Thin Space (14 page)

“You know the other day.” Kate bunches the napkin against her nose. “At the corner. When we talked?”

“Yeah,” I say. But I don’t think I can handle whatever she’s going to say next.

“When I saw you . . . walking across the street, with your hands in your pockets . . . your head was back and your hair was off your forehead.” She sniffles out a sobby snort. “You looked like him.”

Nice, Kate. Thanks! We looked alike. We were freaking interchangeable. I get it.

She’s crying like we’re the only two people in the cafeteria. We’re tucked away at this corner table, but I can sense the audience behind me, stretching, shifting, gearing up for the next scene in the crazy saga of the remaining Windsor brother.

“I know I’m being stupid.” She lifts her head and her face is so blotchy and pathetic-looking I can’t help wincing. “Because you’re not him. I know that. And I have to get over it.”

“Kate,” I say. I can feel my teeth grinding together.

“But he was the love—”

Please don’t say it.

“—of my life.”

And now I remember why I hate her. Don’t lose it, I tell myself. She’s no worse than anyone else.

But that’s the problem. She’s
not
anyone else.

First day back at school, when I came limping around the corner, brace on my leg, gruesome scars tracking across my forehead, I don’t know what I’d hoped she’d do. Run toward me. Wrap her arms around me. It was a one-second fantasy. That she’d lift her head. That she’d look at me.

Instead, she and Logan blubbered with each other against the locker. Crying
Austin
over and over. I was an idiot to imagine any other scenario. What happened with her and my brother—that erased everything after. I’d dated Kate for a long time. I thought I loved her. She thought she loved me.

Funny thing. We were both wrong. End of story. Reality 101.

I stuff my half-eaten tuna sandwich into my lunch bag. Kate’s back to stirring her fruit lumps. Her cup of ice is mostly melted.

“I saw you in Mrs. Golden’s office,” she says. “She’s been calling me down there a lot too.”

Probably a good idea since she’s obviously got some grieving issues. “Yeah, well,” I say.

“I guess we have a lot in common. We both lost—” The sentence breaks apart.

And somehow I’m falling backward.

I can’t breathe. I push my hands out reflexively, try to grab something but catch only air. My legs kick out too, my booted feet thudding against the underside of the table. Something’s squeezing my neck. It releases for a second, and I gasp, “What the—?” before my throat closes up again.

Kate’s a smudge of black, and then I don’t see her anymore. I’m on my back, but not on the floor. Someone’s under me. I
throw my hands out, clutch at the arm against my neck. Jab my elbow backward again and again.

I hear a grunt. The arm releases and I suck in a deep breath. I squirm away, twist around, and swing. It’s Brad. We roll together. My face hits something wet. Fruit cocktail, I’m guessing, and then I taste blood. It must be mine because pain is shooting through my nose. I’ve felt that pain before. When my face hit the steering wheel.

Now Brad’s got me pinned down with his knee. His fist blurs as it slams into my chin. I’ve got one hand gripping his shoulder and then I let go. I let him hit me.
Good,
I think.
Smash it. I can’t stand looking at my face anymore.

There’s a rush of air. Hands pull him up, off me. I see Chuck, Kate, the cafeteria ceiling. And then I’m surprised to see Maddie leaning over me. Her ponytail is loose and hair’s falling over one shoulder. Her face is pale. She disappears when other hands seize my shoulders, heaving me to my feet.

Mrs. Golden’s office is now my home away from home. I’m parked in my usual chair, in front of her cluttered desk. There’s the folded up towel. She must be holding on to it in case I decide to tromp around barefoot again. There’s the picture of her and the smiling old guy. Probably her husband. Now that I think about it, he’s dead. So I guess we do have something in common. I look up, check the ceiling, searching out the fungus blotch. It’s bigger today, spreading onto the surrounding tiles. Pipe leak, maybe, or snow buildup on the roof.

Brad’s kicked out next to me. He’s got an icepack on his eye. So I must’ve landed a couple of decent punches after all.
I’ve got my own icepack. My nose throbs from the cold but I keep pressing it down, ignoring the icy burn.

It’s just the two of us in here at the moment. Mrs. Golden left to round up Mr. O’Donnell and our parents. When we got hauled in, she shook her head at me, muttered “Oh, Marsh,” a couple of times, and pulled the icepacks out of the little refrigerator she’s got behind her desk.

I should be stressed, but for some reason I’m relieved. My conversation with Kate is effectively over. Brad most likely got whatever he needed to out of his system. And I’ve got a rearranged face for a few days. If I get sent home from school, that’s just an added bonus.

I hear Brad shifting around. “I hate you,” he says in a grunty voice. “I’ve hated you since seventh grade.”

Against my better judgment, I look at him. “Why?”

He lifts the icepack away from his face. His eye’s swollen shut, bluing around the edges. His lips have that fish-mouth thing going on again. “You don’t know?”

I shrug and pain shoots through my shoulder. “I guess not.”

“You’re an asshole,” he says.

“That’s my line.” I try to laugh but my nose feels like it’s going to split open.

“You knew I liked her and you went after her.”

“Her?”

“Courtney.”

“Courtney?” I don’t know who the hell we’re talking about.

“Courtney Johnson. Football cheerleader. Remember, she moved away summer before eighth grade?” Brad’s swollen
eyeball is so disgusting that I jerk away from him, sending a fresh surge of pain through my shoulder.

“You’re mad at me because of some crap that happened in middle school?”

“You knew,” he says.

“Come on. This is about Courtney?”

“Man, you’re doing the same thing with Logan, stringing her along.” He shifts his head to glare at me, which truly must hurt him, because he moans. “Cut her loose. Stop torturing her.”

I sigh. “You’ve got it all wrong.” Why am I having this conversation?

Brad clutches his icepack, shakes it at me, comes narrowly close to clipping me on the chin with it. “You think you get a free pass, Marsh?” he says.

I clear my throat, ignoring the spasm in my nasal cavity. “What?”

“Because you lost someone, you think you get to do whatever the hell you want?”

“Look. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He puffs out his bloated lips. “You get to shit all over people. You get to—”

But I never get to hear what else I get to do because the door opens, and Mrs. Golden strolls in to start the suspension meeting.

She pushes some chairs around in a circle and everyone has a seat except Mr. O’Donnell. He stands with his hands on his hips and gets the ball rolling with a lecture on the school fighting policy. Brad and I have the same idea with
our ice packs—we keep them over our faces so we don’t have to look at anyone. The glimpse I do get of my parents makes me want to crawl under Mrs. Golden’s desk.

“The rules are very clear—”

What the hell was I thinking before? About relief?

“Previous physical altercation Wednesday—”

My mother’s hands shake in her lap. My father clutches his tie.

“The four-day suspension will—”

My brother’s gone. I’ve destroyed my parents. And jeez, Brad, do you really think I’m getting a freaking free pass here?

“Mr. and Mrs. Silverman,” Mr. O’Donnell says, and Brad’s parents rise. Brad stumbles to his feet and follows his happy parents out of the room.

The icepack burns my skin, pulses toward the back of my head, it reminds me—

“Some other issues to discuss,” Mrs. Golden is saying.

—how cold my feet were when I walked outside. How the icy concrete burned right through them and shot up my legs—

“About counseling.”

—when I was looking for a thin space—

“Marsh.”

—and any minute I might find it, step into it.

But that’s over. Done.

“Marshall.”

And now it’s time to go. My parents trudge out to sign my suspension papers. I follow them into the waiting room, tilt my throbbing head toward one of the grimy windows.

Sixth period now,
I think. Outside, some PE class is trekking across the football field in the snow. The gym teacher leads the march, blows a whistle that I can’t hear all the way up here. There’s one girl hanging back at the end of the line.

I watch her stoop down. Kick off her boots.

When I feel Mrs. Golden swaying behind me, leaning toward the window, I move out of her way.
Better hold on to your dishpan,
I feel like telling her. But I say nothing, of course, and then I’m leaving the room, trailing my parents out of the building.

N
obody says anything when we get into the car. My father shakes his keys, coughs. My mother’s rigid next to him, fiddling with her scarf. The car hasn’t warmed up yet. My breath puffs out of my mouth. I’m in the backseat, still pressing the icepack against my nose, but the thing doesn’t feel cold anymore.

We roll through the parking lot, pass the football field. There’s the gym teacher waving his arms around. There’s Maddie stooping down, stuffing her feet back into her boots.

She must’ve been trolling around on that online obituary page she was telling me about. Maybe she read about some kid dropping dead on the football field. I could’ve saved her the trouble and the foot pain. Back in September, I limped the length of that field several times. No soul came through there. Maddie’s wasting her time.

Whatever she’s trying to do, it’s my fault. I shut my eyes, see a flash of her pale face today when she leaned over me in
the cafeteria. When I was sprawled out on the floor, getting pummeled by Brad, Maddie must’ve come over to see what was happening. Along with everyone else in the school.

I pull the icepack off, chuck it on the seat next to me.

“Oh, Marsh,” my mother says. She keeps her head faced forward. “You broke your nose. Don, do you think he broke his nose?”

“It’s just bruised.” My father keeps his eyes straight ahead too. It’s like they’re having a conversation with the windshield.

“Maybe we should take him to the doctor’s to check. It could’ve damaged the same place.”

“There’s nothing to do for a broken nose.” The light turns yellow and my father slows the car, stops. Suddenly I feel like crying. It’s my Dad. How freaking cautious he is.

“What are we going to do?” my mother says.

“Helen,” my Dad says in this crushed, beaten down voice.

I snatch the icepack up and put it on my face so I won’t have to keep looking at them. There’s only a dull pain now, pulsing out, radiating across my cheekbones. But that seems to be the extent of the damage.

This is nothing compared to after the accident. The first time the nurse showed me a mirror, I couldn’t stop staring at my face. The eyes sunk into the swollen skin. The nose bulged out, twisted to the side. The forehead and chin, split apart and blotchy—purple, black, yellow.
Marsh
, my mother wailing over and over until I thought I was going to lose my mind.

Wait
, I told her, the mirror shaking in my hand.

Marsh—

Wait. I mean, what the hell is going on?

Before I can stop it, there’s a spark of anger. My mother’s sniffling into her scarf. My father’s switching on his turn signal, looking dutifully in both directions before turning. And I’m sitting here in the backseat, seething.

It starts in my feet, rises into my throbbing chest. My hands curl into fists around my useless icepack. It pounds in my jaw, my head. It has nowhere else to go.

“We need to talk,” my mother says, “Marsh.”

“Stop.” I grit my teeth, and the movement sends a jolt of pain through my nose. “Please, Mom, just stop.”

“Don’t you dare use that tone with your mother,” my father snaps. “Do you understand how serious this is? You’ve been suspended. For four days.”

“I know, Dad.” I press harder on my icepack. I feel like jamming it into my skull.

“We’re trying to understand, honey,” my mother says. “Did that boy provoke you? Were you defending yourself?”

My father exhales a sigh. “That kid’s face was in worse shape than Marsh’s.”

“I’m just saying that if he had to fight back, I can . . . understand.”

My entire head is pulsing. I can hear it—the blood surging through the veins around my eyeballs.

“Violence isn’t the answer. We taught our boys—” His voice cracks. “We taught Marsh better than that.”

“It’s not his fault,” my mother says sharply. “There are extenuating circumstances. That’s what Linda Golden said.
He needs help. What we’re doing, what we’ve tried to do—it isn’t helping him.”

“So what
are
we supposed to do? What?” My father’s voice cracks again. There’s no way I can handle him crying. “Tell me, Helen. What’s the answer here?”