Tears of the Broken

by A. M. Hudson

  I feigned insult.

  “But you did sound very Australian when you said bloody,” Emily added.

  David chuckled beside me.

  “Yeah, say it again?” Ryan leaned forward, turning his ear toward me and holding his hand out like he had a funnel to listen through.

  “She’s not a circus freak, Ryan.” Emily pushed his hand away.

  “Thanks,” I mouthed. I really do not feel like being on exhibition. “So where do you guys normally sit?” With my belly full, all my pre-rehearsed questions came flooding back.

  “Well,” Emily chimed in, “David sits with the giant, incredibly gorgeous guys that are throwing food at each other.” She grinned at David. “More like monkeys, really. And I sit with that group out there by the tree.” She pointed to the windows that cover the back wall of the cafeteria. Outside, in the sunshine, a large group of boys in tight-fitting tee’s, with styled hair, and girls in cheer-uniforms—like Emily—gathered under the oak tree, laughing and throwing water, or looking at things on each other’s iPad’s.

  David leaned closer and whispered, “Two I C.”

  Hm, second in command? So, it goes footballers, then Emily’s group. Well, where does that place me if I hang out with one of each—assuming David is a footballer?

  Emily’s voice trailed back in with my attention span. “And Ryan hangs out on the basketball courts, mostly.” She looked at Ryan for confirmation; he shrugged with a small nod. “And Alana hangs with those guys.” She pointed to the muso’s sitting behind her.

  “Cool.” I nodded. “Well, thanks for keeping me company today, you guys. I would’ve felt like a total loser sitting by myself.”

  “That would never happen.” Emily tilted her head to the side. “Someone would’ve come and talked to you. If they could get past David, that is.” She threw him a mock annoyed stare.

  David grinned and leaned back in his chair, resting his hands behind his head. “Can you blame me? I kinda like fresh meat.”

  I inched away from David jokingly and a sudden whoosh of air brushed past my hair. “Ah!” the kid at the table behind us yelped and rubbed his head. Everyone in the cafeteria turned around to stare at him—silence washed over the room.

  “What gives?” His friend stood up and looked over at the football jocks.

  “What up, losers? Mummy forget to pack your helmet for you?” one of them jeered.

  Those total jerks! I can’t believe they have so little regard for the feelings of another human being.

  Apple pulp covered the boy’s head and shoulders, and the remainder of the offending fruit rolled around on the ground just near his feet. He stood up and grabbed it, his knuckles turning white as he stared across the cafeteria.

  “Just leave it, Dominic. It’s not worth it,” one of the chess club guys called to him.

  I wonder if throwing the apple back might result in a worse attack, later.

  The boy, Dominic, squeezed the apple a little tighter, and his face turned bright red around his tightly clenched teeth. I slid my chair out a little. I should go over and see if he’s okay, maybe even take the apple and throw it back at those boys myself. Stupid teenage boys. They think they’re so cool.

  As I stood fully and took one step, something brushed past me.

  “David? Don’t!” Emily yelped.

  I looked back at David, standing near our table with his arm raised behind his head and the apple in his hand. How did he get the apple? Did Dominic throw it to David without me seeing it?

  Dominic’s eyes narrowed and he looked at his hand, then at David. I followed his gaze just in time to see the apple explode into a million pieces on the wall above the jocks’ heads—showering them in a cloud of apple pulp and juice.

  A cool silence lingered. David’s arm came back down to his side, with his shoulder still leaned in to the throw when the whole room erupted—every person, sitting or standing, started clapping and cheering. Even the jock that threw the apple raised his thumb at David and laughed.

  With a numb kind of shock, I held my breath. What the hell was that? Where did he learn to throw like that? David looked down at the ground, his eyes displaying amusement, but betraying anger. As he sat back down, I closed my gaping mouth and walked up to the chess-kid, now sitting at the table, rubbing the back of his head. “Hey? Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he moaned. “Those guys are just assholes.”

  “Yeah. They had no right to do that. I’m so sorry.” I don’t know why I’m apologising. I just feel really bad for him. I wish it’d been me that it hit instead. I can handle embarrassment pretty well.

  “Thanks.” Dominic smiled—well half smiled. I can tell he’s hurt, both inside and out.

  “Yeah, but it was cool what David just did,” one of the other guys piped up, still laughing.

  “Right. Today. But tomorrow he’ll just be a big jackass again like the rest of them.” The boy dropped his hand from his head and shifted the Knight on the chessboard.

  Did I hear right? David? A jackass? I knew it. I knew he was one of them. I just didn’t want to believe it. When I looked back at David, he turned away, dropping his head between his stiff shoulders. “Is that true?” I sat back down in my spot.

  Everyone at the table went quiet. David looked at Emily; I followed his gaze. Emily shrugged. She seems to pass everything off with that move. “Really, Ara. He sits with them, but he’s not like them at all. Anymore.”

  Anymore? I searched his face for a second, but he kept his eyes on the table between his wrists. Ryan and Alana looked back at their food, making sideways glances at each other. “So what’s the big deal, then?” I shrugged and looked at Emily. “Why are you all acting strange?”

  Emily took a breath to speak, but David cut in. “Because I was a jackass, Ara.” He turned his face to me and a flicker, resembling disgrace, fluttered under his eyelids. “When I first came to the school I used to do stuff like that all the time.” He looked away again.

  “Oh, okay. Well…” I blinked, studying the side of David’s face. “I still don’t get it. You’re not like that now, so—” I let the vowel trail off.

  David looked over at the fruit-throwing jocks.

  “Am I stopping you from sitting with them?” I asked. “Because you don’t need to babysit me. I’m a big girl.”

  “It’s not that, Ara.” Emily waved a hand.

  “Okay, so fill me in?” I used Emily’s shrug to appear indifferent.

  “I had hoped it might be some time before you learned of this—you know what they say—about first impressions.” David looked at me with those big, green eyes.

  “What? You mean my first impression—of you?” Well that’s flattering. He cares what I think about him as much as I care what he thinks about me. This is good. This is very good. “Um. I’ve already made my decisions about who I think you are, and, David?” I looked over at the chess club boy. “What you did for that kid—it was really nice. Jackass-jocks, they don’t do things like that.”

  “And neither do fragile, very breakable young girls,” he retorted with a focused glare.

  Is he referring to me? I inhaled a huff of insult through my open mouth. How dare he? Fragile? Breakable? “I can take care of myself, thank you,” I scolded. “How’d you even know I was gonna throw it back at them?”

  “I could tell—from the way you looked at them,” he added in a low tone.

  “Really, Ara. You should avoid revenge throws when it comes to fruit at this school,” Emily warned.

  “Well, thanks, but I’m fine. I know how to hold my own.”

  “Sure. Until you hit the wrong person in the head and they come after you,” Ryan said.

  I looked at him. Alana kept her head down, remaining quiet.

  “Is that true, David?” I asked.

  David glowered at Ryan. “They’re bullies, Ara. They don’t care who you are, or whom you hang out with. If they get it in for you, you might as well leave the school.” Agitat
ion laced his tone. “It was just better for all if I turned it into a game with them. You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into.” After a second he breathed out through his nose, and his shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry I stepped in, and I know you can take care of yourself. It was not my intention to offend you. I just didn’t want—” David stopped speaking altogether and swallowed hard—studying me with pleading eyes.

  Is he lost for words? Over an apple bomb?

  My mouth refused to close and cold air rushed through my lips with each breath. What is this guy’s problem?

  Everyone quietly watched David and I, with their mouths hanging open almost as far as mine. My eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I can imagine you being like those guys.” He’s way too sweet, naïve, even. It seems like he’s always been that way. How could he ever have sat by and watched—or helped those bullies treat people like that?

  My words only made David stiffen more, and he took a long breath through his nose—making the tension around the table turn into dense air. I sighed aloud. I need to lighten things up a bit. “Besides,” I sipped my milk and placed it down on the table, “what does it matter what I think? You only just met me.”

  David leaned back in his chair and shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose as he groaned to himself.

  Emily looked at David, then at me.

  “David? Did I say something to offend you?” I asked, going over my words in my head.

  “Ara. You just don’t get it.” He rubbed his forehead.

  I bit my lip to hold back from giving him a piece of my mind. Who is he to tell me what I get, and what I don’t? He doesn’t even know me. I met him all of what, four hours ago, and now he’s taking insult to the fact that I don’t care what kind of a person he is? Should it matter to me? I mean—I know it does matter to me—but what’s it to him? No way, this is just too weird.

  I drew a breath to support my serving…

  “So, Ara?” Emily interjected. “You moved over here from Oz. Why?”

  I swallowed the breath and my posture slumped a little—probably not noticeably, but enough to make me feel smaller. David leaned forward and looked at my face with narrowed eyes, then he sat up straight.

  “I—uh.” Don’t want to talk about it! That’s what I should say. Say it, Ara. Just say it. Er! I irritate myself sometimes. I need a distraction—there has to be something.

  As I scanned the room with my eyes, wishing the jocks would throw a banana or something, David reached across to grab the salt from my tray. All of a sudden, my milk carton tilted under his arm, then rocked for a second before landing on its side with a thud. Everyone jumped back just as chocolate milk spread across the plastic table, trickling onto the floor in pastel rivers, right where our laps had been.

  “Ara, I’m so sorry.” David lifted our trays out of the mess, shaking his head. “I’ll get a cloth.”

  After he walked away, I looked at Emily and we both burst out laughing. David doesn’t know it, but I owe him—big time.

  When the bell rang, I stacked my dirty tray on the trolley and smacked straight into David’s chest as I turned around. “Ah, David, you scared me!”

  “Sorry.” He smiled and stacked his tray on mine, staying awkwardly close to me. I took a half a step back so I could look up at him without straining my neck. “Are you okay, Ara?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and hunched my shoulders a little. “Why? Why would you ask that?”

  He looked around the almost empty lunchroom. “I’ve seen you avoid the topic of your family and your home twice, today.” He stepped closer—close enough for me to discover that the top of my head only just meets his mouth. “I just want you to know that I am an excellent listener.”

  “I—” I can’t speak, he’s too close to me. His lips nearly brushed my hair as I nodded, and the heat of his breath—with an underlying cool, like he’s just had a mint, yet warm, and sweet—trickled over the bridge of my nose. I took another step back from him, afraid I might accidently stand on my toes and kiss him. “I…um. It’s nothing. I’m fine. I just—” really should’ve made up some elaborate lie before I came to this school is all. Emily’s shrug-bug caught on to me.

  “Okay, Ara.” David took a deep breath and looked to the side. “Like I said, I’ll be here when you want to talk. I—I can see there’s something bothering you. I don’t have to know you to notice that.”

  “Well. That’s…a little bit concerning.” I laughed it off. Am I so obvious? So much for my poker face. “Look, when I need a friend? I promise, you’ll be the first person I come to.”

  “Okay.” He looked into my eyes for a long moment. What is it that he can see there? I’m told I display my emotions on my face, but for my sake, I really hope not. “Come on,” David ushered with a nod, “let’s get you to class.”

  The eerie grasp of the terrifying, brown building released me as I neared the edge of the only treeless road in this entire suburb. Sam said they removed all the trees that used to line the school grounds, because a kid got hit by a car when he was crossing the road. Apparently it was the tree’s fault the car didn’t see him.

  The shrill peal of a whistle summoned football practice to start behind me, and the dull thud of a boot on the ball made my skin itch to be off the oval. But I’m not ready to go home.

  I perched myself on a knee-height tree-stump at the edge of the oval and looked across at the white house on the corner. It’s a different world over there. The maple trees line the paths on both sides, forming two parallel lines that meet up with the school in a T-junction. Behind the leafy-greens sit quaint little houses—whimsical and yet mysterious—like something from a fairy-tale. They’re pretty much all the same as my dad’s, just different colours. Some grey, some olive green, but mostly white. The kind of houses that, on the fourth of July, have flags hanging from the porches, and kids running from the long, grass-lined driveways waving sparklers around.

  Dad’s house has that fairy-tale look to it, too—especially with the daisy-filled garden bed on the side of the house that faces the school. It’s not so much the daisies that bother me, but the Seven Dwarfs and the small garden statue of Snow White is nauseating proof of Vicki’s deprived childhood.

  There’s a low-lying hedge fence behind it that borders the backyard and the side of the house—but no fencing on the front lawns. No one has fencing on their lawns around here. It’s not like my old street back home, where everyone has fences or properties that are so close to the verge you can only fit a gate beside the house to stop your dog getting out. We don’t have that problem, though, since Vicki doesn’t like dogs.

  Instead, we have an overfed cat that suns himself on the black tin roof, then gets stuck and cries for somebody to rescue him.

  He’s so annoying. The only thing he’s good for is keeping my feet warm in the winter. He’s up there now. I can see the edge of his grey tail sticking out from the gutter over the porch.

  Last time he was up there he actually fell down—straight into the rose garden by the porch steps. He wasn’t hurt, but if cats have pride, then he totally damaged it. He looked ridiculous when he tried to scramble out of the prickling grasp of the roses, and even funnier than that was my reaction; I’d been sitting on the porch with my feet up on the stool in front of Dad’s old rocking chair—just minding my own business, reading a book, when all of a sudden, a great yowl startled me. I threw my book into the wall, jumped to my feet and was confronted by a scampering fluff-ball clawing its way up the edge of the porch.

  I didn’t know whether to kick it and run, or investigate the grossly distorted fuzz for signs of alien life. When I realised it was the cat, I burst out laughing at my own stupidity.

  “Hey, Ara.”

  I looked to the source of the voice then stood up. “Hi—” Oh, crap. Name. Red head. What was her name? “Ellie. Hi.”

  “Do you live around here?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah—just over there.” I pointed across the roa
d.

  “The house with the blue door?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow. I wish my parents would paint our door blue—that looks cool.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, it’s only blue because it’s supposed to be good luck.”

  She grimaced, hugging her books. “Really? I thought that was red?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “It is. But I didn’t have the heart to tell my mum that. She’s old—she gets confused,” I joked.

  “Well, I think it’s nice.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be sure to tell her.”

  “Well, I better go—got heaps of homework to do. It was nice meeting you.” She smiled as she walked away, then crossed the road, disappearing into the shade of the dancing green maple leaves.

  She seems all right. Dad was right; kids at the school are nice.

  A smile fixed itself across my lips at the thought of Ryan and Alana, and their undiscovered love for each other. Meanwhile, perky Emily has taken a liking to a married man, my dad, nonetheless, and I’ve fallen for a guy who admitted he likes me on the first day. However, I’m in no way willing to admit I like him yet—especially since I’ve known him for only one day.

  “You can go in,” someone muttered sarcastically from behind me.

  “Hey, Sam.”

  “Hey. What-ya starin’ at?”

  “Balcony,” I lied.

  Sam chuckled. “Flashback, huh?”

  “Flashback?”

  “Yeah, remember…when you were running on the railing in the snow? What were you, like, seven, then?”

  “Six, actually.” I looked at the second story of the house. “And you shouldn’t laugh. It was a big fall. I could’ve been killed.”

  “Ha! All I remember is Dad running down the stairs, and Mum screaming she’s dead—oh, my God, Greg—she’s dead. Vivid memory.” He tapped his temple. I chuckled. He imitates a very good version of Vicki’s panicky voice. “That was my first traumatic experience, y’know? And I owe it all to you.”

  “Well. You’re welcome.” I rolled my eyes.