Fix by J. Mann (highly illogical behavior .TXT) 📕

“You didn’t seem to mind my mouth Tuesday night in the Stop & Shop.” He grins.

Oh. No. He. Did. Not.

“Yeah, well, I was on drugs.”

“Creo que sigues endrogada.”

“Don’t think I didn’t get that.”

“I absolutely know you did not get that”—he laughs—“since you’re failing Spanish.”

I hate him. And not just because he’s right. Okay, totally because he’s right.

I make a second attempt to get out of his outrageously low car. “Don’t touch me.”

He steps back. “You do you, Eve,” he says.

I scoot all the way to the end of the seat and then feel around for something to give me leverage. I’m cursing myself for not bringing my forearm crutches, especially since the only reason I left them home was to spite Mary Fay—if she was going to make me return, I was going to make it as hard as possible on myself to spite her. I’m pretty damn sure she didn’t even notice.

Velcroed tightly inside my post-surgery brace and without anything to push off of, I basically topple out of the car toward the pavement. Thomas drops my backpack and catches me.

I hate his hands on me. I hate him pulling me up without any effort. I hate the way he makes a show of brushing me off after he sets me on my feet.

“Cut it out.”

“You need a sense of humor,” he says with a cheerful snort.

“I need my backpack. And BTW, I’m taking paratransit home. Your car is a death trap.”

He shakes his head, taking the math textbook out of my backpack. “I’ll return this to DeSota for you.” Then he zips the bag back up and hands it to me.

All it has in it now is my spiral notebook and my English Lit paper. His English Lit paper. I start toward the front doors.

He walks next to me.

“You can stop in the library and reprint your essay without my corrections during Personal Development first period,” Thomas says. “I don’t even know what that class is, so it can’t be important.”

“Personal Development is a perfectly fine class,” I snap. Although I remember how Lidia had dubbed it Personal Downtime. She’d chosen it as a place for us to hang together. “Anyway, why the hell do you know my schedule by heart? That’s mega-creepy.”

I can see his smirk out of the corner of my eye. “We basically have the same schedule, my dear School Within a School pal. Except of course for Personal Development. Which you obviously need.”

I don’t respond. His comment is below me. Plus, I don’t have a comeback that won’t just make him sound more right.

The crowd ahead of us slows due to the traffic jam at the front doors. I teeter a bit as the space around me shrinks. Everyone is too close to the throbbing sore newness of my spine. To my sawed-off ribs. To the thin, soft skin of my incisions.

Way too close.

I stumble. Thomas reaches for me, but I catch myself and back away. Elbows, hoodies, bags… even their cheerful shouts are threatening.

“Listen, I’m going to wait out here until everyone goes in,” I tell him.

He stands there for a second, staring at me. And I know he’s thinking he should wait with me but is most likely afraid to suggest it because I’ll bite his head off. I most likely would. Friends, he’d mouthed, standing in my living room. I don’t deserve a friend.

“I’ll be fine. You go on in.”

He stands there for another second, like he might not listen to me, then nods and moves on. I watch the back of his jean jacket disappear into the crowd of bodies and suddenly feel more alone than I have since that night at the movies. Two months… it feels like two hundred years.

I wander back toward one of the benches under the front office windows, and, slapping my empty-ish backpack on the bench, I lower myself down next to it.

A couple of people say happy hellos and welcome backs as they pass. I mumble hi in return but pull myself deeper into my brace to keep them walking.

The first bell rings, sounding more like a very loud board game buzzer than a bell. The crowd gets louder and picks up speed as it makes for the doors. They only have four minutes before they need to be in homeroom—I doubt anyone expects me on time, or at all.

The second bell rings and I’m still on the bench. The murmur inside the school quiets. A cold spring breeze whips by, clanking together the branches of the trees surrounding the student parking lot and making everything feel hollow.

I put half a Roxy in my mouth and let it dissolve, savoring the chalkiness as I watch the birds fly out of the trees together in one big clump, only to spin about in the air and re-land like some strange version of a bird flash mob. The Roxy tastes extra-terrible, which feels somehow right to me. I only take halves now. Although sometimes I still take two halves. This morning was sometimes.

I look around but am actually seeing her… willing her to come to me. To be here. To take me inside. To help me through this day.

My face feels like it’s sliding off me. I don’t have long until my whole body will slide off this bench. The world begins to blur. Or maybe I begin to blur.

Don’t blur, Eve.

I open my eyes. Wide. Taking in the trees, the sky. The birds? Where are the birds? My eyes are closed.

School. You’re at school, Eve. God, I just want to be fucking anywhere but here.

No.

Not anywhere.

Not there.

The Real One

You didn’t move.

Unlike Jayden,

who flew up out of his chair.

The hat—

the one he’d so sweetly

placed on your head

twelve minutes earlier—

spiraling out into the darkness.

“What the hell!”

he whispered.

“What the hell.

What the hell.

What the hell.”

Hoarsely,

in fear.

Fear.

Stumbling about

between the seats,

the action on the movie screen

flickered across his T-shirt

while shouts of disapproval

peppered the air.

I tried to stand, too.

But Nick’s gruff voice

held