All Good Children - Catherine Austen [81]
He lies there, unresisting.
“You hear me?”
No response.
I worry that I might have hurt him. If he takes medications I don’t know about, I might have rattled his brain into a seizure. “Dallas? Dallas, are you all right?” I get off him, turn him over, stare into his vacant eyes.
He blinks. He sits up and wipes the dead grass and dirt off his cheek. He rises to his feet and brushes off his uniform.
“Are you all right?” I repeat.
“I’m fine.” He picks up his coat and turns to leave.
“No!” I shout, pulling him back. “No way! You’re not leaving till you promise to come over in the morning.”
He shakes his head. “I have work to do in the morning.”
“No, you don’t.” I grab the gray lapels of his uniform and pull him closer. “I’m taking you with me.”
He brushes at my fingers. “That would be wrong.”
“I’m not leaving you here!” I scream those words, and I can’t stop screaming them. I shove him hard into the wall, over and over, stabbing my knuckles into his ribs. “I’m not leaving you here! I’m not leaving you here!”
“Stop!” He peels my hands off him and holds them in his fists.
“There is something wrong with you. You need to see a doctor.”
Suddenly I’m fighting tears again. All my tension—hours and days and weeks of it—starts to leak out of me. “I’m not leaving you here,” I whisper and choke. “I’m the only person who cares who you are. I’m the only friend you’ve got.”
He smiles and lets go of my hands. “All our schoolmates are my friends.”
I smack his head.
His eyes darken and he gathers himself, tight and tense. “I have to go.” His voice rumbles deep and low. It’s an awful sound because it’s almost real and my hope rises to the bait.
“Dallas?” I try to catch his eye, but he stares at my hands where they cling to him.
He clenches his jaw. “Let go of me.” He leans into me, wraps his hands around mine, crushes my fingers.
I wince but I can take it. “Dallas? Is that you?”
He wrenches my hands from his uniform and pushes me away.
“No!” I hurl him around and slam him into the wall.
I shove my forearm into his throat and press on his windpipe.
“Where do you have to go? Are you going to tell a teacher?”
He doesn’t move, doesn’t look me in the eye, doesn’t answer. But he’s shaking. He’s angry, he’s losing it, I can feel him start to burn.
“If you were one of them, you’d tell a teacher,” I say.
He breathes deeply, blinks, says, “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re too damaged already. We should be kind to those less fortunate than ourselves.”
I step back and slap him across the face. His head swings against the wall and my handprint blooms pink on his pale cheek. “You are not one of them!”
He shakes his head and snorts. “You’re having mental health troubles. You need to see a doctor.” There’s nothing in his eyes, no sparkle, no hidden message. He’s angry because I’m in his way. I’m disobedient. I’m history.
“You’re not one of them!” I shout. “You’re not! You’re not!” I slap his face over and over until I’m out of energy and his cheek is flaming red and I’m just sort of patting him and bawling my eyes out, begging, “You can’t be, man. You can’t be one of them. You can’t be.”
“What have we here?” Mr. Graham stands at the corner of the trailer, smiling at me, round and shiny as a big white ball.
SIXTEEN
I shiver with cold and fear. I’m finished.
Dallas straightens up, takes my hands off his uniform, places them at my sides. “Max is unwell, sir. He needs to go home.”
The principal smiles. “I have just the thing to make him better.” He moves fast for a fat man. He’s at my side in a flash, hugely tall and wide, wrenching my arms behind my back.
Dallas stands just inches away, looking down on my struggle, doing absolutely nothing. “Pass me your necktie, Richmond,” Mr. Graham tells him, and he does.
The principal ties my wrists behind my back and pats my shoulder. “Now, Connors, stay calm.”
“Max needs to go home to his mother,” Dallas says. “She’s a nurse.”
Mr. Graham snickers. “I don’t want to send Maxwell home just yet. I might lose him over the holidays, and