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He finally looked at me. The rage in his bright eyes made something swell in my chest.
I was pretty sure he was mad at me for saying that, but that look, those eyes, the way it made me feel, was thrilling. Magical. Like I’d just discovered something to do. Some bright new adventure. Some task that gave me purpose.
I smiled at him. “I like your hair. I think it looks really nice. Those little shits,” I was proud of myself for pulling out a good curse word for him, “just wish they had your hair. Wish they had anything of yours.”
His jaw clenched, and I thought how handsome he was. No one else looked like him. His solemn face was without flaw.
“Nothin’ they say should get to you,” I continued. “You’re better than them.”
“Same to you,” he finally spoke back. “Nothing they say should get to you, either.”
I was straight up beaming at him. I’d never felt my face move like that, like it couldn’t smile big enough.
“I like your gram,” I said, and it was true. She always gave me candy and told me I was pretty. She was the nicest grownup I’d ever met.
“Gram likes you, too,” he returned. His voice wasn’t how I’d heard it before. Usually he was yelling at people. Now, when he was talking softly, it was really nice. I decided I liked it. A lot.
“Wanna know why I was fightin’?” I asked him. I wanted to tell him the story. I wanted it to impress him.
But the fact was, it didn’t take much to get me fighting.
Grandma always said I was a prickly little thing. She was not one for kind words, but even I knew that was the nicest way you could put it.
I was a mean little ball of hate.
He shook his head. “I know why you were. As far as I’m concerned,” he said, speaking in that way he had, like he only knew how to talk to grownups, “you had every right to do that.”
My heart swelled with pride. Not once, in my entire wretched life, had anyone ever offered me encouragement like that, let alone for doing something that even I knew was naughty.
I really, really liked him when he talked to me like that.
I opened my mouth to tell him something, I don’t know what, but it would have been something good, something encouraging, to try to make him feel how he’d just made me feel.
That was when his mom showed up.
I instantly closed my mouth and looked away. She intimidated me, and I didn’t want to call attention to myself.
I needn’t have worried. She didn’t even see me, her disapproving glare was all for her troublemaking son.
“Don’t start with me; I don’t wanna hear it,” he muttered at her before she could even speak.
I gaped. In my world, grownups were scary and you didn’t talk back unless you wanted to get slapped so hard your ears would ring. Other kids were the only ones you could stand up to.
But she didn’t slap him. She just kept staring at him for a few beats, then her lip started to tremble and she turned away.
I gaped harder. I hadn’t thought I could like him anymore today, but he’d gone and done it.
He was a bona fide badass, and I loved it.
He shot me one quick glance as the vice principal ushered him and his mom into her office.
His mouth had shaped into a small, conspiratorial smile.
I was hooked. I really couldn’t think of anyone that impressed me more in that moment. I wanted to follow him around, learn his secrets.
How had he not gotten slapped for talking to his mom like that? How had he instead made her cry?
Badass.
