George walked into the house a half hour later, bracing himself for his mother’s impending punishment. His mother’s austere face quickly turned to concern when she took inventory of her youngest son’s appearance.
“Good gracious, George! What on earth happened to you?” She dropped to her knees and took George’s shoulders in her hands, scanning his face with her eyes. “Who did this?” Her voice was lower this time.
George bit his lip and stared at the floor, not sure how to answer. He could see Eddie’s shadow appear behind his mother in the doorframe. “No one. I-I fell on the way home.” He couldn’t look his mother in the eyes. “Can I go to bed early? I’m not that hungry tonight.”
“I don’t know, honey.” George could feel Eddie’s eyes bearing down on him, waiting to see what he would do. He wished he could silently will his mother to just let him go to his room, so he could be by himself. “Go get cleaned up and I’ll send your father up to talk to you, okay?” It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it worked for now.
George paced nervously in his room until he heard his father’s footsteps climbing the stairs. He took a seat on the edge of the bed and tried to look exhausted so his dad would feel bad for him and not stay long.
In his head, he debated what to say. More than anything, he just wanted to crawl under a rock and make this whole night go away. If he lied, his father would know. If he told the truth, Eddie and his friends would find out and things would only get worse.
He heard a light tapping at the door, as if his father gently knocked with one knuckle so no one else in the house would hear. “George, can I come in?”
His answer came out in a scared whisper, “Yes, sir.”
His father walked across the room and took a seat on the bed next to his youngest son. George took a deep breath and prepared for the questions that were about to follow.
“When I was your age, I wasn’t the most popular kid in the world. I didn’t have the most friends. In fact, I was a scrawny little runt who got picked on quite a bit. There were many times that my dad would sit me down and tell me how to face bullies like a man or tell me what I was doing wrong. Most of the time, I just nodded until he was done with his lecture, just wishing he would hurry up, knowing all that I really wanted was to be left alone.”
George couldn’t believe what he was hearing; his father actually understood what he was going through.
“Son, when and if you need to talk, I’m here for you. I understand that sometimes part of growing up is sorting these things out on your own. You stay up here as long as you need to, okay?”
George still looked down at his lap, but felt his dad’s strong hand on his knee. He glanced up at his father through tearful eyes. “What about Mom? What are you going to tell her?”
“Don’t worry about your mother. I’ll take care of that.” He kissed George on the forehead and then closed the bedroom door softly on the way out. George stared at the door long after his father had left. He learned a lot about his father in that five-minute conversation, and he felt closer to him than ever.
As he got ready for bed that night, he thought about the boathouse, and how it was changed forever now that the others knew about it. He was angry with Eddie for telling the guys. He thought that Eddie would have tried to come by to talk to him after dinner, but he never did. George wondered if his father had said something to him or not.
He sat there in the dark, unable to sleep. George listened as Eddie walked from his room to the bathroom, and paused outside his room at one point, but then kept going. This only made him angrier. He thought things had been different with them, that the boathouse was their secret together, but Eddie had ruined it. How could he forgive him for messing that up? How could Eddie tell the other guys about the boathouse?
George knew that as mad as he was at Eddie, he was even angrier at himself for telling Eddie about it. His secret was gone forever. In the dark, he ran his tongue over his swollen, split lip. It was only then that he allowed himself to think about what really had happened.
His father would have been proud of him. For the first time, he felt like he stood up for himself. Normally, he would have turned and run away, but not today. After Jake had pushed him to the ground, George stood back up, and he was immediately met with a fist to the mouth. Luckily, Jake must have realized it wasn’t really a fair fight, because he turned and disappeared through the boathouse right after the hit. But he’d done it! George smiled now, thinking about it in the dark. He’d stood up and took a punch from a nineteen-year-old.
George lay quietly in the dark, trying desperately to fall asleep, full of mixed emotions. More than anything, he wished he could slip downstairs and talk to his grandfather and tell him about the fight with Jake. Grandpa would be proud of him. George also wanted to ask him about when his father was young, and what kind of son he’d been He couldn’t imagine his grandfather lecturing anyone. George remembered him always being so kind and sweet. Finally, sometime after midnight, George drifted off to sleep. His last thoughts were of everything he wanted to do the next day.