“Well, it wasn’t you. It was this eighty-year-old guy. And he had this dead deer with him. I don’t know who was more surprised. I just screamed when I saw him. And he nearly had a heart attack. I wasn’t naked, but I was close. I was so ashamed of myself. He wasn’t even sweet about it. He said I was trespassing. I told him Artie was my uncle, but he wasn’t believing me. I think the only thing that saved me was that Artie and I have the same last name. I was there in my underwear, showing this guy my ID. There was blood on his hands. And he said there were other guys coming. He’d just assumed my car was one of theirs.
“The problem was—I still thought you were coming. So I couldn’t leave. I put on my clothes, and had to sit there as they came and gutted that poor deer. I waited there after they left. I waited there until dark. The cabin smelled like blood, A. But I stayed there. And you never came.”
I tell her about Dana. Then I tell her about Michael, and running out of his house.
It’s something. But it’s not enough.
“How are we supposed to do this?” she asks me. “How?”
I want there to be an answer. I want to have an answer.
“Come here,” I say. And I hold her close, because that’s the only answer I have.
We stand like that for a minute, each not knowing what comes next. When the door to the gym opens, we pull away from each other. But we’re too late. I figure it’s one of the gym teachers, or another girl from class. But it’s not even that door. It’s the door from the school side, and it’s Justin who’s walked through.
“What the hell?” he says. “What. The. Hell?”
Rhiannon tries to explain. “Justin—” she begins. But he cuts her off.
“Lindsay texted me to say you weren’t feeling well. So I was going to see if you were okay. Well, I guess you’re real okay. Don’t let me interrupt.”
“Stop it,” Rhiannon says.
“Stop what, you bitch?” he asks. He’s on us now.
“Justin,” I say.
He turns to me. “You’re not even allowed to speak, bro.”
I’m about to say something else, but he’s already punching me. His fist crashes right against the bridge of my nose. I’m knocked down to the ground.
Rhiannon screams and moves to help me up. Justin pulls at her arm.
“I always knew you were a slut,” Justin says.
“Stop it!” Rhiannon cries out.
Justin lets go of her and comes back over to me. He starts kicking my body.
“This your new boyfriend?” Justin yells. “You love him?”
“I don’t love him!” Rhiannon yells back. “But I don’t love you, either.”
The next time he kicks, I grab his leg and pull him down. He crashes onto the gym floor. I think this will stop him, but he jabs his boot out again and gets me in the chin. My teeth rattle.
At this point, some whistle must blow outside, because within thirty seconds, girls from softball are streaming into the gym. When they see the carnage, they cluck and gasp. One girl runs over to Rhiannon to make sure she’s okay.
Justin gets up and kicks me again, just so everyone can see it. It barely grazes me, and I use the momentum of dodging the blow to stand up. I want to hit him, hurt him, but I honestly don’t know how.
Plus, I have to leave. It will be easy enough to discover that I don’t go to this school. And even though I’m the clear loser of this fight, they can still call the police on me for trespassing and brawling in the first place.
I teeter over to Rhiannon. Her friend makes a move to shield her from me, but Rhiannon gestures her off.
“I have to go,” I tell her. “Meet me at the Starbucks where we first met. When you can.”
I feel a hand on my shoulder. Justin, pulling me around. He won’t hit me with my back turned.
I know I should face him. Hit him if I can. But instead I duck out of his grip and run. He’s not going to follow me. He will bask instead in the victory of seeing me run.
It is not my intention to leave Rhiannon crying, but that is exactly what I do.
I make my way back to the bus stop, then use a nearby phone booth to call a cab. Nearly fifty dollars later, I am at the Starbucks. If before I was a big, hairy, sweaty guy in a Metallica T-shirt, now I am a big, hairy, sweaty guy in a Metallica T-shirt who’s beaten, bruised, and bleeding. I order a venti black coffee and leave twenty dollars in the tip jar. Now they’ll let me stay as long as I want, no matter how scary I look.
I clean myself up some in the bathroom. Then I sit down and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
She doesn’t arrive until a little after six.
She doesn’t apologize. She doesn’t explain why it took her so long. She doesn’t even come to my table right away. She stops at the counter and gets a coffee first.
“I really need this,” she says as she sits down. I know she’s talking about the coffee, not anything else.
I’m on my fourth coffee and second scone.
“Thank you for coming,” I tell her. It sounds too formal.
“I thought about not coming,” she says. “But I didn’t seriously consider it.” She looks at my face, my bruises. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Remind me—what’s your name today?”
“Michael.”
She looks me over again. “Poor Michael.”
“This is not how I imagine he thought the day would go.”