I stare at the locker in disbelief. In the back of my mind I know that I shouldn’t feel shock, I should have known this was coming. After all, they’ve said these very words aloud to me at least a few times a week all year—why wouldn’t they just give up and put it on my locker for the world to see?
Die, fag.
The square of white notebook paper is as light and innocuous as a snowflake against the dark-blue metal of my newly-scratched locker. I’ve seen the skull and crossbones a thousand times, from the time I was in kindergarten playing pirates with my friends—come to think of it, that was probably the last time I had friends, back in kindergarten—and now here it is, an actual threat. Who would ever have guessed that I’d see it in this context?
Slowly I reach out and rip the note from my locker. I want to burn it, but I don’t have the means to do so right now, and I need to get rid of this before anyone sees. Besides, I see the writer of the note—and he’ll pretend he didn’t write it later, but I know he wrote it—peeking from around the corner. He wants to see what I’ll do. Fine, let him watch me; I’ll give him something to watch…
Very deliberately, I roll the note into a ball and drop the ball onto the carpeted floor. While Scott is watching, I crush the note beneath my heel. Let him see my tiny display of defiance. It’s the only method of fighting back that I have. The administration has proven multiple times that they don’t care, so I have no help there, and my only friend is a skinny sophomore girl who’s about as much good in a fight as a Care Bear. I’m virtually alone; I have no way to fight against Scott, except to do this. He and I both know it’s meaningless, we both know he still has power over me, but for a moment I enjoy pretending that I can actually fight back.
I wince when I hear the voice ring through the halls—“You’ll regret that, faggot!”—but I pretend not to hear. Instead, I open my locker and fish out my binder, and then hurry back to class, having finally achieved my mission and obtained my homework.
And for the time being I forget about Scott, and that is where I make my critical mistake.
At ten-thirty the bell rings and I go to my third-period lunch. I hate this, I really do, it’s too early to eat, but if I don’t I’ll regret it for the rest of the day. I spot Katy at the edge of the cafeteria and wave to her, before heading off to get my food. I never bring lunch from home. Believe it or not, the food here is actually better than what I eat at home, causing me to wonder exactly why the kids all complain about what we’re fed at school.
I get my lunch and begin looking for a place to sit. This is when I notice Scott glowering at me from a corner of the cafeteria that I always avoid. Surrounded by his hulking, chain-adorned friends, he cuts an imposing figure, and I involuntarily shiver as I start to cross back to where Katy and a few of her friends are sitting.
And that is when I realize that the cafeteria is so tense that it’s actually scary. The level of noise is about ten percent of what it normally is. Moreover, half of the students located here are staring at me. I have no idea why, and honestly, I’m not sure I want to know. Probably has something to do with what Scott and his gang did this morning. It’s probably been blown way out of proportion, too. By this time, they probably think my locker was wired with explosives or they put a live snake in it or something. And of course I deserved what I got, for the heinous crime of not wanting to date girls.
I look down at my tray as I edge through the cafeteria. I don’t want to be stared at. I just want to eat my freaking lunch. But, since this is the worst public high school in the history of public high schools, that’s just not going to happen. The last time everyone in the cafeteria stared at me, I got attacked with a Jell-O catapult, courtesy of Scott and his right-hand goon, Justin.
A pair of black combat boots plants themselves in my path. I swallow hard and look up. Scott, of course. Well who else would it be, the tooth fairy? What did you expect, that he’d leave you alone? I ask myself sarcastically. Scott leers at me, and my stomach twists. I just wish he’d insult me or pour milk on me or whatever he’s going to do, and have done with it.
A circle of students, some of them his friends, some of them bystanders, has formed around us. The seconds slides by. Scott continues to sneer at me, and I protectively clutch my lunch tray against me, preparing to get food thrown at me or hear the now-familiar curse words. Come on, Scott…just get it over with.
The fist seems to come out of nowhere, hitting the side of my cheek with stunning force, causing me to drop my lunch tray in shock. For a split second it feels like I’m staring into a strobe light as the fluorescent lighting blackens in my eyes and then hits me full-force, and it’s only through sheer force of will that I manage to stay conscious. All the while, the only coherent thought going through my mind is, What the hell just happened?
I hear Scott laughing triumphantly, and I freeze in place—I’m not letting him do this, I am not letting him humiliate me like this, I know I haven’t got a prayer, but I don’t care anymore, I have to push back.
With a strangled-sounding war cry, I launch myself at him. Innocent of any knowledge of how to fight, the best I can do is sort of body-check him, but it’s enough to throw him off-balance. He stares at me in total shock for a three-count, and then he hurls himself right back at me, knocking me to the ground and causing me to hit my head—hard—against the tiled floor.
What follows is five minutes of sheer hell on earth. I don’t even know how it happens. All I know is that one minute, I’m trying to make sense of the dull, throbbing pain at the back of my head, and the next I’m spitting out a mouthful of my own blood. While Scott pins me to the floor and proceeds to beat the living crap out of me, chaos reigns around us. I hear screams and punches and curses, and I have to briefly wonder why they’re fighting. This is between me and Scott, not them, which is why it never occurs to me to wonder why they don’t help me. After all, they’ve never done that before; why start now?
It doesn’t take long—two or three punches, maybe, if that—before I give up trying to fight back and simply try to defend myself as best as I can from the blows. But it seems like forever before Mr. Wendell, the student dean, pulls Scott off of me, by which time I’m so badly injured that I couldn’t even tell you what’s hurting. My entire body feels as if I’ve just climbed out of a food processor set on “pulse.” Speaking of pulses, I’m amazed that I even still have one. I’m surprised Scott hasn’t killed me by now—God knows he’d be proud of himself if he did.
“Can you sit up for me?” Mr. Wendell asks, not ungently, as one of the security officers deals with Scott. Just seeing this makes me feel slightly better. I don’t have a hope of getting rid of him; the worst he’ll get is maybe a suspension, but at least he’s not getting off completely free. I let the dean peel me off the floor, spitting out another mouthful of my own blood as I slowly pull into an upright position.
“What happened?” the dean asks me.
Oh, now there’s a fine question to ask the one lying on the ground covered in bruises and blood and God knows what else. All I want is for an ambulance to come and knock me out with pain meds, is that really too much to ask? But I force out an answer anyway, and tell Mr. Wendell, through gasps of pain, that Scott punched me unprovoked in the middle of the cafeteria.
Mr. Wendell sympathetically pats my shoulder and tells me that he’s going to take me to the nurse’s office to “get cleaned up,” and then, and I quote, I should “Go back to class and let us take care of this.” Who, I wonder, is “us?” Is this the same “us” that has repeatedly ignored my reports of being cursed, insulted, spat on, and assaulted with food and spitballs and paper missiles in the hallways? Is this the same “us” that let Scott tape a death threat to my locker? Is this the same “us” that took forever to intervene when he started beating the hell out of me? Oh yes, I have a lot of faith in this unnamed “us.”
I should be in the hospital. Instead, I’m taken to the school nurse, where my many wounds are cleaned with disinfectant and I’m given a Tylenol before being sent to Principal Deven’s office to be interrogated. I tell him the truth: Scott taped a threatening note to my locker and then attacked me in the middle of the cafeteria. I know that it won’t be enough to get the asshole expelled, but I know I have to at least try.
Principal Deven listens to my story and then tells me what Scott told him, and it’s enough to make me want to quit life: The reason that I was attacked today, according to Scott, is because I made unwanted advances.
Dear God, if You exist, I silently pray as Principal Deven explains that under the circumstances, others have to be questioned before a decision can be made, is it too much to ask that for once, just for once, they’ll believe me?
I already know the answer.
“It’s unbelievable, that’s what it is,” Katy says later that afternoon, as she bandages one of the multiple open wounds that the school nurse neglected to cover with a band-aid. “I just can’t believe it…so they actually said they have to investigate it? They didn’t believe you right away?”
I snort and shake my head. “Come on, Katy. Since when do they ever believe me right away?”
“Well, seeing as you’re the one who’s so scarred up that Freddy Krueger would be afraid of you, and Scott didn’t get so much as a scratch, I thought for once they might actually see that you’re telling the truth.” Katy tapes the gauze shut and squeezes my hand. “There, is that any better?”
Of course it isn’t; when your arm is grabbed and slammed off a tiled floor by a kid wearing fake brass knuckles, it’s not going to be made better by gauze and Bactine. But she means well, better than any of the idiots running our school, so I say, “Yeah, it’s a bit better.”
“Good.” Katy continues to hold my hand, even after she’s done playing doctor, and I’m grateful for that—it’s not actual medicine, but I actually feel better just knowing that she gives a damn about me, enough to want to comfort me, to protect me. And I know she was the one who ran to get the authorities. I know that out of the five hundred-plus spectators in the cafeteria today, she was the only one who actually went for help.
“So what exactly happened?” I ask her. “I mean, all I know is that Scott kicked my ass and there was some kind of riot…what actually happened? Did you see?”
“Well…” She sighs. “So after you started to fight back, basically everything just went to hell in a handbasket. Someone tried to break up the fight, I don’t know who, and one of Scott’s drones jumped him. Then everyone just lost it and started pounding on each other.”
Translation: Someone was worried about getting in trouble and tried to calm things down, only to get mixed up in the chaos. Nobody except Katy would care that I was getting beat up, only that they might be guilty by association. “Then what?”
“Well, I went for help, and when I got back everyone was still fighting. Mr. Wendell called for security, and the security people got the fighters to calm down pretty damn fast. But you know Scott, he just wouldn’t quit until someone actually pulled him off you…I mean, if anything, he just got worse.”
Of course. If you sense an end coming, try to get as many punches in as you can before someone stops you. “I hate life right now,” I announce, and Katy sympathetically pats my hand.
“Just tell them the truth if they call you into the office again.” She pauses, and then adds, “They questioned me too, by the way. Principal Deven and Mr. Wendell, I mean. They called me into the office not long after the fight ended and asked me a bunch of stuff about you, and about the fight, and whether or not I knew how it got started.”
“What did you tell them?” I ask.
“What do you think? I told them that Scott is an arrogant bastard of a bully who’s been tormenting you for months, and he started this whole thing by sucker-punching you in front of half the damn school.”
I smile. This time it’s the truth, but I know full well that Katy would tell them a pack of complete lies if it would protect me. “So what did they say? Anything?”
She shakes her head. “No…but I think they’ll have to do something this time. I’m praying for expulsion, but you know how they are, they don’t want to do anything that might get them in trouble with the board of education or with the parents.”
Story of my life. “They can’t do anything because…” It’s always about protecting themselves. Can’t defend me because Scott’s cronies might beat them up. Can’t tell on Scott because he’ll target them next. Can’t expel Scott because his parents will freak out. Can’t do this, can’t do that. Protect yourself, and if one lonely gay kid gets punched to death in the process, well, that’s just one way of solving the problem.
Katy sees the look on my face and knows what it means. “They’ll do something this time,” she says softly. “They have to. I mean…look at you, and then look at Scott. Anyone with half a brain could see—”
“There’s your problem, right there,” I cut her off. “They don’t have half a brain among the whole group of them. They all think in terms of fight-or-flight.”
Katy doesn’t say anything else, but she squeezes my hand again and I know she knows I’m right.
The next day, the entire school is called to an assembly in the auditorium at the beginning of the day. Hope rises in me once again. For a few brief moments I let myself fantasize about Principal Deven outlining a new policy against bullying, telling us that Scott has been expelled and sent to juvie, commending me for bravely putting up with his bullshit for so long.
But those fantasies are crushed the minute Mr. Wendell gets up to the podium and opens his mouth. He talks about the fight, and how it “reflects badly on our school,” and how we should all be ashamed of ourselves for behaving like this. I should want to kill him right now, but I can’t muster up the energy to be decently mad. Mostly, I’m just in shock. Katy doesn’t say anything the entire time, just stares ahead like me, her hand slowly tightening around mine as the assembly goes on.
Finally comes the icing on the cake: Mr. Wendell looks at us all gravely and says, “There’s no need to tell your parents what happened yesterday, so if you haven’t told them, don’t. Most of them have been e-mailed about the situation, it has been well-explained as an issue that the school is working to resolve. If anyone from the press asks to speak with you concerning this fight, please decline. There is no reason why what happened yesterday should bring down our school’s morale or image. We can remain unified, as we have always been.”
He goes on and on about how our school spirit shouldn’t be diminished, how we can still finish out the year and be proud of ourselves. I don’t care. I just stare straight ahead, wondering how in the hell I managed to get into this place, and how in the hell I’m going to escape when no one except Katy even knows I exist.
One sentence of Mr. Wendell’s sticks out in my brain. It’s the only time he gives us the truth in the entire assembly, actually—it’s the final statistics of yesterday’s fight: Eighteen bloody noses, four broken bones, thirty miscellaneous injuries, seven expelled—Scott not among them—nineteen suspended, eleven hospitalized, five withdrawn from school.
And all I can think is, Last week, when Marilyn Evans cheated at the Quiz Bowl, it made the papers. And this won’t.
