by Leddy Harper
And with that, it became too personal, igniting a flame within me.
The anger and betrayal I’d experienced walking into class bubbled higher, causing my hands to shake on top of my desk. “No, I don’t. Because it’s not his right. Maybe I have a plan to save my own country.” I used my fingers to quote “country,” hoping he’d know what I really wanted to say. “Maybe I’ve got it all under control. If I don’t ask you—or Steven—to come save me, then you—he—shouldn’t. Especially since no one has a clue as to what goes on in my country.”
“So the German’s could have handled Hitler by themselves?” I had no idea who shouted out that question, but I had a feeling it was the same asshole who spoke up earlier.
“That’s not relevant. We were brought into that war. We tried staying out of it. But when it comes to Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan…we didn’t need to be there.” I could sense every pair of eyes on me, and it started to rattle me. In the two and a half years since starting high school, I’d managed to keep my head down and not draw any attention to myself, yet here I was, offering myself up at the altar as a sacrifice.
“Don’t listen to her. She’s just a hippy liberal,” Andy, the kid next to me, said and waved his hand in my face as if dismissing me.
I didn’t even bother waiting to see if Mr. Taylor would interject before arguing back. “Why? Because fighting sucks and I’d rather live in peace? Because I believe there’s been too much bloodshed and think at some point, we have to say enough is enough? Or is it because I don’t believe we should get involved in others’ affairs when we have our own country and people to think about? We’re blindly killing our own men by sending them over there. Why sacrifice our own for them?” It was an outright argument at this point, and completely off topic from where I began. But I couldn’t stop as I sat on the end of my seat, leaning forward to make my passion known. And I could already feel my face aflame with heat, knowing my fury was visible for the entire class to see. “And why do liberals have to be hippies?”
“Let’s calm down.” Mr. Taylor finally spoke up and called everyone’s attention back to him at the front of the classroom. “Like I said before, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but there won’t be any name-calling. We’ll stop this now if we can’t voice our opinions in a mature fashion.” It was the first time that morning he appeared angry. And the first time all week he sounded frustrated.
“She’s the one that said we asked to be attacked on September eleventh.”
God, what was up with everyone wanting to put words in my mouth?
“That’s not what I said!” I slapped my hand on my desk, unable to hold back the wrath that raged inside. All this had started because I thought people should mind their own business, and somehow, we ended up here. “Back to us being our own country.” I turned my attention to the ass in the back who twisted my words. “Let’s just say your dad is beating the shit out of you. Would you want Steven to come in and tear your family apart to save your country? What if Steven came to you and asked if anyone was hurting you, and you adamantly told him no? Wouldn’t that make you feel betrayed if he went behind your back and stuck his nose in your business? What if his actions only made things worse? How would you feel then?” My heart rate sped up and the adrenaline pumping through my veins caused my insides to shake uncontrollably. There was no way Mr. Taylor wouldn’t know by now how I truly felt. The original metaphors be damned.
Isaac, the kid in the back, sat for a moment, staring at me with narrowed eyes. “If my dad was beating me, and I couldn’t handle it myself, then yeah, I’d want someone to try to help. It’s called humanity.” His eyes held mine as if he could read me. As if the bruise on my face gave me away and he saw everything. “You’re saying you’d sit by and watch a friend get abused just because she asked you to? What if your friend dies while you do nothing? You’d just say, ‘oh well, nothing I could’ve done. She didn’t want help’?”
Luckily, at that moment, the bell rang. Everyone started to stand, yet no one said a word. I, however, couldn’t find the strength to leave my seat. “No homework tonight. See you back tomorrow morning,” Mr. Taylor said quietly from his podium.
The atmosphere in the room had become very heavy, and it seemed to affect everyone, including me. I blinked at the floor a few times before standing, becoming weak on my feet. I couldn’t shake the worry that I had just led my entire class to believe I was an abused child. I’d allowed my anger to get the best of me, and without thinking about how it would appear, how it would sound coming from the girl with the black eye, I decided to question people’s morals regarding child abuse. We were in high school, I’m sure rumors would spread before fourth period. By the end of the day, people would be talking about how my dad tied me up in the basement or how I had to eat dog food for dinner. Like I said, no one knew my life but me. But that would never stop people from talking.
Mr. Taylor blocked my exit from my row, but I didn’t care. I had bigger fish to fry. I had bigger things to worry about than what he had to say. “Please, Mr. Taylor, I can’t do this right now.” I couldn’t even look at him, my eyes trained on the open door on the other side of the room as I fought back the sting of tears born in embarrassment and anger.
“Come here after school, please. I’d like to talk to you about what happened.”
I shook my head and finally met his stare. “I can’t. I take the bus home, and I can’t be late. If you want to give me detention, just do it and get it over with.”
“No. I would like to talk to you. Come see me during lunch today since you can’t stay after school.”
“Lunch? When am I supposed to eat?”
“Bring it with you. You can eat in here while we talk.” He waited until I nodded before moving out of the way enough for me to get by. “Oh…and, Bree? That detention slip will be written if you don’t show up.”
Well, it seemed as though I had a lunch date with Axel Taylor.
Mornings always dragged on the longest. It always seemed as though the classes before lunch took forever, yet the ones that came afterward flew by. But not today. Today, hours felt like minutes, and minutes passed by like seconds. Before I knew it, the lunch bell rang.
I moved through the halls at a snail’s pace, not in any hurry to get to Mr. Taylor’s classroom. My earlier anger had diminished after class, after I’d been practically smacked in the face with logic. Logic I didn’t want to recognize. And all that remained was the sad fact of my reality.
No one could help me.
It only made things worse.
Realism is what made me linger by the lockers, take my time while pretending to look for something, waiting for the students to leave the hallway. Once the majority of the student body had disbursed to the cafeteria or the courtyard, I made my way into his empty room, feeling my chest tighten to the point where I almost couldn’t breathe.
“I started to worry you were going to stand me up.” He wore an unsure smile when he rose from his seat in the back of the room. The corners of his mouth lowered with every step I took, slowly closing the distance between us.
I decided I would sit at the desk I used in class. It was directly in front of him without being too close, offering me a sense of security while in his presence. There were so many thoughts clouding my head at the moment that I couldn’t find the words to speak. I really had nothing to say—my emotions were in an intense game of ping-pong between being irritated and weepy. Although, I think my sorrow was enhanced by the reemerging anger over seeing him again. I had a tendency to cry when pissed off.
He kept his gaze on me, strong and penetrating, yet he didn’t utter a word as I made it to my seat in front of his. And he only sat down again once I did. I wanted to hold his stare for as long as I could, but it became too intimidating, so I dropped my eyes to my hands and attempted to control my breathing.
“Where’s your lunch?” He sounded nervous, his voice almost shaking.
“I don’t have one.” I
lifted my head to look at him and then held my hand up, stopping him from commenting. “And before you call social services, claiming I’m being neglected, I don’t have one because I didn’t bring it. I forgot it at home,” I said, my rage returning by the second, quickly replacing any bit of sadness I had when walking in. Just the mention of what he’d done brought it all back and reminded me why I sat in his classroom during lunch period. It reminded my why I’d forgotten my food at home, in too much of a hurry to leave the house and give him a piece of my mind. Well, here it came, any second now.
His eyes held mine for a moment before he bent down to his side, the distinctive crinkling sound of a plastic bag filling the silent air around us. He placed something on his desk in front of me, remaining silent until I glanced down at it. “Eat this.”
It was half a sub from Subway, still wrapped in paper. “I’m okay.”
His hand covered mine as I attempted to push it away. “No. You need to eat something. This is your lunch period. I won’t be responsible for you going hungry. And I’m not going to call social services.”
I wanted to yell at him for the destruction he’d caused. I wanted to cry for feeling so weak and helpless. But I couldn’t do either of those things. All I could do was stare back at him, the muscles in my forehead going taut as I tried to express my emotions through my eyes. I wanted him to see the hurt and anger that filled me, threatening to drown me in it. I wanted him to experience the same turmoil that raced through me, destroying everything in its path. And I wanted him to know that it was all his fault.
“Please, Bree. We need to discuss what happened in class this morning, but we can’t do that if you don’t eat. And if we can’t talk about this now, then we’ll have to do it later. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really care to drag this out any longer. So please, eat the sandwich.” He held the food out to me. He may have used polite words, which on paper would’ve come across as concerned and sincere, yet his tone made it seem completely different. It came across as more of a demand than an offer out of concern.
Reluctantly, I snatched the rolled-up sandwich from his grip and began to open the wrapper. But then the intimidation of his tone wore off and the fury returned, causing me to slam the food on my desk. “No. You don’t get to make demands on me if it doesn’t have to do with your class. You don’t have the right to stick your nose into my business and control my life like a puppeteer. I understand that you’re an adult and I’m just a kid, but that doesn’t mean you know what’s better for me than I do.”
“Bree—”
“One of these days, you’re going to make a call—”
“Bree—”
“—that will cause someone—”
“Aubrey!” His loud voice accompanied by the slap of his hand on his desktop halted my angry rant. “There’s a better way to discuss this without raising our voices or getting mad.”
“Too late, Mr. Taylor. I’m already mad. You can’t ruin my life and then expect me to sit here and be calm about it. You can’t stick your nose into my business and then sit back while everything falls apart. You have to take responsibility for what you did.”
He took a deep breath, leaning forward in his chair with his arms crossed in front of him. His eyes never left mine, except they turned warm, soft…concerned. “I was only trying to help.”
“But I told you, it was an accident. Guess what, Mr. Taylor? Kids get hurt. We run into things, we get bruises and scrapes. Doesn’t mean we’re abused at home. Has it really been that long since you were my age? Do you reach a certain point in life when you forget what it’s like to be a kid?”
“I know what you said. I also know what I saw. It’s not impossible to have that kind of injury from an accident, but coupled with your behavior, your explanation, and what I found in your records, I was led to believe that it wasn’t an accident. No, I haven’t forgotten about falling off a skateboard or getting slammed with a curveball during practice. I realize people get hurt, adults even. But I didn’t feel what happened to you was accidental. I still don’t.”
“What do you mean, what you found in my records? What records?”
He released a harsh huff of air and dropped his head, running his fingers through the thick mess of dirty blond hair. I got lost in his mesmerizing movements, keenly aware of every motion, until he lifted his head again and met my eyes. “Our school has a strict no-tolerance policy when it comes to abuse. It comes in handy when the decision has to be made to call the authorities. So every teacher must report suspicious injuries. I looked up your file after school on Tuesday, and you have some questionable ones in there. You were sent to the clinic last year for an untreated sprained wrist. Your mother had been contacted, but she’d claimed to not have any knowledge of how you were injured, yet you told the school that it was done at home.”
“So you took it upon yourself to accuse my mother of abusing me?”
“This is my first year teaching,” he said on a sigh. “I’ve done some assisting programs, and even took a few spots subbing before getting this position. This is the first time that I’ve been solely responsible for my students. Maybe I jumped the gun, not wanting to let it go. Maybe I came to my own conclusions too soon.”
“Ya think?” I interjected, needing to speak my mind before letting him finish what sounded like the beginnings of an apology, or at the very least, admission of wrong doing. “I told you what happened. I ran into my bedroom door.”
“And then after that, you said your mother opened it into your face. It was conflicting. It felt wrong. And just the way you said it…it left me to believe you were hiding something. If it were an accident, why act so nervous about it? I’ve already told you, Bree, I’m really good at reading people. You’re not a hard person to read.”
I slumped into my seat, feeling like I wouldn’t win this battle no matter how hard I fought. “I just don’t understand why you felt the need to meddle. Why you wouldn’t have tried harder to talk to me about it before jumping the gun and making a phone call.”
“That’s not the way it happened. I asked a colleague of mine, told him about what I’d found, what you looked like, what you said happened… I asked his advice on what to do because I didn’t want to jump the gun on it. I didn’t want to say something before having all the facts. He agreed with me that it didn’t sound right, and told me to go with my gut. So I called a friend with the police department and talked to him about it. I simply suggested that maybe he could look into things before we make any contact with your mother. I had no idea anything would happen yet. I thought he’d get back to me with what he found and then we’d go from there.”
“Well, you could’ve talked to me about it. And I would’ve let you know that nothing could be done. My mom works in the DA’s office. You think you’re the first person to check up on me? You think if my mom abused me, I would’ve made it this long without someone saying something—especially since you’ve mentioned this school has a zero-tolerance policy for abuse? Everyone in her office knows me as the clumsy kid. It helps her case that even as a young child, I always had scrapes and bruises from falling down or running into things. Which was the truth. I really did get hurt a lot all on my own when I was younger. She’s the best at spinning stories, probably from her time served as a defense attorney. She’s great at playing the part in front of others. And anyone that knows her—which includes the majority of the police department—thinks she’s this amazing person. I could’ve told you all this and saved your time and mine.”
“So you admit it? Your mother abuses you?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not a victim of child abuse.”
He glared at me and cocked his head, lifting one eyebrow in silent question.
With a long exhale, I answered his unasked words. “She’s mean, sure. She says hurtful things to me and has these unrealistic expectations that I can never meet. And there are times that her anger gets the best of her. But is she abusive? No.”
; “You have documented injuries. I beg to differ.”
“Those are rare. Few and far between. Most of the time, she just lashes out at me with her words, not her fists. And she’s never hit me. All my injuries are due to falling down, or running into things. Honestly, I ran into the door.”
He shook his head, seemingly exasperated. “You didn’t run into a door. I would appreciate it if you stopped lying to me. Tell the truth. You already told me there’s nothing I can do about it, so why keep up with the lies?”
“I don’t trust you, Mr. Taylor. How do I know you won’t keep trying?”
“Let’s get one thing straight first. Verbal and mental abuse is no different than physical, except it’s much harder to prove. If that’s what she’s doing to you, then rest assured, there’s not much I can do. But that doesn’t mean I’m just going to drop it. It doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore the fact that one of my students is hurting and then walk away, knowing you need someone on your side. I only want to help you, Bree. If that means being here to listen to you, then fine. If it means stepping in if I can, then I will. Trust me on that. The moment I have an opportunity to protect you, I won’t let it pass me by. But you also need to understand that I will do that whether you open up to me or not. It doesn’t matter if you tell me what really happened, or stick to your lie, because if I have a chance to prove abuse, I will, regardless of what you do or don’t confide in me.”
“Why?” It was a simple question, yet meant so much.
Why do you care?
Why me?
Why does what happens to me, matter to you?
“What kind of person would I be if I didn’t?”