"So how was your day?" I asked. The answer was obvious, but I figured I'd approach the whole random situation that I put myself in with a calm and simple question. As anticipated, he didn't reply, but he did look away. An answer without speaking.
"Does this have anything to do with the first day of school?" I continued a bit heavier. I was leaving campus when I heard the screams coming from the bathroom. I ran and got the janitor before he left campus and had him open the door. That's when I watched Javier fall to the floor in a panic, covered with scraped knees and hands. He always wore dark jeans and black shirts, which lessened the severity of the blood, but it was dripping on the floor. It was bad.
My question caused him to flinch. He pulled his knees to his chest and turned toward me.
"What about?" he asked. His tone was serious, but curious.
"Well, I'm assuming that whatever made you come over here today is more than likely related to the minor incident with you and the locked bathroom," I replied.
I didn't want to push. If he wanted to talk he would, not that I really wanted him to, but he obviously needed something or someone. The guy was a mess and I was a sucker for hopeless individuals. Do unto others sort of deal. Just because the world was mean to me didn't mean I had to be mean to the world.
His legs relaxed and his head fell back against the wall. School had officially ended and the sky was starting to fade. Fall would be here soon. I turned to look at him again, straight into his eyes, but they were closed. His lips moved against the cool air, but I couldn't hear a single word.
The movements were repetitious and held a pattern. Maybe he was crazy. I continued to stare as his words grew in sound. They started as a whimper and morphed into a scream.
"I want to leave. I want to leave. I WANT TO LEAVE. I WANT TO LEAVE!"
I leaned away from him, afraid he might lurch or need some sort of physical outlet. Females might be unpredictable with their emotions, but males were unpredictable physically. He held still though, until he uttered those words one last time. And then he opened his eyes.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"No," he replied.
"Can I do anything?" I pulled my cheek to the side and started fiddling with a loose thread on my skirt.
"Do I know you?" he asked.
"No, but that doesn't really mean much. No one really knows me, and besides, do you really know anyone?"
He moved to stand and brushed the dirt and leaves off of his pants. I followed him.
"Don't leave," I said. His steps were long and quick as he headed straight to his locker where dozens upon dozens of shoelaces littered the ground. He began to dump the remaining ones in his locker onto the floor with the others.
"Why do you care? I don't even know your name," he replied.
I held out my hand. "Selah Wonders. Senior, loner, and lover of 70s rock and roll." I ripped open my jacket, exposing my vintage Eagles t-shirt. "Everything worth anything always starts in Los Angeles."
A small smile cracked at the side of his mouth. "Nice name. Old shirt. I don't like LA. And I still don't get why you care."
I walked backward several steps and started to spin in slow circles, letting my arms fall to my sides. After five spins, I stopped and faced him.
"I don't really, but the truth is, if you leave then they've won," I said.
"Who's won? And why are you spinning?"
"Them. All of them. Or, in your case, Nathan. He seems to be the harbinger of doom for you." I placed my hands out at the side and swayed like a scary ghost as I spoke. "I'll tell you why I spin if you explain the shoelaces," I replied, answering his last question.
"How would you know?" he asked. "And the shoelaces mean nothing."
"I know because I'm an observer of life, not a participant. And you're lying about the laces."
"So what, you just sit around and stare at the lives of others?" he asked.
"Yep," I replied.
"Sounds boring." He continued to kick at the laces, pushing them further and further away. Laces shouldn't make someone so angry.
"Better than the alternative," I stated with a smile on my face.
"Which is—?"
I looked him up and down, pointed at the floor, and made a note of his banged up knuckles.
"I'd rather be alone than a bull’s eye," I replied. "What did you do to Nathan anyway?"
"Nothing."
"Well, it couldn't have been nothing. He has you pegged for some reason."
He took a deep breath before responding, "It's a long story."
"How long could it be? We're only seventeen."
"I'm eighteen."
I blinked at him with annoyance. "Whatever, you get what I mean."
Javier stopped fiddling with his books and slammed his locker shut. He eyed my hair, my shoes and my everything in-between.
"And what, you've chosen to be a loner who loves 70s rock and roll, who has no friends, and no desire to fit in or be cool? No, you didn't choose this. You became this." His words grew sharper with each statement.
"What the hell does that mean?" I asked.
"It means you have a story too. And by the looks of it, it's longer than your seventeen years."
Like he could tell anything about me by the way I dressed. He didn't know me. He knew nothing.
"Well, I'm not the one screaming behind locked bathroom doors, or walking around without shoes on, or having my locker stuffed with hundreds of white laces. At least I keep my story to myself and don't burden others with it."
Javier tensed and his eyebrows puckered at the edges. "You think I like this? You think I want this?" His hands shook at his sides, fresh droplets of blood coming to the edges of his knuckles as he flexed his fist.
"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I won't go digging around your life if you don't go digging around mine. Okay?" I said.
"You're the one who sat down next to me. I didn't ask for any help," he replied.
A familiar voice rang out from behind us.
"Javier, my office, now." Our principal stood there looking square and displeased.
We turned back to face one another. I scrunched my nose and then picked up a pair of laces. "I'm sorry," I said as I placed them along with the others.
"Whatever, I have to go." And with that he walked away—a trash bag full of shoelaces in his left hand and raw, exposed knuckles on his right.
"Javier!" I shouted out, hoping to leave a better impression.
He stopped and craned his neck back in my direction. There was a fresh gleam covering his eyes, but not a single tear formed.
"Don't leave. I know you want to. I've seen that same face in my own mirror." He had stuck it out this long, what was another two hundred days of hell?
His chin fell to his chest and he walked ahead toward the office.
Maybe he'd be here, maybe he wouldn't.
Chapter 8
Mr. White
(Javier)
Punching Nathan got me an undetermined length of suspension. Taunting me, leaving my locker full of shoelaces, and basically torturing me for the past three years got him nothing. I walked home that day knowing what waited for me when I arrived—an angry mother, zero freedom and utter disappointment. Whenever something went wrong, the school notified her. It was a contingency they had put into place since two years ago. Another situation that Nathan was never punished for. He wasn't even haunted with the knowledge of it. Which was good and bad. I didn't want Nathan to have access to my darkest secrets. He had been punishing me for knowing his and the power of more retaliation would be imminent.
When I reached my apartment, I saw the lights on and my mother cooking. Out of habit, I took a seat on the bench outside and took my slippers off. Gio would be walking by any minute, and my mother would leave soon for work. My ears couldn't take a second scolding. The principal had already done enough.
***
"Javier," he said. "I can't sweep this under a rug. You assaulted a student." His hands gripped the side of his desk, as the ticking of the clock got louder and louder.
"Why? Why couldn't you just walk away?" he asked.
Because I was tired of walking away. Because I was tired of Nathan owning me. Because for once, I wanted him to feel reduced to the size of an ant in front of everyone who worshipped him. Because it felt good. Because I legitimately couldn't stop myself.
You know, it's funny that teachers expect more from the good students and basically want to spear us when we finally make a mistake. There's no grace for the good. But the bad, the bad are expected to do horrible things and they aren't punished equally, in my experience.
I raised my chin and didn't reply. My blank expression and lifeless body told him how I felt. I was tired of high school.
He tapped the large ring he wore on his right hand twice on his desk and then stood tall.
"I expected more from you. You're better than this," he said.
See, I told you. But how did anyone know if anyone was really better than whatever "this" was? My mother didn't really know me. She pulled from what she had the chance of observing, more often than not, the
mistake
of observing. Izzy had been through a lot with me, but even with him I was scared—scared to really reveal what my mind processed throughout each day. I felt that only Gio really knew what I could or would be capable of, considering the situation. And we mostly shared silence, but in his silence I knew he was listening.
Slinging my bag across my back, I stood and left to exit. Principal White, under most circumstances, had been understanding of the situations I found myself in, but I had lost my cool.
"Mr. Rios." Principal White's voice crawled across the ceiling and waited at the edge like a spider about to drop from its web.
"Are you going to leave without explaining yourself? Explain why there were dozens, if not hundreds, of shoelaces jammed into your locker? Explain Nate's face? Explain anything?" His suit was extra stiff today, fresh from the cleaners.
No, I wasn't going to explain myself or anything else. You either explained it all or nothing. Otherwise, lies were bound to unfold.
I turned around and stared at the carpet, counting the invisible holes where my laces should've been woven into each shoe, had I been wearing them. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen holes and then I looked up, blinked once and grabbed onto his eyes.
"No. I will not be explaining myself," I stated.
He took a seat into his leather, ergonomic, executive chair and crossed an ankle over his knee.
"You're suspended until I invite you back onto this campus. You will handwrite an apology to Nathan and his parents for your disrespect and have it ready by the day your presence is required back. Understood?"
I nodded once as my official reply.
"Fine, you're dismissed." The wheels of his chair squeaked as he pulled himself up to his desk and began to work. I grabbed the edges of my pants by my knees, pulled them out to the side and curtsied like a Disney princess. Only the chime on his office door bid me goodbye.
***
Shadows now lined the sidewalk, and the only sounds detectable were the clanking of dishes and the mumbling of families gathering for dinner again. I walked down the black asphalt, my bare feet wiggling against the chill and cleared my head of my impending doom at home. Focus on the things I could change, not the things that were out of my hands. Decisions. Mistakes. Past choices.
If my father had taken responsibility of me, would who I am today differ very much or would I still be the same? I went through a period during my first year of elementary school where I repeatedly asked my mother, "Mama, why don't I have a dad?" The first time shocked her. She didn't have an answer prepared and returned my question with a question, "Want to go out for ice cream, mijo?"
Naturally not one to push things, I accepted, until another week passed by and I asked her again. This time she had thought it over and figured out a concrete response. "Mijo, I have more than enough love for two parents." She got down on her knees and pulled me close to her chest, stroking my head all the way down the back of my neck. "Why does it bother you so much?" she asked, her eyes flicking around me, taking in the details of my appearance.
"The other kids at school who don't have dads said they see them only on weekends or that they're dead. Is my dad dead? Or is he just busy on weekends?" I had asked.
She didn't answer. Instead she kissed my cheek, wiped away her lipstick and stood up. "Javi, you don't have a dad. No more questions." And with that she returned to the kitchen, cooked dinner and I never asked again.
I looked to my left and saw Gio walking up the stairs to his apartment. He caught my eye, looked down at my feet, frowned and walked on. He entered a dark apartment—no dinner, no mom, no dad.
The light from our kitchen window still held my mother's silhouette. I put my slippers back on and headed home. My backpack dropped to the floor as I closed the door behind me. When I turned the corner, she stood waiting for me, her foot tapping silently against the linoleum.