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Josh stumbles to a standing position and rubs at his face.
“She’s not worth it, man. Scrawny little . . .”
Before he goes on, he blinks and looks around, as if only realizing he has an audience.
He glares at me, a flash of anger that makes me take a step back, and stomps off.
No one makes a move to stop him, ignoring him instead to gather around Eli.
I hurry towards him as he rolls over and pushes himself up.
When I reach down to take his hand, his gaze captures mine.
“Totally worth it, Mia. You are.”
“Hey, kid. Are you okay? You sound like Yoda.”
We’re all squatting around Eli now, and my neighbor’s comment makes most of us laugh , easing the tension.
A police car rolls up to the curb, but thankfully, there are no sirens to draw more attention.
“Your parents just left today, right, Mia?”
“You shouldn’t be out here without a coat or shoes.”
“Is this your boyfriend? What about the other guy?”
The questions continue as a police woman gets out of the car, taking her time looking around the other yards and down the street, as if she might find something of more interest there than in the small gathering closer to my house.
“I’m sorry, Mia. Give me a minute, my head is kind of tired.”
I know exactly what Eli means by this, even if the adults around us, first questioning me all at once and now, staring at Eli after this statement, don’t seem to understand.
“How is everyone tonight?”
Eli gets to his feet, taking my offered hand as well as one of my neighbor's and brushing snow from his clothes, and we all nod at the officer.
“Do you want to explain, Mia?”
The woman who called the police catches my eye, and I find myself a little dizzy, enough for Eli to grab me and hold me steady.
“Just a misunderstanding. I’m sorry for the trouble.”
I smile, wondering if this is going to be difficult to get us out of.
After all, this is more action on my street than it's seen in the past few years, and there will be plenty of talk about it once the four people here start texting and calling.
But maybe they won’t.
I don’t want to get Eli involved with the police, and he did hit Josh first.
“You sure? We don’t get calls from this area often, so I’m surprised.”
Eli’s hand is cold in mine, and I want to bring him inside to warm up.
“Your feet are blue, kiddo. Why don’t I take a look around and be on my way.”
The officer points to my feet and I don’t look down. Instead, I glance around to see how my neighbors are reacting.
I don’t think they want a police report about our street, either, but I feel relieved they know I’m here alone for the next week, and Josh is a problem.
They take turns thanking the officer, who gives me a business card, and offer me reassurances that I can come to them if I have any more problems, pulling out phones so I can give them my number.
Mine is still in my bedroom, so they all tell me they’ll text so I will have their numbers in case of an emergency.
“Wow. You have your own bodyguard squad.”
Eli sounds like his usual slightly goofy but cool self, as if Josh hasn’t just beat on him and he doesn’t have bruises blooming across his cheekbones and over his eyebrow.
“Come in before you freeze already.”
I tug on his hand and he leans close to me, his whisper a loud echo in the quiet that surrounds us.
“Can I hold you for just a minute?”
When I slide my arms around his waist, he relaxes against me, his own arms tight across my back.
“It’s too cold to stay out here. You’re shivering. At least I have this new coat.”
We walk into the house with our fingers entwined, and I lock the door behind me although I’m sure Josh won’t be coming back.
At least, not tonight.
I take Eli's coat, clearly a replacement for the jacket that rests on the back of my desk chair in my bedroom, and hang it up in the hall closet, as if this is an ordinary visit on an ordinary night.
Eli looks a little nervous, as if he’s about to meet my parents for the first time.
“Are you okay here by yourself, for real?”
He follows me into the kitchen as I nod and open the refrigerator, finding it packed with a ridiculous amount of food considering I’m the only one here for the next week.
I guess I have plenty for entertaining both Kayla’s friends and mine.
“I can make some hot chocolate. Or coffee?”
Eli is right behind me, although he keeps a short distance so he isn’t breathing down my neck.
Although I wouldn’t mind.
“Why don’t you get something on your feet first? I can make us something warm, if you don’t mind me rummaging around your kitchen.”
I want to ask him where he’s been, but I wonder if I should wait until we're settled, more relaxed, before I press him about it.
“I have some things to tell you, which is why I came over, but I don’t want your toes to grow black and fall off from frostbite.”
He’s exaggerating, but I smile and nod, stepping around him to go up to my room and grab a pair of soft slipper socks as well as my phone.
“Tea? There’s a lot of it here. Do you have a favorite?”
Eli holds up a couple of boxes of tea my mom likes, one for energy, one for calm.
I don’t know how well they work for her, but they smell nice and are comforting, so I point to one of them, unsure which is which from this distance.
When I stumble as I walk towards the kitchen table, nearly laughing out loud at the number of times I’ve been so clumsy lately, Eli is by my side instantly.
“This is . . .”
He shakes his head and looks away from me as he helps me into a chair, and I stare up at him, frowning.
“This is what?”
At some point, my hair has come loose from its ponytail, my lack of attention to my appearance today making me realize I must be a mess.
Before I can pull it out of my face, Eli takes a thick strand of it in his fingers and pushes it behind my ear, holding onto the ends of it longer than he needs to.
“Mia, there’s so much I need to tell you, but . . .”
I rest my hand gently on his arm, and his fingers go still as they rest in my hair, not letting go.
“But what?”
I’m so happy to have him here, to see him after what seems so long although it’s only been a few days.
I know how much can change in a few hours, never mind a few days.
“There’s an ice pack in the freezer door. You should put that on your face . . . somewhere.”
My laugh feels so relaxed as it frees the tension I didn’t know I was holding in my chest.
Eli's smile is tired but genuine.
“Thanks for defending me against Josh. He’s been texting me, and I was ignoring him, even though I know he doesn’t like the word no. I should have answered him, stopped this from happening.”
His fingers tighten in my hair, but he’s not pulling it. He stares at me, his face stony.
My excitement over having him here turns into a weight at the pit of my stomach, which begins to growl.
“I’ll get the ice pack if you eat with me, and I’ll tell you . . . everything, okay?”
I nod, happy he’s said something after I felt like I was babbling.
He rummages around in the refrigerator as he holds the ice pack to his cheek, declining my offer to help, and speaks again as he pokes his head in the sea of random food my mother has packed into the fridge.
“Did your parents think you were having a football team over for the week or what?”
I slide my fingers through my hair where Eli touched it, and consider my sister would have known how to handle the fight better than I did.
She would have been able to keep Eli from getting hurt.
“How has the counselor been? You’ve gone twice now, right?”
Eli is supposed to be telling me where he's been, instead of focusing on what I've been doing.
“Yeah, but I haven’t said much. Mostly I've talked about my sister. Hopefully I won’t have to go once the suspension is over.”
He takes some vegetables from the fridge and slides them into a pile on the counter before opening and closing some cabinets, finally digging out a box of brown rice I haven’t seen in awhile.
“Maybe you should keep going. Keep talking. It might help, and I’m speaking from experience.”
I blink at him, frowning as I watch him moving around, pulling a skillet from a drawer at the bottom of the oven.
“Mia, this is about more than getting suspended from school. You know you have some big problems to work through, right?”
No, I don’t know. All I know is I have to help Jackie, and once I’m back in school, I need to stay on track to keep my grades up and eventually, get scholarships to a college far from my parents.
“Oh, I need to talk through something with you, just to get it out of my head.”
I know Eli will have a clear perspective on the teacher problem, and he’ll be able to tell me if I’m making connections that aren’t there.
“So it’s just between us on the newspaper staff, or a few of us anyway, but . . .”
“I’m sorry, Mia, but I have to talk to you about that, too.”
I sit back in my chair, surprised he’s interrupting me. His voice seems distant now, no longer part of the boy who was just standing in front of me, touching my hair and staring at me as if we’d been apart for too long.
What does he mean, about that?
“I wrote the note. I saw who was in the teacher’s car, and I know who is involved. But I couldn’t go to anyone about it, not any adults, anyway, because no one would believe me. I texted you later, from my mom's phone, about their meetings on Mondays, and deleted your response so my mom wouldn't see it.”
My mouth falls open, and I curl my hand around the mug of cooling tea Eli gave me moments before.
“If you’ve figured it out, you know why I couldn’t bring it to the principal, or anyone else’s attention.”
He’s right.
As shocked as I am, as disappointed as I feel because Eli didn’t tell me, didn’t trust me with this information personally, I understand his relationship with the vice principal would make it look like he was trying to cause trouble, to get Mr. Duncan back for disciplining him.
“That day when Jackie was crying in Duncan's car, she saw me watching them.”