This Will Only Hurt a Little(8)
Do you know how they reset a dislocated knee? Two doctors (or med students or nurses, I don’t know) just yank your leg out straight as hard as they can while a third slams your kneecap back into place. It’s disgusting and kind of violent and it hurts like hell, but as soon as it’s over, you have immediate relief. It took a while to get to that point, though, because they had to x-ray my leg and make sure I hadn’t broken anything and didn’t need emergency surgery. When it was all over, the doctors put me in a temporary knee brace, handed me crutches, and gave my parents instructions to follow up with an orthopedist the next week.
I didn’t go back to school that Monday. Or the Monday after that. Or the Monday after that one. It took me about three weeks before I was able to face it. My parents didn’t press the issue. Emily picked up my assignments and brought them to me every day. I talked with Rachel and my other friends on the phone after school (I had my own line, guys, NBD). My mom turned Emily’s purple jeans into jean shorts and Emily even generously said she liked them better that way.
When I did get back to school, it wasn’t as terrible as I’d imagined. A few kids snickered when I hobbled by. There were stares and whispers, and one day some kids threw balled-up paper at me. I learned to handle my newfound infamy by keeping my head down and shutting it out almost completely. That is, until Scott Bell approached me one day in between classes.
Scott Bell was the worst. A Tracy Flick, if Tracy Flick had been a lanky boy who was obsessed with student government and randomly really good at calligraphy. I had no idea why he was walking up to me.
“Hey, Busy,” he said. “Listen. I think you should know that if your parents decide to sue the school over your accident, we won’t be able to have any more school dances. Ever. That’s what Mr. Bataglia said in our student government meeting and I just thought you should know. Just because you fell down doesn’t mean our whole school should be punished, you know?”
I stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
And I really didn’t. I hadn’t heard any discussion of my parents suing the school over my humiliation. They’re not exactly litigious people, although my mother does like to bring up all the times she should have sued people.
“Yeah. Well, just make sure they don’t. ’Cause, like, everyone would know it’s because of you.”
I realize this exchange sounds so fucking arch—like how could some seventh grader even be that horrible? But it’s true. The worst part about that kid (who by the way, never got any better through high school) is that he actually lives in Southern California, and our paths have crossed a few times. About fifteen years ago, I ran into him at some cheesy sports bar in L.A. I was on Dawson’s Creek at the time. He was drunk, and very flamboyantly came up to me saying, “Look at you! You’re just all that now, aren’t you?!”
Weirdly, my takeaway from that run-in was that he was gay and had come out of the closet, and I concocted this whole story in my head about how that was why he was so intolerable in school, because he was repressing who he truly was. I mean, he was really into calligraphy! Of course he was gay!
A few months after running into him, I was having a general meeting at a production company when one of the executive assistants poked her head in and said, “I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself. I’m friends with a bunch of your friends from high school!”
“Oh really? Who?” I already knew this wasn’t true, since the girls I’d ended up friends with in high school all still lived in Arizona, with the exception of Emily BB, who was my roommate in L.A. by this point.
“Taylor Goldfarb and Nikki Eliot and Scott Bell!”
“Oh! Yeah! I mean, I for sure know those guys. We weren’t really friends, though. I actually just ran into Scott. I’m so glad he’s out of the closet and everything—that’s so great!”
The air was sucked right out of the room. I knew I’d fucked up immediately. Her face fell and then she very tersely said, “Oh. Ummm. No. Scott’s not gay. He’s my fiancée.”
I tried my best to laugh it off and back up what I’d said, but the damage was done. I’ve now heard from multiple people that he has it out for me. Oh well. Do your best, Scott Bell. You were always a fucking cunt.
Anyway, after my run-in with Scott, I confronted my mom that night in tears.
“No,” she said. “I never talked to the school about getting a lawyer. But we did talk about there needing be something put in place for these dances. The fact that there were no teachers or administrators around to stop those horrible boys is unacceptable—”
“Mom! Please! If you do anything or say ANYTHING they’re gonna cancel the school dances forever and it will be because of me!”
“Oh, honey, don’t be ridiculous. It will be because the administration wasn’t doing their job. That’s not your fault.”
“Mom! No!”
“Okay, okay. Calm down, sweetie. I promise.”
I’m not sure if she ever talked to the school about it again, but it must’ve been dropped, because Scott Bell left me alone and the year-end dance went off without a hitch—not that I was there. My knee brace came off and I had to do some physical therapy, but it wasn’t so bad in the end. It was actually kind of fun to go to a weird tiny office in a strip mall and do exercises and ice my knee with a bunch of septuagenarians who were recovering from hip surgery.