Chapter 20

Tweetie birds spun around my head as my awareness took a break. Everything felt like flashes of reality. Or like I flipped through the TV channels, getting a piece at a time.

Cathy caught me as I went down, cutting her scream short. She touched me, and her hand came back bloody. Surely couldn’t have all come out of me. She shook. Or I shook. I couldn’t tell, but the world looked blurry around the edges, and I heard another pained sound.

A boy limped away as Poe dropped down to me, and the room sounded so quiet. That didn’t last long, and then the chatter started up. People wanted to know what happened, and none of them seemed to have seen the boy hit me. No one had been looking until it was too late.

“Are you okay?” Cathy asked me. “Say something.”

I blinked, and then might have passed out.

The next thing I remembered was being picked up and cradled as I moved past a crowd. I buried my face against the body that held me, realizing quickly that it had to have been Poe. I let it happen and felt guilty about the blood I got on his shirt. I knew he wouldn’t have minded.

Someone tried to pull me away, and I heard a low growl. Then Cathy’s voice, but soft, “He bites. Best let him keep her.”

A woman spoke, and she sounded irritated. “I need to get a look at her. Put her on the bed.”

Poe sighed, and Cathy said, “You gotta, babe. She’ll forgive you later.”

I got laid on something soft, but paper crinkled against my back, and I flinched when I wrinkled my nose at it. Liquid heat leaked out of my closed eyes, and the metallic sting of blood sank into my tongue. A hand touched my forehead a moment before lips did.

Someone not as gentle as that, started poking at me. They held my face, shined a light at me so bright, that it made me wince, even with closed eyes. “What happened?”

“Some fucker punched her in the face,” Cathy hissed. “Came up to her and assaulted Clover while she walked away. I want him found and hanged.”

“Miss…”

“What?”

Footsteps joined us, and the voices that followed sounded husky. They also asked what happened, but this time, Poe answered the men. He told them the same thing Cathy said, only not as hostile.

“There wasn’t any reason,” he said. “Clover wasn’t feeling good, and I was going to take her home. Then the guy came up, hit her, and then ran away in the chaos.”

One of the men said, “Something had to have started it.”

“It didn’t,” Poe hissed. “Clover didn’t say a thing to him. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t earn this, and I don’t appreciate that you’re insinuating she did. She’s five goddamned feet tall, and that asshole was six foot three.”

“Calm down,” the other man said.

“I won’t calm down until you find the guy who did this and have him thrown out of this school.”

I couldn’t hear the rest of the fight, because my head pounded, and my face ached with every touch from the nurse. Cathy scolded her each time I winced, and she got threatened to be banned from the room on three separate occasions.

“It’s not broken,” the woman said. “Your friend is lucky.”

“Lucky?” Cathy deadpanned. “She got socked in the face. Her nose almost exploded. How is that lucky?”

“Because it didn’t break.”

More footsteps, and it sounded like a trade. Someone left, and someone came over to me. When I felt a cold, damp cloth on my face, I opened my eyes. The brightness burned, but I saw two blurry and comforting faces watching me. Cathy tried cleaning the blood from my face, and Poe had my hand in both of his.

“I’m gonna kill a bitch,” Cathy promised me. “Tell me you saw the fucker so that I can get a positive ID.”

I shook my head, though it was a mistake. “I didn’t really get a good look at him. I don’t know who it was.”

Cathy cursed. “So he just gets away with this?”

Poe gave her a look. “I don’t know about that. I kind of sliced up some of the muscles in his limbs.”

Our friend grinned and smacked his arm. “Lovely! Defending your lady. You’re a good man.”

Poe took the cloth from her and started back on my face without commenting. He had to get another one to clean all of the blood, and neither of them let me see my face. I assumed I looked like, well, like I got punched in the face.

The security guards that Poe glared at, came over to ask me the same things that they asked Poe, and then Cathy. I knew even less than they did, but it didn’t keep them from asking the same questions three different ways. I told them I didn’t know the boy, and I’d never spoken to him a single time in my life.

“I think he’s one of the lacrosse guys,” Cathy sighed. “Those jock dicks think they can do whatever they want. He probably thought this was funny.”

The younger guard gave Cathy a look. “I played lacrosse when I went here.” He looked at her like he’d expected an apology for her misspeaking, but he obviously didn’t know Cathy.

“Good for you,” she said. “How about you go get that guy and have him expelled.”

The other security guard sighed, and then scratched his head with the pen in his hand. “We’ve chatted with some of the kids that were out there when this happened, and none of ‘em saw a thing. No one could tell us who hit your friend.”

Poe shot him daggers. “There were three hundred people in that cafeteria.”

“And no one was looking. Sorry.”

It made me feel insane, thinking about how little these people cared that I’d been assaulted in front of a crowd. I did nothing to deserve this, yet, my face felt like someone took a sledgehammer to it.

“What happens now then?” I asked. “I’m out of luck?”

The first guard shrugged. “We’ll do all we can, but I think you just need to do your best to stay out of trouble. Best not get anyone mad at you.”

So it was my fault, and the person who hit me, didn’t matter. I got punched, so I must have done something to tick someone off. I guess I would have assumed something like that, because it didn’t sound sane that someone would hit a person for no reason. Only, they had. I’d been feeling sick, and someone hurt me for no reason. Someone bigger than me, and who I stood no chance of defending myself against. One of the lacrosse guys.

A paranoid thought came to mind, but the approaching nurse pushed it aside. “No one answered when I called your emergency contact,” she said. “Do you have another one?”

Of course, Dad didn’t pick up. He was probably out shopping or something. Mom would have been at work, and bothering her right now didn’t seem like a good idea. They wanted me to stay out of trouble, and this wouldn’t have looked good on my already blemished record.

“Nope,” I lied. “Sorry.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Cathy said, cutting me short. “We’re taking her home. If you people can’t do anything for her, then I will.”

The nurse didn’t move. “I cannot condone you leaving school early.”

Cathy stood, and cocked her hip. “Fine then. Officially, we aren’t ditching school. We’re going to all go back to class and be good little children.”

“Thank you,” the nurse said, and she went back into her little office on the other side of the room.

Poe put his hand on my side, and the other on my arm as he pulled me to my feet. The world spun a little, but I had Poe to brace myself on. Ugh, his shirt looked a mess, with blood smeared across a cartoon car filled with cartoon people. It looked like he went all From Dusk Till Dawn on someone.

“Sorry,” I said.

He scoffed at me. “Shut up. Can you walk?”

“Yeah.”

No one else came to talk to me about what happened, and I assumed it left me SOL. With no witnesses coming forward, it wasn’t anything that could have been fixed. So my friends brought me to Poe’s car, and I got to sit in the back with Cathy while he brought us to my house.

We parked in my driveway, and Poe turned the car off before looking over his shoulder at us. “All right, call me crazy, but I say—”

“That crazy bitch Tammy,” Cathy said. “Who the hell else would want Clover punched in her pretty face?”

“Kelly maybe,” I suggested. “She’s very unhappy that Peter is still interested in my friendship.”

As we got out of the car, Poe hurried to catch up with me, leaving Cathy one step behind. We went into my empty house, and then room before we went on with the conversation.

“I don’t think it was Kelly,” Cathy said. “It seems like a big step to go from telling you to stay away from Peter, to telling someone to assault you when you haven’t even gone near the boy. I mean, other than for that fight.”

“True,” I began. “But what if she found out about the fake letter?”

Poe thought. “Wouldn’t she come to you first? She seemed reasonable last time you talked. She could have snapped in a moment of fury, paid this guy off, and then had her little cheer team pretend they didn’t see anything. And it’s not like the lacrosse players would rat him out.”

I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but what choices did we have left? Kelly or Tammy. I had to pick. I did not think that Peter would have been okay with any of this, so that pushed me to think Tammy. If Kelly was so insane that she thought she had to do this, then Peter would have caught on.

“Do we go to the police?” I asked. I didn’t even want to talk anymore. My brain wanted to go down for a nap, but I had to carry on this conversation I didn’t want to have.

“What would that even do?” Cathy asked me, turning to look at my wooden figures. She flicked one, casually knocking it on its side. “The ladies in the office thought you were crazy, the security guys don’t care, and us three are the only ones who can be official witnesses.” She knocked over another figure. “We can start trouble, but it’ll only get eyes on us.” Down went another figure.

Trouble would have only made this a whole lot worse, and I wanted nothing more than for this to end. “I say we leave it be.”

Poe grumbled. “So everyone gets away with hurting you?”

“It’s that, or I poke the angry bear. If I don’t react, then maybe Tammy won’t want to mess with me anymore.”

He shook his head as Cathy pushed over a wooden cat. “This isn’t going to make it end. She’ll just turn it up to get your attention.”

I heard the front door unlock before it pushed open. My father called to me, and I saw him through my opened door. I got up, swayed, and Poe caught me so that we could meet up with him and my frantic looking mother.

“Clover!” she said, rushing over to me. “What the hell happened to your face!”

Dad had the same worried panic, holding his phone in his hand. “I got a voicemail saying someone hit you. What happened?” he echoed.

I spoke as honestly as I could, knowing it wouldn’t have made sense. I told them the cold facts, leaving out who I thought had it done, and all the stuff around it. It ended up being a short story of course, since I went from minding my own business, to getting punched like a little bitch.

“That makes no sense,” my father said. “Why would someone hit you for no reason?”

I didn’t like the accusatory note to his voice. Cathy didn’t like it either, because she went into her defiant stance. “Because people suck. Also, someone had this done to her. There’s a psycho at school who’s been harassing her. Some crazy bitch who’s punishing her for an accident.”

“What accident?” Mom asked.

“The car,” I said, knowing I couldn’t have gone back now. “Tammy, that girl whose car I accidentally messed up. She hates me and decided that she wants to make my life hard.”

Dad rolled his eyes. “You always assume everyone is out to get you, Clover.”

Cathy scoffed. “The two shiners she’ll be rocking in the morning is a pretty good indication that someone is out to get her. Sir,” she hissed.

Dad turned to me. “You think this girl is after you?”

“What else am I supposed to think? She’s the only person who has a problem with me.”

Mom didn’t seem to buy it, and she cut me off before I could go on. “Stop that. The car thing was taken care of, and I doubt this girl cares so much about you, that she would have a boy come do what happened. This was probably all a misunderstanding.”

Poe spoke next, and he looked utterly baffled as he subtly took hold of my hand and tugged me back to him. “You both don’t seem all that upset that your kid got her lights knocked out today. Cathy almost killed a nurse when it happened, and you’re just telling Clover not to worry.”

“I didn’t say that,” Mom bit back. “I don’t want my daughter to go bothering a girl who probably wants nothing to do with her. Who was this boy who hit her? Maybe Clover did something to upset this person.”

Poe rubbed his face, glaring at my mother. “This is real then… You’re blaming Clover. You’re blaming the person who got hit.”

Cathy tapped her foot. “This explains so much. No offense, but you guys suck.”

Oh, I wanted to run far, far away from here, but I couldn’t. I watched my parents as they tried to keep it together, and my father took over.

“I understand that you’re all frazzled,” he said. “I’ll let that go. Trust me, I’m very unhappy that someone hurt my daughter today. I would love nothing more than to beat that boy senseless. But it would be insane to go blaming people without any proof. Do you have proof?”

“No,” I bitterly said. “We have no proof.”

“I thought so. Listen, I think you all need to cool down. The school said that they’re doing everything they can to figure out who did this, and I trust that they’ll get it done. You guys being hotheaded won’t solve a thing.”

I said nothing, but Cathy didn’t have as much control as I did. “I think beating her ass would keep Tammy from doing this again. I say that solves a lot.”

“Don’t you dare,” Mom said. “You kids don’t need to get in trouble for this. I’m sure after a good night’s sleep, Clover will remember this boy. She has to have come across him before. People don’t go punching other people for no reason.”

I agreed. I was sure he had a reason, like doing a favor for Tammy, or maybe she paid him. It could have been one of a million reasons I might never have known. But what this boiled down to, was that my parents thought it had been me. That I’d earned the throbbing head, and pulsing pain. It always came back to me and my fuckups. I wasn’t good enough to please my parents. I wasn’t good enough to keep Peter around. I wasn’t good enough to think I could hold onto Cathy or Poe either. I wasn’t good.

I couldn’t take it anymore, and I ended up half running back to my bedroom, ignoring my parents as they called for me to come back. I didn’t want to see them and see the blame in their eyes. Wasn’t it enough that someone had hit me? Did I need to be harmed again?

“We have this,” Cathy said, hostile as she made my parents keep from following me. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Of course we’ll worry about it,” Dad said.

“Really,” Poe reiterated. “This is something I think Clover would rather talk to us about. At least we listen when she speaks.”

Seconds later, Poe and Cathy appeared in my room. Cathy closed and locked my door, while I sat on the carpet by my dresser. I held my head in my hands, hearing my own heartbeat in my chest. It had not been a good day.

My friends sat on the floor with me, both looking pissy. “I hate your parents,” Cathy decided. “Hate them. They didn’t for a second think it was possible Tammy did it. Are they always like that?”

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “They don’t normally talk to me that much.”

Poe inhaled, paused, and exhaled. “I’m going to steal you and hide you away in my room. You can sleep in the closet. I’ll sneak you food.”

I shrugged. “It’s not so bad.”

“It is,” Cathy decided. She huffed twice, glaring at nothing. “I need to take my aggression out on something, and I don’t have a small animal or chocolate cake around here.”

She looked around, and Poe leaned back, revealing my dresser again. Cathy smiled, thanked him, and then reached up to knock the remaining figures to the floor.