Brandon was talking to Monique, who sat next to him (12:02 p.m.). Really he was snatching food off her plate and teasing her about her acne. But the thing was, everybody knew he had a crush on Monique, no matter how many moon-face jokes he cracked. Everybody also knew that he tried to get her, but she kept rejecting him, which was the real reason he snapped on her. Her acne wasn’t even all that bad.
“Hey, Shack,” he called out. “All you gonna have is fries?” Again, I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t have to explain that I always got just fries so I could save a dollar to get sunflower seeds later. So I just ignored him. Just sat there with my empty tray and shook up my chocolate milk. Lunch would be over in a few minutes. A few minutes. I was so close. So close. Then Brandon grabbed a drummy off Monique’s tray. “Here, take this. It’s my good deed for the day. Feeding the hungry.” And he threw the chicken wing at me. It hit me in the chest, the grease instantly staining my T-shirt, and if my insides really were black, at that moment they were definitely turning red.
Red and Dre looked at me, both their mouths open in disbelief. I could tell they could see the anger in my face, in my eyes. Dre slid down, and Red got up from the table, moved away from us. I brushed the over-fried wing off my lap, opened my milk carton, took a swig, and then, with all my might, beamed the container at Brandon’s head. He moved just in time and the open milk box smashed into the table behind him. Brown liquid exploded everywhere, and everyone at that table whipped around to see what was happening. Brandon sprang from his seat, but before he could even make a move I had picked up my plastic tray and whacked him upside the head. He fell backward, and I kept coming. I dove across the table and after that, it was just like it was when I was sprinting. I didn’t hear nothing. Not even Monique squealing. And I didn’t feel nothing either. I just lifted my arms, fists tight, and lowered them like hammers down onto Brandon’s face. I had been good. So good. Altercation free. For seventeen hours and two freakin’ minutes.
The third, fourth, and fifth minute of the seventeenth hour were the altercation minutes. But the sixth was the longest minute of them all—the embarrassing walk to the principal’s office.
“You wanna tell me what happened, or should I tell you?” Principal Marshall closed his door behind him and took a seat at his desk. Arms folded across his chest, he waited for me to answer. But I didn’t. I just slouched in the chair and stared into my lap, biting on my bottom lip, trying to turn the red inside back to black. I was just so mad, and I couldn’t get it to go away. Mr. Perham, or as everyone called him, Big Perm, because of his last name and because he had bone-straight permed hair, is who pulled me off Brandon. He yoked me up in some kind of full nelson armlock and practically dragged me to a corner until I calmed down enough for him to let me go. Of course all the other students were screaming and cheering and all that, like I was putting on some kind of show. Another one. But it was never a show for me. It was serious. It was always serious.
Next, Perham helped Brandon. And as he started leading him to the nurse’s office, no smack was coming from Brandon’s stupid lips. No mom jokes. No poor jokes. No name jokes. None of that. Just blood and ketchup.
Still, I said nothing to the principal. I wasn’t about to just snitch on myself. “Okay, Mr. Cranshaw, let me tell you what happened,” Principal Marshall continued. He leaned forward, and rested both hands on his desk, fingers woven. “You just got yourself suspended. Again.”
Dang! “I didn’t even start it,” I couldn’t resist muttering.
“What’s that?” the principal asked with some extra bass in his voice.
I lifted my head. “I said, I didn’t start it. Brandon was talking about me. He kept going on me.” I tried to keep a stone face, which is hard to do when you’re desperately trying to explain yourself. “About how my mother works in a cafeteria, and about my neighborhood, and all that. He always trying me, and he don’t even know me like that. Just wouldn’t shut up.”
Marshall leaned back in his seat. “So instead of telling a teacher, you jumped on him?”
Well, yeah. Brandon needed a beat-down as far as I was concerned. Somebody had to do it, and well, this wasn’t the first time I had been in this kind of an “altercation.” I mean, there was the time I yelled at Mr. Crue, because he kept being mean about us not understanding Spanish well enough to speak in the perfect accent or whatever. He was just riding us too hard for not rolling our r’s, and one day I just lost it. After class everybody told me he deserved it, but I still caught a detention for it. And then another time Damon “DW” Woods told everybody that I kissed this girl named Janine, who was the only pretty girl who liked me, but I hadn’t, and I hadn’t told DW that lie. I just told him that me and Janine exchanged phone numbers. Once she found out, Janine said I was disgusting and stopped talking to me. So I punched Damon in the stomach. He cried and ran to Marshall and I got suspended for that one, and then Janine liked me again. But I was already over her. And me and Brandon had a bunch of other moments, but it was mostly just a lot of yelling—really just me yelling and him laughing, but not no more. No more getting the Brandon runaround. Then it hit me—run . . . around. Running. The team! Coach made a deal with my mother. I only had one shot. No mess-ups, no do-overs, no . . . altercations! But what was I supposed to do?
“What would you have done?” I asked Mr. Marshall. The tears were teetering in and out, in and out, and I was trying my best to keep them in. “You ain’t never been pushed before, to the point you just couldn’t take it?”
Principal Marshall cocked his head to the side and studied me. Then he hunched forward again and put his face in his palms, as if he was remembering a time he went through this. Then he wiped his hands down his face like he was washing that memory away.
“I’m gonna deal with Brandon, but you . . . ,” he said, his voice now a little softer, “you gotta get it together, Castle. I know you’ve been through some things, but you just can’t keep doing this.” He stood up from his desk and came around to the front. “I’m not gonna give you a full suspension this time, but you do have to go home for the rest of the day.” He reached behind him for the big black telephone. “Here.” He held the phone toward me. “Call your mom.”
Now, I knew that Principal Marshall was letting me off the hook, big-time, but there was no way I could call my mother and tell her that I needed her to come get me from school. No way. I hadn’t even really been on the track team and I was already about to be kicked off. I hadn’t even been to a practice yet! Plus what was I gonna say? That I punched a jerk for talking trash about me? I mean, that is what happened, and as awesome as that sounds, my mother would’ve hit me with the “How many times do I have to tell you to be the bigger person!” followed by some crazy punishment that involved me coming to the hospital with her, which was always wack.
“I can’t,” I shot back at the principal.
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t call her.”