His shoulders shake. His face is hidden from me by his hair and the angle at which he stands but I think he might be crying. I try to grab his wrist again but he twists away. It stings somewhere in my chest.
"It's okay," I say hurriedly, even though I know it's not, even though I don't know how to help. "He's a fucking asshole. Sorry, I know he's your dad. But we can go together, right? You and me and Georgia. We can go visit... visit your mum together."
My voice trails off and I realise that it's not enough. I'm not enough.
Theo sighs then gives me a forced smile that wavers like a tepid ocean. "Just... can you leave me alone for a while? Please?"
"O...okay."
He nods, then heads up the stairs without looking back. There are no sounds coming from Georgia in the kitchen, no noise from anywhere in the house after Theo's bedroom door slams shut.
He's hurting and I can't do anything. I've failed him. I'm not enough and I never will be.
*******************
He doesn't wake from a nightmare, but his sobs echo through the walls of the house. I lie awake and listen to them, wishing I was brave enough to get up and wipe his tears away.
"Theo?"
I knock on the door three times the next morning, the vibrations of my fist sounding pathetically sorrowful through the layer of expensive wood.
"Theo, we have to be gone in half an hour."
The door flies open so quickly and unexpectedly that I stumble back, very nearly landing on my butt.
Theo stands there. Shirtless again, although this time it's because he's in the middle of dressing. Hair rumpled. Looking like he's leaving after a one night stand.
I blush in a way that would make the boy standing before me jealous and quickly pin my eyes on his face. "Er... we have to.. go, soon."
Theo smiles and his eyes are as hard as diamonds. "Wow, way to act casual." I blush even harder. Oh no. Oh, no. "Look, I know you heard me fucking crying last night. I know. I'm a little bitch. Get over it, let's move on, stop acting weird."
I hadn't forgotten. His eyes are red and ringed with shadows but that isn't why I'm flushing like I've slapped repeatedly with a salmon.
"I'm really sorry," I say. "That it happened... and that I couldn't help."
He shakes his head. "Not your fault. Meet you by the front door in ten?"
He closes the door so that my half-hearted "Yeah," is only heard by the wood that just got slammed in my face.
*******************
It's a wordless bus ride, but Theo brought earphones this time instead of headphones and we listen to something loud and angry and emo with the volume too high. Theo taps his fingers to the beat, his mouth set in a hard line. I scratch on the knee of my jeans and he doesn't stop me this time.
When we get to the school, Theo heads around the back of the building without dumping his bag first. Luckily, there's nobody there. We sit on the same bit of fence as before, a sizeable gap between us, and Theo turns up the music so loud that I have to hold the earbud at least an inch away from my head.
As the song ends on a long, drawn-out, screaming note, I tap Theo's shoulder and motion for him to take the earphone out. Surprisingly, he complies.
"Do you... do you wanna talk about it?"
He shakes his head. "I was being stupid. It's just Dad being Dad."
"That doesn't make it okay," I say, my hand twitching with the desire to reach out and touch his shoulder.
He shrugs, looking up at the grey morning sky like he wants to grow wings and soar towards it. "There are worse problems."
I do touch his shoulder then. This time, he doesn't shrug me away. But he doesn't move, either, doesn't lean into me like he did yesterday on the roof. I wish we could return to that moment, even just replicate it.
"Just because your problems aren't as bad as somebody else's," I say, "doesn't mean that they're not problems."
Theo looks at me like I've just delivered fifth gospel. "Evan..."
"Something wrong, rich boy?" somebody says.
Theo's head snaps away from me and my arm falls from his shoulder. I look around and see Jack, the ugly fucking bully fucking asshole, standing there with his arms folded and the biggest, ugliest smirk on his face. People who I assume are his friends are gathered around him, as well as some curious onlookers with their phones poised in case a fight breaks out.
"Or were you just going to start kissing?" Jack taunts, leering at Theo because something beyond my control won't let me take his scrutiny. "Well, don't let us stop you. Kiss away, fag." He steps forward so that he's towering over Theo and I can feel every muscle in my body coiling like a spring. "Come on, Theodore. You didn't mind kissing me at your party, right? Maybe this time you've found a cunt who'll actually let you come within five feet." His face splits into a grin. "Go on, kiss. It gets better, right? We'll all support you. Me, these guys, your deadbeat daddy, maybe even your mummy up in the clouds-"
I stand up, fists raised, ready to give this fucker a punch for every word that came out of his fucking mouth.
But Theo moves before I can even step forward.
Theo, who stopped me from decking this fucker just three days ago.
He darts past me and wraps his arms around Jack's middle, using the full weight of his body and sending them both to the ground. I'm frozen in shock as Theo kneels on Jack's chest and punches his face, screaming words that are lost to the shouts and screeches of the crowd surrounding us. He hits him again. And again. I hear thuds, see blood, and Theo just gets in his fourth punch.
And I'm frozen.
But Jack's stronger and snaps out of his shock first, and one well-placed shove and turn of his hips sends Theo sprawling to the ground. Then Jack's on top of him and holding him down by the throat with one hand and punching him, bloodying his knuckles on Theo's face, drawing screams from him.
Hurting him.
I move then. I move like I never have before, like my limbs are shot with electricity and my blood is sparked gasoline.
I grab Jack's hair and pull him off, Theo. Then I knee him in the face and - crack - I can feel his nose break against my dead flesh and bone. He crumples and I knock him down and pin him down with my knees on either side of his torso and he tries to kick me but I don't feel it and I hold him down by his hair and punch him and I can feel my fingers cracking and fixing and he's no match for me because I'm dead, I'm dead and I have him pinned down-
Girls are squealing. Boys are yelling. Theo's screaming my name, but I can't hear it over the roaring in my ears.
He hurt Theo
- He's a bully
- He's awful
- He's me
Then somebody pulls me away, their fingers digging into my shoulder like meat hooks. I land on my elbows in the dust, my hair in my eyes, blood on my knuckles that slowly drips away into nothing because I'm unnatural and I'm awful and I'm not really alive-
Jack is curled up in a ball, sobbing. His friends surround him in a circle, looking like they want blood but also like they're too scared and also because I'm not real enough for them to direct their anger. I feel a vindictive surge of pleasure. I look around. It was a teacher who pulled me off.
So where's Theo?
Is he okay?
Is he-
He's there. His nose is swollen, his left eye black, his jaw rapidly bruising.
He's hurt. Somebody is holding him back, their hands wrapped around his chest. He's straining against them, trying to get to me. He mouths my name. "Evan."
Then he burst into sobs. Everything is crumbling.
*******************
I tried to slip into the nurse's office with Theo, but they noticed me just enough to shove me out of the way and slam the door in my face. I caught Theo's eye - his aching, bruised, black eye - as the door slammed closed but he looked away.
I'm sitting outside now, wishing I was in there with him or still punching in Jack's stupid little fucking face. I twitch with every noise and keep seeing blood on my knuckles or dripping down my wrists, even though it all slid away like the paint that refused to let me remember better times.
And, for some reason, that kid Kyle is here, the one who won't stop staring at Theo. He arrived about five minutes ago and is sitting two seats away from me, twisting the black ring that he wears on his middle finger and occasionally checking an ancient-looking phone. He keeps glancing at Theo's door. He looks worried.
It's only when I stare at that ring for a while that I recognize it from the hand wrapped around Theo's middle: Kyle was the one holding him back, keeping Theo out of the fight so he didn't get more hurt. He was the one who cradled Theo against his chest as he cried and demanded that the nurse see Theo before Jack.
I'm glad he did it.
But why did he do it?
I stare at him even more, then. He's wearing the school uniform underneath a faded bomber jacket that has a tear in the sleeve and his backpack is plain and old, just like his phone. The only thing that makes him stand out is his piercings (one in his lip, one in his ear) and that ring that he just won't stop fucking twisting. Otherwise, he's plain.
He's handsome. Not as handsome as Theo, but handsome. He has a face that looks like it smiles a lot. He looks like somebody who would help at Theo just because.
But I've had sixty-one years to practice reading people. It has to be more than that.
I'm glaring at Kyle so intently that I don't even notice when somebody walks out of the nurse's office until she strides right around me. She stops in front of Kyle and begins to whisper to him intently. Kyle frowns down at her, (he's short but she's shorter) then shakes his head, then nods. With one last conflicted look at the door Thoe's behind, he follows her down the hall.
Ha.
It's another half an hour before that door opens again. This time, it is Theo. I leap to my feet. His eye is even blacker, his dark skin mottled with bruises, but otherwise he looks okay. When I walk over to him and touch his arm gently, he finally looks into my eyes.
"I'm sorry," he mumbles.
"For what?"
"Come on, Theo," somebody says. A nurse, or a teaching assistant, I think. Not like it matters.
Theo, with one last look at me, starts to walk down the hall. I'm not even spared a glance as I follow him, wondering what the consequences will be.
We stop outside the headmistress's office and one of the women escorting Theo knocks. A moment later, the door is opened by a fearsome-looking woman who glances at Theo then looks over her shoulder.
"You can go, now, Mr Thapa," she says, standing back. A moment later, Kyle appears behind her, his head ducked.
Yeah. Go
As he passes through the door, though, Kyle catches Theo's eye. "Are you alright?" he asks, his eyes tracing Charlie's bruised eye and mottled lip. My stomach wrenches.
"Yeah," Theo says. And he blushes.
"Off to class, now, Kyle," the head says, and I could kiss her. "See you soon." Kyle smiles at Theo, then yanks his raggedy backpack further up his shoulder and heads down the corridor without looking back. We all watch him go, me and Theo for a second longer, before the women who escorted us here shove us (well, Theo, but I follow) inside the office and slam the door shut.
In forty-five years, this room has barely changed. The decorative shields still line the walls, with a few new additions, and there are still those massive bookshelves and tiny window and a disgusting throw rug on the floor. Only the placement on things and the desks and chairs and whatnot have changed.
I'm thrown back into the past. As we sit in chairs on the other side of the desk, I begin to scratch rapidly at the knee of my jeans, just so I don't have to look at those wooden shields on the walls, awards for the generations of children who have done good things for this school. I might recognise a few names.
Even the headmistress's steely gaze fizzles away as she looks at me. I have my anxiety attack in peace as she interrogates Theo. "So, tell me exactly what happened, Theodore."
Theo pulls a slightly bloody tissue out of his pocket and turns it over in his hands. The head holds out a bin and a cardboard box. He dumps the soiled one in the bin and grabs a new tissue, proceeding to shed the corners off and drop the scraps of paper on the floor. She doesn't seem to mind.
"I was talking with my friend. He was comforting me." He doesn't look up from his hands, not even once. It's like I'm not here. "And Jack came up to us and accused us of kissing and called me a fag and my friend who was just trying to help me a cunt and teased me about my dad and my dead mother... and I lost it." He looks up then, his eyes defiant. My chest burns with affection. "And I don't regret it."
The principal, who didn't even flinch as he swore, frowns down at Theo's hunched form. "So what did you do?"
Theo recounts, absolutely truthfully, how he attacked first, how Jack got the best of him, how I (although he just referred to me as "friend") pulled him off and started beating up Jack.
"Was this friend Kyle Thapa?
Theo shakes his head. "No. It was..." he looks over at me before I can convey to him what a bad idea that is.
The head glances at me, her eyebrows knotting. "Ah." Then she looks right back at Theo. For once, I'm grateful for being ignored. As I stand, quietly, and creep towards the door, she doesn't look at me once. I need to go.
"Would you do it again?" she asks Theo.
Theo glances at me, halfway out of the door. His eyes beg me to stay but I feel like that room is swallowing me.
"Yes," he says to her. He looks at me again, his gaze lingering. "If he hurt or insulted somebody I cared about, I would."
The door closes behind me and I sit down on the floor on the opposite side of the corridor, my back against the unforgiving brick wall.
Five minutes later, Georgia arrives. She doesn't notice me as she strides down the hall, pounds on the door Theo's behind and is let in. She must be filling in for his absentee dick of a father.
Ten more minutes. Then the door opens and Georgia storms out, a dejected Theo in her wake. I scramble up and follow them, wanting to stand at Theo's side but not brave enough. Theo glances behind at me and frowns - not like he's angry with me, but with himself. He nods with his head, confirming that I can follow.
We step out into the sunlight and my skin turns to diamond. Georgia, silent, strides towards a sleek black car parked just outside the gates. As she slams the driver's door shut behind her, Theo holds the back door open.
"Well?" he half-demands, his first words to me since he apologized for reasons beyond my comprehension. He nods towards the open door.
I slide into the car, looking out of the window. I see several faces pressed against the school windows and wonder what Theo will be facing when he returns to this place.
Whatever it is, I won't let it hurt him. Not again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
a note from me
whew, such a long chapter. I hope yall liked the fight scene, I'm not good at writing fights. g. If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it! :) And also your thoughts on Kyle, if you are willing to give them (: