L U K E
I was not an aggressive person, not at all. Exhibit no. 1) just this morning someone had stepped on my foot with the chunkiest combat boot I had ever seen, and I had apologized. Exhibit no. 2) every other day, someone bigger than me asked me to buy them lunch, and I did, not because I was worried about their nutrition, but because I liked my teeth. A lot. Exhibit no. 3) a guy called me a fucking loser the other day, and I said, okay. I thought maybe this would hold up in court, but I wasn't too sure.
Someone tapped my shoulder.
"Are you his boyfriend?" I turned around to the person behind the voice, a nurse not a year over thirty, smiling at me with a file in her hands.
"What?" Did she really just ask me if I was Jason's boyfriend? "No. No, I'm not his boyfriend. I'm not even his friend."
I was pretty sure Jason had been the one to call me a fucking loser the other day. I was pretty sure we were not friends. I was also pretty sure I didn't have to tell her that, and that I would carry this idiotic interaction home and tuck it in bed with me tonight.
She frowned, "Oh, okay, well, Jason will be alright. He has a fractured leg and a few scratches, but he should be good in a few months."
"Fuck." The world left my mouth before I could stop it. The nurse's frown grew deeper. "Can he still play football?"
She smirked, "With a broken leg? No, I don't think so."
"Fuck." Oh my God, what was wrong with me? Fucking stop swearing!
"I'm sure he won't mind having a few months off for himself," she said, pressing the file against her chest.
"I don't think so." I really didn't. Jason's only personality trait was that he liked football. His whole life revolved around it. I suspected he had an altar in his bedroom with a football as the centerpiece. He was good at it too, second-best in the team, after Jacob, the captain. I thought of the two of them as slight variations of the same person, parallel-universe versions of each other. The similar name was the cherry on top of the cake. I hated cherries. And cake.
I had wanted chips. I had gone to the vending machine at school only to watch it swallow my dollar and spit nothing out. I had been living on an empty stomach since breakfast at 7 a.m., courtesy of today being one of those days where I bought someone else lunch instead of myself, and so these chips held more emotional value than usual.
And I really wasn't an aggressive person, but I had shaken that machine like I was. Usually, this meant me burning the calories of a Zumba class while the machine stood there, unmoved, unbothered, having swallowed my money and kept my lunch. Today, I saw it coming down for me. I wasn't the sharpest pencil in any box, but I was still considerably sharp, so of course, I stepped out of way.
Not Jason. He had been standing behind me, waiting impatiently â I was sure if I had taken a little longer, he would have slapped me in the head and told me to get lost â and the machine had come down for him instead. Correction, for his leg.
"Right," the nurse said. "You can go see him if you want."
I didn't want to go see him, but I felt like I had to. I had, after all, second-handedly broken his leg.
"Thank you." I watched her walk away and then turned around to walk into Jason's room.
He was sitting down in a hospital bed, looking angrily at the new cast on his leg. I suspected Jason did everything angrily. I once watched him fight a door like it was a person when his jacket got stuck on the handle.
"Jason," I started. Was it weird that I knew his name, but he probably didn't know mine? "I'm so sorry. I didn't see you behind me. I was just trying to getâ It doesn't really matter. How are you doing?"
He looked up from his leg, his hands clenched around the edge of the mattress. There was a deep frown on his face, like a muscle he kept contracting.
"What do you think?" he spat out.
"The nurse said you're gonna be fine."
"I'm gonna kill you." I didn't think he was, at least not right away.
"You're missing a leg. I don't think you're â" A yogurt flew my way, so fast, I only had time to raise my arms over my face and hope for the best.
Here's what the best looked like: cherry yogurt all over my t-shirt and the jeans I took out of the pile of clean laundry just this morning.
"It wasn't on purpose!" I tried, looking at the yogurt burst open at my feet. "Who the fuck likes cherry yogurt?"
"Oh really?" Jason said, "It wasn't on purpose?"
I frowned, "Well, obviously. I didn't fucking push the vending machine over you, did I?"
"Oh, that's fine then. I guess I'm good to go. Let me just tell the doctor it wasn't on purpose, and he'll take the cast right off. I'm fucking fine, I guess."
"I see," I said. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I know it's â"
"You ruined my life," he stopped me. His head fell down the same way yogurt dripped from my t-shirt to the linoleum floor.
Pretty sad life, I thought but didn't say it.
"It's only a few months until it heals-"
"What the fuck happened to you?" the voice came so out of nowhere. A scream left my throat like a flinch.
I turned around.
"Daisy?" It was Daisy! "What are you doing here?"
She walked past me without even a glance my way, eyes locked on the cast around Jason's leg, one hand on her waist where a colorful patterned t-shirt was tucked into a pair of lime green checked trousers, the other on her forehead.
"Yeah," Jason said, his face matching mine, "What are you doing here?"
She stopped in front of him and pulled his chin up so he would look at her. He slapped her hand away.
"What are you doing here?" he asked again.
She stepped back. I didn't know what to do. Were they friends? Boyfriend and girlfriend? I had never seen them together at school. Jason had lunch with the football team. Daisy had lunch with Zoey. I had lunch with no one. I thought I was winning, but no one ever asked for my opinion anyway.
"I heard a guy pushed a vending machine over you," she said, an explanation punctuated by a turn of head my way. Her ponytail moved with it.
I frowned, "I didn't push it over him."
She frowned too. I looked down at myself as if to prove a point. Here was the point, "I dislocated my shoulder playing football in gym class last week. I couldn't move a vending machine even if I wanted."
"Why are you here?" Jason asked again.
"I'm trying to apologize," I said. "I might not have â"
"Not you, asshole," he said, waving me away like I was a fly. He looked at Daisy. "You."
"Really?" She sounded amused in a sad upset way. Her eyebrows came down from where they had been high up on her forehead, the line of concern and confusion flattened out. "You're fucking unbelievable."
"Sure," he said, not looking at her, but at his cast instead. "I'll see you later."
"How do you know each other?" I couldn't help myself. Daisy once said football had been made up by men who wanted to either fuck or kill each other but couldn't. Jason once asked what the fuck a prologue was in English class. But I had consumed enough mainstream media to guess.
"Are you dating?"
"Ugh, what?" Jason's head shot up and his voice matched the look on his face â disgust.
I thought it was both unnecessary and uncalled for, but I didn't think he wanted my feedback on it, so I kept it to myself. I turned to Daisy instead, who was rubbing her forehead like this whole thing was giving her a mean headache.
"Does Zoey know?" She frowned but shook her head. I was grinning too much. "How exciting!"
"Shut him up please," Jason said, dropping his face in his hands.
"Does this mean we're best friends now?" I kept going. None of them answered. "I won't tell anyone, don't worry. But I'm very excited for you. He probably has so many abs â"
"What the fuck's wrong with you?" Jason asked.
So much, I thought but didn't say.
"I'm just saying. This is good. Good life experience. Something to tell your grandkids."
"Shut up," Daisy said. I didn't. I didn't know why.
"A bit of a Jane Eyre situation, right? What's he hiding in the attic? My bet is anger issues and some hardcore â "
"Who the fuck is Jane Eyre and why are you still talking?" Jason said, rolling his eyes to the back of his head. "Why are you even still here?"
"Right," I said then. "I said I was sorry. They can't lock me up. I'm out."
I walked for the door.
"Are you not going too?" I heard him ask Daisy as I grabbed the door handle.
"Oh, fuck off," she said, and then walked in front of me when I opened the door. I followed her out into the hallway.
"Are you crying?" There was a certain frenzy in the way she kept wiping her eyes, and the sleeves of the skin-tight yellow turtleneck she wore under her t-shirt were wet.
"No," she said, a lie so bad, I just waited. "Yes."
"Why? He's clearly an asshole. Cum and go, right?" I was trying to make her smile, but she just kept walking for the elevator.
"You're disgusting," she said when I stopped next to her.
"I'm just saying, if there's something you can take from this, is â"
"Can you just shut up, please?"
"Ejaculate then evacuate."
"Fuck's sake."
"It was too good not to say."
The elevator doors opened, and she stepped inside. I followed.
"Look, I don't know what's going on, but you're clearly too good for him."
She looked at me. There was a questioning smile on her face, and I wanted to pat myself on the back for it.
"You are," I said again. "When Mrs. Blunt retired last year, you bought her flowers."
"She was a really good teacher."
"She gave me an F for writing about the homosexual nature of The Picture of Dorian Gray."
She laughed, "No one's perfect." And then, "Can you send me that essay?"
"No," I said. "I destroyed it. She made me feel really insecure about it."
"Pussy."
"That's not very feminist of you, is it?"
"I take pride in being a bad feminist. It gives me character," she said, eyes locked on the little screen with the floor number on it. It had yet to move. So did the elevator. "Why isn't this moving?"
"I guess we're stuck," I said. I was only joking, but she didn't seem to see through it because her breathing picked up pace like a bad song.
"What?" She looked around, her ponytail slapping me as she did. The space was too small, only big enough for a few people if they cared little for personal space. "Fuck."
"God's listening, you know?" I didn't believe in God, but I doubted she knew.
She furrowed her eyebrows, pursed her lips together, and finally slapped the side of my head.
"What the fuck?"
"I need you to stop being you for a second."
I rubbed my head, "Are you claustrophobic or something?"
She focused on breathing in and out, ignoring me altogether. I frowned.
"Right," I said, slowly leaning against the elevator's dashboard and accidentally pressing a button.
We started moving. Her eyes squinted, and her lips pursed, and I thought, how would I look without a couple of teeth?
"You idiot, you never even pressed the button, did you?" Her hand was already coming my way, slapping the side of my head once again.
"You didn't press it either!"
"I hate you!"
I frowned, scratching the back of my neck, "That's such a strong word, you sure â"
"Fuck you."
The elevator doors opened. She stormed out. I watched her as she did, the soles of her multi-colored shoes angry against the linoleum floor of the hospital.
"I love you!" I shouted over, but I didn't think she could hear me.
She was already walking out of the main glass doors and into the street.