Arran’s arm is round me as we walk back to the school building. He is holding me tight, pulling me to him, but as we near the entrance he shoves me away. It’s an angry shove.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“Why are you laughing?”
Was I laughing? I hadn’t realized.
Arran carries on into school, his arms out as if he needs to fend me off. The door slams shut behind him.
More Fighting,
Some Smoking
I don’t go back into school that afternoon. I go to the woods and from there make my way home, timing my arrival to coincide with Arran’s and Deborah’s. I wait for Arran to say something, but he is giving me the silent treatment. It goes on all evening. I think he will relent when we go to bed, but he is already tucked up and switching the light off as I come into the room. I put the light back on and stand with my back to the door.
“I’ll tell Gran about the fight tomorrow.”
The lump under the bedclothes doesn’t respond.
“You know fighting’s normal, don’t you? Most boys do it. It would be weird if I didn’t do it.”
Still nothing.
“I laughed because we’d beaten them. I was relieved. Let’s face it, I had you on my side; we were at a disadvantage.”
He still doesn’t react.
“It doesn’t mean I’m the Devil.”
Finally he stirs and sits up to face me. “You know they’ll say you started it.”
Of course I know. I know that even if I don’t fight, even if I avoid Annalise, even if I get on my knees and lick Niall’s and Connor’s boots, it will make no difference; they will do what they like and say what they like, and what they say will be believed. Arran still hasn’t accepted that there is no hope for me. He looks miserable, though.
I sit on my bed and ask, “Do you get a lot of stick for being my half-brother?”
“I’m your brother.” And he gives me that look of his, the most-gentle-person-in-the-world look.
“Do you get much stick for being my brother, then?”
“Not much.”
He’s pretty hopeless at lying, but I love him more than ever for trying.
“Anyway,” he says, “I’ve lived with Jessica all my life. Those jokers are amateurs.”
I wonder when Niall and Connor will come back at me. My main concern is that they will go for Arran, but they don’t. Maybe they realize that is stupider than just getting their revenge on me.
After the fight I leave school at lunchtimes and hang out in the streets nearby, avoiding the O’Briens and everyone I can, but it’s a miserable existence and within two weeks I’ve had enough of hiding.
I’m leaning against the wall in the same spot as for the first fight when Niall and Connor round the corner. I know they’re going to be more prepared this time, but I think that if I get Niall down first I have a decent chance against them.
They run at me and I see that they are more prepared; Niall is holding a brick.
The best form of defense is attack. I’ve heard that somewhere. So I run at them, shouting as loud as I can—bad stuff, swear words.
Niall is surprised enough to hesitate and I push him away, swerve past him and land a poor punch on Connor, who is a pace behind. But somehow Niall reaches back and grabs my blazer. I pull away from him, but Connor gets his arms round me, pinning my left arm to my body. I try to punch him with my right, but it’s all over.
Niall catches me on the side of the head with the brick and Connor is clinging on to me.
Then I get rammed in my back, which must be with the brick again. But still I’m okay.
Then
T
H
U
D
It reverberates down my spine and stops me dead.
I’ve been hammered into the tarmac like a nail.
Connor’s hands push him away from me.
He’s staring at me. He looks pale, mouth open. Afraid.
Then he isn’t there.
And slowly, slowly the tarmac rises up to my face and I have time to think that I’ve never seen tarmac do that before and wonder how . . .
My body is cold . . . and lying on something hard. My cheek is squashed into something hard. I taste blood.
But I feel okay. Strange but okay.
When I open my eyes everything is gray and fuzzy.
I focus. Oh, right the playground . . . I remember . . .
I don’t move. The brick is there, lying on the tarmac. It doesn’t move either. The brick looks like it has had a bad day as well.
I close my eyes again.
I’m in the woods near home. I vaguely remember walking here. I’m lying on my back looking at the sky and aching everywhere. I don’t sit up but feel my face with my fingers, millimeter by millimeter, slowly daring to work my way to the bits I know are bad.
I have a fat lip that is numb and a loose tooth, my tongue is sore for some reason, I have a bloody nose, my right eye is swollen, and a cut above my left ear is oozing blood and a sort of sticky mucus. A dome has grown on the top of my head.
Gran bathes my face and puts lotion on the bruises that have appeared on my back and arms. My scalp starts to bleed again and Gran shaves the hair around the cut and puts some of her lotion on that too. She does all this in silence once I’ve told her whom I’ve been fighting.
I look in the mirror and have to smile despite my fat lip. Both my eyes are black and there are other colors too—purple, green, and yellow—coming out. My right eye is swollen shut. My nose is puffy and tender but not broken. My hair is shaved above my left ear and the skin covered with a thick yellow lotion.
Gran allows me to miss school until my eye heals. Thankfully by then my bald patch has begun to grow over.
On my first day back Annalise sits next to me as I paint. She whispers, “They told me what they did.”
I have been thinking about Annalise and her brothers a lot in my days at home. I know it would be sensible to ignore her, and I’m fairly sure that if I ask her to she will avoid me. I have a little speech about it worked out, something along the lines of, “Please, don’t talk to me anymore and I won’t talk to you.”
But Annalise says, “I’m sorry. It was my fault.”
And the way she says it—the way she sounds like she is sorry, like she is genuinely upset—gets me angry. I know it isn’t her fault and it isn’t even my fault. And I forget my crummy speech and all my crummy intentions and instead I touch her hand with my fingertips.
Annalise and I spend the art lessons whispering and looking at each other, and I build up to well over two and a half seconds. I want to stare in private, though, and so does she. We begin working out how we can spend time together, alone.
We devise a plan to meet at Edge Hill, a quiet place on Annalise’s way home from school. But every time I ask if today is the day that we can meet, Annalise shakes her head. Her brothers are guarding her, sticking close to her whenever she is out of classes and out of school.
Annalise isn’t the only one being guarded. Once I am back at school, Arran and Deborah make a point of staying with me from the bus to the classroom. Arran escorts me home and misses lunch to be with me.