Zack
I was sitting in calculus trying to remember the definition of Differentiation of Inverse Trigonometric Functions when I looked over and noticed her. Whatever answer I may have been about to come up with, it turned into smoke. Zoe sat in the outdoor commons area on one of those metal picnic tables. Her back was to me, her feet on the bench, and the wind whipped her hair like a circus ride. She had her hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched, and seemed to be staring out over the grounds. Why was she out there? She should be in class.
I jumped out of my chair, making one girl gasp at the sudden movement, and nearly everyone else looked over from their work to see what my problem was. Feeling a couple dozen eyes on me, I snatched up my books and quiz paper before hurrying to Mr. O’Brien’s desk. When I got there, I realized I didn’t have anything to say. I tried to scramble for an excuse to leave as I handed him the page.
“I….”
He peered at the quiz, frowning. “You didn’t answer the last three.” He raised his head, searching for an explanation.
“I know. I’m not…feeling good. I need to go see the nurse.” I tried to look as pathetic as possible, and it must have worked, as he was leaning away from me as if to distance himself from the germs. He whipped off a pass.
“I had a student last hour puke in my trashcan. Whatever it is, I hope I don’t catch it. Here.” He flung the paper across his desk and turned back to whatever it was he was doing. I suppressed a grin and rushed out the door.
No wonder kids skip class. It’s easy.
But my thoughts immediately turned to Zoe. She wouldn’t skip class, ever. She was one of those kids who actually read the student handbook. I increased my pace. Halfway down the hall, I spotted someone through the glass windows on the door at the end of it. Someone in a gray hoodie crossed the doorway, headed in the direction I knew Zoe was in. My heart raced.
I can’t believe that son-of-a-bitch Oatam had the nerve to come back again. Doesn’t the dude understand what a restraining order is?
I broke into a run. A few feet from the door I threw my stuff on the floor and hit the release bar with the heels of both hands. That thing was loud enough on an average day to make people jump, but neither Zoe nor Oatam turned. She was still staring out into space, completely unaware of the danger now only a few feet from her. He had his hands stuffed into his pockets and lurked behind her. Zoe did jump when I rode him to the ground, and let out a piercing scream as she flew to her feet.
Taking him unawares, and with his hands in his pockets, gave me a distinct advantage. Not that I needed one. I came out on top in our last two altercations.
“Zack!”
I gave him enough room to roll over so I could see his teeth when I knocked them out. My left hand grabbed sweatshirt, my right elbow was drawn back to deliver the first blow.
“Zack. Stop! It’s Nick.”
My arm shook when I held back the punch I was about to deliver to my best friend’s face. He was cringing, with his eyes partly closed. My mind spun like a yoyo at the end of its string. I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around the fact it wasn’t Ben I was sitting on, it was Nick.
Zoe took a step forward. “It’s Nick, Zack,” she said more softly. “Everything’s okay.”
I found my voice and climbed clumsily off the body I’d taken down like someone who’d intercepted one of my passes on the playing field. “Oh, man, Nick. I’m sorry. I thought you were Oatam.”
Nick pushed onto his elbows. “Oatam? Why would that jackass be here?” He looked from me to Zoe. She ducked her head. I glanced around as it dawned on me someone could have seen us and gone to get a teacher or administrator. Luckily, we were alone.
I offered Nick my hand and pulled him to his feet. “Because he was here earlier.”
Nick stopped brushing his pants. “What? Oatam was here? At the school?”
“Yeah,” I said through gritted teeth. And I was still pissed about it.
Nick looked at Zoe. She raised her gaze and nodded a little, then dropped it again. Clearly she didn’t want to talk about Ben’s appearance. I moved over and took her arms. She was shaking again. Poor baby. Her nerves were shot. “What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be in history?”
She shrugged. “Art. But yeah.” She lifted her gaze again, staring over the field hockey pitch. I turned my head to see what was absorbing so much of her attention, but the field was bare. In the distance, the wind played a beat on the flagpole by the gym, the rope and hooks making a shrill but melancholy repetitive noise as they thumped against the pole, emphasizing the emptiness surrounding it. I scanned the area and realized that was the direction Ben took off in.
“Zoe, are you worried? He—”
She shrugged out of my grasp. “No. No. I’m not worried.” She scooped her books from the table, not looking me in the eye. “Just…don’t feel good. Dani’s coming to get me. I better go.”
“Do you want me to walk you—”
“Nah. I’m good,” she threw over her shoulder as she crossed the commons. Nick and I stared after her until she entered the next building.
I moved in that direction, wanting to trail her, but keep enough distance so she wouldn’t know I was following. Nick matched my pace, still peering at the door Zoe had disappeared behind. He must have sensed my motives because he kept his voice hushed when he spoke to me.
“Oatam came here? Did he…touch her?”
“I didn’t give him a chance,” I answered grimly. The thought made my stomach roll, and I moved faster, deciding I didn’t care whether Zoe saw me or not.
Nick jogged beside me. “I mean…what an idiot. Doesn’t Zoe have a restraining order?”
“The dude’s so obsessed with her, it doesn’t matter to him.” We entered the building and I had to blink until my eyes adjusted to the low wattage lighting.
“What the fuck.” Nick summed it up nicely. “Why can’t he just leave her alone?”
I didn’t answer. Zoe hit the far end of the building and banged the door release. As she passed through, a bell rang and kids swarmed out of classrooms. Nick and I dodged other students, doing the peculiar dance mandatory in a congested hallway. When we got to the door, we paused, watching through the window as Zoe climbed into Dani’s car and they left. I sighed. We turned and trudged back along the corridor.
I twisted my head, a thought coming to me. “Why were you out of class anyway?”
“I saw Zoe out the window. It was during sixth period, and I wondered what was going on. She never skips class. Always yells at me when I do.”
I snorted then remembered something. “Oh, shit. I threw my books down in the senior hall and left them there.” We exited the fine arts building in time to see my English homework take flight, the book right outside the door, where someone must have kicked it, the pages turning, the wind making them flow like water. I ran after the loose paper and by the time I got back, Nick had my book and some other papers that were kited away before becoming plastered against a table leg. The bell rang.
“We’re tardy,” I noted. We ducked in the building.
Nick grinned. “Not the first time…” He left me at my classroom and continued along the hall, yelling, “…won’t be the last.”
After the final bell, he beat me to my Cobra, even though I was rushing so I could check on Zoe. He leaned against my car, his arms crossed over his chest, smirking.
“What took ya so long, Issaacs?”
He couldn’t have been there for more than a couple of minutes. I walked up to him, opened the back door, and slung my backpack in. I stared at him, raising my eyebrows. “Get your ass—” I smacked his arm, unable to reach the offending party. “—off my car.”
He laughed and moseyed around to the other side. He hucked his bag over the back of the seat, and ten minutes later I was sitting in the middle of the cluster that was dismissal. I chose the wrong strategy today in circling around to the back of the lot so I didn’t have to wait for someone to let me in the line.
I banged my fist on the steering wheel. “Seriously? How many cars is she gonna let in?”
“I’m pretty sure that was her third.”
“Fourth. Remember the white truck back there?”
“Oh, yeah. Fourth.”
We both groaned when she let in another driver. “It’s great to be nice and all that, but there’s a limit,” I fumed. “Can you see who it is?”
“I think that’s Shelly Gaff’s car.”
“Great.” She was one of the sweetest girls in the school, besides Zoe. Well, Zoe was kind of sweet, or she could be, but she had enough zing of spice to make her interesting. That’s what I loved about her.
“Might as well chill out, bro. We’re not going anywhere fast.”
I glanced at my phone, which was currently in his possession, as he had texted Zoe for me. “Has she texted back?”
He sighed, staring at me, then appeased me by checking the screen. “No.” He turned toward me more. “So. You haven’t told me yet. Oatam? What did he do?”
“I don’t know.” I glanced out my side window at nothing. “I was coming over the hill, into the hollow, when I heard Zoe screaming.” I took a breath. “She was really freaking out, man.” I looked at him to emphasize my point. His mouth was hanging open.
“Then?”
I fixed my eyes on the dwindling line of cars ahead of us, trying to remember how it happened. “I took him out. Like I did to you. Only I didn’t hold back on my punch.”
His eyes lit up. “You get him good?”
I had to chuckle. “I really tagged him.” I nosed the car forward, cutting off a freshman who was trying to make her way out of a side aisle. Not today.
“Nice.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me putting the beat down on Ben, or if my sweet maneuver to keep the other driver in her place impressed him.
“Well, go on. What happened next?”
I exhaled. “Nothing. Coach Cummings came up and the freaking pussy ran away.”
Nick chewed on that for a while as I approached the front of the line and checked the traffic before turning out of the lot.
“Zack….” He clicked his teeth and didn’t finish his statement.
I waited, but he kept quiet. “What?”
“Nothing. I….” He swallowed his sentence again.
I could sense from his tone, and his reluctance to speak, he was about to say something I wasn’t going to like very much. And I had a bad day. My hands tightened on the wheel. “What, Nick? If you’ve got something to say to me, spit it out.”
He moved his lips, but no noise came out at first. “You were there to rescue Zoe and all today. But….” I twisted my head to look at him and he stared me straight in the eye. “When you go to college, Zoe’ll be alone.”
I sputtered, watching the road as I formulated a reply. I shook my head. “You’ll be here.”
“Yes. And you know I’ll look out for her. But I can’t be there all the time. Not like a boyfriend would be.”
I knew he was right.
“You don’t want her all alone if that freak comes back here again.”
“I know,” I barked. Didn’t he understand? I knew. “So what am I supposed to do, Nick?”
He hesitated. Enough for me to know he had an answer to that question.
“I don’t know.”
I ground my teeth back and forth. “But you have some ideas, don’t you?”
He turned so he was more square to the dashboard. “It’s none of my business.”
I was ticked. Ticked and scared. What would happen if I weren’t around to protect her? “No. You have ideas. Share them with me.” He shook his head. I was seething. “You want me to break up with her. How’s that supposed to keep her safe?”
“We could still watch out for her,” he said quietly.
“Really, Nick?” I swung into a convenient store lot and maneuvered into the first empty spot I could find. I slammed the car into park and turned to him. “You want me to break up with her?” Even as I said it, I could taste the rightness of it, the weight of it sinking into my gut. I wanted to spit it out of my mouth. Make it go away. I looked out the windshield, my eyes hot from holding back tears. “Just break up with her and walk away.”
He hung his head and didn’t speak.
“And I should do that now,” I spat out. “So she will have someone before I go away who will keep her safe.”
“Well….”
“And I’m supposed to just sit back and watch this and be miserable. Watch some other guy steal her heart away. Make some grand, noble gesture of it and—”
His head popped up. “She’d never fall for someone else,” he said vehemently. “She may date someone else, but no one could take your place. Then, when she goes to school, you can get her back.”
“Oh.” I snapped my fingers. “Just as easy as that. ‘Zo, I know you may find it hard to believe, but I broke up with you for your own good.’” I stared out the window again at some pizza poster. “‘It was for your own damned good.’”
We sat in silence.
“You’re an asshole, Nick.”
His eyes flashed. “What? Because I’m telling you something you don’t want to hear?” He gestured widely. “You’re not going to be here. And she won’t be safe. I can’t change the fact you’re leaving for college. And I wouldn’t even if I could. It—”
My mouth dropped open. He wanted me to call it quits with Zoe so he could have her.
Catching my look, he waved his hands in front of him. “Not in the way you’re thinking. I wouldn’t change it because it’s the right thing for you to do. It’s the right thing for both of you.”
“Yeah. Right.” My voice broke. I put the car into gear and backed out with exaggerated slowness. We didn’t speak again. When we got to his house he looked at me for a second. When I didn’t turn, just stared straight ahead, he got out and opened the back to get his shit. He closed the rear door and bent his head to look in, one hand on the top of the front door, one hand on the roof.
“Zack, I didn’t mean to—”
“Save it,” I bit off, not turning.
He stood for a couple more seconds then sighed. “Okay.” He closed the door and walked toward his house. I eased away from the curb and glided along the street, a focused calm ruling me.
He was manipulating me. Working my strings like a master puppeteer. But it didn’t change the fact he was right. Zoe needed someone to protect her—physically and emotionally—and I didn’t exactly have the means to hire a body guard. I never thought Oatam would come near her again when I gave my promise to that coach at U of C-Denver. Was there some way to get out of that?
Or maybe Nick was right about us each needing to explore outside of our relationship, to make sure we were making the right decision when the time came.
I didn’t go over to check on Zoe. Instead, I went to my room to think about things, until I got a headache. I texted Zoe and told her I loved her. But was I a fraud? If I loved her, really loved her, maybe I should step aside. The thoughts weren’t good for homework, or sleep either. This was eating at me. I had to make some kind of decision soon.