by Bryan Bliss
“If he sees it, fine. If he doesn’t, even better. I’m sure it will pass.”
I look at the image again, which was posted only an hour ago and already had 10k likes. I tell myself there have been posts like this before. I tell myself that what they think does not matter.
“This is . . . Shit, Boone. This is different. Like, they’re threatening you.”
Something catches in my throat, and I can’t say anything for a few seconds. Outside of one guy at the mall—fury and bravado on his face—nobody has ever confronted me in person. Before he got more than three words out, Dad had him up against the wall. Soon after that, the mall security guards had Dad pinned against a different wall and the whole thing made the local news, because back then I couldn’t take a breath without it attracting attention.
But I’d never been threatened.
And while I’ve spent a lot of time training myself not to engage, not to care, it was hard to deny that Tyler is right. This is different.
“I think it will go away,” I say. “I don’t want Dad hunting those people down and going to jail forever.”
Tyler laughs, puncturing the tension a bit. “I’m not going to lie, Boone. Your dad scares me.”
“He’s harmless.”
“He’s, like, six-foot-four, three hundred hard pounds. And a former fucking marine to boot! He’s not harmless, Boone. And, worth saying again, terrifying.”
“Well, only to people he doesn’t like. So maybe you’re right.”
“He likes me,” Tyler says.
“You sound confident.”
I laugh, picturing Tyler’s sudden panic, and it helps. To laugh. To feel normal. To imagine a time when my entire life wasn’t determined by the whims of idiots who worshipped pieces of metal. Just a normal high school kid excited about going to college.
“Oh, shit. I almost forgot,” I say. “Guess what happened?”
“You got nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Tyler says.
“Pretty close . . . NC State.”
I let it sit there, no context, until he finally figures it out.
“Holy shit. Are you serious?” I can feel his excitement through the phone.
“Yes. I don’t know how it happened.”
Tyler doesn’t hesitate. “It happened because you’re awesome, Boone.”
“I know. I’m glad you understand this.”
Tyler laughs. “Seriously, though. That’s amazing. You’re going to be a part of Wolfpack Nation. God help your dad.”
The next morning the school day starts with an announcement that I’m going to NC State. Even though I haven’t technically signed, it’s presented as fact, and that’s the way most people in the class take it. There’s a legitimate cheer in Mrs. Hoffman’s class, which of course she hates, and I can already see the new black mark in whatever mental file she has on me.
But I don’t give a single damn. Because once the announcement is made, it’s like I’m flying—only a few feet over the ground, but flying is still flying—throughout the rest of the class, the rest of the morning.
And you would’ve thought it was Tyler who’d been offered, given the way he goes peacocking through the hallways. Not that he’s trying to siphon off any attention. Instead, it’s a weird sort of pride for me that, while it shouldn’t be surprising, makes me want to pull him aside and hug him until he can’t breathe.
“Get that Duke shirt the fuck out of here, Guthrie!” Tyler says to a thick-necked guy I don’t really know, but has made the mistake of wearing a Duke shirt on the wrong day. Tyler’s smiling as he says it, though, raising my hand and saying, “Wolfpack! Nation! Boooooooooone!”
The last part he said with his nonschool voice, hands cupped and head raised to the moon. Guthrie shakes his head and pops his shirt once so we can see the grinning blue devil.
“State’s better than Carolina, I guess,” he says, before disappearing down a different hallway.
This is how it goes for most of day. When I have a class with Tyler, he makes sure everybody heard the announcement and comes at me with the proper amount of respect. In the classes without him, the love and shock and awe doesn’t dip much. People are legitimately excited, even the ones who had spent the better part of the last year giving me the side-eye.
So, by the time lunch comes around, I’m really soaring. I half expect the cafeteria to erupt into applause when I walk in, not that I want it to happen, but the way people are acting it wouldn’t have surprised me.
Instead, a few people say, “Congrats!” but once I get my food and sit down, the excitement ends and the cafeteria goes back to business as usual. A few minutes pass before Tyler and Ben slide into the seats on either side of me, Tyler leaning over to give me a peck on the cheek, and Ben pretending that he’s going to do the same.
“Kidding. I don’t feel like getting my ass kicked,” he says.
“That’s right,” Tyler says, opening his lunch bag.
“I was talking about Eleanor, but you do you, bud.”
I laugh and squeeze Tyler’s knee. I’m about to suggest that we all go out tonight—Keep the party going! Applebee’s!—when a couple of kids start scream-laughing in the corner of the cafeteria, the typical Oh no you didn’t! type of freshman shit that’s fairly common, no matter if they’re freshmen or not. At first, I ignore it, but pretty quickly people are staring at our table. It must be something to do with NC State, so I’m about to wave or stand up, something.
But then a few things happen all at once.
There’s more laughter, louder—across the cafeteria. That same corner.
A boy emerges, laughing as his friends push him up and away from their table.
And then I see the reason.
His shirt, my face. The target superimposed on top of it. And now everybody in the entire cafeteria laughing as this kid takes a bow like he just won the blue ribbon for best pig.
Chapter Five
TYLER TEXTS MY DAD—I DON’T WANT HIM TO, BUT HE holds me back as he hits Send—and then I swear both my parents are in the office in a matter of minutes. Dad is red-faced and slamming his hands on Mr. Townsend’s desk. Mom looks just as angry.
“That shirt has to violate your precious dress code,” Dad says.
Townsend smiles stiffly.
“The student is no longer wearing the shirt,” he says. “And it’s the district’s code, Ron. Not mine.”
The dress code was made out to be nothing short of scripture back when I was wearing the FUCK GUNS shirt. It wasn’t my First Amendment rights they were violating—no, no!—but, you see, the school district’s dress code ensured that all students were protected from any language that might be deemed dangerous or unsavory.
“The kid should be expelled,” Dad says. “At least. And if I—”
Before he can finish the sentence, Mom sits forward and puts a hand on his knee.
“We’re just concerned that somebody would not only make that T-shirt, but that a kid—a kid—in her own school would wear it.”
“Yes, well, Mr. Banfield’s actions were misguided and ill-timed, for sure,” Townsend says. “And there will be consequences.”
“Which are?” Dad says, pushing himself forward, knocking over the wooden cross on Mr. Townsend’s desk, until he’s nearly face-to-face with the man. “Because I want to make sure you understand that there was a target on my daughter’s head.”
Mr. Townsend readjusts his cross—it says something about wings of an eagle on the base—and clears his throat one more time before saying, “I’m not allowed to discuss the specifics of another student with you, Ron. Just like I couldn’t discuss anything about Eleanor with Trevor’s parents. But I’ve placed a call to the district office and we’ll be handling it accordingly.”
Dad sits down, laughing bitterly. “Well, perfect. Don’t we all just feel so much safer now?”
“Ronnie . . .” Mom’s tone tells me she isn’t as calm as she seems. “Let’s just get some specifics on next step
s, and then we can take Eleanor home. Okay? Ronnie?”
Dad’s still staring intently at Townsend and, to his credit, the man isn’t backing down even though Dad is giving him everything he has. Townsend waits two, maybe three seconds, before finally answering Mom.
“We’ll make an announcement and send an e-mail”—Mr. Townsend looks over at me briefly as he talks—“a phone call, too. Making it clear that this isn’t acceptable in the Ford community.”
The principal smiles again, just as stiffly.
He’s obviously spent a lot of time being yelled at as an administrator, because this guy is barely sweating—barely moving. I bet if you took his pulse right now, he’d be asleep. Calm as anything.
“So you’re just going to let him get away with it,” Dad says. “But I’m guessing if this was Eleanor wearing a shirt, we’d be having a totally different conversation, right? Probably have the National Guard up here to make sure she didn’t get out of hand.”
“I’m just following the policy, Ron. It’s not a personal thing. And trust me, there will be—”
“Consequences,” Dad said. “I know.”
When I first wore the FUCK GUNS shirt, Mr. Townsend pulled me into his office and appealed to the emotions that had brought it about in the first place. What is this going to do to the school? he asked. Haven’t we been through enough? And for a second, I understood. Hell, I even agreed with him. None of us wanted these wounds.
But that’s also where we differed. The shirt wasn’t about causing more pain. It wasn’t about shitting on some district policy I’d never had a reason to know, let alone subvert. It was a desperate attempt to actually change something, to be heard amid all the screaming and crying that still echoed in my ears, even now.
Dad turns to me. “How are you doing, kid?”
Every single word on my tongue is sharp as a dagger and ready to be thrown across the room. Because it’s all a bunch of bullshit. The Right-Wing Report shirt existing. Some basic boy named Trevor wearing it. The way the principal, even if he doesn’t realize it, is protecting him in the name of bureaucracy.
But I can’t say any of this, because as soon as I unload, it would be the same old story.
Eleanor the troublemaker.
Eleanor the attention hound.
Eleanor why-can’t-she-just-stop! Boone.
This, for better or worse, calms the fires. I summon my own fake smile and give Mr. Townsend a big thumbs-up, one I hope he realizes has the DNA of a completely different finger on the same hand.
“As long as he doesn’t wear it again,” I say. “I’m fine with whatever you think is best.”
Dad looks like I’ve been swapped with an alien.
“Eleanor, you can tell him how you really feel,” Dad says.
His words are a two-ton truck crashing into a brick wall. The cracks climb up the wall and suddenly, I can’t feel any part of my body, only the sense that I’m going to start crying, which is something I do not want to do in front of Townsend, or anybody else at this school.
So instead I say the first words that come to my lips.
“Can I?”
Dad’s face falls. He turns to the principal, ready to explode once again when I stop him.
“I just don’t want him to wear the shirt anymore. And I don’t want anybody—teachers or students—to say anything to me about it. I just want to go to my basketball game tomorrow, get through the rest of the semester, graduate, and go.”
The words come out in a burst, enough that I feel like I’m gasping for breath at the end. I swallow, push back more tears, and refuse to look away from Townsend. When he speaks, all I can hear are plastic words.
“We’re here for you, Eleanor. I want you to know that.”
I tell Mom and Dad I’m not going home because I don’t want people like Trevor Banfield to win, but also because I have practice and it will feel good to run up and down the court. To lead the break. To get buckets.
When I walk into physics and hand my pass to the teacher, Tyler looks flabbergasted.
“Why didn’t you go home?” he whispers.
“I don’t want to miss practice,” I say. “And what am I going to do at home? Sit there until tomorrow? I might as well just stay and not get behind.”
Tyler tries to figure out if there’s more. If I’m hiding something from him. I reach over and pat his forearm.
“I’m good. Trust me.”
But the more I sit in my desk, the more untruthful that statement becomes.
At some point, I should be able to have a bad day. Normal ups, normal downs. I shouldn’t have to worry that my face will end up on a T-shirt simply because somebody needs to have an enemy—a place to focus the anger they’ve been stoking.
The bell rings and I don’t move. Even though I’m pretending to look through my bag, I guess Tyler can tell something is up because he hangs back and sits on the edge of my desk.
“You look like you’re about to cut somebody,” he says. “Like, pull a razor out of your boot and cut somebody.”
I laugh, but it doesn’t feel right. Instead, it feels like the time I had pneumonia. A hollow cough that doesn’t move a thing.
“Maybe just hand out a light beating,” I say.
Tyler reaches down to carry my backpack for me. Once it’s on his shoulder, he offers me his hand and pulls me up, intentionally making me bump into him, which normally might lead to some fake offense from him. Boone, he’d say, I’m standing here—I’m standing here!
Instead, he secures my backpack one more time on his shoulder and never lets go of my hand. And for a second, I can feel the anger get replaced with the sweet memories of Tyler when I first met him, when he could barely reach for my hand without blushing.
But as soon as we get back into the hallway, as soon as I see the people staring—and, hey, maybe they’re not laughing at me—the sweetness curdles, churning itself back into the thick rage that I can’t honestly say has disappeared, even a year later.
After basketball practice I don’t want to go home. So, I drive, rolling the windows down and trying to see how long it takes me to reach for the heater. It’s a game I’ve played with myself for years, one that forces me to endure any number of pointless tests of will—the sort of things I want to believe most people wouldn’t do. Likely because it’s not smart to practice, take a shower, and then drive with your windows down in forty-something-degree weather. But in my mind, it’s not stupidity as much as its strength.
I’m not paying attention to where I’m going at first, but then I’m deep into the Hickory city limits, in the downtown area, where you can never fully tell if the stores are open. But there’s always something or someone moving, but not the way I assume bigger cities operate—places that stay awake hour after hour. Just enough so you know it’s still alive.
When I park, I don’t intend to go to Dr. Holston’s office.
I start out walking along the brick sidewalks, looking into storefronts that have closed or will soon. There’s a pay-as-you-go jewelry store where Tyler bought me a locket freshman year—one that he might still be paying off for all I know. A tavern that, much like the city itself, always seems to be moving, even if with only a few people at a time. And then Dr. Holston’s office, on the second floor, above a mortgage company that I’ve never seen open.
The light is on. So I walk in.
Before, in the days and weeks after the shooting, the school hallways were filled with therapists and psychologists. Every opportunity for healing was given to us. Emotional support dogs. A few cats, for those sorts of people—even a therapy llama, which might not have actually been certified because it ended up being weirdly aggressive. In the midst of all of it, in the midst of all the FUCK GUNS attention, the school bullshit, my entire world coming apart, it was Dr. Holston who came up alongside me, even though she likely regretted it once the shit really started piling up and her name got leaked to the press, too.
But she was a rock.
In fact
, we rarely—if ever—even talked about any of the attention. Every time I came into her office, she would offer me a cup of tea and asked a very simple guiding question: “How is your world today?”
And at first there wasn’t a session that went by without my world being filled with napalm. Burning without end. And unlike almost every other person in my life, the entire world, Dr. Holston said, “Okay, let’s just feel that today. Let’s really feel it.”
When was the last time you were told it was okay to feel something like napalm? In most cases we’re told to bury our emotions, anything that might embarrass or anger or make somebody uncomfortable. In those early sessions, for months actually, all I did was scream and cry and rage. And I never felt like I was finished. Session after session, it was like a match had already been lit and I was ready to explode.
When I knock on Dr. Holston’s office door, I don’t hear anything at first and wonder if she accidentally left the lights on. But then the door opens, and Dr. Holston is standing in front of me, her wild, graying hair tied down with a headband.
“Eleanor! Did I forget about a session tonight?”
“Is it okay for me to still be angry?”
Holston has an unreadable expression on her face. I’m about to apologize and leave when she says, “Why don’t we go over to Drips and get a cup of something. Talk. Sound okay?”
As we walk, she calls my parents and makes sure they know where I am. As soon as she hangs up, my mom texts me.
Are you okay?
I quickly type out, Yep, don’t worry. Just stopped by.
Drips is a coffee shop filled with secondhand couches, a small stage, and a continual collection of high school and college students dotting the tables. The windows are fogged up by the conversations, the entire shop warm and full.
Holston orders a tea and I get some caramel macchiato monstrosity, and when we sit down, she steeps her bag and waits for me to talk, which is by far the therapist’s biggest trick. Holston is a master, too, always letting me guide the conversation until I somehow stumble into an answer or paint myself into a corner that, you know, ultimately leads to an answer.