The Indifferent Children of the Earth

by Gregory Ashe

  Chapter 10, Tuesday 23 August

  Somehow I made it through dinner and that night without parental anxiety. If they believed my story about falling off my bike, they didn’t show it. Instead, they just didn’t care. Mom stared at her plate throughout dinner; she couldn’t stand to look at me, be near me. Halfway through the meal she left to work in the garden again, and the smell of fresh-turned soil hung in the air between me and Dad, a strange counterpoint to the lamb chops growing cold on the table. Dad made me hold still while he checked me out; he offered to take me to the hospital too, but when I said no, I honestly think he was relieved. The idea of the car ride, and then the waiting room, and then waiting in the examination room again—all that silence to fill up with words. Easier for him to go back to his office and start chipping away at the darkness, carving out the white between words.

  In the morning, everything ached a hundred times worse. I felt like an old man; even breathing hurt, a dull pain that flared to life when my chest expanded. In some ways, though, the pain distracted me from other things. Dreams. Memories. And so, even though every step sent a lance of pain through my knee, I actually was up and in the bathroom quicker than normal. Hot water and ibuprofen did a lot to help me feel human, although they did nothing to mask the yellow and browning bruises along my jaw, or the split lips, or the scabs on my cheek. I ate something, although it was hard to chew, and grabbed the lunch Dad had packed.

  Waiting in English, before the buzzer announced the start of the day, was the worst part. Little flashbacks of me curled up on the floor, of the way the kicks had landed, damaging soft tissue before they hit bone. The clang of the lockers behind me. Then I saw Chad come into class, followed by the three amigos.

  And I felt incredibly satisfied.

  One of those skin-colored bandages ran across the bridge of Chad’s nose, and to judge by the coloring, I’d managed to break the bastard’s nose at least. There was a bruise on his jaw too, where I had hit him first, although it wasn’t very noticeable. A part of me wondered if he’d used something to conceal it; the thought brought a smile to my stinging lips.

  Chad glared at me, but when Jack muttered something, he barked a laugh in response and seemed to relax. They took their seats in the back. Not a word to me. Not even many hard looks. Like I wasn’t worth their time.

  It was a huge relief, in some ways.

  Wyatt showed up just as the buzzer sounded. He slumped across the room. I couldn’t see any bruises on his face, but in part that was because he deliberately avoided looking at me. He still sat next to me, though.

  “Hey, Wyatt,” I said as Mrs. Nadel stood to start the class.

  He stared ahead. “Hey.”

  And that was all I could get out of him for the rest of the day, even at lunch. Well, that’s not true. There was one moment when Wyatt sent me a very clear message.

  Shawn was sitting across from me, Taylor practically in his lap. “Dude, sorry about Chad. He can be a real dick. Just keep your head down around him and you’ll be fine. I’m surprised Wyatt didn’t tell you that; everyone knows to stay clear of Chad.”

  So. Everyone also knew about what Chad had done to me. I guess he had enjoyed telling people about it.

  “It’s not Wyatt’s fault,” I said. I wanted to get back in Wyatt’s good graces, even though I wasn’t entirely sure why he was mad at me. “He—”

  Before I could finish explaining how Wyatt had tried to help me, I caught Wyatt’s eye. He looked terrified and gave a single jerk of his head, mouthing the word ‘no.’ I stumbled in my sentence.

  “He’s helped me a lot already,” I finished lamely. “Not his fault Chad’s a jerk.”

  “More than a jerk,” Mary threw in. She leaned toward me a little, playing with her dark hair. “I can’t believe what he did to you.”

  It took me a minute to realize that she was trying to get on my good side. Maybe even flirting. I just smiled, but it stretched paper-thin across my mouth.

  “I kind of had it coming,” I said. It’s true; nothing anyone did to me would be enough punishment for what I had done. It didn’t change anything that Chad thought he was beating the crap out of me for a totally different reason.

  When lunch ended, I stayed behind and caught Wyatt.

  “Hey, I’m really sorry,” I said. “About Adam, and all that. They shouldn’t have dragged you into it.”

  “You should have listened to me.”

  “Yeah, I know. I guess I deserved what I got. Sorry you got some of it too.”

  “Who do you think you are?” Wyatt said. “You walk in here, cooler than anybody else in town, act like you don’t give a crap about anything. And then you get beaten half to death and tell people you deserved it. I was trying to help you, but I’m starting to think that you wanted those guys to mess you up.”

  The words came too close to the truth. I forced a smile onto my face, and this one felt like it was tearing my lips. “Look, I’m sorry. I thought I could handle myself. Sometimes I forget I’m not . . . not back in New York anymore. Things are different for me here. I’m still trying to figure everything out.” I paused, because anything else would have been a lie. “I guess Shawn doesn’t know about Adam?”

  “He’d go ballistic if he did,” Wyatt said. “He’s super cool about me being a nerd and all that. Always goes out of his way to be nice; a lot of older brothers would just be jerks, I imagine. You know, he’s really popular here, and it’s never changed the way he acts toward me. But I don’t want him to know about what happened with Adam. He’s going to college next year, and I need to be able to take care of myself.”

  I just nodded. We left the lunch room, and all I could think to say was, “Yeah. My older brother was really cool with me too.”

  And I could see the question in his eyes, so I turned down the next hallway, grateful that we didn’t have the next class together.

  That afternoon was my first day of work. Well, Monday would have been, but I didn’t think Mr. Wood would have gotten his money’s worth out of me. I went straight from school, following Lilburn Street north. The garden supply store was at the edge of the downtown, and it had a big lot for all the plants and stacks of mulch, etc.

  Right before the bizarrely named Forest at Home, though, was a skinny, two story brick building. It looked like it belonged to the old downtown, but Forest at Home had barged in somehow, cutting it off from the rest of the worn brick buildings. Mica’s. That was the name. No description of what they sold, but glancing through the window showed me rows of paints, silk flowers, wicker baskets, disassembled picture frames—all the junk of your typical craft store. And standing at the counter, wearing a 1950s-looking navy blue blouse trimmed in white, stood Olivia.

  And just at that moment, she looked up and met my eyes. I froze, then turned and walked in the store. I don’t know why; I hurt all over, I needed to get to work, and—most importantly—I reminded myself that I didn’t want any friends, didn’t need any friends, and didn’t deserve any friends.

  But I walked right on into that store anyway. A blast of A/C hit me, reminding me of the sweat rings under my arms. Olivia was walking toward me, a plastic bag over one arm as she put something away in her purse. Behind her, I saw a skinny woman, mid-twenties, with frazzled red hair. The red-haired woman flashed me a smile and waved, and I gave an awkward wave back.

  “Hey,” Olivia said, glancing up for a second as she fumbled with the purse.

  “Hey.”

  She snapped the bag shut and swung it over her arm, looked up at me. “Oh my God, are you ok? What happened to you?” Before I could answer, she had stepped close enough for me to smell her, something flowery, almost powdery. Like everything else about her, it was something no one else would wear, and somehow fit her perfectly. One of her hands ran across my jaw, so lightly I could barely feel her touch, and she traced the scabs on my cheek. “Who did this to you?”

  “It’s no big deal,” I said. “I, um, fell. Off my bike.”

  Sh
e pulled her hand back, but she didn’t move. We were so close I was sure she could hear the breath catch in my throat.

  “Right. Your bike. God, I hope you gave as good as you got. That bike must be scrap by now.”

  “Well, it promised me I could return the favor one day,” I said. “Reminded me that I had gone easy on a girl who hit me with a door. I couldn’t set a double standard, not after that.”

  She smiled. It was amazing how beautiful she could be, even in the skin around her eyes. The way it pulled tight into these fine, straight, adorable lines. The kind of lines I could kiss.

  She had said something, and I had no idea what.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Wait. What did you say?”

  Olivia grinned this time. Yes, definitely kissable lines. Not that her mouth wasn’t kissable. It most definitely was. But romance calls for some variety, and she was very, very pretty.

  “Sorry,” she said, mimicking my tone. “But you missed it. And it was really clever, too.”

  “Well, it’s only fair you give me a second chance. I’ll credit it toward the door-bashing.”

  “Maybe another time.” She hesitated, and I could feel it in the air. This was it, the second dinner invitation. It hung in the air between us, an envelope waiting to be opened, addressed to me. And I realized, standing this close to her, smelling that perfume, tracing the lines of her arms, the pale skin with just a few freckles, that I would say yes. No matter how much I hated myself, I wasn’t enough of a masochist to deprive myself of this.

  But then the moment passed, and she shot me a different smile. One I hadn’t seen yet. It seemed to shut me off to a corner of the room. “I better go,” she said.

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. What had just happened?

  We stepped out into the hot street, where the only thing I could smell was burning brick and exhaust. Walking up the street, I tried to figure out what had gone wrong. What had I said? Or not said? Or was it because she knew about Chad and was mad that I had lied?

  At the entrance to Forest at Home, I stopped. In answer to her inquisitive glance, I shrugged and said, “I work here. Got a good tip from someone.”

  She smiled, that real smile, and I struggled to breathe. And not because of the mass of bruises.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m sorry about not being able to go to dinner last time. But I was wondering, you know, if you’d want to hang out some time.” That same smile. Inviting me. A smile that said she actually liked me. It was stronger than any street drug, to feel like someone liked me, wanted to be near me. Didn’t know anything about me, and in spite of that—because of that—liked me. “Maybe you could show me some of your art, sometime. I’m not an expert, but I’d love to see it.”

  The smile vanished. “Yeah, sure.” That was all. Two words that said, more clearly than anything I’d ever heard, goodbye. And she hurried up the street, the waving heat of the street drawn between us like a curtain, and the humidity pressing down on my, smothering whatever had kindled in my heart.