by Bryan Bliss
“What the hell, Eleanor?”
“Just leave me alone, okay? I want to be left alone.”
“What’s going on? Talk to me. Please.”
This was probably the first time I’ve ever been happy to see Mrs. Hoffman, standing in the hallway, watching all of this unfold, disapproval curling across her lips.
“Mr. Castigan. Miss Boone. Are we coming to class today?”
“Yes ma’am,” I say, ignoring every instinct telling me to feel indignant with her tone—we aren’t even late yet. But with her standing in the doorway, there’s only room for me to squeeze through, so Tyler has to wait for Hoffman to move at her crawling pace before he can follow me inside.
As soon as I sit down, my phone buzzes. I ignore it and it buzzes a second time. A third. I make a show of putting it in my bag and Tyler cusses behind me, which Hoffman also hears.
“Mr. Castigan. Do you have a problem?”
“Maybe,” he says, his voice angry. It breaks through the wall I’ve built up. I want to turn around and tell him to calm down—that we’ll talk afterward. I’ll explain.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, Maybe. Are you deaf?”
This time, I do turn around, along with the rest of the class. Anticipation hangs in the air as Hoffman tries to get her pearls rearranged after such an outrageous show of disrespect.
“Mr. Castigan. To the office.”
Tyler doesn’t break his stare with her at first. Doesn’t move. Then he finally stands up and snatches his backpack from the ground. Just before he’s about to leave the room, he turns and glares at me for a long second.
And then he’s gone.
As soon as class ends, I pull out my phone and text Tyler immediately.
I’m sorry.
I can explain.
I wait for the little dots to pop up, to show that he’s about to respond. When we first started dating, we’d spend hours texting back and forth. Stupid messages that skirted around my feelings, intense and embarrassingly earnest. And while our text conversations are more practical—Come pick me up—these days, I keep screenshots of some of those original messages on my phone. Sometimes, when I’m feeling down or I just want to remember those early days, I’ll open the folder and enjoy how goofy and ridiculous and wonderful he really is.
Text me back.
Please.
I wait for the dots. But it just sits there on my phone, unread and killing me.
I don’t see him until lunch. And when he walks into the cafeteria with Ben, I’m worried they’re headed to a completely different table. Instead, Ben peels off and gets in the lunch line, while Tyler heads right for me. He doesn’t sit down, and I start to apologize, but he stops me.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I nod, biting my lip so I don’t start crying in front of everybody.
“Okay. That’s all I need to know.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He looks back to Ben, still standing in line, and sits down across from me, rubbing his hands over his face.
“Can you, like, explain it? I mean, if I did something wrong, just tell me. And if I didn’t . . .”
He shrugs and it breaks me. I want to reach across the table, grab him and hold him and promise that I will never treat him that way again. Instead, I fumble with the words that are both what he wants to hear and what he doesn’t.
“I’m just—everything that’s happening has me all messed up. And I’m so angry. Like, really angry. And I don’t want to be. But then again, I do want to be angry. I want to scream and hit things and just lose my shit because I’m so fucking tired.”
I stop to breathe. Tyler doesn’t move, an unreadable look on his face.
“And I’m really afraid that you’re not going to want to be with me,” I finally say.
Finally, a reaction.
“C’mon, Eleanor.”
“Are you saying you weren’t over me wearing the shirts? All the attention?”
He can’t answer, because we both know it’s true. He wanted me to stop. Everybody wanted me to stop. And while I understand it, I want him to acknowledge that it didn’t end for me when I took off the shirt.
“I never stop thinking about it,” I say. “Like, ever.”
“I know,” he says. “I can tell.”
“And I tried, Tyler. I will keep trying. But—”
He shakes his head.
“You don’t have to explain. And . . .” He clears his throat, looks back to Ben who is paying for his lunch. As he steps out of the line, Tyler turns back to me.
“I think about it every day, too. I dream about it. Not every night. But sometimes. A lot.”
When Ben gets to the table, we must look like emotional zombies or something because he doesn’t sit down. He stands there with his tray looking very nervous that one or both of us is about to break down into tears in front of the whole cafeteria.
“Just sit down, idiot,” Tyler says.
Through the smile, I see something different in Tyler. I was so consumed after the shooting—with my own anger, my own pain and sadness—that I never considered his. I never thought that every time I screamed, it might rip apart something inside him, too.
Once Ben is sitting down, he launches into his impression of Tyler’s moment of disobedience in Hoffman’s class.
“She looked like she was going to legit explode,” he says, laughing his ass off.
The whole time, even though we’re both smiling and laughing, Tyler and I keep checking in with each other. Quick glances. Little smiles. All of it making sure that everything was cool, that we were fine, and life could go on like normal.
Or as normal as it has been.
Chapter Nine
WHEN I FINALLY GET TO BASKETBALL PRACTICE, I’M so exhausted I’m not sure I’ll be able to get a shot up, let alone spend the next two hours running up and down the court. Surprisingly, as soon as my feet touch the hardwood, it’s like my energy meter immediately recharges.
I’m winning windsprints. I’m jumping out of the gym for rebounds. And I’m pushing the break so fast Coach Harris laughs and asks what’s gotten into me. The only answer I give her is another bucket.
After practice, Coach Harris breaks us down—“one, two, three, Ford”—and I feel completely empty, which is weirdly perfect. There’s a difference between being drained by somebody else and giving everything you have in pursuit of a goal—something you want.
I sit on the court, unlacing my shoes so I don’t have to bend down and do it in the locker room. Trying to imagine tomorrow’s game, the points I’ll drop on them. The way the scout will look when she sees my performance—a perfect night.
I’m smiling when Tyler walks in and sits down next to me. He doesn’t say anything, just uses his finger to trace a line of sweat on my knee until it starts to tickle, and I suddenly feel every drop of sweat on my body.
“Looks like you were really killing it,” he says.
“So, you were out there creeping again?”
“That’s the first time I’ve waited for you to finish practice in, like, three years,” he says.
Freshman year he would sit outside the gym, waiting for me. Even though he was just sitting there, it freaked out a lot of the older girls on the team, all of whom ended that season and graduated from high school thinking Tyler was nothing more than a freshman pervert. Later I found out that he was worried they would pull me into their junior and senior stratosphere, leaving him behind.
Still, I like to give him shit.
“Remember when Connie Shilson—”
“God. Stop. Please.”
“You don’t remember?” I lean over and nudge him with my shoulder. “She went to Coach Harris and made, like, a formal complaint against you?”
“For one, it wasn’t a formal complaint. It was a request that I not ‘watch’ practice,” Tyler says, fighting a smile. “Which I wasn’t doing. I was doing homework. And the way it was explained to me was it had more to
do with competitive advantage and less about, you know . . .”
“Being a creeper?”
He laughs, but I can tell he didn’t come in here to joke around. He stayed at school, hours past when he would normally leave, so he could catch me at this exact moment to say something very specific.
“Okay, so out with it.”
“What?”
I stare at him and he eventually rolls his eyes, both because I can read him like a book, and he doesn’t ever like to admit that I know exactly what he’s thinking most of the time.
“I heard something. About the game tomorrow.”
I take a breath, pull my first shoe off. “Yeah?”
He shifts uncomfortably and then grabs my hand and holds on to me like he’s about to fall of the side of building. I forget my second shoe and turn to face him. His expression is nothing short of stricken.
“Fucking Trevor Banfield,” he says, and my heart feels ready to stop beating. “He’s not doing it, of course. But he got the rest of those assholes thinking, and now there’s, like, this whole thing happening.”
“Tyler. What are you talking about?”
“They’re going to wear the shirts to the game tomorrow night,” he says.
If my heart has already stopped beating, this is where it falls completely out of my chest.
“Okay,” I say, trying to rationalize. To make a plan. To fight the fury that is rattling toward me like a runaway train. “Okay.”
“I already told that little fucker Trevor he needs to put an end to this. Immediately. But then his brother—the dude with the epic mullet that runs the cash register over at the Wilco—kind of got in my face, so who knows if the message was received.”
He takes a deep breath. “Maybe you should skip the game.”
“What? No. The scout from NC State is going to be there.”
“Right. I know. But, like, she could probably come a different time? Because . . .”
He stops talking, probably at the exact right time. Because even though I want him to finish the sentence, I don’t need to hear the words to know what was coming next.
“You’re afraid I’m going to lose it,” I say.
“What? Eleanor. No. I’m worried that something’s going to happen to you.”
And while I don’t doubt his sincerity, I can’t help but let the anger take over. The thought of all those boys showing up at the game for no other reason than to get a reaction out of me. To hurt me. It’s the same boys-will-be-boys bullshit that I’ve dealt with my entire life, the exact same shit.
“We have to tell your parents,” Tyler says.
“They won’t let me play,” I say.
I can already hear the conversation—how it won’t be safe. How we shouldn’t give those boys the satisfaction. I know every single word that will come out of their mouths, all of them meant to protect me from a threat that is impossible to see until it’s staring you in the face.
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Tyler says, and I nod, not because I agree but because I just want time to think.
“I should probably go tell Coach Harris,” I say, pushing myself up.
Tyler stands up too and reaches for a hug.
Then he asks, “Do you want me to come home with you?”
“No, I got this.”
And then I walk away from him, across the court, which now seems impossibly large.
Coach Harris is at her desk, watching a video on her phone. When I walk into her office, I must scare her because she nearly drops the phone and stares at me like I’ve just jumped from behind a closed door.
“Boone. You nearly gave me a heart attack. What are you still doing here?”
“So, I guess there are some guys who are planning to do something at the game,” I say.
I have no idea why I’m dancing around it. Coach Harris, if anybody, has always told me—the entire team—that you couldn’t go through life scared and meek. Speak up, be a leader, and all that same rah-rah shit that never seems like it matters until it does. Until a moment like right now. But standing here, I’m worried she doesn’t actually believe any of it. I’m scared that when I tell her, I’ll get the same disapproving look I’ve been trying to avoid for months.
I do it quick, Band-Aid style.
“They’re planning on wearing those T-shirts to the game tomorrow,” I say. “The ones with my face on them.”
Harris doesn’t blink and, at first, I think everything is going to be okay. But then she speaks.
“You can’t be a distraction,” she says. “That was our agreement.”
“I don’t want to be a distraction,” I say. “And it’s not like I asked them to do this—it’s not like I asked for any of this.”
Harris’s eyes go wide and then she sits back in her chair, considering me.
“Sometimes our actions speak louder than our words.”
“What? What is that supposed to mean?”
“Eleanor . . .” Her tone shifts midway through saying my name, becoming softer. Like she is about to give me some long-awaited advice. “You chose to wear that shirt. And now you have to accept that there will be consequences.”
“It’s been almost nine months.”
“Sometimes consequences have longer tails than we might expect.”
I stand there, stunned. As much as I want to scream, to let the rage take over, I suddenly feel remarkably calm. One question rises up out of all of it and hangs there.
“How long?”
Maybe I should soften my tone and be more polite, put to use all the lessons I’ve been taught over and over again.
Instead, I say it one more time, “How long?”
“All right, that’s enough, Boone.”
This is where I would normally blow up. But I feel like a bit of life has been drained out of me.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” I say. “And I won’t be a distraction tomorrow. Don’t worry.”
And then I walk out of her office.
Tyler is waiting for me, and when he sees my face he doesn’t need to ask. He follows me back to my house, and as I’m getting out of the car, a soft rain starts falling. I don’t want to move. I just want to stand here in the cold rain, letting it slowly soak me to my bones. But Tyler pulls up the driveway, wraps me up in his arms, and walks me to the house.
My parents aren’t home. Tyler starts a fire and I turn on the television. There’s a sports talk show on and it drones in the background as the house grows darker and darker. I let myself relax. At first it feels reckless, as if I’ve put a bag down and walked away from it. But the longer I sit there in the dark with Tyler, the more I never want to move again.
The television show changes—two men sitting across from each other, debating a ticker tape of topics—just as Dad walks into the house. He must think he’s stumbled onto us making out, or worse, because he starts stammering and turning on lights like it might blind him long enough for us to button up our shirts—whatever he’s thinking we need to do. I stand up and stretch, my entire body sore from sitting on the couch and basketball practice, the entire last year.
Before Dad or Tyler can speak, I tell him everything. About the T-shirts, the conversation with Coach, and my plan to pretend like nothing is happening.
Dad takes it all in without responding.
Then he says, “I think we should still call the school.”
And now I’m so worn out and exhausted, I don’t care if he calls the school or uses a megaphone to get Townsend’s attention.
“Let them do what they want,” I say. “I’m not going to say another word until graduation. Silent Eleanor. The end.”
Dad stares at me and it looks like he’s about to cry, which I don’t understand. As we’re standing there, Mom comes into the house holding two bags of groceries. She looks at me and then Dad and without putting the bags down says, “What happened?”
“Some idiots at her school are planning a protest for the game tomorrow night,” Dad says, sti
ll watching me with his sad eyes. “I’ll call the school tomorrow and, well, that will be that, hopefully.”
Mom seems satisfied with this answer. She puts the groceries on the kitchen counter and quickly recruits Tyler for the job of shredding cheese as she starts cooking the pasta for baked ziti. I wash some lettuce for a salad, trying not to look at Dad. When I sneak a glance at him, he’s fiddling with the stove. He catches my eye and gives me a smile, the kind usually reserved for weddings and funerals. A smile like a mirror, designed to reflect however I’m feeling.
When Dad walks out of the kitchen to grab some sodas from our basement refrigerator, I follow him down. I sit on the stairs, waiting for him. When he sees me, he nearly drops the cans.
“About gave me a heart attack, kid. I swear.”
When I was actually a kid, I would lie in wait throughout the house, in the backyard, hoping to catch him unaware. I’d jump out and he’d jump up, cussing loud enough to wake the dead. I don’t know why I found it so funny. Why I kept doing it even into middle school.
Now he sets the cans on one of the steps in between us and looks up at me, that sadness back on his face.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask.
Dad looks surprised. He hops over the cans of soda, climbing the stairs until he is right in front of me.
“Eleanor, no. Of course not.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Hey—I’m not mad. Not at all. Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know,” I say. While it sounds like a cop-out, it’s the only answer.
I don’t know if he’s mad at me for taking a stand. For all the subsequent problems, the headaches. All the moments that have robbed our family of any normalcy. Or maybe he’s mad because I took a stand, and now I’m tired and ready to give it all up.
“I don’t know,” I say again, and he takes my head in his hands.
“What you did? What you continue to do? I’ve never seen anything so courageous in my entire life. You understand?”
“I don’t know why everybody still hates me,” I say. “I stopped. I tried to make them happy.”