I was eight years old, and the last girl on the playground anyone would ever guess would grow up to become a fashion model. Every day I came to school in clothes that were worn and usually a couple sizes too big for me, hand-me-downs, either from my brother or from Zane. When I wore their baggy clothes, the other kids didn’t spend so much time telling me how skinny I was.
But they said other things.
I was sitting alone in the playground after school when it happened, up on top of a climbing dome; my brother and his friends called it “Thunderdome” because they’d made a game of dangling like monkeys from the bars inside and kicking the crap out of each other. The bullies were standing at the bottom of Thunderdome, so I couldn’t even run away. They were big bullies. Fifth grade bullies, and while my brother, who was in seventh, would’ve intervened, he wasn’t there.
“How come you got shit stains all over your jeans?” the dumb-looking one asked me, leaning on Thunderdome and looking bored. “Doesn’t your mom do laundry?”
“You got a shit leak in those saggy diapers, dork?” the even dumber-looking one asked, and they both snorted.
“Yeah, she’s so full of shit her eyes are brown.”
“What’s wrong, baby dork? You gonna cry?”
No. I wasn’t going to cry. My brother had a lot of friends and while they were never that mean to me, twelve-year-old boys could be relentless. I knew how to hold my own. I’d cry later, at home, when no one could see me.
Besides… the new boy was coming over, and I definitely wasn’t crying in front of him.
He was in seventh grade, but the rumor was that he was thirteen or even fourteen and had flunked a grade or two. Obviously, he was super cool. He wore an actual leather jacket, black with silver zippers, like rock stars wore. He smoked outside the school, hung out alone at the edge of the school grounds, and spent more time in the principal’s office than the principal. I never knew what he did to get in trouble, but whatever it was, he did it a lot.
The other kids in my class thought he was scary. I just thought he was sad.
Ever since Dad died, I knew sad when I saw it.
The bullies saw him coming and they started getting squirrelly. I thought they’d run but he was there too fast, closing the distance with his leisurely, long-legged stride.
“You guys’re so interested in shit, there’s some over here I can show you, yeah?” He stood with his hands in his pockets, his posture relaxed, as the bullies started going pale.
I slipped my headphones off.
“Naw, I don’t wanna—”
“Sure you do, it’s right over here.” He toed the ground at his feet with his sneaker. The grass was still damp from a bit of rain in the afternoon and mud squished out.
The bullies started shaking and sniveling, babbling apologies and excuses. There was a brief, almost wordless negotiation, at the end of which they ended up on their knees in front of him.
He hadn’t moved. His hands were still in his pockets.
“Just have a little taste and tell me if it’s fresh,” he told them, in a tone that brooked no argument, squishing his foot in the muck again.
Then he looked up, his brown hair flopping over one eye, and winked at me.
I stared from my perch atop Thunderdome with unabashed, eight-year-old awe as the bullies bent forward, shuddering.
He was going to make them eat shit!
For me!
I was ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure it was just wet mud, but those bullies were scared enough to believe it. And ate it, they did.
He then told them to apologize to me, which they also did, eyes downcast and shaking, spluttering mud. One of them was crying, snuffling through his snot and tears. Then he told them to beat it and they ran away, blubbering and tripping over their own feet.
I stared down at my savior as his unkempt hair fluttered in the breeze. He wore a Foo Fighters T-shirt under his leather jacket and his jeans were ripped, like mine. “You can go home now, you know,” he said, like maybe I was slow.
I just sat there, picking dried mud from my jeans.
“Aren’t your parents waiting?”
I didn’t answer. I knew better than to answer questions like that.
When other kids found out what happened to Dad they either made fun of me or worse, they felt sorry for me. And Jesse said not to tell anyone Mom was sick again. He said if they knew how sick she was, they might take us away from her.
So I said, “I’m waiting for my brother.”
He glanced around at the empty playground. “Who’s your brother? And why isn’t he here kicking those little shits up the ass?”
“Jesse,” I said. “My brother is Jesse. He’s in detention with Zane.”
He took a step closer, teetering on the edge of the sandbox. “Yeah? How come?”
“They… um… got in an argument with Ms. Nielsen because she said I can’t come to school in dirty clothes. They do that a lot,” I mumbled, wishing maybe I hadn’t said all that, except he looked kind of impressed about the detention thing.
He looked at my jeans; I’d gotten them muddy when I sat in a ditch to listen to music before school. I could pretend it didn’t hurt me if he said something mean about it, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hear it.
Why didn’t he just go away?
“Well, you can come down. Those little shits aren’t coming back.”
I picked at the hole in the knee of my jeans, where my kneecap was poking through.
He leaned over, resting his elbows on Thunderdome. “What’re you doing up there?”
“Playing Thunderdome.”
I knew how stupid it sounded when no one else was there. It wasn’t like
