For a long time he didn’t reply. He simply squeezed my hand and lay there, his one good eye staring up at the late afternoon sky and a tear or two leaking down the side of his face every now and again. He made no noise, and I could only imagine what tumbled thoughts he might be having.
I wanted so much to wrap my arms around him, cover him with love, and protect him from any further harm, but in the year and a half that we’d been together, I’d learned to give Spence his space after one of these fights. So I sat there and leaked a few tears of my own until, finally, he cleared his throat and that one good eye focused on me.
“How’d you know?” he asked.
“Your sister called, looking for you.”
Spence’s gaze moved back to the sky. “And you guessed I’d be here?”
I looked around at the large circle of trampled grass where Spence and I would go sometimes to be alone with each other. This little circle was ours, close enough to the school to get back quickly, but hidden from just about everyone by the field it was centered in.
At the beginning of junior year, we’d been lucky enough to be assigned the same study hall, and it was easy to sneak out here on occasion, twenty minutes before the bell rang when Mrs. Rutledge slipped out for her smoke break. If she knew we also snuck out, she never marked us as absent, and none of the other kids ever told on us.
“I had a feeling,” I said, pulling his hand to my stomach. I’d had a bad feeling all day, and then at three, when his sister called, I knew why. This was the first place I’d thought of when I came looking for him.
“Where’s your car?” I asked him. Spence lived a good three miles from the school. I’d already checked the parking lot, and there was no sign of his beat-up old Mustang.
“At home. I felt like walking.”
After a lengthy pause I said, “What happened this time?”
Spence shook his head. “The usual. He found out I got that D on that chemistry quiz, and he wouldn’t let go of it. He kept telling me it was proof I wasn’t cut out for college. No college was gonna give a D student a football scholarship. I mean, God, Amber, it was one quiz!”
“I know,” I said, gritting my teeth against the anger I held in my heart for Mr. Spencer. Spence had been working late the night before the pop quiz—which barely counted toward his overall grade. Spence was a decent student. I had no doubt that, with his skills on the football field, he’d get a scholarship somewhere.
“Anyway,” Spence continued, “Mom tried to intervene. He raised his fist, I got between them….It got bad….”
I breathed deeply and tried to hold my emotions in check. It was hard. Spence’s home life was so unfair because he was such a good guy: he got decent grades and worked weekends and after football practice to bring home a little extra money. He was also kind and protective of his little sister, and he was a rising football star. It infuriated me that his parents could be so completely horrible and abusive to him in the face of all of that.
About three months earlier I’d told my parents what was going on within the Spencer home, how his father drank and became violent and often struck Spence. They’d been far more alarmed than I’d been prepared for, and they’d very nearly gone to the police.
I’d managed to stop them only after telling them that Spence’s family was barely getting by, and they couldn’t manage without Mr. Spencer’s income. I knew that for a fact because that was the reason Spence always gave me when I asked him why his mom didn’t throw his dad out. I’d been tempted to call the police once or twice myself, actually, but Spence had always talked me out of it.
This time, however, I didn’t know how I could hold back. “Isn’t it time?” I asked him.
He exhaled loudly, like he knew exactly what I was about to say next. “Amber,” he said gently, “please don’t.”
“Don’t what, Spence?” I said as my temper flared. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Don’t do anything while your father uses your face like a punching bag? Don’t say anything when I know what’s happening at home is killing you? When would you like me to say something? At your funeral?”
Spence sat up abruptly and wrapped me in his arms, pulling me to the ground on top of him to hold me there against him. “It looks worse than it is,” he said.
I pushed at his chest. “Well, that’s fantastic,” I snapped. “Because you look like Rocky Balboa at the end of twelve rounds with that Russian.”
Spence actually laughed. “I look that good, huh?”
“It’s not funny.”
He seemed to sober. “You’re right. It’s not.” Sitting up with me still cradled against him, he said, “But there’s nothing I can do to make it better.”
“You could call the police,” I said. He began to shake his head and I reached up and held it still. “Spence, please. He could kill you.”
Mr. Spencer was an ox of a man—at least six foot four, and solid. Spence was also big and strong, but his dad had the upper hand on him in both size and weight.