“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.