I made Billy open his backpack Tuesday morning to verify the yearbook was inside, on its way back to the library.
“I told you,” he said, zipping the bag and hefting it off the garden’s brick pathway. “I’m taking it back. Even though Miss Tanner said I could keep it as long as I want.”
“Who’s Miss Tanner?”
“The librarian.”
I thought for a minute. “The tall, skinny one?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s kind of hot. Nice ass.”
“Ew.”
“What? You don’t think she has a hot ass?” I gave him a little push down the path. “C’mon, Billy D. Admit it. You only go to the library to check out Miss Tanner’s ass. Or are you a boob guy?”
Billy shushed me, his eyes darting around as if the flowers could hear us. He looked almost as freaked out as when I’d explained why Beaverlick was such a funny name.
“Oh yeah.” I laughed. “Billy D.’s a breast man. You like ’em real big and squishy, huh? Like water balloons—firm on the outside but all—”
“Gross!”
I turned to walk backward in front of Billy as we left the garden. “What’s the deal? You never kissed a girl?”
Normally I’d ask a guy if he’d done a hell of a lot more than that, but I figured Billy might be behind this particular curve.
“I kissed a girl!” Billy said, but the red that filled his cheeks gave him away.
“I thought you said you were a good liar.” I winked.
Billy harrumphed and crossed his arms.
“Hey, it’s no big deal,” I said. “We just gotta hang out with some girls.”
“Seely’s a girl,” Billy said, a little too hopefully.
“Not Seely,” I said, a little too forcefully.
We locked eyes for a minute, both stopping in midstride down a grassy slope.
“You like her,” Billy said.
“I don’t like anybody.”
“She likes you.”
My stomach did a strange flip-flop, and I coughed to cover it up, as if Billy could hear it. “Would it bother you?” I asked.
“What?”
“Would it bother you if Seely and I liked each other?”
Billy adjusted the straps of his backpack. “I know she doesn’t like me,” he whispered.
That wasn’t an answer. I waited.
Finally, Billy let out a dramatic sigh and started walking again. “Okay, it wouldn’t bother me.”
“Good.” I smiled, falling into step beside him. “Because I know some other girls you might like.”
Billy looked up, listening.
“I have to think about it a bit,” I said. “Sara’s usually down to hang, but she’s kind of an airhead.” I flipped through my mental black book. “Annie is nice—to everyone—real nice. But she’s always with Marjorie. And Marjorie Benson can’t close her legs.”
Talking about girls carried us all the way to school.
Billy asked me a thousand questions. How do you know if a girl likes you? Where do you go on dates? When do you hold her hand? I told him: if she laughs a lot, bowling, and hand-holding is for pussies.
He asked me how I knew girls who didn’t go to Mark Twain High, and I sugarcoated the details about most of the girls I knew getting kicked out of Twain. He asked me if I’d had sex with any girls, and I answered honestly that I hadn’t—but I’d been pretty close. He asked me if he should have sex with girls, and I pretended I didn’t hear him.
At the edge of the baseball fields, before we went our separate ways, I punched Billy lightly on the arm. “You taking notes on all this? There’s a pop quiz on the way home.”
Billy slapped my punch away. “I don’t need a quiz.”
I dodged the slap and gave Billy a shove that knocked him sideways a few steps. “We’ll see about that.”
“Stop that!” a voice called out.
A teacher I didn’t recognize was marching across the parking lot. She had daggers in her eyes, and they were aimed at me.
“Stop what?”
“I saw that.” She reached us and put a hand on Billy’s arm. “Did he hurt you?”
Billy pulled away from her touch. “He can’t hurt me.”
“We were just messing around,” I said.
The teacher glared at me for a split second, then looked back at Billy. “It’s okay. He can’t do anything to you. You can tell—”
“Dane Washington doesn’t hit retards.” Billy crossed his arms, proud that he had settled it.
I closed my eyes. “Billy, that’s probably not the best—”
“Oh honey, you are not a … people shouldn’t even use that word.” She looked at me with venom but kept talking to Billy. “And people who do are not your friends.”
“He is my friend,” Billy insisted. “We were just messing around, like he said. He walks me to school and tells me about girls and teaches me to fi—”
I cleared my throat to shut him up.
“We’re going to be late for class,” I said.
The teacher checked her watch and studied us both for another second. “Messing around. Fine. But not so rough,” she said to me before clacking away in her high heels.
I stared at her back as she retreated. I wanted to believe it was me she was judging—that she looked at me and saw a hoodlum. But I knew it was more likely she looked at Billy and saw a victim.
That realization put me in a mood that lasted all morning.
• • • X • • •
I was still on edge when Billy plopped a tray down next to mine at lunchtime.
“Mrs. Pruitt has the flu,” he announced.
“So?”
“So she doesn’t need my help today, and Mr. Bell said I should eat lunch in the cafeteria.”
“Then go eat in the cafeteria,” I said through forkfuls of mac ’n’ cheese. I wanted to be alone, and if Billy would disappear, I would practically get my wish. I hadn’t seen Jake or Marjorie since the abandoned fight with Mark, and the only other person on the patio today was minding his own business at the other end of our table, scribbling in a notebook.
Billy ignored me and dragged the atlas out of his backpack.
I pointed at it. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to solve this clue,” he said. “What’s need—what’s needed—”
“Put it away. It’s not cool to be geeking out over a bunch of maps at lunch.”
Billy huffed at the interruption and started again, reading even more slowly. “What’s needed for a doo—a doo—for a duel.”
“If you don’t put that thing away, all we’re going to need for a duel are my fists and your face.”
I didn’t know if it was leftover rage from the teacher that morning or the shame of Billy catching me eating alone that had me so irritated, but I was not in the mood for chatting. I was in the mood for hitting. …
Which is probably why I ended up in the disciplinary office not fifteen minutes later, sitting next to a kid with a bloody nose.
The guy had it coming, of course, but that wouldn’t matter to the warden.
Billy had started babbling about the clue, and I’d let my eyes drift away—toward the kid with the sketch pad. I could tell the ugly cartoon face he was drawing was Billy D., even before he added the gapped teeth and tiny protruding tongue.
My elbow had connected with his nose faster than he could glance up. Nobody even saw me swing, except Billy. They just saw the aftermath with the blood and all the crybabying from the cartoonist.
Within seconds, some cafeteria cop had the three of us marching down the hall to let the warden sort it out.
Now we were parked in his office, waiting while he fussed with some paperwork and checked voice mails. I could see Mrs. Pruitt’s absence did not improve the warden’s mood. Not that my timing mattered. Good mood or bad, the warden would know just what to do with me. This was strike seven. Seven and you’re out. The only card I had to play—the ace up my sleeve—was Billy. He was there, and he would back me up—assuming he caught on fast enough.
“It was an accident,” I blurted.
The warden slammed down his stack of papers and finally fixed his full attention on us.
“An accident?” he asked, but his question was drowned out by the nasally shout of the guy with the bloody nose.
“Bullshit!”
Except he had so much tissue stuffed up his nose it sounded more like “Billshid.”
He pointed a finger at me. “Thad kid hid me in the doze.”
The warden fixed a glare on the boy. “Watch your language in my office, please.” His eyes flicked back to me. “How do you accidentally break a nose?”
I had to fight to keep from rolling my eyes. I seriously doubted the kid’s nose was broken. “I was telling my friend Billy D. here a story,” I said. “And I was gesturing with my arms.” I demonstrated an exaggerated sweep of one arm, and the bloodied boy flinched as my hand came close to his face again. “And whaddaya know, but I accidentally hit this guy in the face.”
I gave the warden a smug smile. Really, I was helping us both out. Keeping me in school kept the warden in the principal’s good graces. All he had to do was confirm it with Billy, and we’d all be on our way back to class. Well, maybe not the kid with the crushed nose. He’d probably have to go to the nurse’s office—or the hospital. After the picture he’d drawn of Billy, I really didn’t care.
As expected, the warden swiveled his chair slightly to face Billy. “It was an accident?”
Billy squirmed in his seat.
The warden sensed Billy’s hesitation and made his voice sharp. “Because you know I have every reason to suspect that is not how it happened—”
“No, id’s nod,” the sketch artist protested.
“It is,” I insisted. “Right, Billy D.?”
My eyes bored a hole in the side of Billy’s head, willing him to look at me, but he only stared at his hands.
“Billy D.?” the warden prompted.
Billy rocked back and forth in his chair.
“Tell him,” I said in a low, fierce voice.
Billy looked up finally, and his voice was small and miserable when he said, “I don’t feel good.”
“Do you need to see the nurse?” the warden asked.
“Uh, I deed to see the durse,” the other boy snuffled.
The warden and I smacked the boy with equally vicious stares, then turned our attention back to Billy, who cowered.
“I just don’t feel good,” he repeated.
“Okay, Billy, why don’t you wait outside?”
I started to protest, but Billy was already scrambling for the door and the warden was already moving on.
“Dane, given your track record and the severity of the damage inflicted, I’m inclined to disbelieve this was an accident.”
What was with the formal talk?
“Therefore, I have no other choice but to—”
“Wait!” I gasped the word, trying to think as fast as my mouth could move. “I had a reason … I can explain …”
The warden pressed his fingertips together, and his voice was almost hopeful. “I’m listening.”
Okay, so lies were out. I had to come up with another angle quick. Desperately, I latched on to something I’d heard in history or English or, hell, chemistry, for all I remember—the truth shall set you free.
I pointed at the boy with the bloody nose. “He was drawing a nasty cartoon of Billy D. Real nasty, making fun of his face and stuff.” I knew the warden didn’t stand for violent reactions to any nonviolent offense, but I silently prayed he would make an exception, just this once.
“Yeah, I drew dat kid.” The boy next to me dropped his hand from his nose for the first time. A thin red bubble of snot ballooned under one of his nostrils, then disappeared as he took a breath. When he spoke again, I could hear him clearly for the first time. “I draw everybody.”
He pulled his sketch pad from his backpack, smudging a little blood from his thumb on the edge. He flipped fast through the notebook—page after page of faces I half recognized from the patio, the cafeteria, the hallways. Each one was as cartoonish as the next.
“I do caricatures.” He sounded almost apologetic. “I wasn’t making fun of your friend.”
“He’s not my friend,” I spat, my anger pulling away from the boy with the bloody nose and latching on to the backstabber waiting outside the warden’s door.
But the itch in my palms faded. I’d hit the kid for no reason—or maybe just the wrong reason. It really was an accident, in a way.
I looked up from the sketch pad to the boy’s face. “I’m sorry.”
The words felt sort of bulky and foreign coming out of my mouth, but I meant them.
The boy mumbled something like “It’s okay” and put his notebook away. His anger had disappeared, too. He looked as guilty as I felt.
The warden finally sent the poor guy to the nurse’s office, and a silence fell between the two of us. I broke it first.
“So it was kind of an accident,” I said.
The warden just stared at me.
“And you heard the guy. He said it was okay. And Billy—”
“Billy,” the warden interrupted, “seemed very shaken by what he saw.”
“Nah, he just—”
“You promised to look out for him, and instead you exposed him to violence.”
“No, I—”
“If you ask me,” the warden pressed on, “you hurt two boys here today.”
I clenched my jaw. Anyone could see it was Billy who’d betrayed me. All he had to do was agree it was an accident, and this whole mess would have gone away. Sure, that guy’s nose would still be jacked up, but what was done was done, right?
The warden spoke quickly, tugging open file cabinets and pulling out papers as he talked. “Dane, you are suspended, effective immediately and for the duration of the week.”
I sank back in my chair, speechless.
“This is a final offense before expulsion.” He slid one of the papers across the desk toward me. “This form states you cannot be on school property and outlines other rules of suspension.” He dropped another sheet on top of that one. “This one is for you to take home and have a parent sign, stating they understand you will be expelled for any further …”
The warden’s voice turned into a low buzz as he kept pushing papers at me—one form explaining how Mom could pick up my homework, one detailing how a suspension would be reported on my permanent school record. The pages blurred together just like the warden’s words. This was exactly the moment I’d been trying to avoid when I’d made a deal with Billy. So why did it feel like his fault that I was here?
That’s what you get for sticking up for people who don’t return the favor.
Billy was sitting patiently in one of the outer office chairs when I opened the warden’s door. He hopped up at the sight of me.
“Can we go back to class now?” he asked.
I waited for the door to click shut behind me and gripped the forms in my fist so tight they crumpled. I looked Billy dead in the eye and seethed. “You go back to class. I’m going home.”
“But—”
I raised my fist full of papers, silencing Billy. Then I shoved as much anger into my voice as would cover up the hurt.
“Deal’s off.”