Circumstances 34

I worked hard on my essay the next week.  It meant something to me, something much more than my usual school papers.  I was writing it more for myself than for Mrs. Gallagher.  Writing it forced me to focus on just what my life had been like, and how I’d felt, and the message really was obvious.

Of course, implementing the change I was writing about was harder than simply understanding that I needed to do this, or how important it was.  But the paper made it very clear why I had to do it.  And outlining specific steps I was going to take gave me a plan to put into practice.

I was eating lunch one day when, to my surprise, Darryl Cane approached my table holding his tray.  I glanced up at him, and saw he looked nervous.

“Uh, would it be OK if I sat here?”

I was surprised he was so tentative.  I was usually the one who had a difficult time talking to anyone.  No one had a problem talking to me.  And they rarely asked my permission, either.

“Sure,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I meant it.  He’d been involved in pantsing me, and I didn’t know him at all.  He was bigger than I was, but then, so was most everyone.  He was tall and thin, and still had a sort of baby face with chubbier cheeks than most guys our age and a perfect, rosy complexion.  It looked to me like puberty was working elsewhere first and would attend to his face last.  He was actually kind of good looking, with long dark hair that came down over his ears and long bangs that were swept back to the side, and very dark green eyes that showed concern right then.  I’d never really looked at him much, even though he was in a couple of my classes, but that was probably because of the guys he chose to hang out with.

He set his tray on the table and got settled in the chair, then looked up at me.  He started to open his mouth, then dropped his eyes back to his tray.  I almost smiled. 

He picked up his fork and toyed with his home fries for a moment, then looked at me again and cleared his throat.  “I want to apologize for what happened,” he finally managed to say.

Oh, that’s what this was.  “OK,” I said, putting no inflection at all into my voice.

He was staring at me now, not dropping his eyes, and I could see that he was doing here meant something to him.

“No, I mean, I really am sorry.  I didn’t want to do that.  We shouldn’t have done that.  I’ve felt bad about it ever since.”

I nodded.  “Well, it’s over with now.  I wish you guys hadn’t done it either, but things happen.  I’m a little surprised, though.”

“Surprised?  About what?”

“That you’d be this concerned about it.  You hang with Tony.  He likes to bully kids, and you guys help him.  So why would doing what you did to me bother you?”

He dropped his eyes for a moment, then said, “We don’t hang together.  Not anymore.  Not since we did that to you.  I told him afterwards that what we did was wrong, and he got mad.  He doesn’t like people telling him he’s wrong.  We got in a fight.  I don’t mind not being with him anymore.  He’s a jerk.”

It took a moment to process that.  Then I asked, “You got in a fight over me?”

He laughed, and all the concern left his eyes for a moment, and he became just another kid my age.  “No, dummy!  We got in a fight over how he treated you.  But actually, it was more than that.  I’ve known for a while now that I didn’t like what we were doing, but I’ve been friends with him a long time, and he wasn’t always like this.  But what we did to you simply wrong, and was the last straw for me.  I could see how you felt, how we made you feel, and I knew I was part of that, and I just had to stop being involved in things like that.  I didn’t want to be a person who’d do that anymore.”

“I don’t know what to say.”  I was watching him, and he’d dropped his eyes again.  “Thanks for telling me, I guess.  You know, I was watching you a little, when that was going on.  I saw you looking uncomfortable.  Seeing that made me feel better, actually.”

He looked up.  “Well, good then.  Uh, OK, I said what I said, so if you want, I’ll go eat somewhere else.”

“You don’t have to.  I always eat alone, but it’s not because I want to.  If you want to eat here, it’s fine.”

He smiled.  “Good.  I don’t really have any friends anymore.”

So he stayed, and we talked a little.  He wasn’t a bad guy.  We had things in common.  Lunch went a lot quicker that day than it usually did.  I was sorry when it ended, but excited the next day when he came right over and without asking plunked his tray down across the table from mine, looked up and grinned at me.

I now had a lunch partner.  It’s difficult to express how great that felt.  When you’re alone in the midst of hundreds of kids, you feel so left out and isolated that it sort of eats at you and strengthens your conviction that there’s something seriously wrong with you.  Having him sitting there changed things.  My physical circumstances were different because he was sitting there, and that was all it took for my perspective of myself to change, too. 

He was in my English class, and on Wednesday he asked me how I was doing on my essay.

“I’ve finished it.  Well, I’m done, but every time I read it over on the computer, I add a word or change a word or mess with it a little.  I can’t seem to help myself.  But I’m finished and ready to print it.”

He poked at the mystery meat on his plate, frowned, and asked, “What did you write about?”

His eyes were still on the theoretical food he was prodding, so I couldn’t get a good idea of why he was asking me that.  I had the impression it was just curiosity, nothing more.  He looked up when I hesitated.  I wasn’t sure what my eyes were showing, but I looked away so he couldn’t really see them anymore.

“Uh, well, it’s kind of personal.  What did you write about?”

It was his turn to look away.  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said after a moment.  “It is personal.”

“I guess we’re all writing about something we don’t like about ourselves.  Probably no one wants to admit what that is.  Are you finished with yours?”

He shook his head.  “I haven’t started it yet.  I’m not sure what I want to say.  There’s a lot wrong with me that needs fixing.”

I smiled at him.  “There’s one less thing wrong with you than there used to be.  You don’t hang with Tony any longer.”

He looked up, and I saw he had a wicked smile.  “Hey,” he said, “that’s what I’ll write!  About pantsing you and realizing I had to stop doing things like that, and that I’m now going to work on that, and it was seeing you lying there naked that woke me up!”

My eyes widened and I about froze.  An essay, for Mrs. Gallagher, about me lying on that lawn with my parts exposed for public viewing?  He saw the expression on my face and stopped smiling. 

“Hey, I’m kidding!  I’m sorry.  It was a joke!  I’d never embarrass you like that.”

“Oh.”  My heart slowed back down.  “Well, good.  I didn’t think you would, but embarrassment’s been my middle name recently.”

He paused, one of those pregnant pauses I’d read about, and lifting his eyes to mine, said, “You really don’t have anything to be embarrassed about.”

What in the world did he mean by that?