I pressed my head against the rock, digging it deeper into the cut on my scalp, clutching the pain, using it to drag me out of the fog. I elbowed Marcus in the face and scrambled to my feet, pulling up my pants and sprinting toward the flashing lights and laughter and nauseating smell of popcorn.
Marcus screamed my name. He tackled me by the bleachers, and I fell on my wrist. It bent back in a way wrists weren’t supposed to bend, but I ate the pain, swallowed it down with blood, and became stronger. I kicked like an animal until I connected with something that made him howl. And then I ran again. I didn’t look back this time either.
I spotted Ms. Faraci standing by the candy apple booth.
“Henry?” Ms. Faraci dropped her apple and brushed my hair from my eyes. It was sticky with blood. The color drained from her face. “Henry, what happened?”
Now that I was safe, I finally looked back. Marcus wasn’t there, but Diego was. He trotted toward us, panic in his algae eyes. “Henry, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” He saw me cradling my wrist, touched the blood on my ear. He saw my pants undone, hanging off my hips. “What happened?”
“Were you attacked again?” Ms. Faraci asked. She guided me to a quieter spot behind the roasted nuts tent. The smell made me want to vomit.
Diego followed us, his eyes an expressionless wasteland.
“Henry? Tell me what happened.” Ms. Faraci grabbed her cell phone out of her purse. “That’s it. I’m calling an ambulance.”
“It was Marcus McCoy.”
Ms. Faraci dialed 911.
“What was Marcus?” Diego’s voice was flat; he hardly sounded like the boy I knew.
“I need an ambulance and police at Calypso High School. One of our students has been attacked.” Ms. Faraci regarded me like she was afraid I was going to shatter to pieces in front of her.
“What did Marcus do?”
I couldn’t look Diego in the eyes. “It’s not your problem.”
“Did Marcus hurt you?” I nodded. “Did he . . . ?” Diego glanced at my jeans, and I fumbled with them but couldn’t button them because my wrist was swollen and useless.
“He tried.”
Diego’s mouth twisted.
Ms. Faraci touched my shoulder, and I jumped. “It’s okay, Henry. You’re okay. The police are coming. Let’s get you somewhere safe.” She put her arm around my shoulders to lead me toward the school.
“Come on, Diego,” I said, but Diego was gone.
? ? ?
I sat on the back of an ambulance while the cops questioned me and paramedics pressed gauze to my head. My wrist was definitely broken, and I probably had a concussion. I told the police officers everything, including who had attacked me in the showers. The paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital, but I refused to go until someone found Diego. Audrey stayed with me, holding my good hand. She hardly said a word.
A crowd of onlookers had gathered around the emergency vehicles, and my mom shoved them aside to get to me, not caring who she elbowed. “Henry! Henry, what the hell happened?” She was wearing pink pajamas, and her hair was pulled back with an elastic band.
I smiled weakly and tried to assure her I was okay, but what she really needed was a Xanax. “Someone attacked me,” I said. “He tried to . . . He tried to rape me.” None of this would have happened if I hadn’t run from Diego. “I needed to be alone, so I went to the football field.”
“Young man,” said the red-haired paramedic with bloodshot eyes. “We need to take you to the hospital.”
“Not until they find Diego.” I turned to Audrey. “You have to find him.”
“I’m not leaving you.” Her voice was so fierce that I didn’t even try to argue.
The paramedic was about to explain for the fifth time why I needed to go to the emergency room, when two cops led Diego through the crowd, his hands zip-tied behind his back. Dried blood stained his face and was streaked across his shirt. I jumped off the edge of the ambulance and ran to him.
“Diego! Are you okay?” I looked for the source of the blood but couldn’t find any injuries.
“Don’t worry,” Diego said. “It’s not mine.”
16 January 2016
We stayed at the emergency room until nearly two a.m. A chatty doctor put four stitches in my scalp and a cast on my wrist. When we got home, I passed out on the couch with my phone beside my head so I wouldn’t miss it when Diego returned one of the hundred texts or voice mails I’d left for him. I just needed to know he was okay. Audrey messaged me that Marcus had been released to his parents, who immediately checked him into a drug-and-alcohol treatment facility.
Mom peeked in on me repeatedly throughout the night. At around eight in the morning, I sat up and said, “I’m not sleeping.”
With a cup of coffee in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other, Mom sat beside me on the couch. She fidgeted with the cigarette like she was dying to put it to her lips and light it, and didn’t seem to know what she was supposed to be doing. Finally she set the mug on the coffee table and hugged me so tightly that I thought she was trying to break my spine.
“Why didn’t you tell me it had gotten so bad?”