Dessert First (27 page)

I wandered to my locker, and opened it to get my bag lunch, stuffed behind my books. Once I had it open, I stood there spacing out, thinking about how to apologize to Evan. I reached in to pull my books out of the way. The locker door banged off my hand. “Ouch!”

Kayla Southerland had slammed it on me. “Move it, Bald Ho.”

I shook out my aching, tingly wrist. “Shut it, Southerland.”

“Trying to.” She shoved my locker door again.

This time I caught it with my hand.

“Why do you bother with the books?” she said, looking at the pile in my locker. “You never read them. Or do your part of group assignments.”

Pretty much, but old news. “I'm having a bad day, Kayla. How 'bout we talk about that some other time?”

“Ooh—right.” Kayla's dripping tone and incompetent locker slamming had caught the attention of some bored kids passing by, and a crowd was gathering. “Kat has a bad day, so the rest of the world has to stop.”

I couldn't believe I was getting this, a week after Hunter died, and a few months after Beep. “What?”

“Never mind how it messes up things for the rest of us. You think you don't have to do anything, because your brother is sick.”

“Not just sick. Dead. From cancer.” Guess she didn't get the memo. “At twelve. He stopped treatment. Then died. So shut your badly-made-up face.”

The crowd we were drawing grew and now included Curtis and a couple of the Tracies. Great. Maybe even Kayla realized she went too far with the dead brother thing, though. She licked her lips, but not enough to remove the excess lipstick. “Well, my dad kicked my ass—literally—because of my grades. Thanks to your screwing up our group assignment. Because you think you're too good for homework.”

“Not too good for homework.” What did she know about it? About anything? “Ignorant raccoon girl. Go scare someone else.”

I didn't expect what happened next and had books in my hands, from pulling them out to get to my lunch. Kayla hit me, with a big half punch, half slap that slammed the back of my head into the locker behind me.

It clanged. I shook my head at the sharp pain, my mouth full of the coppery taste of blood from a cut lip.

I threw my books at her. Then punched her hard in the stomach. She snapped forward and I slapped her face, with a hard clap sound. Then I shoved her backward so hard she stumbled over someone's leg and went down.

Curtis started with “Girl fight! Girl fight!” and a few clods joined the chant.

Kayla scrambled up, furious, her cheek pink. “Right now, Monroe. Outside.” She didn't look nearly scared enough. “Behind the gym.”

“I'm too busy wiping your makeup off my books. That idea is as stupid as you are.” I gave her an out. I'd hit her, and was done.

“It's your funeral, Monroe. No, wait—that was your brother's.”

A dam broke inside of me and furious burst through. I shut my books in my locker and I followed her. “You'll need the makeup. To cover black eyes.”

We stomped outside, herded by a growing pack of gawkers. At least they'd stopped chanting, to avoid attracting teacher interest.

Behind the gym, the wide concrete driveway with trash dumpsters stretched, complete with the warm ammonia garbage smell, like last Friday's fish sticks were growing slime-whiskers. That must have made Kayla feel at home, because that's where she led us. On the other side from the gym, a short concrete wall and chain link fence marked the edge of the practice fields above. Kids were gathering up there too, to get the box seat view.

I took five years of karate in the off-season, when I first started soccer, because the coaches thought that would help us with our kicking strength. Kayla was screwed.

“Wearing the blue shirt and almost no hair,” Curtis Warren boomed, in a fake announcer voice, pretending to hold an invisible microphone. “Is Bald Ho Monroe.” That got a rippling laugh from the crowd.

“Which you'd know,” someone yelled to him. The laughs got louder.

“In the other corner, protected by her jab and heavy makeup,” Curtis went on. “Is Massive Scary Mascara Southerland.” There was laughter at Kayla too.

I took a deep breath and then blew it back out. I wasn't going to fight for these jerks' entertainment. “No. We're not doing this.”

Kayla glared at me, furious, like she still wanted to fight.

“Punch her, Kayla,” someone yelled.

“Yeah!” Someone else.

Kids were still arriving behind me and were piling up along the fence up above us, not wanting to miss the school's two least popular girls punching each other into bloody suspension.

“Forget it,” I said to Kayla. “If your face needs rearranging, learn to apply makeup.”

Flat-footed, she put her up clenched fists, not high enough to do any good. “Let's go, Bald Ho.”

I clenched my jaw. “You're not worth it, Southerland. It's too late to beat you stupid.” Did she think she'd get accepted by the Tracies if she beat me up? Like that would happen.

Her voice got louder and ugly. “Quit then. Go ahead. Quitter Ho. That's what you are. A quitter. Like your brother.”

I might have broken my right hand the first time I punched her in the head, but didn't feel it until the third and fourth punch with that hand. By then, I'd driven her back, completely through the crowd, up against the fence and low concrete wall, barely aware the madwoman roar was coming from me. My right hand in useless agony, I smashed her cheek with my elbow, and she slipped and went down. I jumped on her and tangled my hurt hand in her hair to hold her so I could keep punching her face with my good left hand.

She was wailing and bloody then, trying to get a hand in front to block. She caught my left arm. So I head-butted her, bashing her back into the concrete with a hollow thud. Hands grabbed me, pulling me off her. Someone carried me straight back about five steps.

I wasn't done fighting, so I struggled, even though I heard Mr. Brillson, my favorite teacher, yelling in my ear, “That's ENOUGH, Kat! Knock it off NOW!” Before I could think, I smashed my elbow backward. There was a surprised grunt of pain, and the hands let go.

I stepped forward, fists up, even the hurting one, to pound Kayla Southerland into bloody paste. Everything was in slow motion. Kayla was lying, curled into a ball, holding her face, blood mixed with tears. She howled an awful “No . . .” One eye was white and wide in terror, the other already swollen partly shut.

One of the football players stepped part way between us, holding his hands down in a calming gesture, his face full of fear. I looked around, and every kid, from Miranda to Jordan to Kelly and Tracie, was staring with scared eyes like I would kill someone. Even the kids behind me looked shocked. I saw Evan there, looking at me in horror. Next to Evan, his face white and scrunched in pain, Mr. Brillson was doubled up and clutching himself, below the stomach.

Apparently, I'd just elbowed my favorite teacher in the balls.

They caught me hiding in the girls' bathroom, sniffling and staring at tear-blurred graffiti in the dingy toilet stall. I wasn't hiding from punishment as much as from everyone's terrified look after I'd beat down Kayla and elbowed Mr. B. Like I'd sprouted poisonous fangs, and was about to bite them all to death. But there was no hiding from the awful feeling—if I hadn't been stopped, what would have happened? I was shaking, an adrenaline reaction, or maybe I was now scared of myself.

“Monroe, get out here,” Vice Principal Janey “the Fritz” Fitzgerald bellowed.

I didn't know what to do or say. “Would you believe I have diarrhea?”

“
Now.
”

I wiped my eyes, blew my nose, and shuffled to my doom. The Fritz, compact and muscular, despite her gray hair, grabbed me by the upper arm and practically dragged me to her office, in a trot.

Fascinated clumps of students watched me get hauled off. Ashley's expression was glee.

• • •

Kayla Southerland was already sitting in a chair in the Fritz's office, her head tilted back, pinching her nose to stop the bleeding, with bloody tissues stuffed in both nostrils and an ice bag pressed against paper towels on one eye. That eye was swollen shut, and her other eye was blackened, a dark circle underneath. Her mascara had run with the tears, so it was hard to tell other damage from excessive cosmetics.

I was holding my injured right hand, which was purpling up on the little finger side of the palm. The side of my face stung with scratches, which I couldn't even remember getting. When I wiped my cheek, there was blood on my hand.

The Fritz pushed me into the chair next to Kayla's, then huffed into her chair on the other side of her big desk. She leaned forward, breathing hard. Her frizzy gray hair made her look like a curly-haired schnauzer. A furious one. “What was this about?”

“She started it.” Kayla jabbed a finger at me.

“It was my fault,” I said, at the same time.

The Fritz opened her mouth, then closed it into a frowning line. She looked less angry.

Back when we still got along, Rachel taught me how to deal with angry grownups: Ultimate Frisbee Blame Toss. When there's a serious problem, grownups expect you to deny everything. But if you start with that excusing, denying, blaming-others thing, it makes them bang on you harder, to get you to accept responsibility. Instead, with Ultimate Frisbee Blame Toss, you grab total fault from the first words out of your mouth—then explain the facts to show the other person did something much worse, flinging the blame with a little flip.

“It was my fault,” I said again, in the silence. “She punched me and smashed my head against my locker, and when I said I wouldn't fight her, she called me a ‘quitter ho' like my dead brother, who died after he stopped his cancer treatment. Then I lost it completely.”

Kayla started sputtering, but the Fritz shushed her.

“I was out of control. Completely. There was no excuse for getting that violent.” I swallowed. “I could have killed her. And when Mr. Brillson grabbed me to stop me from hurting her more, I wasn't thinking, and I elbowed him. In the—” I looked up. “—testicles.”

“Yes,” Vice Principal Fitzgerald said, in a clipped tone. “I heard.”

“I'm especially sorry about that,” I finished miserably.

“Did you?” Fitzgerald was looking at Kayla. “Call her dead brother a quitter?”

“I . . .” Kayla trailed off. Maybe she was having difficulty figuring out the right lie, because there were fifty witnesses.

“First she said I use his cancer as an excuse for everything. Then, when I said I didn't want to fight her, she said I was a quitter, like my brother.” I repeated what she'd said, mimicking her tone.

“And did you punch Kat?” It was quiet in the office for a long pause.

“She knocked me down.” Kayla was furious. Kayla was doing most of the bleeding, but also getting the hard questions.

“
After
you punched me,” I lobbed in. “And smashed my head into the locker. Before you told me to come outside so you could beat me up some more.”

The Fritz raised both hands to shut us up. “Do either of you wish to make a police report?”

I looked at her blankly.

“Seeking to have the other charged with assault and battery?”

I shook my head.

“Nuh-no,” Kayla managed.

The Fritz leaned forward. “You are both suspended.” After a beat she continued. “For the rest of the day. I'll think about further appropriate punishment tomorrow. In the morning I want you
both
”—she looked from me to Kayla, with her gaze longer on Kayla—“to give to me and to each other a written apology for your part in this. And Kat—write Mr. Brillson an apology as well.”

She waved us out, with a shooing motion and expression of disgust. “Hitting people is
never
acceptable. You are both released to go home. Have a parent sign your apology notes, so I know they've read them. And have them provide a daytime phone number.”

We walked out into the sunlight, Kayla with her ice bag and the bloody paper tissue still sticking out of her nostril, like a red and white nose flag. A good look for her.

“I hobe you're habby,” she said, through the plugged nose. “By Dad is going to
kill
me.”

Right. My brother had, actually, died. Mr. Brillson had probably saved Kayla from brain damage, so it was already her lucky day. And my hand was killing me. “Keep using pressure.” I put a finger on the side of my nose to show her. Beep used to get tons of nosebleeds from the leukemia, which was dangerous when his blood counts were bad.

Kayla stormed away, swearing.

My harsh punishment for attacking a classmate and octave-upping a teacher started with getting the afternoon off. Not exactly a rocket scientist score in the punishment-fits-crime contest.

You might think I'd feel great, after the Kayla Southerland beatdown. Nope. Horrified. Awful for hurting her, even worse that I'd been one Mr. Brillson–grab away from maybe causing permanent damage. And Mr. Brillson's thanks for trying to keep me from flunking out and then saving me from a mayhem rap was my bashing him in the balls.

When I got home, my hand hurt as badly as my conscience, throbbing fiercely. It was streaked black and purple, with swelling now all the way up through the little finger. Which freaked me out. Was that normal? The first sign of leukemia in Beep was easy bruising. I knew I probably didn't have leukemia, but I couldn't stop looking at my hand every two minutes. I mean, what if I did?

After they gave Beep my marrow-to-be cells, he got better for a while, but then got sick again. What if there was cancer in my cells too, and that's what made him worse?

Ibuprofen didn't touch the ache, and neither did the added Tylenol. Mom didn't answer my repeated calls. (Now that Beep was gone, she turned off her ringer when she met with clients.) I tried Dad at the office, but it rolled over into voicemail, so I hung up without leaving a message. I waited a few hours for Mom to wander home, then decided I'd better get my hand looked at. I'd go to UCSF Benioff Children's. There were closer hospitals, but that's the one I knew how to get to, from my practice with Beep, and it was on public transit, so I wouldn't have to ride my bike far, with the messed-up hand.