Between the Sheets

by Molly O'Keefe

  John bent over and reached down for his phone.

  Casey knew better, knew he should just stop, but he couldn’t. He kicked John in the chest, knocking him over. It took him a second but John stood up, his face full of hate.

  Uh-oh, Casey thought, this is going to be bad.

  Casey tried to brace himself, but it wasn’t enough.

  John when nuts on him. While Scott held Casey’s arms, John totally beat the crap out of him. One of his punches got him square in the nose and something popped and there was a gush of blood.

  He heard the scream of one of the second graders and he wanted to tell John to stop, that he was scaring that kid, that they were all going to get in trouble, but there was so much blood.

  And then Mr. Phillips, the sixth-grade teacher, was yanking John away. Someone was pulling Scott away, and Casey spun around, not sure what he was going to do but still feeling like he needed to do something. Needed to hurt someone. Needed to apologize or scream or find out if that second grader was okay. He was torn in a thousand different directions at once. None of this was right. None of it.

  And he wanted to make it worse just as badly as he wanted to try to figure out how to make it better.

  Ms. Monroe was there. She wore silver earrings, long leaves that brushed her cheeks.

  There was blood on her white sweater.

  “Casey?” she breathed and he could see the tears in her eyes, and when she held out her arms as if to touch him or hug him, he dodged out of the way. She dropped her arms, but didn’t look away and he felt trapped. “Casey, you’re hurt.”

  He opened his mouth, but a sob broke out of his chest.

  “Oh, Casey, Casey please let me—” She reached for him again, but he shoved her. As hard as he could, with every bit of strength he had left, he shoved her and tore off for the side entrance to the school. He heard her cry out and someone yelled after him and he was pretty sure he’d knocked her down. Pretty sure this was the worst moment in his whole life. And there had been a lot of bad ones.

  He got himself to the boys’ bathroom and hid in the corner stall, his feet curled upon the seat next to him so no one could see him by looking under the door.

  Snot ran down across his lip and the tears stung the cuts on his cheeks and he hissed when he tried to wipe them off on the knees of his jeans. He was panting and crying and he couldn’t get himself to stop. He unrolled tons of toilet paper and held it up to his nose, trying to stop the bleeding.

  “Casey?”

  It was Mr. Root, and Casey held his breath.

  “I know you’re in here.”

  The door to his stall rattled and he squeezed his eyes shut. “Casey,” Mr. Root said. “Please, come out. Ms. Monroe said you’re hurt.”

  The sob ripped through him. Did he hurt her when he’d pushed her over? Oh, God, he wanted to throw up.

  “Buddy?”

  “Go away!” he yelled.

  In the end, Mr. Root got the janitor to take the hinges off the door and they came and got him.

  * * *

  Ty turned the corner into the school’s office, ready to take his son apart.

  Honest to God, what part of “you will be suspended” didn’t the kid understand?

  Ty had been fooled by this weekend, by their Sunday afternoon together. They’d had fun after church. They’d gone to Cora’s and had fritters and then headed out to the river to throw stones. They went to go see the new aliens-and-robots movie and had popcorn and licorice for dinner.

  The phone call from Vanessa never came up again.

  He’d thought, stupidly maybe, that they’d turned some kind of corner. It had been fun. Happy. Easy.

  And the very next day Casey gets suspended for fighting. And Ty just couldn’t believe how angry he was. How … betrayed. How fucking at the end of his rope he was with this kid.

  But then he caught sight of Casey slouched in the chairs outside Mr. Root’s office and all the anger he had toward his kid for pulling him out of work, for fighting during school, for getting suspended, vanished.

  Casey’s head was tilted back and a cold pack wrapped in paper towel pressed to his nose. The neck of his white tee shirt was red with blood.

  Ty had gotten the shit kicked out of him more than once.

  But he wasn’t prepared for the sight of his son’s face.

  The terrible squeeze around his heart, the push and pull of his guts, made him stop for a second in the doorway. Made him brace his hand against the door frame.

  He’s so little. So young.

  All Casey had wanted from him was to take him out of those foster homes. To keep him safe.

  Oh God, I’m failing him. I’m failing him so bad.

  “Mr. Svenson,” Colleen said, looking over the top of her computer at him as if he had single-handedly ruined the delicate balance of her whole damn day.

  Stirred into motion, he ignored Colleen and stepped right to Casey. He leaned over to try and see his son’s face past the brown paper towel. To access the damage.

  Casey saw him and closed his eyes with a moan.

  Part defeat. Part fear. All grief.

  “Casey,” he breathed, reaching for the cold pack, but Casey turned away. When he reached again, Casey jerked away to sit on the chair sideways, his back to Ty, the small knobs of his spine pressed against his tee shirt.

  “You okay?” Ty set his hand against his son’s back, spread out his fingers, and covered all those knobs.

  “Don’t.” Casey jerked away.

  Mr. Root’s office door opened behind him, and Ty turned, only to see a boy in the same shape as Casey and a very grim-faced mom behind him walking out of the office.

  The mother stopped the boy beside Casey’s chair and she gave her son a little nudge with a sharp elbow.

  “I’m sorry, Casey,” the boy said, not making eye contact.

  Casey was silent for a long minute and Ty didn’t nudge anything. He had no idea what had happened, but until he got an idea, he wasn’t sure who owed whom an apology or if one should be accepted.

  After what seemed like a good mental shake, the mother turned to Ty. “I’m Mary James, John’s mother. I’m really very sorry. If Casey needs to go to the hospital for his nose, please let me—”

  “Hospital?” Ty said. He turned Casey around in his chair, just picked him up and moved him, and Casey didn’t fight it. He just let himself be manhandled and that was a terrible indication of how low Casey was, because there was no other time he would have stood for this.

  Ty pulled his son’s hand and the cold pack away from his face.

  “Holy shit,” Ty breathed, and John, the other kid, snorted.

  His son’s nose underneath the cold pack was swollen, red, and bruised. Blood was smeared all over his face. It looked broken.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mary whispered. “Really, I don’t—”

  “Someone needs to tell me what the hell happened, right now.” He stood up, glaring at every adult in the room.

  “Come on inside the office,” Mr. Root said. “I’ll explain.”

  Ty looked from Casey to the other kid, who had a split lip and a dark bruise forming under his chin. John. The kid’s name was John and when he looked at Casey, he didn’t look sorry. He looked mad, as though if there weren’t any adults around he’d do it all again.

  “Really,” Mary said, and for a moment all the grim fell from her face and he saw a woman with her back against the wall. Her hands shook as she dug through her purse and her eyes were wet with tears. “Here’s my number,” she said and handed him her Mary Kay Representative business card. “It’s just me, so you can reach me at those numbers and if you do need to go to the hospital just … let me know that he’s okay.”

  Ty took the trembling card she held out to him. He wanted to be furious with her; he wanted to yell that she needed to manage her son better. She was just like him, though, a parent who was trying really hard. And screwing it up sometimes.

  But he was still pissed, st
ill scared, and all he could do was take the card and nod.

  Mary force-marched her son out the door.

  Ty looked down at his son, at that defeated bend to his body, the blood splatter across his shirt. The broken nose.

  “You okay?” he whispered. Casey didn’t answer. “Son?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m going to talk to Mr. Root. I’ll be right back.” Casey’s ice-blue eyes twitched to him. Full of doubt and hope and fear and worry. Ty squeezed his shoulder and stepped into Mr. Root’s office.

  The door shut behind him and he sat down in the chair that Shelby had been sitting in the last time he was here. “What the hell happened?”

  “Well.” Mr. Root walked around his desk. “Your son won’t say a word, so all we have are the stories told to us by John and Scott and Mr. Phillips and Ms. Monroe.”

  “Ms. Monroe?”

  “She broke up the fight.”

  He stretched out his hand, trying to shake away the instinct to make fists. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Your son was playing by himself and Scott and John approached him. Casey tried to leave, but John grabbed his sweatshirt and tore the pocket. According to Scott, Casey just went berserk. He started punching John.”

  “Why?”

  “No one knows.”

  “Of course they know.”

  Mr. Root nodded. “They aren’t saying. In any case, Scott tried to pull Casey off of John but Casey kicked him.”

  “How did my son’s nose get broken?”

  “Mr. Phillips and Ms. Monroe said that when they found them, Scott was holding Casey down while John punched him.”

  Ty stood up. Those words—oh God, how they hurt. Someone held down his son and hurt him. This pain was searing, like trying to hold onto something that was too hot. He bent over, his hands braced on his knees.

  Mr. Root leaned back from his desk and held up his hands. “Please. Mr. Svenson, let me finish.”

  “There’s more?”

  “When Ms. Monroe broke up the fight Casey ran away, but he shoved her, knocked her over—”

  Oh God. “Is she okay?”

  “A minor scrape. But when I found Casey, he was crying in the bathroom stall.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine. Because his nose was broken.” Mr. Root shook his head, seemingly uncertain. “He hasn’t told us his side of the story. He hasn’t defended himself, or accused John and Scott of anything. He’s been silent.”

  He got where Mr. Root was going. “He’s not really a silent kid.”

  “No. He’s not. Most fifth graders who’d been held down and beaten would be pretty quick to tell their side of the story.”

  Ty rubbed his forehead. “Every time I come in here I have less clue what I’m doing.”

  “I know and I’m sorry.” That Mr. Root sounded sincere was nearly the end of him. It was so much better when Mr. Root was the bad guy. When he was understanding, Ty had no place to put his ugly emotions. He just had to hold onto them.

  “Is he suspended?”

  “All three boys are. For the rest of the week.”

  Four days. Casey would just have to come to work with him.

  “Next week, every morning before school I need to have all three of them in my office. I’m going to have some work for them to do.”

  “Together?”

  “Supervised. They’ll be supervised, but hopefully we can get everyone past this. It’s a small school, Mr. Svenson. And this kind of thing can be a cancer.”

  Ty nodded, his back teeth nearly cracking in his mouth he was grinding his jaw so hard.

  “You should know, Scott told us all of this and he was very … very upset.”

  “Yeah, I’d imagine holding a kid down while your buddy smashes his face in would be upsetting.”

  Mr. Root said nothing, as if Ty’s sarcasm was totally warranted. “Like I said, it’s a small school, Mr. Svenson. A small town. Scott and John have been friends since kindergarten. John’s parents have been going through a very ugly, very public divorce.”

  “Are you defending them?”

  “No. I’m …” He shook his head. “I think I’m just trying to give you some context.”

  Fuck your context, he thought. “I’m not interested in gossip, Mr. Root.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Can we go?”

  Mr. Root nodded. “I can’t … I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this happened at our school. It should be a safe place.”

  “Yeah,” he said, in total agreement. Casey didn’t have a whole lot of safe places left. “Is Ms. Monroe in class?”

  Mr. Root shook his head. “The teachers’ lounge.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ty opened the door, and at the sight of his son’s scuffed shoes and the torn pocket of his red hoodie on the floor in front of him, he was struck to the core by a moment of such painful, terrible doubt.

  “Mr. Svenson,” Mr. Root said.

  “You can just call me Ty,” he said, staring at that red hoodie.

  “Ty. Try to get him to talk to you. To talk to anyone.”

  Ty looked over his shoulder, surprised by his change of heart regarding counseling. “I will,” he said.

  He just had no clue how.

  “Let’s go, son,” he murmured. He put his hand under Casey’s elbow to help him stand up, but Casey twitched away, doing it all on his own. Casey scooped his hoodie up from the floor and dumped the cold pack and the paper towels on Colleen’s desk.

  “Thank you,” he murmured to her and walked out of the office. Ty could only follow.

  Chapter 11

  In the hallway, Casey was at the doors heading outside before Ty could catch up with him.

  “Hold up, Casey. You know where the teachers’ lounge is?”

  Casey looked back, his blue eyes so clear in his red, swollen face. His nose was twice its normal size and the bruising was showing up under his eyes. He would have two shiners in the morning.

  “Why do you want to go to the teachers’ lounge?” he asked, so wary.

  “Because we need to see if Ms. Monroe is okay.”

  Casey let the door close shut behind him and walked down the opposite way, through the hallways and the empty gym to a small set of stairs on the other side.

  “Up there,” he said.

  “You’re coming with me.”

  “Kids … kids aren’t allowed.”

  “They are right now.”

  Ty went up first, because he understood the holy mystery that was the teachers’ lounge to a fifth grader, but he heard Casey’s footsteps behind him.

  He opened the door at the top and found Shelby sitting at a round table with a man.

  “You don’t want a bandage?” the man was asking, pulling away the cold compress that she was holding to her cheek. The guy sat close, close enough that he was touching Shelby in about four different places, and surprisingly, Ty felt jealousy blast through him.

  “It’s a scrape,” she said. She was flushed pink. “Hardly worth all this.”

  “Shelby,” the guy breathed, looking at Shelby as though he wanted to wrap his arms around her, and Ty cleared his throat, shattering this little scene in front of him.

  The guy jumped back and Shelby’s wide brown eyes flew to his. At the sight of him she stood and looked behind him, where Casey was standing.

  “Casey,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  Ty stepped sideways trying to get out of the way, but Casey kind of stepped with him. He was hiding behind him. Christ, this was all so strange.

  Shelby glanced up at Ty and he shrugged, because he had no clue what was happening.

  “Are you okay?” Casey asked, from behind him.

  “I’m fine. It’s just a scrape. See?” She came around the table and turned her face. She had a bright red scrape across her cheek. “Are you okay?” she asked. “When I saw—”

  “I’m sorry I pushed you.”

  She stepped closer and when Casey shuffled back unti
l he was almost backed into the corner, Shelby pressed a quick hand to her mouth. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Casey just turned and walked out the door. By the sound of his footsteps, he ran down the steps.

  Ty met Shelby’s eyes, and there was nothing either one of them could say that would dissipate this black cloud. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said, then jogged down the steps to catch up with his son.

  Casey had slowed down and it was obvious his face hurt. Silently they left the school and got into the truck. Instead of heading through town toward the house, he headed back toward the interstate.

  “Where are you going?” Casey asked.

  “We need to get your nose checked out.” He watched Casey lean sideways against the door. “Does it hurt?”

  Casey nodded.

  “You going to tell me what happened?”

  “Mr. Root already did, didn’t he?”

  “I know you threw the first punch and I know that Scott held you down while John punched you.”

  “That’s all,” Casey said, his eyes shut.

  “Why’d you throw the first punch?”

  Casey didn’t answer.

  “Were they making fun of you?”

  More silence.

  “Casey?”

  Nothing.

  “Is this about your mom calling?”

  “No!” The venom with which he spat the word would indicate otherwise.

  “We can talk about it—”

  “I don’t want to.”

  He turned into the parking lot at the clinic and switched off the ignition.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry she called. You don’t have to ever talk to her if you don’t want.”

  “I don’t give a shit about her.”

  That was clearly a lie and Ty didn’t know what to do about it. It sat between them, steaming and rotten. Casey cared about the call. He cared about all of it.

  “When she calls, there’s this recording saying that an inmate at the prison is calling. You have to accept the call before you even hear her voice.”

  “I … I don’t want to hear her voice.”

  “Then you just hang up. If she calls again, we’ll just hang up.”

  He stared at Casey, trying to gauge if his words gave him any comfort, but he was still curled around himself as if waiting for another punch.