“Put it on,” I said, pointing at the sweatshirt. “I didn't puke on it.” The sirens suddenly stopped. Erin stared down at the gray fleece in her hands. “Put it on. We gotta get out of here. They might come back.”
Slowly she pulled the shirt over her head.
“I'm sorry,” I told her. “You're gonna have to help me get up.”
“You need a doctor,” she said. “I think something's broken.”
“Just help me get up.”
I bit my tongue hard so I wouldn't scream, and somehow I got to my feet. For a moment my vision darkened. I grabbed
Erin's arm and tried to breathe more slowly. The darkness faded away.
“This way,” I said. I knew there was a makeshift path through the woods that would bring us out by the school and the football field. I kept hold of Erin's arm and we stumbled along in the dark. A branch whipped against my cheek. I hoped we were going in the right direction. I listened for the sound of people, of sirens again, of anything but Nick and the others coming back.
Suddenly Erin tripped and I went down too. It took me a minute to get my breath again. “I'm sorry. Are you okay?” Erin asked.
I turned my head and spit blood again. Then I nodded. Erin pulled me upright and put my arm over her shoulder. We started moving again.
“Why now?” Erin asked suddenly. “Before, you didn't do anything to stop them. You were one of them. I don't get it.”
Up ahead, finally, I could see light and hear people. I looked at Erin, wondering if
I was going to puke or pass out before we made it the last few feet through the woods. “I don't know,” I said, because I didn't.
By the time my dad got to the hospital, I'd been X-rayed, had a bunch of blood taken and been more or less cleaned up. I was sitting on the edge of the stretcher, talking to one of the police officers who'd shown up at the school. The father of one of the kids who'd been playing flag football at the field had called 911 on his cell phone. A few minutes later and they would have all been gone. Turns out the sirens we'd heard
were headed to a fire at Sloppy Joe's. So we were saved by greasy onion rings.
I heard Dad's voice in the hallway, asking where I was. Then he was standing in the doorway. “Christ, Kevin,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought you knew better than to be fighting. What the hell were you thinking?”
That was my dad. Yell first, get the facts later. The veins were sticking out in his neck, which meant he was majorly pissed and only holding in his anger because there was a cop there. The officer stood up and stepped between the stretcher and my dad.
“Mr. Frasier, your son wasn't in a fight. He was beaten up when he stepped in and prevented a girl from being sexually assaulted.”
“What?” Dad said.
The police officer glanced over his shoulder at me. “I don't like to think what might have happened if your son hadn't been around.”
Dad just stood there, silent, for a long
moment. Then he said, “The girl. Is she all right?”
Way to go, Dad. Don't ask if I'm all right.
“She's being examined, but as far as we can tell, yes, she's all right. Your son has some pretty bad bruises, but the doctor says nothing's broken.”
Dad walked over to the stretcher. “Kev, I'm sorry,” he said, quietly. He laid his hand, lightly, on the top of my head for a moment before I pulled away. “Who did this to you?” Dad asked.
“Some guys from school,” I said. I stared at the pink tile floor instead of him.
“You know who these guys are?” Dad asked the officer.
“We're looking for them, and there are cars at their homes. It's a small place. We'll find them.”
“And then what? What are you going to do to protect my son and the girl?”
“Mr. Frasier, I have a fourteen-year-old daughter,” the police officer said. “I don't want those punks walking around any more than you do.”
The nurse came in to put a bandage on my head. Some guy who hadn't looked old enough to be a real doctor had put stitches in the cut by my ear. “The doctor will be in to talk to you,” she told Dad. “We're waiting for the ophthalmologist to check his eye.”
My right eyeball, the one Nick had punched, was blood red. That side of my face, around the eye, was purple and getting darker.
Dad took hold of my face with one hand and turned it so he could have a look. “Jesus,” he muttered. He glanced at the nurse. “Sorry.”
“I know it looks bad,” she said. “But I'm pretty sure it's okay. Come in here any Sunday morning and you'll see worse.”
While we waited for the doctor, I finished answering the police officer's questions. I left out the part about trying to talk to my father. The officer promised to be in touch. “You did good,” he said to me. The eye doctor walked in as he was leaving.
My eye was fine, or at least it would be, was the doctor's verdict. It wasn't going to swell up and explode, and I wasn't going to go blind. He told me to make an appointment to see him at his office in a week and left.
Dad was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. I shot a quick glance at him, and then he looked away again. I heard him swallow a couple of times.
“I am sorry,” he said finally. “I shouldn't have assumed the worst. I should have asked.”
The nurse had given me some pills earlier. They made me feel kind of numb. Mostly I felt like I didn't care. “Forget it, Dad,” I said. “What else is new? You always expect me to be the screwup, don't you? Sorry to disappoint you this time.”
The same nurse came back with a prescription and handed it to Dad. I heard her say something about how often I should take the pills and what side effects to watch for. “Bring him back Tuesday to have the dressing changed on that cut,” she said.
“My, uh, friend. Erin. Is she okay?” I asked. I hadn't seen Erin since the police had arrived at the field.
“She's already gone home.” The nurse smiled at me from the door. “I think you're a very brave young man,” she said. “Take care of yourself.”
I managed to get down off the bed by myself. “Here, let me help you,” Dad said. He grabbed my clothes off the back of the chair.
“I can do it,” I said. Dad laid my stuff on the end of the bed. I picked up my pants and managed to pull them on using just my right arm. I even got the zipper up. But I couldn't get my T-shirt on. I couldn't even get it over my head.
Wordlessly, Dad took the shirt away from me. He tugged it over my head and eased my arms into it. Even with the stuff they'd given me for the pain, the room swam in front of my eyes for a second when he lifted my left arm.
“Is this all you were wearing?” Dad asked.
I figured Erin had taken my shirt home with her. “Yeah, that's it.”
Dad was still holding the paper the nurse had given him. “We can't afford that,” I said.
“Let me worry about it,” Dad said.
Charlie's car was squeezed in at the end of a row of parked cars, half on the grass and half on the pavement. I figured that meant our car wasn't running again. We drove home without talking. Dad watched the road and I looked out the side window.
Back at the trailer I was so tired it was all I could do not to fall over. I peeled off my jeans and got into bed. Dad came in and handed me a couple of pills and a glass of water. “Take them,” he said.
“Where did you get those?” I asked. My mouth felt fuzzy.
“The nurse gave them to me to get you through until I can get that prescription filled.”
“I don't need them.”
“Take them.”
“I don't want them.”
“Just take the goddamn pills,” Dad snapped. “For once do what's right for you instead of trying to figure out how you can screw with me.”
I swallowed the capsules and drank half the glass of water.
“I'm going to get some food and get that prescription filled,” Dad said. “Charlie is gonna come over until I get back.”
“I don't need a babysitter,” I protested. It was hard to keep my eyes open.
“If those guys come looking for you, I want someone here who can break some heads,” Dad said. I wasn't awake enough to argue anymore.
When I woke up it was light outside. Everything hurt. My ribs, my face, my teeth, even my hair. But it was a different kind of painâthe sharpness was gone. I didn't know if that meant I was healing or that the pills were still floating around in my bloodstream.
It probably took me five minutes just to get out of bed, but I did it. I managed to pull on a pair of sweatpants that looked fairly clean. I had to hold on to the wall on the way down
the hallway, but I made it out to the front room of the trailer.
Dad was leaning on the counter by the sink, nursing a cup of coffee. There were dark circles under his eyes, his hair was standing up and he had on the same clothes as the day before. He stretched as though he was trying to work out a kink in his back. I managed to make it across the floor to the table without anything to hold on to. I dropped into a chair. I was breathing harder than if I'd just run all the way around the trailer park.
“Hey,” Dad said, “how do you feel?”
“Okay,” I muttered.
“You look like crap.”
“Gee, Dad, you sure know how to make a guy feel better,” I said.
Dad came over to the table and tipped my head back so he could look at my eye. “Some of the red is gone.”
“See, I told you it was okay.”
“You still have to go back and have it checked. Don't even think about not doing that.”
I didn't say anything.
Dad crossed over to the fridge. “What do you want to eat?” he asked.
“What is there?” I said. “Let me guess. Cornflakes or puffed wheat.”
Dad pressed his lips together, looked away from me for a moment and then back. “I got stuff for pancakes,” he said, “and syrupâthe real thing, not the stuff that's just all sugar and colored water.”
“Wait. You're going to make me pancakes?”
“Sure.”
“I guess I should get the crap beaten out of me more often. I can't remember the last time you ever made anything for me except maybe a can of beans.”
“It's not funny,” he said, pulling things from the fridge. “Those punks could have killed you.”
“Yeah, well, they didn't. You always said I had a hard head. I guess you were right about that.” My head felt like there was a pinball game going on inside it.
“Why didn't you tell someone?” Dad said.
“Who?” I snapped. “Mr. What-does-the-school-guidebook-say Harris? The cops? Right. Like they would have done anything. You, Dad? You were too busy being the poster child for Honesty week.”
“You're right,” he said in a low voice. “I messed up royally, and I'm sorry, but things are going to change around here. I'm going to change.”
“Yeah, right.” I couldn't help it. I gave a snort of laughter, and then I sucked in a breath because it hurt.
Dad looked at me without saying anything. Then he turned back to the pancakes.
We ate breakfast in silence. I looked at my distorted reflection in the toaster. The bruises on my face went from red to purple with some black in places. There was a big bandage by my ear, covering the stitches.
“You did the right thing,” Dad said suddenly.
“So if it's the right thing, how come I had to have part of my face sewn back together?”
“I didn't say it was the easy thing. I said it was the right thing.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot I'm talking to Mr. Honesty, Mr. TV celebrity. So are you getting your own TV show, Dad? Am I going to see your face on the side of a bus with âDo the right thing' written underneath?”
“Cut the bull,” Dad said. “All I did was return something that didn't belong to me. I didn't go looking for those reporters. They came looking for me.”
“I didn't see you hiding, Dad.”
He didn't answer at first. He stared at me, and I could see his jaw tighten as he ground his teeth together. “Yeah, you're right, Kevin. I didn't hide. Like you said before, I don't have a job anymore.” He kicked at my sneakers with the toe of his boot. “You can forget about new sneakers. I don't have the money to get the car fixed. I don't have the money for next month's rent. So I figure, yeah, maybe somebody sees me on TV. Maybe they think there's an honest guy and they offer me a job.”
“That worked real well.”
His hand moved, and I thought for a second he was going to smack me one. But he didn't. He cracked his knuckles instead. Then all of a sudden he reached down and grabbed me by the arm. “Stand up.”
A rainbow of swirling colors swam in front of my eyes. “Hey, what did I do?” I said.
“Stand up,” he said again, pulling me to my feet.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from making any noise. There was no way I was going to let him know how much it hurt.
He dragged me into the bathroom, which was barely big enough for the two of us, and we stood in front of the sink. “Look at yourself,” Dad said.
I took a quick look at my beat-up face.
He put his hand on the back of my head and forced it toward the mirror. “Look. At. Yourself.”
I tried to twist away, but he had his other hand on my arm, holding on so tight I could feel his fingers squeezing through my shirt. The pain went up a couple of
notches. I could feel the sweat on my scalp, and for a second I thought I was going to puke pancakes on his boots. He might have been the same size as me, but he was stronger and I was one giant bruise. I looked down at the grubby sink. There were still little bits of hair and foamy soap in it from him shaving.
He let out a breath. “You know what I did when I found that money, Kevin?” he said.
“Yeah, the whole freaking town knows what you did with it. You took it to the police station because it wasn't yours.”