She was having a hard time hearing me.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Jeremy. Jeremy Thompson?”
“Oh, hi. What’s up, Jeremy?”
“I don’t know . . . I just thought we might hang out sometime.”
“Oh. What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, I just thought we could maybe do something sometime.”
“Okay . . . sure.”
“Okay,” I said. Then there wasn’t much else to say. I forgot all my jokes.
Then she said, “Okay, I’m going to go.”
“Okay, I’ll call you sometime,” I said.
“Okay, bye.” She hung up, but not before I heard someone ask, “Who was that?” I bit my lip really hard until it almost bled. Her voice was echoing in the cold air. I was left with my computer screen and the empty room and the blackness outside in the backyard, and everything felt empty. I couldn’t go back to my video game with her voice still in my head, and those other voices too. I couldn’t play the game anymore without feeling like I was wasting my life. I watched some more television in the living room until my father came home at twelve thirty and told me to go to bed.
I had PE first period. It was a drag getting into those stupid uniforms first thing in the morning. Short green sweat shorts and tight off-white T-shirts. I’d always get depressed playing softball with all the other dweebs who didn’t get excused from PE because they played sports. I’m usually late. The day after Stephen’s outburst, I was getting dressed alone in the locker room when Lewis came in, followed by a bunch of the tough black guys: Ezra, Jackson, Damon, Roland, and two big white guys that hung out with them, a fat guy named Mike Farley, and a muscular guy named Damian Petrone. They were all older and all really big. Next to them Lewis was a skinny midget.
Jackson walked up to me. He played running back for the school and got most of our touchdowns. He was six foot three. I was trying to pull on my PE shorts when he pushed me down onto the bench.
“Use that nigger word to my face,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Come on, use that fucking nigger word to my face, white boy.” He put his hand on top of my head so that I couldn’t stand up from the bench. He didn’t push down; he just held it there so I couldn’t stand up.
“Come on, white boy, say that fucking nigger word.”
“Call him a nigger,” said Mike, the fat white guy.
“Listen, I was just doing it for class, I don’t really think those things.”
“What things, white boy?” said Jackson.
“Those things I said. I was just saying them because I was supposed to.”
“You’re supposed to? Your teacher told you to call Lewis a nigger?”
“I didn’t call Lewis a nigger.”
He slapped me across the face.
“Watch your fucking mouth,” he said, not laughing anymore. I looked up at him. I looked at the others. They were all serious now. I turned to skinny Lewis with his big round head.
“Lewis, you know I didn’t call you anything.”
Lewis didn’t say anything. He stood there with his arms crossed. He gave me that same blank stare that he gave me in the classroom.
“Listen, I didn’t mean what I was saying, okay? I was just doing it for class and because I wanted to see Stephen Gary get crazy.”
“Lewis,” said Jackson. That was it, just “Lewis,” like they had already talked about doing something and now was the time to do it. Lewis looked at Jackson and then at me, but he just stood there.
In a slow, cold voice Ezra said, “Lewis, break off this motherfucking honky.” It came out of his cruel face like a rocky stream.
“Lewis, I was being an idiot. I was just trying to make Stephen crazy. You saw how crazy he got,” I said.
“Why’d you want to make him crazy?” said Lewis.
“I don’t know. I was just trying to show off. You heard Mr. Hurston, he said I was just doing what I was supposed to do.”
Lewis was staring down at me. He didn’t look really tough, but he was trying. Then he said, “Thomas Jefferson was doing what he was supposed to do, and he done raped his slaves.”
“What?” I said. “What does that mean?”
Lewis stepped back and then hit my nose. There was an explosion between my eyes. I fell back and hit my head against the lockers and fell into the space between the lockers and the bench. My legs were still up on the bench, but my butt was on the cement. I held my nose, and there were tears coming into my eyes, but just as a physical reaction.
I squinted through my fingers and saw Lewis looking down at me. His regular dumb look was angry now. Unsure but trying not to be unsure. I took my hand away from my face and looked at it; there was a lot of blood on my fingers. I heard all the other guys cheering Lewis on. He still looked unsure, but I could tell he was going to do something. I pulled my feet off the bench and slid underneath it. It was really dirty down there and wet. On the underside of the bench there was some old gray gum, and at the bottom of one of the lockers it said I LOVE YOU BITCH! Who wrote that? It was pretty creative.
“Kick that motherfucker!” said the guys.
Lewis stepped back and kicked me. He got me on the top of my head, and he stubbed his toe on my skull, and everyone laughed because he said “Ow, shit” and started dancing around. I lay down there covering my face while they all laughed at Lewis’s foot. I waited for more. But it didn’t come. The laughter faded, and then they were gone.
For a while I lay on the ground and looked at I LOVE YOU BITCH! Then I got up. I went to the toilet stalls and sat on one of the toilets and waited for the period to end. Just sat there. When the warning bell rang, I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror. My right eye was purple on the inside bottom, and my nose had bled all over my lips and down my neck and onto my off-white PE T-shirt. A nice splatter across the neckline. All the kids were coming in now. Some looked at me, but I didn’t wash off and I didn’t change my clothes. I left my things in my locker and walked to my next class, American History with Mr. Hurston.
I was there before everyone. I sat at my desk and waited. The middle of my face was throbbing. My classmates started coming in, but no one noticed me. My seat was toward the back. Finally Stacey came in and sat down. She didn’t look at me because she never looks at me, but I stared at her really hard until she finally looked.
“Oh my God,” she said. “What’s wrong with your face?”
“Nothing is wrong with it.”
“You’re bleeding, Jeremy,” she said loudly. “Oh, Jesus, you’re bleeding!” Other people looked.
“I know,” I said. I didn’t say anything else; I just stared at her. Real hard.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she said.
“Because,” I said.
“Because what?” She said that quietly, like she was scared.
Then Mr. Hurston came in. He said, “Hello, class, new morning, same old history,” like he always did.
“Mr. Hurston,” said good Jerry Holtz. “Mr. Hurston, look, Jeremy’s bleeding.”
“Mr. Hurston, he’s staring at me,” said Stacey. She was right; I was staring at her. Mr. Hurston walked over to my desk. He put his hand under my chin, in the blood, and held my face up to his. I looked into his empty blue eyes. His eyebrows were silvery like his hair.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Who did this to you?”
“No one.”
“Okay, no one did it, right. All right, who?”
“No one.”
“Fine, if you won’t tell me, I want you to go to the office right now and see Mrs. Moore.” He looked around the room. “Jerry, I want you to take Jeremy to the office, to see Mrs. Moore, okay?”
“Sure, Mr. Hurston,” said Jerry. He walked to the door and waited for me.
Mr. Hurston let my face go. I didn’t stand up yet. I just turned my head and stared at Stacey again.
“What?” she said. She sounded mad now. Everyone was watching.