“Last chance,” I warn, and take a step forward, hoping that they will break apart and make room for me to pass. They don’t.
Today I will veer from my routine. Break out of my comfort zone, as Miney likes to say. I will do what needs to be done. Take one for the team, as the expression goes. There will be no getting back on track, though for just a second, before it all starts, I close my eyes and picture myself in school, rounding the corner of the hallway just as Mozart hits D minor.
And then, as I hear that perfect note in my mind, I open my eyes and step forward one more time.
I drop-kick Meat Boy.
—
I sit in the principal’s office with a bag of ice on my face that smells like cafeteria food. Not one food in particular, but instead a sickening amalgamation of all the food that they serve in there: chicken nuggets and french fries and boiled broccoli. An undertone of meat loaf. My nose is bruised, but other than that I am fine. I can’t say the same about the football team.
“What are we going to do with you?” Principal Hoch says. The dread that had lifted with that very first kick and with that very first crack, as if that single noise and that single motion themselves had caused all the heaviness to evaporate, now resettles on my shoulders. For about seven minutes, I was a warrior. A hero. A defender of girls. Or one girl. The only girl who matters.
I was not David Drucker. Class loser.
Both of my parents are here, which means this is serious. Usually it’s just my mom who comes, who hears these What are we going to do with you? speeches. Usually they end with me promising to try harder, though I never really know what I’m promising to try harder to do.
Be normal, I think.
Be like the neurotypical, which is another way of saying “everyone else.”
Be less like me.
I no longer want to be less like me.
“I don’t think ‘we’ need to do anything,” I say, and as I speak I realize my tongue is swollen. Someone must have snuck a punch to my mouth. I don’t remember the specifics of the fight. It was all action and reaction, autopilot, no thinking. A clean, quiet brain. Later I will take the time to reenact it in my head, figure out all the sequencing. Savor it a little.
Immediately afterward, when my thoughts came rushing back, I smelled blood and heard shouting and all I wanted was to take a shower. To be free of other people’s bodily fluids.
“I was merely acting in self-defense. I even gave Meat Boy a first warning, which I thought was incredibly generous.”
“Meat Boy?” Principal Hoch asks. I shrug. I have a fifty-fifty chance of getting his name right. He’s either Joe Mangino or Sammy Metz. Not that it matters. Both got hit eventually.
“The first guy I kicked,” I say.
“We have a record of death threats,” my mother says. “On David’s cell phone. This was obviously self-defense.”
“Three of our students had to go to the hospital,” Principal Hoch says. “That sounds like more than self-defense.”
“With minor fractures,” my dad chimes in. “Minor.”
“I can’t condone this sort of violence,” Principal Hoch says, and I don’t know where to look. I hadn’t expected my dad to speak up or to defend me. He usually lets my mom do the talking. But then again, he’s the one who taught me self-defense.
“Tell me: What was my son supposed to do? The entire football team was lined up waiting for him. They’ve previously accosted him in the cafeteria. Do you need me to read you the texts?” my mom asks, and grabs my phone from my backpack.
“I don’t think that’s necess—”
“?‘You little shithead. I’m gonna kill you,’?” my mom reads in a flat tone. “?‘Die, retard. Do us all a favor and die.’?”
“She can keep going. There are plenty more,” my dad says, like my mother is reading a grocery list. Eggs, bacon, strawberries. Die, die, die. I need her to stop.
I want to slip on my headphones. I want to flap my hands. I do neither.
I try to appear as normal as I can while holding a bag of foul-smelling ice to a blue throbbing nose while I think about Kit, who smells nice and whose nose is perfect. Not too big and not too small, just right. She’s a Goldilocks of a person.
I don’t remember seeing her after that first kick. Did she like it? Me defending her?
“Please, Mrs. Drucker, we’ve discussed in the past the possibility that this school just might not be the right fit for David. That there may be somewhere else better suited to his needs.” This is the first time I’ve heard this, and the insinuation that I might be transferred hurts even more than her use of the word needs. I don’t look at Principal Hoch. I am folding in on myself, smaller and tighter and smaller and tighter still, until I disappear. I want to be something that can’t be seen at the molecular level.
I cannot transfer schools. Not now. Not after Kit.
Since I can’t put my headphones on, I force myself to imagine what they feel like. I play pretend. Feel the weight of them. The quick vacuum seal when they first envelop my ears. The rush of white noise on the “Relax, Little D” playlist that Miney made for me before she left for college. The slow filling up of my body by the neutral sounds.
“Principal Hoch, shall I start reading again? Because I think if you take a step back and look at the situation reasonably, my son is the target here. He’s not the one who has acted inappropriately. Your beloved football team ganged up on him.” My mom is practically spitting. She’s angry. I know this because she has a vein three millimeters to the left of the middle of her forehead that throbs when she’s mad. Miney taught me that trick, and it has proven a both helpful and reliable guide to my mother’s moods.
“No doubt those texts are inappropriate, and we have a zero tolerance policy to bullying at this school. But we do need to put this all in a larger context. There was provocation—”
“Are you kidding me?” My mom explodes. Her entire body is shaking, and my dad puts an arm around her to keep her from spinning right out of the room. “That notebook was private. It was stolen, for God’s sake! I don’t understand what’s going on here! It’s your job to protect my son!”
“But don’t you see? I am trying to protect him. It’s not just the football team. Obviously a lot of the kids have trouble with David. I want to keep him safe.” Principal Hoch’s voice is misleadingly calm. I want to float away on it, but I know I can’t. I need to be here. If I don’t focus, I will find myself at that school for kids with special needs, where they don’t know what to do with someone who takes a course load of five AP classes. How will I explain in my applications that I was forced to transfer mid–junior year? I will not get into college. I will never escape Mapleview. I will be the loser everyone here expects me to be. No. “Maybe he’d be better off—happier, even—in an environment where he’d make actual friends.”