Page 29 of Coached By the Grumpy Gargoyle

"You've been recording him?"

"It's all on there." He says it to the carpet, steady, like he rehearsed it. "Every time it happened is in there. They're sorted by date. At first I wasn't going to do anything with them. I just wanted it to exist somewhere. Because it would happen, and then he'd smile at everybody in the hallway, and it was like it didn't happen. Like I made it up." His jaw works. "I wanted there to be one place where I wasn't making it up."

For a moment I can't answer him. My eyes sting, and I make myself take a deep steadying breath. Then he looks up, and I wait. He's still holding the phone close to his chest. His fingers are trembling against the case.

"You said I deserved to stand up for myself." His voice shakes and keeps going. "Not because I'm useful. Not because of the team. Because I'm worth it. You said that was enough."

"I said that." It comes out mostly level. “And you are, Eli.”

"And you said when I decided I was ready, whenever that was, you'd be right there beside me."

"I did."

"Okay." He puts the phone in my hand. His fingers are cold and they are not steady and he does it anyway. "I thought about it. I'm ready."

I take the phone carefully. He's watching my face now, waiting to see what I'll do with it. This is what he came here for, and I don't want him spending another second wondering if I'll believe him.

"I'm glad you brought it to me, Eli." I hold his gaze for a moment. "Show me where to start."

He leans over the desk, opens a folder, and then he steps back and turns to my window and the slice of field in it. He doesn't look back at the phone. I turn the screen toward me and start to scroll.

The folder is named locker room. There are dozens of clips inside it, each date stamped. I scroll back through them. Eli hasn't moved from the window. I glance at him once, then open the oldest video.

The image shows the view from inside the equipment cage, with chain-link soft in the near frame, a stack of helmets, and past them the end of a locker row and a stretch of bolted bench. Eli's in frame with the laundry bin, sorting towels, hood down, working, and Cole Braddock walks in from the left. Eli turns toward him. Cole walks straight up to him and knocks him against the lockers with his shoulder.

I watch another clip, then another. The dates change, but each one starts with Eli trying to do his job. In one, he's carrying a water bottle when Cole slaps it out of his hands. In another, Cole tips the laundry bin, then stands there while Eli kneels to pick everything up. Eli keeps his head down. He doesn't say anything I can hear. He just gathers the towels while that enormous boy watches him.

My grip tightens around the phone. I want to stop the video, but Eli brought it to me so somebody would see what happened. I make myself keep watching. Every time Cole comes into the room, Eli stops what he's doing or tries to move away. Every time, Cole goes after him anyway.

I look up at the boy by my window. His shoulders are hunched, and he's picking at the cuff of his sleeve. He knows what I'm watching. I wish I could reach into the screen and stand beside him there, before Cole gets close enough to touch him.

Gene called it horseplay. Things boys do. Gene is full of shit.

I look back at the phone, at Eli backing away from a boy almost twice his size. There is nothing playful about it. He is trying to get away from danger.

I find the recording from the Monday before last, the morning I found him in the storage room. I open it, and there he is beside the laundry bin. Cole comes into view. I watch him hit Eli, watch Eli bring a hand to his nose and look at the blood on his fingers. At the end, Cole tosses him a towel.

I have that towel in my bag. I know what it looks like with Eli's blood dried into it. Now I know exactly how it got there, and I have to put the phone down for a moment before I can go on.

Eli shifts beside the window. I pick it back up. He waited until he was ready to bring this to me. I can watch it.

Yesterday's clip is the last one. The timestamp says quarter past five.

The bin goes over. The towels fan across the floor. Cole has him against the lockers in the back bay. I knew what Bram meant when he told me. I wasn't prepared to see Eli pulled up onto his toes, his hands clutching Cole's wrist while his collar stretches against his throat.

Then Bram enters the frame.

I recognize him before I can make out his face. He crosses the locker room without one wasted step and pulls Cole away from Eli with one hand. Then he puts himself between them and stays there. Eli is behind him, and Cole can't get to him without going through Bram.

I stop the clip right there, on the frame where seven feet of gargoyle stands planted between a bully and my kid.

I look at his hand on Cole's shoulder. He didn't hesitate. He didn't wait for Eli to ask him for help. It was just him and the two boys, and he stepped in the moment he saw what was happening.

I don't know how to make sense of all this. Watching him protect Eli makes my chest ache, and I wish it didn't. I knew he was capable of it. That was why I looked at him in Gene's office.

I can't work out what happened between us while Eli is standing at my window, waiting for me to help him. I set the phone on the desk and turn toward him.

"Eli." He turns from the window, his eyes going straight to my face. I stand, and I come around the desk so I can speak to him without the furniture between us. "I'm taking this to Principal Oakes. Right now."