Bad Boy Blues(69)

I’ve had it forever, inside me.

Suddenly, I have this great, great urge for him to say my name. It’s not that I don’t like the name he gave me. I love it. I’ve always loved it even when I never accepted it.

But I want to hear how my name will sound on his tongue.

I want to know what goes through his mind when he calls me by his special name for me. Why did he name his bike after me?

I want to know everything about him. Every little thing.

“But that’s not your name, either.”

“What?”

Zach leans over and whispers on my lips, “Cleopatra. That’s your name, right?”

I swallow against the onslaught of emotions. I feel the savage flapping of the butterflies in my stomach and I press my belly against him to make him feel it too. Make him feel all these crazy, intense emotions inside of me.

“But hardly anyone calls me that.”

A lopsided smile as he traces my cheek with a thumb. “Do you know Cleopatra was an Egyptian queen?”

I nod. “Yeah. My mom used to tell me that she was the most beautiful woman of her time.”

“People are crazy, aren’t they?”

I clutch his dark t-shirt at his waist. “Why?”

“They don’t know what they’re talking about. One look at you and they would’ve snatched away her crown and laid it down at your feet.”

The shudder that goes through me is the biggest one yet.

He called me beautiful.

Beautiful.

I blink up at him. “You’re being nice to me.”

He smiles slightly and acknowledges my statement with a grunt.

I place a kiss on his jaw.

“So, is this it?”

He tips his chin toward the books scattered on the island and I nod. “Yeah. Art sometimes leaves his storybooks here but I borrowed all of them from Doris. So we have a lot of reading material.”

His nod is short, barely there.

I can feel his reluctance. How much he doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to read. He doesn’t want to do this.

I bet it has to do with his dad and his bullying.

The man who should’ve nurtured Zach is the one who’s made him wary of something so basic as reading.

How fucked up is that?

“Take a seat,” I whisper to him.

He does, albeit rigidly.

I sit on the chair beside his and slide the books close. “So, uh, I thought we should start with Art’s favorite story. And I want you to read it so we can see how far along you are.”

I can hear him grinding his teeth, but he doesn’t say a word.

Opening the book, I push it over to his side. For a few seconds, he doesn’t make any move to reach for it. And my eyes fill up with tears as I watch him sitting here, looking all angry and lost.

I’ve watched him grow up, see. I can very easily imagine him as a kid, doing the same thing in classes, in his room, with his tutors.

Maybe even in front of his dad.

Perhaps this was a bad idea. I don’t want to dredge up any bad memories for him. I just want him to feel good about himself.

I’m about to call this thing off when he grabs hold of the edge of the book like it’s an explosive object.

Then, he begins to read.

***

We’ve been working on his reading for an hour now.

I asked him to read a few pages so I can gauge the level of damage his dad has done to him.

Turns out, it’s a lot.

Because Zach isn’t bad. He isn’t bad at all.

Yes, he’s slow and he’s halting. He can’t do some of the bigger words. Not right away. It takes time for him to read them, compute them. I’ve had to help him a few times, put my finger under the word and enunciate the letters.

But it’s not something that’s so terrible that it should keep him from reading.

That’s the thing about bullying, isn’t it?

It isn’t confined to a single moment. No. Bullying has consequences. It creates ripples that span for years. Sometimes for an entire life.

They call you fat and so you stop eating. You watch what you eat until you die.

They call you a nerd and so you stop reading in public. You still look over your shoulder when you read on a park bench.

It destroys you, a vital part of you. It fucks with your mind, with your heart, with your soul even. It changes your beliefs, your lifestyle. It makes you anxious. It causes panic. It won’t let you sleep.

But then again, the bullied are powerful, aren’t they?

We’re resilient. We’re strong. We’re a motherfucking force.

Zach’s a motherfucking force – he can do whatever he wants. And I could throttle his dad for ever making him feel less. I could throttle myself for not seeing this sooner.

There’s a frown on his forehead and as I watch him, his right hand with the tattoo moving across the page, I blurt out, “When’d you get this tattoo?”

He stops reading and lifts his eyes.

He’s really, really been good ever since we started this. Not once did he make a casual comment or use sarcasm. I gave him a book and told him to read and he did.

“The first year I moved away.”

“What does it mean?”

A lip twitch. “I can cross the line.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah. But what line, exactly?”