The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (9 page)

And then they saw me.

“Hey, cowboy!” Grant shouted, his nickname for me now, his clever way of reminding everyone about my humiliation, while still relegating me to the position of “boy.”

I think I preferred it when I was “city boy.”

He projected his voice across the lake of people milling around. Many of them turned to look first at Grant, then me.

Crap.

“Hey, cowboy, you still smell like cowshit?”

As if it were conceivable that Grant wasn't directing his comments toward me, I kept my head down as I shuffled along, trying to get through the stalled traffic of people waiting to get on their buses. If I quickened my pace, Grant and his buddies would be on me in a second, like a pack of wolves after an elk that had separated from the herd. A blush started to creep into my cheeks as people studied me for a reaction.

“Hey, I'm talking to you, cowboy. What's the matter?” Now I could make out the laughter of Grant's buddies, their afternoon's entertainment.

Jesus said a man should turn the other cheek … but Jesus never had to go to high school in a small town. Or if he had, Jesus would have been the popular guy and not subject to the same humiliations I was. His ability to change water into wine alone would guarantee that.

Two girls stood off to one side, hugging their books to their chests, as the mob mentality shifted. Maybe no one really liked Grant Parker. Maybe people thought he was a bully and a creep. But the universal truth was everyone was glad I was the target instead of them. The distance between the entrance of the school and my bike suddenly became an ocean, and the probability of my survival lessened the farther I ventured from shore.

Something hit me on the shoulder and bounced to the ground in front of me. A pencil. A hail of other objects followed, meant to humiliate rather than hurt me.

And I was. Humiliated.

Red started to creep in around the edges of my vision, and my gut tightened like a blood-pressure cuff until I felt a vein throbbing in my forehead.

Who the fuck does he think he is?

My anger boiled up the way it had at the pep rally when I assaulted Willie the Wildcat. Grant's next comment was enough to set me off completely.

“Go ahead and run, faggot,” Grant said. It wasn't the fact that he was accusing me of being gay, or even that he was such a cretin that he considered being gay an insult. It was the way this last comment was delivered—as a dismissal. He was done with me for the day. Somehow that made me angrier than anything else, that he had toyed with me, tired of me, and was now discarding me.

Grant and his friends were still walking toward me but were now laughing and joking among themselves. I stopped and knelt on one knee, setting my backpack down beside me on the ground. I made a show of tying my shoe, pretending I was indifferent to Grant as he approached.

I felt them behind me, felt their eyes on me with a question, wondering why I had chosen this moment to stop and tie my shoe as they walked past me, headed to their cars. Grant was just about even with me when I stood suddenly and swung a roundhouse punch with such force that if I had missed hitting Grant, the momentum would have sent me sprawling.

But I didn't miss. My fist landed in the center of his chest, and his breath gusted out with a rush. He was momentarily winded as he tried to keep his feet.

Time stopped. Grant's eyes went wide and he gasped for breath, his mouth working like a fish out of water.

Slowly his eyes traveled from my feet, to my hands clenched in fists at my side, to my face, and I couldn't decide which of us was more surprised by the fact that I had punched him. My hand hummed with pain from punching him on the hard bone of his sternum, or maybe his muscles were just so rock-hard it hurt to hit him anywhere, like a superhero in an armored suit.

The students around us started to circle, like scavengers around a kill site on the Serengeti. I noticed a few of them getting their phones ready to catch me being pulverized on video. I cringed at the thought of another video of my humiliation going viral. If you want a sense of your own self-worth, just contemplate how many hits the video of your untimely death would get on YouTube.

When Grant finally did find his voice, what he said was, “You're dead.”

And the way he said it … not just a threat. A truth. A promise.

And I believed it. Like gospel.

Before Grant could lift a hand, there was a confusion of angry shouts and the figure of Principal Sherman burst into our little circle, red-faced and frothing at the mouth.

Sherman was pointing at me, his finger stabbing the air like a weapon as he moved to separate Grant from me. I sighed and hung my head, accepting guilt and defeat.

“Boy, you sure do know how to look for trouble,” Principal Sherman said. I was no longer Mr. Grayson. Now I was merely “boy.” “How many times do I have to tell you I'm not going to tolerate any funny business at my school?” Grant stood just behind him, and I kept my gaze fixed on Grant's smirk as Principal Sherman tore into me. “Fighting on school property is grounds for automatic suspension. I want both of you in my office right now.” Then Sherman seemed to hesitate as he turned to look at Grant and said, “Grant, I'd like to hear your side of this.” He said it almost deferentially, as if asking Grant's permission.

“Sure, Mr. Sherman,” Grant said, his tone polite, his expression one of concern and innocence. He was too smart to smile in the presence of Sherman, but I saw the smug satisfaction in his eyes.

You motherfucker.

Sherman put a hand on my sleeve to usher me to the office, and I snatched my arm away, hot with impotent rage. Grant's mouth twitched with amusement when Sherman wasn't looking, and I wanted to smack the smile right off of his face.

In the office Grant gave his version of events—described how I stopped to wait for Grant and his buddies and attacked. Completely unprovoked.

Even if I was looking at the situation objectively, I would know this story was bullshit. Grant was a full head taller than I was. His neck was thicker than my arm. Only if I were an idiot would I go asking Grant Parker for a fight without provocation. And that's what these people believed. That I was an idiot.

“I was just walking to my car,” Grant said, “and out of nowhere he starts insulting me, attacks me. I have no idea what provoked it.” If I hadn't known for a fact that Grant was lying, I would have been tempted to believe his story myself. He was such a good liar, a brilliant actor.

I didn't bother giving my version of events. No one was going to rat out Grant Parker, and Principal Sherman already thought I was a troublemaker. Once again, I was plotting my escape from Ashland in my mind, ready to leave this place and never look back.

I suppose you could say that my silence only made me look guilty to Principal Sherman. But Grant Parker had done nothing but humiliate me from the beginning.

Principal Sherman sentenced me to two days of at-home suspension.

Since Grant was just a “victim,” he would go unpunished.

Game, set, and match.

 

13

By the time I was free of the principal's office and got to work, Roger and Tiny were already sipping their beers. Happy hour, as Roger called it.

“Why are you so late?” Roger asked, but not in a way like he really cared. He wasn't paying me after all. It had cost him nothing to give me the Camaro, and I got the sense he was happy someone was giving it the love it deserved.

“I got in trouble. Had to go to the principal's office.”

“Good old Leslie,” Roger said. “Though I kind of feel sorry for the guy. I dated his wife in high school. She's a bitch and a half.”

“Yeah, well, he's a dick.”

“What'd you get in trouble for this time?” Roger asked.

“Fighting. Grant was giving me shit and I took a swing at him.”

“Boy, you are about as dumb as they come.”

“Well, he was messing with me. He thinks he can treat everybody any way he wants.”

“He can.”

“Well, anyway. Leslie is going to call my dad, and I'm suspended for the next two days. I don't want to go home. Ever.”

“You can move in here, I guess,” Roger said, as if he harbored juvenile delinquents in his garage as a regular thing.

“No, thanks,” I said, thinking of the black mold that lurked in the corners, along with the accumulation of grimy air fresheners that no longer held any scent, in the garage's single bathroom.

*   *   *

W
hen I got home that evening Dad was waiting for me. He pounced as soon as I came through the front door. Leslie had reached Dad at the church office, explaining that I would serve two days of at-home suspension for fighting on school grounds.

Because he was a spineless dweeb, Dad just took Principal Sherman's interpretation of events as gospel and ignored any arguments I made about my innocence. He lectured me at the dinner table about personal responsibility and the moral pitfalls of popular music and the Internet. As always, it felt distinctly as if he were delivering one of the sermons he had written and memorized for a Sunday delivery. After all, if Dad actually knew what I used the Internet for most of the time, there was no way he would allow me to keep my phone or my laptop.

Doris sat at the dinner table in grim silence as Dad sermonized his way through three courses, topped off with homemade peach cobbler. She and Dad sat at opposite heads of the table, Doris in a conservative blouse and skirt, her hair swept back in a neat bun, with a strand of pearls at her throat.

“Luke,” Doris said once Dad had run out of breath, “your father is just asking you to live up to our important position in the community.” Her voice was almost shrill and she looked to Dad for encouragement. “It makes me distinctly uncomfortable to entertain members of your father's church here when I never know what kind of music is going to be coming out of your room or whether the driveway will be a mess with your tools and car parts.”

I almost felt sorry for Doris. It was hard to imagine how much time and effort she put into keeping Dad's house. There were meticulously embroidered pillows on the sofa in the den, artfully pruned lilacs arching over the front walk, and a hot three-course meal prepared every evening.

I imagined Doris's life was very much like that of Martha Stewart … while she was in jail. Ashland was Doris's prison as much as it was mine.

In Ashland, there was nothing but exclusion, humiliation, and loneliness. Even at my own dinner table.

*   *   *

I didn't get to move into Roger's garage or spend any time there for the next two weeks. While I was grounded I had to sneak around if I wanted to do anything, a virtual impossibility in a town as small as Ashland. On Sundays I had no choice but to attend church. I had never spent much time in church, since Mom was very anti-organized religion. Actually, she was very anti a lot of things. And instead of letting me work at the garage, Dad made me spend time helping him around the church. This involved everything from janitorial work to helping with preparations for the annual harvest festival, hosted by the Baptist Church Women.

It wasn't much of a festival. There were a few booths selling merchandise and a tent for food concessions. There was a band that played Christian country music. I had heard of Christian rock before, but Christian country was a new one.

It took all of about five minutes to see the entire festival. There was a livestock exhibit where you could pet goats and baby pigs, but the stink made me keep my distance.

There were games for people to play, like horseshoes, which I had heard of, and cornholing, which I hadn't. Cornholing, by the way, means something totally different outside of an urban environment.

This was a church fund-raiser, and they made money by selling tickets that could be used for cotton candy or lemonade or games with shitty prizes. I worked the ticket booth most of the day, which forced me into contact with people but at least kept me busy and didn't demand that I have more than a passing conversation with anyone.

Even though I was grounded, the two days I had gotten to miss school was like a vacation from degradation. I dreaded the return to school, hated the idea of it.

My goal as the new kid, to avoid unwanted attention, had been an epic failure. I was a magnet for public ridicule.

And even though I was now even more of a target for Grant and his posse, when I returned to school I was amazed by the changes that had overcome my classmates. I had anticipated staring. I had anticipated feeling ostracized and excluded. I had anticipated the soundtrack of whispered comments about me as I passed people between classes.

And people did stare at me as I walked the halls, but not with shock or horror or dislike. It was more like they were finally seeing me, really seeing me, for the first time. As if I was a person now instead of just the punch line to one of Grant Parker's jokes.

The boys gave me a head nod, a few of them even a casual fist bump, in greeting. The girls made eye contact and smiled. As I moved through the corridors people got out of my way, the crowds parting like the Red Sea under Moses's command. When I moved up the aisles to take my seat in the classroom, other students politely removed backpacks from my path.

It was eerie, the way they acted. As if they respected me now, accepted me as one of their own. The classmates who had once treated me with indifference or disdain now treated me with deference.

As I walked into the cafeteria that day, I felt the climate shift. I sat at my usual table, with Don and Aaron, and things were like normal. Except they weren't.

A girl, a real girl, stopped off at our table to ask what I was doing that weekend, and a couple of guys stopped to talk about the upcoming hunting season, a subject so foreign to me I had trouble hiding my absolute ignorance. Even Roland—aka Willie the Wildcat—gave me a guarded but almost friendly chin thrust when he passed our table.