“You were too nice to her,” Nelson had said as we moved to the next shabby door in the shabby complex. “Don’t make a habit of it. You gotta watch it with these tenants. Give’em an inch, they’ll take a mile.”
As far as I could see, the tenants weren’t getting much of anything. Nearly all of them had plumbing and heating issues, and their apartments were just as shitty as mine. Or worse. The whole building needed new paint, new pipes, new pavement in the cracked parking lot.
During those weeks, I did my best to fix what was broken—clogged drains, leaky pipes… On my iPhone —a gift from my social worker before leaving Wisconsin—I Googled how to replace heating filaments. I paid for any repair materials out of my own savings because Nelson was too slow, and he was even slower paying me back.
The work kept me busy. The first few days of school at Santa Cruz Central High came and went, but on Thursday, I was caught up enough to go. The school was in walking distance, thankfully, since I had no transportation.
Or a paycheck.
“You live rent free,” Nelson had told me. “I’m supposed to pay you on top of that?”
“How am I—?”
“You gotta get a job,” he’d said, as if I were stupid. “Between work and keeping the units going, there’s no time for school. I told you.”
“I’m going.”
He heaved a sigh. “For now. But if things start to fall apart at the complex, I’m yanking you out.”
Try it.
Central High was like a movie. An open, outdoor campus with trees and classrooms that were cleaner and better lit than my apartment. I felt like an imposter. I was too old; I’d seen too much. I didn’t belong with these students and their smiling faces and their fucking pep rallies. I felt the stares on my tattoos and heard the whispers that I was an escaped convict. A criminal.
Nelson was right.
But I thought of my mom and kept going.
In math class, Ms. Sutter—a sour looking woman with dark hair and a pinched face—told us to get out our notebooks and pencils while she wrote out equations on an ancient overhead projector.
I tapped a pencil on the bare desk. I’d forgotten to buy supplies.
“Mr. Wentz, is it?” Sutter asked. “Where is your notebook?”
“Forgot,” I muttered.
She pursed her wrinkly lips. “There is scratch paper by the window. You can use that. For today.”
All eyes were on me as I got up and grabbed a few sheets of paper from an uneven stack on the shelf. I didn’t give a shit what anyone thought about me, but the math equations on the projector didn’t make any sense. Me being there didn’t make any sense. I’d missed too much normal life and would never catch up.
Sorry, Mom. It’s too late for me. Too late…
I grabbed my backpack and left the class, Ms. Sutter calling after me. I ignored her and headed down one of the cement paths toward the front walk. But the school was huge. When the football field came into view, I knew I’d gone the wrong way.
“Fuck.”
I started to turn around when I heard voices and some kind of alarm clock going off.
“You don’t look so good, Stratton. Gonna piss yourself again?”
I peered around the corner. Three guys were ganging up on a fourth in torn jeans, a jacket, and beanie on his head. His watch was beeping and he swayed on his feet as if he were drunk.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” he said weakly to a scrawny red-haired guy wearing board shorts and a sick grin on his face.
“I’m good right here,” the red-haired guy said, crossing his arms and barring the way. “Kinda curious about what’s going to happen next.”
His two friends shifted nervously.
“Hey, Frankie, he really doesn’t look so good,” one said to the red-haired guy.
“Yeah, and he’s got that alarm…”
“Nah, he’s alright, aren’t you, Stratton?”
The guy, Stratton, looked like shit—pale, sweaty, hardly able to stand.
Frankie gripped him by the back of the neck. “You still wearing that little machine stuck in your guts? What would happen if someone took it out? Just to get a better look?”
The fuck…?
I strode into the small crowd just as Stratton threw a weak upward punch that caught Frankie under the chin. His jaw snapped shut with a clack and a spurt of blood.
“You fu-ther!” he howled. “I fu-thing bit my thung.”
Frankie charged, fist cocked. Stratton was in my way. I shoved him aside and slammed my fist into Frankie’s oncoming face. Bone and cartilage gave under my knuckles, and he staggered back, crying and cursing.
I could feel the others staring but kept my focus on Frankie, every muscle in my body itching to go if he wanted more.
I hoped he wanted more.
The Vice Principal, an oily fucker named Chouder, appeared behind us. “What’s all this?”
“Fu-ther broke my nose,” Frankie whined from behind his hand.
“Go see the nurse, Dowd,” Chouder said and turned his hard stare on me. “Mr. Wentz. My office. The rest of you get back to class.”
Stratton’s beeping watch drew his attention and cooled the blood in my veins. He looked like hell. Maybe needed an ambulance.
“Are you all right?” Chouder asked, annoyed.
“Oh sure,” Stratton said, lip curling. “Never better.”
He staggered away, toward a bank of lockers with a kind of tired stoicism. He didn’t rat on Frankie or his friends. Didn’t complain.
“He going to be okay?” I asked Chouder as we headed for the admin building.
“You broke his nose. A little late for concern, isn’t it?”
“Not that asshole. The other guy.”
“Miller will be fine,” Chouder said, leading me through the offices of the administration building where counselors and staff talked or worked at their desks.
“Why were they fucking with him?”
“Watch your language, Mr. Wentz.” Chouder indicated I should sit at the chair in front of his desk. “I suspect they were teasing Miller over the fact he was briefly homeless and lived in a car with his mother several years ago.” He bent to pull a file from a drawer and slapped it down, then frowned at my dark look. “I’m not telling you something you won’t hear by lunch tomorrow. Let it go, Wentz.” He tapped the file. “You have bigger problems. Your little stunt basically amounts to assault.”
“That bullying prick deserved it.”
“Hmm.” Chouder arched his brows and consulted my file. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in the Wentz family, does it?”
I gritted my teeth.
“There are other methods, aside from violence, to achieve one’s goals.” Chouder folded his hands. “How about you take a three-day suspension to think that over?”
When I got out of Chouder’s office, Miller Stratton was waiting for me.
“You didn’t have to do that for me,” he said, falling in step as I headed out of the school.
“I didn’t do it for you,” I said, not looking at him.
“Then why?”
Because he killed her, and I didn’t stop him.