Page 2 of Win You Over
“Freak,” someone yells, but I can no longer tell who, as ringing builds in my ears. “All you have to do is beg us, Booker, and we’ll stop. Open your mouth, you stupid fuck.”
I stop thrashing, my body going limp as I’m hit again by another wave of pain over my stomach and chest. Floating images of laughing faces and monsters fill my blackening vision.
I almost laugh at myself then because I am a stupid fuck. I believed one of the most popular kids in school wanted to be my friend. A smarter kid would have known better. A stronger kid would have fought back.
High pitched laughter and the blurred faces of my attackers invade my dreams. Cold eyes and sharp teeth. Monsters out to get me. I wake with a start, my breath exhaling in short stuttering puffs as a heavy, crushing feeling pushes on my chest.My arms flail around trying to fight the invisible attackers off. The hands that land on me though, are soft and warm. Comforting. Not like the hands from earlier. Or the sharp claws in my dream.
Gently, Mum pulls me to her. She smells like that purple flower we have in the garden. The one that the big furry bees always hang around. I love those bees. She rubs my hair and kisses my forehead, and I let my body sink into her warmth. My eyes drift open and closed, then open again, taking in the brightly lit hospital room. The grey walls and the blue blanket over my body. My chest is bandaged in a thick white gauze that wraps over my ribs, hiding the horror that lies beneath.
Even if my own body no longer feels like mine, I know I’m safe right now. The boys who put me here are gone. The monsters now nothing but a distant nightmare.
I must fall asleep again, because when I’m next aware of my surroundings, even with my eyes still closed, I know my mum isn’t next to me. She’s in the room, though. I hear her telling someone to keep their voice down because she doesn’t want to wake me.
She thinks I’m asleep and that I can’t hear that she’s crying. Her words trembling as she speaks in a whisper not quite soft enough to go unnoticed. Her sentences are broken up by sniffling and on each hiccupped sob my heart hurts a little more. The sound of her sadness – which is all my fault – makes me feel all tumbly inside. Like I’m rolling in a wave that’s too powerful for me to escape.
It’s because I’m weak.
An ugly duckling.
A stupid little freak.
“They put him in the fucking hospital, Sandra!” Her voice raises then dips again before there’s a shuffling of shoes on tiles and when she speaks again, her voice is a little furtheraway. “Kids. Hisclassmates,” she says in a hushed tone and I’m suddenly reminded about how I got here. My hand slides over my chest, down over the soft, bobbly bandages. I can’t feel the pain anymore, but even though the kids who did this to me call me stupid, I know what they did has left a mark. One that I probably won’t ever get rid of.
“They held him down and set his skin on fire with a lighter and a fucking can of deodorant!”
“I know, Bee. We’ll talk to the school again.” Sandra’s voice is reassuring, strong and confident. There’s a storm of emotions screaming inside of me, but knowing she’s here for Mum settles some of the chaos. I can’t begin to understand what it must be like to have a friend like that. Someone you can rely on. Someone who always has your back.
“The police are involved this time,” she adds, and my mum cries a little harder and my stomach tumbles and twists into a tight ball, until my mouth feels funny and I think I might be sick.
This time.Because it’s not the first time a bully has left a mark on me. It’s only the first time it was bad enough to land me in hospital. Opening my eyes, I chance a quick look at Mum. Her shoulders are slumped and her head is buried in her hands, her dark hair hanging loose down her back.
When she speaks again, I close my eyes, trapping my own tears behind my eyelids.
“I’m sick of talking to the school and them doing nothing!” she says, her voice laced with tears and anger. “It was bad enough when he came home with bruises on his ribs, or a black eye. But this?” She sniffs again. “He’s twelve years old and he’s suffered so much in his short life. He rarely ever speaks anymore, even to me and I’m…” her voice trails off, her tears washing away her words.
“You’re scared for him, I understand,” Sandra replies. “None of this is fair, but we’ll get through it.” Iwantto believe her, butI’m also so tired. Tired of being alone and never sure who I can trust. I trusted Lucas and look at what he did. How can I ever trust another person enough to call them a friend? How will I ever be anything but alone?
“I’m afraid this bullying won’t stop. Not until they kill him, or until he…” She doesn’t finish her sentence, but I know what she’s thinking. Until I take the option my dad did.
It was two days after my tenth birthday that my dad went missing. It was four days after my tenth birthday when the police showed up at our door after finding his body washed up on the banks of the river Thames. It was that same day, feeling completely helpless when I wrapped my arms around my mother as she lay crumpled on the floor, that I couldn’t get my tongue to work. I couldn’t get out the words of comfort that I so badly wanted to offer her, nor could I ask the questions I really needed answers to. It was four days after my tenth birthday that my voice started hiding.
All the pain of what those boys did to me wasn’t enough to force my words out. Even as the smell of my burning skin reached my nose and my body started to shake from the pain and they promised that all I had to do was say one word and it would all be over. Even then, I couldn’t get my tongue to work the way it’s supposed to.
I can speak, and I do. I even like it sometimes. But at other times, usually when it really matters, I can’t do it. It didn’t take me very long to work out that my silence upsets people. It makes them nervous. People don’t like what they don’t understand – that’s what my mum said – and the kids at school don’t understand me. So they pick on me. They picked on me long before my dad died, but his death and its impact on me made things worse.
A stupid little freak.That’s what they call me. Because I’m quiet, because my dad is dead, because I’m small and my glasses are wonky and my hair is messy. Because I’m not like them.
But I’m also not like my dad. I don’t want to die. I just want to be left alone. I just want to go to school and not be afraid.
My thoughts spiral back to the events of earlier today and I swear I can smell that awful burning again before my attention is grabbed by Mum’s words. Her voice is louder now as if she forgot she was trying not to disturb me. “I can’t do this anymore, Sandra. This life was Evan’s dream. He was the one who wanted to live in London. I’d have been happy going home years ago, before Holden started school, but we stayed for him and then he...” She stalls and I hold my breath, waiting for her next words. “...I’m not doing it anymore.”
The room falls silent for a few heartbeats. I can hear my pulse in my ears, like a distant drumming. It’s Sandra who breaks it and her voice is sad, which only makes that tumbly feeling in my stomach worse.
“You’re going back to the States.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement. The cold, brutal truth.
My fault. My fault. My fault.
If I was stronger, I could have fought back. I could have stopped the bullies and then Mum wouldn’t be sad and Sandra wouldn’t be sad and I wouldn’t be hurt.
