“Kellie? You up here, honey?” It was Mrs. Velez’s voice, climbing up through the shadows and into the room. My chest loosened a little. Kellie cursed and pushed me away, scrambling to get her sweater back on, then wiped her mouth and spit right onto Jess’s clean carpet. She didn’t even look at me as she left.
“Little faggot,” was all I heard her say.
I curled into a ball and waited for my mom to come and get me. I curled up inside of myself and went somewhere very far away, somewhere where no one could ever touch me again.
6.
It was hot, so hot that you could smell the tar burning on the streets, that smoldering rubber tire smell. We stripped off our sweat-soaked shirts and sneakers and sat beneath the shade of an aging sycamore.
“Not even a fucking breeze and it’s only April,” Max grumbled. “Con, hand me that, man.”
Connor tossed him the big water bottle. Max drained it over his head, cool water streaming down his neck and back. My skin itched with envy.
Connor lit a joint, passed it around. He seemed perfectly content even in this sweltering haze, lying against the tree, one hand behind his head, legs stretched out. He took a long drag and blew smoke rings into the air. I sat by him and tried to simulate his body language, to let my head just rest against the trunk. It scratched at my neck but felt better this way, not fighting the heat, just letting it burn through me, letting go.
He passed me the joint and exhaled. I felt the smoke hit my cheek.
“Look at those fucking fags,” Toby said. He spat into the street, gesturing at a group of kids popping open a fire hydrant, squealing with joy and running in circles as a torrent of water spurted up and splashed down on them, turning the street into a splash park.
Connor’s lips twitched into a smile. “I don’t know, man, I like the way they think.”
“Yeah, but look at ’em,” Toby said. “Look at those pansy-ass BMXs. Probably cost Mommy and Daddy a good grand. Bet they can’t even do a fire hydrant.” He grabbed the joint out of my hand.
Connor laughed, shook his hair out of his eyes. “They’re like twelve, dude. Besides, they’re fucking with the right kind of fire hydrant.”
“It is hot as balls, Tobe,” Max said.
Toby sat up and spat again. A thick ball of saliva landed right by Connor’s feet. “Then why don’t you go fucking play with them?”
Connor stood. “Thinking about it.” His hand reached out to me, beckoning towards me. “Come on, Jack.”
The guys were sitting there like bacon in a frying pan, moaning and hawking spit, and then there was Connor, the sun hitting his olive skin. I took his hand and let him help me up. He smiled at me and I smiled back.
Toby growled an insult and Max snapped something back at him, but I couldn’t hear them when we hit the opened fountain, the sound of rushing water that filled my ears and licked my skin clean and cold. Connor laughed with his head back, mouth wide open, catching the water on his tongue. We ran around the hydrant like little twelve-year-old fags, the boys at the tree dissolving into smoke.
7.
I hated Burro Hills High, with its ugly orange lockers and dirty floors and halls that smelled like a bad mix of cleaning solution, smoke, and something foul. I hated the vile graffiti written all over the stalls, endless webs connecting names to people who’d fucked, and who was fighting who, and who the rival groups were. Jess would always tell me stories about the girl’s bathroom, the peeling paint and the names of girls we’d gone to elementary school with, things like “cunt” and “dirty whore” written in magic marker next to their names. It was quietly sinister, a warning to toe the line and know your place and hang with your crowd or you’d be marked next.
I especially hated it on days like this, when it was swarming with cops. They were everywhere, patrolling the front of the school, the courtyard, the classrooms, their walkie-talkies crackling and beeping. The pigs brought a menace with them, something we could all feel as they stepped across our hallways and peeked inside our classrooms.
“It’s getting worse,” I said. Jess nodded. We were at lunch, standing by the water fountain near the entrance to the courtyard in the aftermath of a fight. One freshman girl and her crew had shouted insults at a senior girl, and soon fists were flying and hair was being pulled. One of the seniors, a tiny girl named Tasha, had a busted upper lip, but kept calm and collected while she was questioned by the cops. Rumor had it that she’d slammed a freshman so hard into the vending machine that two Cokes had popped out.
They say girls fight with their words, not their fists. They’ve clearly never been to Burro Hills High. Fights were our circus sideshows, our sick distractions. Everyone would pop out their phone and film the action, pushing and shoving to get a better look.
“I could really use a smoke right now,” I said.
“Now? Are you joking?”
I shrugged. “If we go by the tennis courts…come on, Jess, Andrew’s here today. He’s got our back.”
Andrew was one of Toby’s cousins, a clean-cut cop who often patrolled the school. He and his partner, a young guy fresh out of community college, always turned a blind eye to Toby and his friends’ boozing and drugging. He was also probably the reason we never heard about any of the cousins on the nightly news.
“Why can’t you just wait to get home to smoke?” Jess whined. “Are you that addicted to weed that you need a hit every half-hour?”
It annoyed me so fucking much whenever she said that, like I was some hopeless addict who was constantly stoned. I wanted to tell her off, but she
