Hear Me Now

by Melyssa Winchester

  I hate this, but I never complain about it. There’s no one I can complain to. No one gives a fuck. I’m alone and I’ll always be alone. I would kill to turn around right now and lay this son of a bitch out, even knowing he’s my dad, but I can’t. I might be strong against the people I go up against at school, but I’m a complete pussy when it comes to him. I won’t lay a hand on him, no matter how badly I want to and I think he banks on that. He’s secure knowing he controls me and all of this.

  Frank Simmons, the ref for this fight, steps forward and calls to both me and Rodney and as I make my way forward, ready to step into a fight for my very life, I focus on the only thing that can possibly help me get through this. The caramel hair and brown chocolate eyes that have haunted me for the past three days since I first laid eyes on them.

  Thinking about her might seem like a distraction if I ever told anyone about it, but for me she’s more than that. Right now, her attitude, the glassy look in her eye that she gets when I insult her, disrespect the teacher or any of the kids in the class, is going to be the thing to get me through this. I’m gonna focus on her and maybe, just maybe I’ll use all the pent up feelings I have about her and take this son of a bitch down before he can do any real damage.

  As Frank calls for us to start, I bring every bit of anger I’ve got to the surface, seeing not Rodney’s face as I make my first move, but my fathers and with thoughts of Cadence and the way she’s gone out of her way to ignore me pushing me even more ahead, I unload on the beefed up guy in front of me. I unleash everything I’ve got on him right from the jump, even knowing that in the end it’s going to cost me.

  It’s only when I attempt to block his retaliating fist and come up short, the impact slamming me right in the cheek, hearing my father screaming his anger at me in the background that I realize the mistake I’ve made.

  That one punch is going to cost me and not just when we got out of this smelly screwed up barn. The stinging in my cheek alone from the impact of the hit is going to cause my face to bruise and when it does, there’s no way in hell my secret is gonna remain a secret.

  I’m about to be found out.

  Cadence

  The first thing I notice when I get to class Thursday morning, after two days of ignoring Dillon and all his stupid attempts to make conversation, is the limp he has when he walks to the front, handing some paper over to my mom and turning to make his way back to his seat.

  It’s only when he sits and I really look at his face that I see something even worse than the limp. His cheek is bruised and there’s a small piece of medical tape over his right eye, holding a scrap of tissue or toilet paper in place. His lips, the ones I spent so much time watching are cracked and cut open, dried blood resting just on the surface.

  If Dillon looks like this, I’m almost afraid to see what the other guy looks like. Talking to Eric for the past two days at lunch, I’ve got a feeling I know who the other guy is and seeing him this morning as he walked Isabelle to class, he doesn’t have a scratch on him, which means whatever went down, Dillon took the majority of.

  Sliding into my seat after tossing my backpack on the floor, I unzip it and like I’ve been doing for the last two days, pull out my book, prepared to spend the entire time reading and doing my best to put Dillon Murphy and his broken body out of my head all together. I’m curious about what happened, but not enough to reach out and ask. Today is going to be like every other day this week. I’m not going to say a word, he’ll ignore me the same way and things will be the same as always.

  At least that’s the plan until he goes and breaks it.

  Leaning over, he puts another small lined piece of paper on my desk, but this time, through the gap where my hair isn’t entirely covering my face, I see him flinching in pain as he leans back into his seat. Where I would have just ignored the piece of paper for a while, seeing him flinch and the way his eyes roll back up into his head with the pain of the small movement he made, I reach out and flip it open, reading what’s written there.

  If the guy’s gonna hurt himself in order to talk to me, the least I can do is read it. I don’t have to respond, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least acknowledge the words on the page.

  Hey.

  One word.

  With the way he tried so hard on Monday to get me to talk to him, forgive him for what happened with his friends, I thought for sure I would see more than just this one word, but as usual, Dillon is again proving that I know nothing at all about him and any attempt to figure him out is pointless.

  Using his paper to respond instead of reaching for my sticky pad, I scribble the same word back to him, hoping it will be enough and he’ll go back to ignoring me so that I can pretend to do the same even though the voice in my head is screaming at me to ask what happened to him.

  Hey.

  Before I know it, he’s handing the paper back to me, this time not reaching out around the desk, but holding it out across the space between our desks in order for me take it. After a split second of deliberation on whether or not I should engage with him this way, especially after the way the last two days have gone, I reach my hand out and take it from him.

  What are you reading?

  A book. You know, those big things with pages that you turn for enjoyment?

  Fuck. Are u always such a bitch?

  No. Just for people that deserve it.

  We continue to go back and forth like this for at least another ten minutes while my mom stands at the front of the room, her back to us, explaining some math lesson to the other six students in the room. After every pass of the now filled paper between us, I scan the front, praying as I do that she doesn’t catch me talking to him.

  After the conversation we had this morning before coming here, the last thing I want her to see is me going against what she wants and talking to Dillon.

  ~*~*~

  “I had an interesting talk with Eric Carmen yesterday afternoon.”

  I know where she’s going with this. There’s only one thing that Eric could talk to her about that she would find interesting, at least enough to tell me about. Anything else he may have said to her, she would have kept to herself, which means she knows what happened on Monday.

  Motioning with my hand, not willing to speak up and admit to anything, I try to get her to continue. The sooner we get this over with, the better. It’s been two days since it happened and even though I couldn’t get it out of my head, the last thing I want to do is talk about it.

  “He said that Dillon, Amy and Tim attempted to start something after lunch on Monday and you got knocked down in the scuffle. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  I shake my head and turn back toward my cereal. I don’t want to talk about this with her, especially since it happened two days ago and nothing’s happened since. So, some girl knocked me down. It’s not like there was some big fight or something. She’s gonna freak out over nothing.

  “Cadence, I know the way it works. When a student gets bullied they keep it to themselves. I don’t want you feeling you need to do that. What you tell me here will remain between the two of us. If you are being silenced in some way, it ends now.”

  Not being silenced, Mom. Don’t want to talk about it.

  “Who pushed you to the ground?”

  The girl. I sign easily.

  “If it was Dillon, you can tell me.”

  It wasn’t Dillon. He just watched it happen.

  She seems surprised by my answer. My mom is usually pretty understanding when it comes to just about anyone, but I can tell she wants to believe the worst of Dillon. It’s not like her at all. Where’s the non-judgmental teacher I’ve been living with for the past sixteen years?

  “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter who did it. If it happens again, I don’t want to hear about it secondhand from Eric or any other student. I want you to bring it to me, even if you think you can handle it on your own.”

  Okay. Are you done now?

&n
bsp; “Cadence, I’m aware that going to work with me is not something you’re happy about and you would like nothing more than to be back at your school with your friends, but this is the situation we’ve been dealt. I want you to promise me something.”

  I already agreed to tell her if something happened at school, what else can she possibly want me to promise?

  “I want you to promise that you will stay as far away from Dillon as possible. I know that he’s in the class and the two of you sit in close proximity to each other, but he is not a person you want to be getting involved with.”

  Nodding my head in agreement, I put my attention back on my cereal and tune her completely out. We haven’t said so much as hello to each other since Monday afternoon when I told him what I thought about him. If she wants me to stay away, that’s an easy promise to make since I didn’t have any plans on speaking to him again.

  “Good. You’re such a sweet girl, Caddy. The last thing I want to see happen is for someone like Dillon Murphy to come along and change that.”

  ~*~*~

  Focusing my attention back on the paper in front of me, a new one he ripped out of his notebook and taken to writing on, I see the question he has waiting for me and it just reminds me again of how true my mom’s words were this morning. Though with the back and forth so far this morning, I’m doing a bang up job of listening to them.

  So I gotta ask. Why are u in this class? You don’t seem retarded.

  I’m not letting him get away with this. It’s one thing to roll his eyes at my mom and for me to reach over and flick him repeatedly, but there’s no way I’m gonna let him refer to the kids in this class as retards. By all rights, with my disability, I’m one of the so called retards he’s talking about. I’ve never been a fan of that word and that’s not going to change now.

  I’m not in a retard class. There’s no such thing. I’m in this class. If you wanna know why I’m here, I’ll tell you as soon as you tell me what truck did that to your face.

  His response is immediate and as I read it over, I can easily see its bullshit. I saw Kayden this morning, I know he had nothing to do with what’s going on here. Even if Dillon had taken the brunt of an attack, there would still be some kind of marks on Kayden and there just wasn’t.

  Got into it with someone I used to be friends with. No biggie. So why are you here?

  I think you’re lying, but I’m here because my school got closed down for a couple weeks.

  His eyes raise at my admission or me calling him out on his lying. I can’t be sure which one he’s doing it to, but it’s obvious that he hadn’t been expecting that to be my response.

  Is this you thinking you know me again?

  I don’t think I know you; I do know you. I’ve met a lot of guys just like you and you’re all the same.

  He attempts to hide it but I catch the eye roll the minute it happens and it’s at that point I make up my mind. I’ve had enough of this back and forth with him. I’m done. When he’s ready to stop acting like a brat, I might think about responding again, but for now, I’m just done.

  Turning back to my book, I flip back to the page I left off on and go back to ignoring him. When no note comes, either with him reaching painfully across my desk to deliver it or holding it out for me to take, I know I’ve made the right decision.

  Dillon

  Jesus Christ; this girl just doesn’t let up.

  There’s a second there where she calls me out for being a liar that I almost tell her what really happened to me, but just as quickly as it comes, I push it down. It doesn’t matter how hot this girl is, or how much I enjoy our conversation, there is no way in hell I’m telling her the truth.

  When I got to school this morning and people started staring at my face, I thought for sure that shit was about to come falling down around me. People would find out that I hadn’t gotten into a fight the way I’d spread around the night before through texting with Amy and my secret would be exposed.

  So far, it hasn’t happened but it doesn’t mean I’m gonna go out of my way to make it reality. Telling this girl would be exposing myself in a way that I’m just not willing to do. So I attempt to flip it around on her, my ability to be a total jerk coming as easily as it always does and within a couple of minutes, she’s got her nose back in her book and I’m back to being left alone.

  I don’t know how it happened, but somehow I managed to get through all three fights last night. Sure, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck the way Cadence said but it’s been happening for so long now that I’m used to it. In a few days, the cuts and bruises will fade and I’ll be back to normal. I just hope that he doesn’t schedule another fight before that happens. This time I definitely need time to heal.

  Kicking Rodney’s ass had been easier than I expected. I let him wail away on me for a while, watching as he became winded quickly due to his size and the amount of liquor and drugs in his system. When that happened, it was easy to take him down. It’s only when I got to Mark and Alex that I lost steam and ended up looking the way I do now.

  Bruce had not been happy, but considering what he told me while he drove me home, he should have seen it coming. According to him, Mark and Alex are training to become professional fighters, which means they know what the hell they’re doing and going up against a kid like me is easy as shit for them. Hearing what he told me, I’d been pretty pissed. It’s one thing to throw me against someone my own age or maybe even a few years older like Rodney, but professional fighters?

  What dear old dad doesn’t know is that by the time I got to Alex, I was prepared to lie down and let him get the win. I actually did lie down at one point, praying for it to end. I had sucked all the blood I could stand off my lips and I could barely see out of my right eye with the blood that was pouring out of the cut Mark left me with. By the time I got home and looked in the mirror, my eyes were completely bloodshot and it had nothing to do with me not sleeping. It was the blood that managed to hole up there.

  Most kids, if they went through what I did, would be freaked out going home, afraid their mom would see it and lose her shit on them, but I’m not like that. Between all the fighting I get into at school and then all the shit that went down at Homecoming with Kayden, my mom is used to seeing me like this. She didn’t even bat an eyelash when I walked through the door.

  She also didn’t ask what happened.

  That’s Rebecca for you. She’s so out of it, I’m shocked that she even gets up for work in the morning or knows enough to leave me money for lunch. She’s always been a space cadet, but the last couple of years since she kicked my dad out, she’s gotten worse. It’s the pills. She drowns herself in them so much that the world is completely lost to her. I’m thankful for her being this way though. It means I don’t have to answer any questions about what Dad really does with me during our time together.

  I bandaged up the wounds as best I could and here I am, back at school, earning some looks but nothing I can’t handle. My secret is still intact, my friends doing what they’re good for and spreading the perfect amount of lies in order to make it seem as though all I did was get into a fight after school. The only risk to all of that being one of my own making in wanting to tell Cadence the truth.

  As long as I can keep my mouth shut with this girl that seems to know more about me than I do, I’ll be just fine.

  Thing is, I can’t do that. She’s sitting there reading her book, the pages all bent and worn, like she’s read it multiple times and I’m kind of interested in exactly what it’s about. I’m so pathetic right now that I’m willing to listen to her tell me about some stupid book I’ll never read just so she’ll give me the time of day again.

  “Can I see what you’re reading?” I ask and when she doesn’t look up or even acknowledge that she’s heard me, I try again.

  “Cadence. Can I see your book?”

  What the hell is with this girl? Is she still pissed about what happened Monday so she’s purposely ignoring me? Considering
I got her to talk to me a couple seconds ago, there’s no way she can be all that upset. I gotta figure if she hated me she wouldn’t have said a word to me this morning, but she did, so what the hell is with her now?

  Reaching across and tapping her on the shoulder even though it causes my ribs an enormous amount of pain, I watch as she jumps back in the seat. She must have been more into the book than I thought. It looks like I freaked the hell out of her.

  When she settles and her shoulders go from rigid to relaxed, her eyes catch mine and I try one more time to get her to talk to me. Now that she’s looking at me, there’s no way she can ignore me the way she just did.

  “Can I see what you’re reading?”

  Her eyebrows raise and she smiles weakly, closing the book after bending the top of the page down, marking her location and passing it over to me. Reaching out to take it, my hands brushing softly over hers and my body tenses with the shock that takes place. Shaking it off, believing it to be something related to the amount of times she’s run her fingers through her hair since she got here, I look down at the cover of the book and I’m surprised.

  I expected to see some kind of romance, since that seems to be what most girls read when I do pay them enough attention to notice, but what’s in front of me now is as far from romance as you can get. It’s a fantasy novel, science fiction I think, and the very last thing I expected to see someone like her reading.

  Shit; I know absolutely nothing about this girl.

  I feel her eyes staring a hole into the side of my face as I’m looking at the book so I turn back to her and hold it back out for her to take.

  “You like this kind of stuff?