Beast(38)

“Bryce, Ethan! Wait!” I call out to them. Twenty minutes ago, they would’ve stopped.

JP’s about to bolt, and I grab him by the neck. “If anyone hurts her, believe me, you’ll get it ten times worse.”

He works to not fidget in my grip, and we both stare at each other. I can feel my eyes burning his. I’ve never hated anyone more.

“They’re…not gonna do…anything…,” he coughs out, and I loosen my hand. “They’re all talk. They couldn’t even remember an empty box for the can drive, remember?”

“Dylan Ingvarsson!” Mr. Copeland calls out from left field. “You release him right now, this second. No choking people. That’s a detention.”

Oh, so some shitstain standing up on a chair and putting me on blast in front of the entire cafeteria is Catholic-school kosher, but one tiny squeeze of a chicken neck and I get detention? This is garbage.

“Mr. Copeland…” I try to plead my case and JP sprints off. Fucking coward.

The slip gets written up, and I stuff it into my pocket next to my phone.

I don’t want to go to class. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to know these people.

Somewhere in this city, Jamie is sitting in her school and most likely not wanting to be there either. An image of Bryce and Ethan flashes in my mind. I feel sick because I know if they really want to, they’ll find her. People talk. I’m all worried they’re going to harass her as she’s just trying to ride her bike or something. Whatever happened with me and Jamie is one thing, but that doesn’t mean people have the right to give her a hard time. She didn’t do anything wrong.

Things creak and crawl into place, and before long I have a plan.

I get my phone out and text: Can we talk?





SEVENTEEN


I have a secret.

It’s foul and dirty and sends me into a death spiral from euphoria to self-hatred every time I do it, but I can’t stop. It always happens when no one is home. I start to get idle hands. Everything starts to tingle, and a silent itch demands to be scratched. It sends me to my stash buried in the living room, where I keep the discs hidden underneath the loose floorboard. Once I have what I need (and I hate that I need it), I turn on the TV.

As I sit in my chair, I turn the sound on low so no one will hear and ready myself. Hands hot in my lap and gripping my favorite controller.

I play Madden NFL.

The bestselling football video game of all time.

Once it boots up, all my tension releases and I get lost building teams in franchise mode. I know all the players and their stats and make unstoppable brute squads that annihilate opposing teams. As the players inside the video game make their hits, my muscles twitch. Hours disappear as I play. There is only football. Nothing else matters. It’s my guilty pleasure, and no one can ever know how much I actually love football, which is why I fly to dismantle the entire system when I hear my mom’s bockety old car slow down and park.

Racing against the clock, I save, eject, and throw it all under the floorboard as soon as her key slides into the lock. I turn off the TV and tear into the bathroom like nothing ever happened. Besides, tonight is an important night. I’ve been waiting for Mom to get home. We have to get ready for dinner.

I hear her enter and dump her shoes off to the side. Flushing the toilet full of damp TP from wiping my brow, I leave the bathroom with a slightly sweaty face and pink cheeks.

“Hi,” I say.

She gives me a weird look. “I don’t want to know.”

Good. You won’t. “Did you get the stuff?”

Mom thrusts a thick paper bag full of groceries in my hands. “Here. But like I said this morning, I think this is a terrible idea.”

I’d grumble something about how it’s a plan and not an idea, but this is the first time she’s said more than “Get up” and “Dinner’s ready” to me since I manhandled the basement. “Things didn’t end well,” I say, trying to justify the cost of imitation crabmeat.

“Sometimes things don’t and that’s okay,” Mom says. “In fact, I think having Jamie out of your life is for the best. The way you’ve been acting since you met…this certain young lady…is not cool.”

Ingredients out on the counter, I get to work blending the mix for the crab cakes in a bowl and check the oven temperature. I’m not even hopeful Jamie likes them. I’m on autopilot. “All I’m asking is for you to be nice.”

Mom’s coffee cup hits the counter with a mad clink. “Be nice? I know a trans person; I work with a very sweet man in accounting. He’s short and has delicate hands. That’s how I knew when I asked him.”

“I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work.”

“Are we an expert now?”

“No,” I mumble. Once I knew Jamie’s real deal, as with all things unknown I turned to Google for the lay of the land. “I just don’t think you’re supposed to go up to someone and ask them. It’s pretty much the opposite of your business.”

Her finger wraps around the handle. “I work with him every day, I call him Jack when he looks like a Jill. And I’m about to sit through my son’s date with a very confused young person, what more do you want me to do?”

“It’s not a date,” I snap.