Say Something (2 page)

Say something.

That was what kept going through my head. Over and over again, on a loop.
Say something, say something, say something.

But what was I supposed to say? Who was I supposed to tell? Every minute that ticked by, every second, took me farther away from that horrible day. At some point, not saying something turns into an accusation all its own. How would I answer the first question that would come out of everyone’s mouth—
Why? Why didn’t you speak up?

Valerie wasn’t in any of my classes. For the first time since coming to GHS, I didn’t have at least one hour to look forward to, at least one hour where I could stare at the way she crossed her legs at the knee and then tucked the crossed foot back behind her other ankle like a pretzel, or watch her roll her eyes over something a teacher said. It was like Nick had killed her, too.

We did have lunch shift together. And on the first day, we all gathered around our usual table in the back—me, Mason, Duce, Bridget, and Joey—and I was excited, because I’d seen Val go into the lunch line with Stacey. I sat across from Duce, next to the empty chair where Valerie usually sat.

“Where’s your lunch?” Mason asked.

I shrugged. “Not hungry.”

“What’s that like?” Duce asked, cramming a handful of fries into his mouth.

“I can spot you if you need it,” Bridget said, pulling out her purse, unzipping it.

True, my family didn’t have the most money in the world, but that wasn’t why I didn’t eat. I didn’t eat because it was never worth it. You got food, and next thing you knew, you had Chris Summers’s snot ball on your burger or his gum in your mashed potatoes or an open container of chocolate milk dropped in your lap. He used to mess with Nick’s food all the time, and as shitty a friend as it made me, I was always just glad that it wasn’t me Chris was messing with. The best way to keep out of the line of fire was to starve. So I did.

And I was still starving.

Even though Chris was gone.

Like penance or something.

“No, thanks,” I mumbled, and Bridget slid her purse back under the table.

“Dude, there they are,” Mason said to Duce, and they craned their necks to look at the cashier, where Valerie and Stacey were paying for their lunches.

“No way, man, I’m not dealing with this today,” Duce answered after a moment. He stuck a few more fries in his mouth, wiped his hands on his jeans, and stood. He moved the chair on the other side of him to the table behind us. Without missing a beat, he sat down and went back to eating his fries. “This cafeteria’s getting crowded,” he said.

Before my brain could put together what was going on, Stacey and Valerie walked up. Stacey slid into the chair between me and Duce, and Valerie just stood there, holding her tray, her weight shifted onto her good leg, her face pale and tired-looking.

“Oh, yeah,” Stacey said all of a sudden. “Yeah. Um. Val. We um… ran out of chairs, I guess,” she said, and then sank back into Duce’s arm, both of them looking so superior and slithery it made me want to puke.

I started to get up. Screw this dumb game they were playing. Valerie was our friend. But as I started to push back, Duce clipped the leg of my chair with his boot and glared at me. I knew what that glare meant. He wasn’t playing. He didn’t want her at the table.

So instead of offering Valerie a seat, instead of fighting back, saying something, I did what I always did. I lowered myself into the chair and fixed my eyes on a point on the table and stared at it until it started to look funny and I had to force myself to blink.

Bridget started talking, and even though I was so mad I wanted to flip the whole damn table upside down so nobody could sit there, I pretended like I was interested, not hearing a thing. I noticed Valerie’s shadow drift out of my periphery and guiltily flicked my eyes after her as she slunk out of the cafeteria, carrying her lunch tray.

I felt like such a jerk.

And I was so disappointed. Twenty minutes I might have had with her, and I’d lost that, too.

After that I didn’t see Valerie much, other than here and there in the hallway. I was always afraid to talk to her, afraid she’d ask me why I’d let Duce do that. I was ashamed that she’d seen me back down to someone bigger and meaner once again. The cornerstone of our relationship.

By the second month of school, she was pretty much just another face in the Garvin High crowd. I felt like I didn’t even know her anymore, especially when, after school one day, I saw her talking to Jessica Campbell—that volleyball chick who always acted like she was better than everyone else. I stood by the restrooms outside the field house, watching them as they walked toward the art hallway, looking like a yin-and-yang symbol. Valerie, dressed in all black, her hair straggly and caught in one backpack strap; Jessica in her white volleyball uniform, her blond hair perfect and silky, teasing the back of her shirt as it swung, pendulum-style, across her shoulder blades.

It didn’t make sense to me. I thought Valerie hated that girl. I knew Nick had hated her. I thought he hated her for Valerie.

I rounded the corner into the field house, which was thumping with basketballs—the basketball team heading in for after-school practice.

I hadn’t walked through the field house in a long time, and I wouldn’t have that day, had Mrs. Helmsly not asked me to take a paper to Coach Radford. Teachers always sent me on little errands like that. My mom said it was because I was “such a good, reliable boy,” but I knew they did it for the same reason bullies pushed me around: I was easy. People expected me to do stuff, because they knew I would, plain and simple.

I strolled toward Coach Radford’s office. He wasn’t there, so I dropped the paper on his desk and headed back the way I’d come. But halfway across the field house, I was startled by laughter near the water fountain. I turned to look, just in time to see Jacob Kinney grab the legs of Doug Hobson’s sweatpants and give them a yank.

The pants went all the way to the floor, Doug’s boxers stuck around his knees, and a glut of basketball jocks burst out laughing, some of them literally falling down on their elbows with wooden clunks. A couple of girls passing through put their hands over their mouths and made gaspy, shrieky noises, and Doug Hobson dropped his backpack in his hurry to get covered up.

“Very funny,” he said, his voice echoing off the walls. “You got me again.”

Doug had been pantsed probably a million times in that field house. It was almost a tradition at GHS.

A tradition started by Chris Summers. Of course.

I knew I should do something. Should step in. Help the guy out. But instead I turned and hurried out of the field house.

Once outside, I leaned against the brick wall and took a few deep breaths, feeling like shit about myself for running away, and trying to tamp down the anxiety rushing up through me.

I closed my eyes, trying not to hear that sound, that sound of gunshots and screams, that sound of Chris Summers’s haunting laughter intermingling with sirens and shouted instructions and
hey-fag
,
hey-fag
,
hey-fag
—the soundtrack to my nightmares. I forced my eyes open, wiped the sweat from my hairline, from my upper lip. My hands were shaking.
Hey, Judy, come here.

I could hear the squeal of bus doors closing and the hiss and creak of buses leaving the lot. I pushed away from the wall and picked up my backpack from the ground between my feet. Just as I began to hoist the bag over my shoulder, Doug Hobson came out of the field house and had to stop short to keep from smacking into me.

“Watch out,” he said gruffly, and cornered around me.

“Hey,” I said, but he didn’t stop, so I said it louder. “Hey!”

He glanced over his shoulder. There were red patches on his cheekbones, and his bangs looked damp with sweat. “What?”

I hurried to catch him. “You’re in my fourth period, right? Ms. Vasquez?”

He made a face. “I don’t know.”

He continued walking, and I could see pit stains on his shirt. The poor kid was practically bathing in nerves. I had to walk fast to keep up with him.

“I saw what happened,” I said, my heart pounding beneath my Adam’s apple. I gestured over my shoulder. “Back there in the field house.”

“Good for you. Maybe next time I’ll get you a ticket for a front-row seat.”

“Jacob’s a dick, man,” I added.

He turned, looked like he might say something, but seemed to think better of it and simply shrugged, reaching behind him to pull up his hood.

“It’s just a joke,” he said, but I didn’t believe him. How many times had I given the same shrug, the same excuse? How many times had Chris Summers said it—
It’s just a joke. Lighten up, fag.

Jokes. And we were supposed to be good sports, to laugh. Nick hadn’t been taking it as a joke, though. Everyone knew that now. Was it so easy for them to forget?

The bleachers were empty as I slugged toward them, toward Starling. Mason hadn’t waited for me, had probably ridden home with Duce again. I zipped my jacket. Just as good. I didn’t really want company. Every time I was around people, my brain just started in again—
say something… say something.

***

My brother, Brandon, was sitting on the front porch, wearing only a pair of boxers. Mom wouldn’t let him smoke inside anymore, so he had to go outside if he wanted a cigarette. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy. He rubbed his hand over his buzz cut and yawned.

I looked at my wrist like I was checking the time, even though I didn’t have a watch on. “Up early, Sleeping Beauty. It’s only three thirty.”

He rested the palm of his hand against his forehead and flipped me off, then lowered it and squinted up at me. “Have a good day at school, Peewee? Did you learn to tie your shoes yet?”

“Clever,” I said. “Come up with that on your own, or did Grandma help you with it?”

I stepped up onto the porch, and he punched my calf with one knuckle. “Grandma taught me that, too, punk.”

I rubbed my leg absently and spied my dad’s car in the driveway. “Dad here?”

Brandon belched, a plume of smoke racing into the air. “Came home about an hour ago.”

“Why?”

“Not enough work, I guess. Do I look like his nanny?”

I went inside and dropped my backpack on the kitchen table. This was why we never had any money. Mom drove a school bus for a living, and Dad worked at a factory. Neither made much money to begin with, but when things were slow, Dad got sent home with no pay. In Garvin you either had money or you didn’t. People like Jessica Campbell and Ginny Baker and even Jacob Kinney had money. People like me and Mason and Duce didn’t.

Not that something like economic status mattered when you were already the “class queer.” In the tiny minds at GHS, being gay was worse than being poor.

I knew exactly where Dad would be, so I grabbed a soda and jogged downstairs. There he was, on a stool, bent over his bombed city, a miniature Dresden.

“Hey, bud, how was school?”

“Okay,” I said, popping open the soda and taking a swig.

He glanced up, his hand frozen over the warscape. “Yeah?”

“It’s school. Boring. Annoying. Pointless.” I reached out with my index finger and inched a tiny blown-out car off the road. Dad watched intently.

“Well, only one more year,” he said. “Less than, actually. Then you can go to college and move on. Forget all about the bad stuff, you know.…”

My ears buzzed. Forget. If he only knew how much I wanted to forget. But he didn’t, because I hadn’t told him. I hadn’t told anyone what I knew about the shooting.

Say something.

“Dad,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he said absently, placing a soldier behind a crumbled brick wall.

“I…” My throat tightened.
It’s all a joke, Judy. Don’t be a pussy. You take things so seriously. Not everything is a reason to run to the guidance office.

Dad paused, the soldier still hovering above the scene. “Yeah?”

Say something.

“I…” I swallowed, mashed my lips together. “I think you need to add some smoke over here.”

Dad hesitated, studying me, then followed where I was pointing.

“Huh. Good catch, bud,” he said. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I answered, willing the buzz in my ears away. “No problem at all.”

“Hey, princess, where’s your tiara?”

I walked as fast as I could from the showers back to my locker, holding tight to the towel around my waist, having learned the hard way that Chris Summers would find all kinds of tricks to rip your towel off if you weren’t being vigilant.

“Why, you want to borrow it?” I asked, part of my new strategy to stop taking his shit and start slinging it right back at him every chance I got.

His eyes crinkled with a smile. He bumped shoulders with Jacob. “You hear that? Our little girl is growing up. She’s getting sassy on us.”

“I always heard flamers were sassy,” Jacob said with a grin. Chris turned to Jacob as if I weren’t there, shivering in my towel, my skinny, hairless chest still beaded with water. “What should we do about this new sassy attitude she has?”

“I don’t know,” Jacob said, all mock innocence.

“Maybe we should toss her out into the field house,” Chris said.

“But first we should make sure she’s not overdressed.”

“Come on, guys,” I mumbled, my heart speeding up. I hated how quickly my new bravado had disappeared.

“Don’t worry, man,” Chris said, his voice going soft and friendly, which I knew was a trap. “We’re not going to throw you out there. We’re just going to twist things up.”

At that, they both lunged toward me. My body tensed, and my hands clutched the towel desperately. Chris reached forward with one hand and wrenched my bare nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Jacob twisted the other one at the same time, both of them squeezing so hard, my skin felt like it was being ripped off. I cried out, but my voice was lost under their laughter.

“Cut it out, dickwads,” I heard, and then saw Chris jerk back as someone came up behind him.

There was the sound of scuffling, and I opened my eyes just in time to see Chris throw Nick Levil backward. Nick fell and skidded on his butt, his body making a dull
clang
against a set of lockers. Other people had begun to gather around us to see what was going on. I huddled back as far away from the scuffle as I could get, praying nobody would see the purple bruises already blooming on my chest.

Nick stood up and bent his legs in a fighting stance. No way did that skinny kid have a chance against those two refrigerators, but that didn’t stop him from standing his ground, which only served to deepen my humiliation as I continued to inch backward.

“Protecting your girlfriend, freak?” Jacob said. “How precious.”

“You’re always calling everyone else gay, but you can’t seem to keep your hands to yourself in the locker room. Maybe you have a little secret,” Nick answered.

Chris stepped forward and shoved Nick, who banged against the lockers a second time. “Calm down, freak. I didn’t know you and Judy had a thing. I thought you were into skinny, ugly corpses with stringy hair.”

His face twisted with rage, Nick got his footing and sprang toward Chris.

But just as he reached Chris, Coach Radford stepped out of his office.

“Hey. Hey!” he yelled, rushing between them. They both stopped short as he stared them down. “Everyone get to your next class. Levil, Summers, you can come with me.”

“He started it, Coach,” Chris said, and Jacob nodded like his head was on a spring.
Boing! Boing! Boing!

Coach turned to Nick questioningly. Nick wiped his mouth with his sleeve, his eyes darting from me to Coach and back. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out—story of my freaking life.

“Yeah,” Nick finally said. “You wouldn’t believe the truth, anyway, about your precious football stars.” He followed Coach.

It turned out not to be so bad for Nick—maybe because he had been losing the fight when Coach stepped in, or maybe because the school was sick of breaking up Nick’s fights. Maybe the principal figured if suspensions hadn’t worked yet, they were never going to. Maybe he’d given up on Nick and just wanted him to graduate and leave GHS. Whatever the reason, Angerson only gave Nick a Saturday detention and let him go back to class.

“Whatever,” Nick said as we walked home that afternoon. He kicked a chunk of asphalt, which skittered across the road and into a drainage ditch. “Not like I care. I’m used to Saturday detention by now. When I graduate, they’re gonna have to name a desk after me or something.”

We paused at his driveway. “Well, see ya later,” I said awkwardly, stupidly, because in my head all I could think about was how he had detention because he was defending me and how I should be the one in detention, because it was my new resolution to stop taking Summers’s shit and ten seconds into an altercation with him I’d caved. I should have at least thanked Nick, but somehow thanking him would be like admitting something I didn’t want to admit.

“Hey, why don’t you come to the lake with us tonight?” Nick called from halfway up his driveway. “Duce is gonna bring some beer.”

“Is Valerie…” I started, then blushed. “I mean, are you sure it’s okay with everyone? That I come, I mean?”

He gave me a strange look. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Okay,” I said.

For a change, I wouldn’t be spending my Friday night sitting next to Dad, gluing toothpicks to newspaper or God knew what else. For a change, I wouldn’t have to hear Brandon’s crap about me having no friends, or Sara’s pitiful admonishment of him for saying something so mean.

“Come by around six,” Nick said, and opened the half-ripped screen door and disappeared into his gloomy house.

***

I came back fifteen minutes before six, kicking myself for looking eager and desperate, but at the same time so pumped to see Valerie outside of school, I could barely stand it. I hoped I didn’t smell as drenched in body spray as I felt. I hoped I didn’t look razor-burned, like some dweeb preteen. I hoped she would notice me in a good way.

Nick opened the door, his ear glued to a phone, and let me in. I blinked in the shadows, making out the back of a blond head on the couch, watching TV, eating something, then wiping her fingers on a towel that was being used as a curtain over the big bay window.

Nick motioned for me to follow him, and we went downstairs to his basement-turned-bedroom.

“Uh-huh,” he kept saying into the phone. After a few minutes, he hung up. “Val,” he said.

“Oh.” I tried not to look as miserable as I felt. Valerie didn’t call me, because I wasn’t her boyfriend. I could wish it all I wanted, but Nick was the one who had her. “She still coming tonight?” I picked up a PlayStation controller and idly pushed the buttons, though the TV wasn’t on.

“Yep,” he said, messing with something on his dresser, shoving things into his pockets. “Duce is picking her up at Stacey’s house.” He turned to me. “You like her?”

I froze. Was it that obvious? “Who, Val? She’s great,” I said, trying to sound uninterested.

“Yeah, she is,” he agreed. He turned and rooted through more stuff on his dresser, and I let out a breath while his back was turned. “There’s something about her. She’s, like, delicate or something. And smart. I don’t know.… I always thought I’d get bored if I dated someone for more than a month, but that’s not how it is with her.”

“Oh,” I said. A lump formed in my throat.

“Her family’s crap, though. Her parents fight constantly. Her dad’s some big-time lawyer, and he treats everyone like they’re something he stepped in. Not that my family’s the best or anything, but at least we don’t pretend to be great. Hers is all about show. They’re afraid to admit what they’re really like. Afraid of what people will think.”

I sat back on Nick’s bed, which was just a mattress on the floor, and my eyes landed on a battered red spiral notebook lying on top of some books heaped inside a milk crate. I dropped the controller and bent to pick it up. “Valerie’s not like that, though,” I said, opening the notebook and thumbing through it.

“I know, right? That’s what I like about her. She’s real. We think alike.”

There was a pause. I turned pages in the notebook. It was filled with inks in every color, in two different hands—a list.

“What is this?” I asked.

Nick made a noise that was somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “It’s nothing. Just a list. It’s Val’s, actually.”

“ ‘Number thirty-two, people who stare at you too long when talking to you. Number thirty-three, Beefy Ellen,’ ” I read aloud, then snickered and glanced up. “Ellen Mass? Val calls her Beefy Ellen?”

Nick nodded and shrugged. “She’s beefy,” he said simply.

I read on, flipping another couple of pages. “Number eighty-nine, CB’s thunder thighs. Who’s CB?”

“That Christy Bruter chick, the one on the softball team. I don’t really know her, but Valerie hates her. You ready to go?”

“So this is a hate list?” I asked, amused.

“Something like that.”

“Who all’s on it? Besides Ellen and Christy, I mean.”

“Lots of people. Whoever’s pissing us off at any given moment,” he said. He dug a brush out from behind his pillow and ran it through his hair. “People who deserve it.”

“Chris Summers should be on it,” I blurted out. I couldn’t help myself. “He should be top of the list.”

Nick tossed the brush back onto his bed. “Trust me, he’s on it,” he said grimly.

I turned a few more pages, looking for Chris’s name. “I had no idea Val had this,” I mused. “It’s funny. ‘Number forty-four, Hollister clothes. Number forty-five, people who talk in abbreviations. OMG! JK! LOL!’ ” I chuckled.

“See? You get it. That’s why Val likes you so much,” Nick said.

A current of hopefulness worked its way up my spine, then stopped cold. She liked me, but she would never love me. Not the way she loved him. And why would she? Everything about me was all wrong. I was too skinny, too feminine; I would never have confidence. I would never ask anyone out. I would never stand up for myself against guys like Chris Summers. I swallowed against the blackness building up in my throat.

“Can I add to it?” I asked.

His eyes flicked to the notebook, and he seemed to hesitate, as if he didn’t want me to. As if it were theirs only. But after that tiniest of hesitations, he walked over to the dresser and rummaged around until he found a pen. He tossed it to me. “Sure.”

I grabbed the pen and flipped to the last page of the list. Chris may have already been on it, but guys like him couldn’t be on it enough.

Pressing so hard my pen cut through the paper in some places, I wrote:
104. Chris Summers.