Page 132 of The Space Between
It moves on.
And so do we.
I stayed home for a week.This morning, I covered my bruises with makeup and headed back to school. It’s humid and loud. The hallways are full of chaos and middle school hormones.
The ‘Welcome Back’ sign is still hanging above the main doors from the first day of school, but more than half of the glitter letters are now gone. My classroom still smells like printer ink, dry-erase markers, and that vaguely sour scent of pre-teen/tween body spray and anxiety.
It’s totally normal and it’sjarring.
A week ago, I had a man I used to think loved me with his hands around my wrist and fire in his eyes—and now I’m walking around with a coffee mug that saysTeach Like A Boss.No one here knows what happened, except the principal. I had to tell her once I needed a complete week off so early in the year. She was quiet after I reveled the extent and she said that she was glad I was okay and that I could take the week off and not to worry about it.
She sounded sincere.
No one sees the bruises on my arm, still faint under the sleeve of my blouse or the massive one on my hip that’s now a mottled yellow and brown blob. No one would have any idea of the layers of makeup on my cheek to hide the mark from being backhanded… faint but still there and still very obvious of what it is.
No one asks why I keep checking my phone, even though I know it’s dead, cracked beyond saving, after Tyler smashed it into the floor.
They don’t ask and I don’t tell but I carry it in me… like a storm I survived… like a wound I stitched shut with my own hands.
Because I did. I stood up to him.
I defended myself and I took back my power.
I don’t know what would have happened if Gruene hasn’t shown up when he did.
But… he did.
And I’ll always remember that.
At lunch,I sit with a few other new hires in the corner of the faculty lounge. I listen to the chit chat, but don’t actually participate. Someone’s kid is teething. Someone else’s air conditioning went out. There’s half a cake in the fridge from a birthday but none of them know whose it was.
I smile. I nod in the right places.
My brain is back at the river… with him.
Gruene.
I keep replaying the way he said it… not just “I love you” also,“It’s yours” like I had the power to wreck him, and he was offering me the match.
I never wanted that kind of power, but I do want him… even if it terrifies me… even if it means I have to keep learning how to believe I’m not poison.
That my love doesn’t ruin everything it touches.
After school,I pick up a temporary phone from the shop in town, the guy behind the counter more interested in the new scratch-off machine than in helping me move my number over.
I send one message before I do anything else.
Me
Got a new phone. Number’s the same.
Me
I’m okay. Just tired.
It doesn’t take long.
Gruene
