Page 29 of Seven Days in June

There was an electric calm. Suddenly, Genevieve’s neck snapped back, hard, and her head felt eerily weightless. She turned around, and Apple Bottom was grasping three-fourths of Genevieve’s ponytail in one hand and scissors in the other. The Boyfriend cackled.

“I’m getting Principal Miller,” Mr. Weismuller said with a robotic lack of urgency and left the room.

Genevieve felt behind her neck, where her hair no longer was. A red fury raged through her, and she pushed Apple Bottom’s desk violently, knocking her backward. Apple Bottom shrieked, unhurt but tangled under a chair.

“Kill this new bitch,” screamed The Boyfriend to no one.

“No,” said Shane, standing up. “You. Fight me.”

Everybody looked at The Boyfriend. It was clear he didn’t want to do this.

One girl went, “Nope. When Shane starts with his shit, I’m out. Y’all ain’t gonna fuck around and get me suspended right before graduation.” She grabbed her backpack and left.

“Fight me, nigga,” Shane repeated. They were nose-to-nose now. The crowd formed a wide circle around them.

The Boyfriend threw a weak punch, knocking Shane across the nose. Shane folded his arm across his chest. He hit Shane harder. Then Shane whispered something in his ear, causing him to really rear back and crack Shane on the temple. Then the class was shouting “Fuck him up, fuck him up,” and The Boyfriend shoved Shane to the ground, fists flying. Shane’s nose and lip were bleeding, but he didn’t fight back.

“Stop!” Genevieve yelled. “Jesus Christ, Shane, it’s just hair!”

Abruptly, Shane heaved the kid off him and stood up. His breathing was jagged, erratic. And then he lifted up his hurt arm, the one in the cast, and whacked The Boyfriend across the cheekbone, hard, with a sickening thwack. The Boyfriend dropped.

Shane clutched his ravaged arm to his chest, the bone rebroken. He stood there, trembling, gritting his teeth, radiance draining from his skin. Then he shot Genevieve a bloody smile and crumpled to the ground. It was the most terrifying, graceful thing she’d ever seen.

“Someone get help. He’s…”

The last thing Genevieve saw was Apple Bottom’s fist inches from her nose, and then a zillion bright lights.

Six hours later, Genevieve and Shane lay in cots next to each other in a curtain-enclosed space at United Medical Center’s emergency room. They’d been there all day with the school guidance counselor, Ms. Guzman, perched between them in a foldout chair. The Boyfriend was discharged and went home with his grandmother, sporting a fractured cheekbone. Apple Bottom left with her aunt and a bruised shoulder. Shane’s arm was reset with a new cast, and between his upper lip and left eyebrow, he had a total of fourteen stitches. Genevieve got off easiest, with a ghastly black eye and an even ghastlier bob.

She and Shane were suspended, but as seventeen-year-old minors, they couldn’t legally be discharged until a parent or guardian picked them up. Ms. Guzman couldn’t reach Lizette, which was no surprise.

Ms. Guzman couldn’t find Shane’s guardian, either. Apparently, he lived in a foster-kid shelter, and no administrators were reachable.

Now they were just lying there. Waiting. While Ms. Guzman dipped outside for her thirty-seventh smoke break.

Genevieve was in agony. That punch had rattled her brain. The ER docs had treated her bruised eye, but despite her increasingly panicked pleas, they’d given her only Advil for her head. At her pain level, this was as helpful as an M&M.

Shaking badly, she’d curled into a ball, clawing into her forearm with her nails as a distraction.

“Genevieve?” Shane whispered from his cot.

“John-vee-EV,” she groaned, through gritted teeth.

“You good?”

“No.”

She watched him peer out into the hallway and then shut the curtain. He dug in his jeans pocket, yanked out a baggie of pills, and grabbed a Dixie cup of water. He handed both to her.

“Will OxyContin help?”

“Grind it up,” she rasped.

Shane pulled an ATM card (name unknown) from his magic pocket and cut the pills into four lines of chunky powder on a metal medical tray. Gently, he held the tray under her nose, steadying the back of her head with his good hand, and Genevieve sniffed each line. It went down rough but worked fast—the hurt dulling, her face slackening, muscles going gooey.So good.Oxy didn’t kill the pain, just made it so it didn’t matter.

He smoothed her ruined curls from her face. She tucked his hand under her cheek. It belonged there.

“You’re my bestbestbest friend,” she sighed, groggily and goofily.

---