent little boy, a fragile cherub. Never kissed, never—"
“Yeah, I know. It’s fucking pathetic.”
Ricky changed his stance abruptly. Pushing off the locker to stand straight beside me. He leaned against his arm, bringing his face close to mine.
“What happened?”
I ground my molars together. “Nothing.”
“No. This”—he gestured toward my face, my body—“isn’tnothing. What happened? Was it your dad? What did he do?”
God, I hated how much he cared. Life was so much easier when nobody gave a crap. It made it easier to keep a straight face, to push through. But this interrogation, that look he was giving me … I needed him to stop, or I was going to lose it in this fucking hallway.
“Max?”
“Go away, Ricky,” I told him, slamming my locker door and spinning the combination lock shut.
“What the hell?”
As I stormed off, I thought about my fourteenth birthday. The day we had become real friends. The day he gave meDraculaand invited me over to his house and his mom made me two grilled cheese sandwiches. That had been nearly four years ago, and it was the best day of my life. When was I going to have another good day? Would I ever be allowed to behappyagain?
“Max!” Ricky called at the same moment I heard Molly ask, “What’s going on?”
“Something happened to Max.”
“What happened to him?” It was Laura’s voice, tinged with urgency.
I stopped short and spun around on my heel. Not far behind me was Ricky, Molly, and Laura. Fuck, Laura, with her soft eyes and beautiful smile. All of them stared at me now, expressions of concern blanketing their faces. They were my friends, and they cared, and I was somadat them for it. I was so fucking mad that they would make me believe Ideservedit.
“Nothing happened, all right?!” I shouted at them. “Nothing fucking happened! Now, let it go and leave—"
“Mr. Tailor! Language!” one of my old eleventh-grade teachers shouted from across the hall, her head poking out of her room.
But then a worried expression contorted her features. “Mr. Tailor, are you bleeding?”
“Fuck,” I whispered as I lifted my hand to gingerly touch my injured ear, my voice strangled as the back of my eyes pricked with tears that I knew were coming.
Weak. Fucking weak.
Pussy.
I squeezed my eyes shut and turned in the opposite direction before the tears could fall. With a feeble attempt, I brushed past Ricky, but he grabbed my arm before I could rush down the hall. Shame crept up from the collar of my shirt, heat blossoming across my cheeks, as I felt his eyes pin to the side of my face.
“Shit,” he whispered, his hand beginning to tremble around my arm. “Come on.”
The next thing I knew, he was dragging me down the hallway until we reached the boys’ restroom. Ricky pushed the door open and shoved me inside. Molly and Laura followed, and one of them—I didn’t know who—locked the door behind us.
Finally, I pulled my arm away from his hold and spun around, away from him, to face the big metal garbage can in the corner.
“Max,” Ricky began warily, “I know you keep saying nothing happened, but … I don’t know … I’m kinda getting the feeling thatsomethinghappened.”
I glanced in the mirror and saw the hazy trickle of blood slowly sliding down my neck. I’d thought the bleeding had stopped. I’d thought I could get through this damn day without anyone noticing.
I looked back at that garbage can as my frustration and so, so,somuch anger built higher and higher until there was nowhere else for it to go.
With my hands clenched at my sides, my fists shaking with a violent torrent of rage, I screamed, “Fuck!” from between my gritted teeth.
Before I gave myself a moment to think or reconsider what I was about to do, I pulled my foot backand kicked that stupid fucking garbage can again, again, again as tears soaked my face. The resounding clatter of metal bouncing off of ceramic tiles rang throughout the restroom, drowning out the persistent droning in my ear, and I kept on kicking that damn thing until I couldn’t anymore.
