the fight with Billy. Now Bret figured he was going to get such a talking-to from Daddy that he didn’t dare add a girl-pinch on top of everything else.
He closed his eyes and pressed the ice pack to his throbbing eye. He could hear Mrs. D. moving around the small room, reorganizing stuff and shutting and opening doors. It sounded just like when Mommy was getting ready for dinner.
DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT.
It wasn’t like Bret wanted to think about his mommy. When he did … when he accidentally remembered things like the way she used to scratch his back while they were watching TV or the way she yelled too loud when he caught a ball during Little League or how she cuddled with him every night for ten minutes before it was really bedtime … if he thought about those things too much, it was bad. He didn’t cry so much anymore—not until night, anyway. He just sorta … froze. Sometimes whole minutes would go by and he wouldn’t notice a thing until somebody smacked him on the back or yelled at him or something. Then he’d blink awake and feel totally stupid for spacing out.
That’s what had happened at recess today.
He’d stepped out into the snowy yard, and that was all it took. It happened like that sometimes, the remembering.
All he could think about was his mom and how much she loved the snow. The next thing he knew, Billy McAllister was standing in front of him, yelling, “What’s your damned problem, Brat?”
“Sorry, Billy,” he’d mumbled, not sure what it was he’d done that made Billy mad.
“Come on, Billy,” Sharie Lindley had said, “he didn’t do anything. Besides, Mrs. Kurek told us to be nice to Bret. Remember?”
Billy’s frown hadn’t faded. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. His mom’s a vegetable. Sorry, Brat.”
All Bret remembered was the way he screamed, My mom’s no carrot, and launched himself at Billy. The next thing he knew, Mr. Monie, the principal, was there, breaking up the fight, blowing his whistle. And now Bret was here, in the nurse’s room, feeling like a geekozoid and wondering how he’d face his friends again.
“Bretster?”
Bret flinched at the familiar voice and slowly turned. “Hi, Dad.”
Dad stood in the doorway. He was so tall, he had to kind of duck his head forward, and because of that he looked … bent. His silvery blond hair was too long now—Mommy used to cut it—and it fell across his wire-rimmed glasses a little. But Bret wasn’t fooled by those bits of glass. He’d learned long ago that his daddy’s green eyes saw everything.
Mrs. DeNormandie looked up from her work. She was organizing tongue depressors in a glass jar. “Oh. Hello, Dr. Campbell.”
In the old days, Dad would have smiled at Mrs. DeNormandie and she would have smiled back, but now neither one of them smiled. “Hey, Barb,” Dad said quietly, “could you give us a few minutes?”
“Of course.” She put the tongue depressors away and quickly left the room, shutting the door behind her.
Quiet fell, the icky kind that spelled big trouble.
“How’s the eye?” Dad said finally.
Bret turned to him, letting Daddy see for himself. He dropped the ice pack onto the floor. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Dad sat down beside Bret. “Really?” he said in that we-don’t-lie-in-this-family voice.
“Okay, okay. It hurts worse than when Jacey’s cow stepped on my foot at the fair.” At his dad’s soft look, Bret almost started to cry again. If Mommy were here—
DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT.
“I guess you’ve learned the first rule of fighting. It hurts. The second rule is: It doesn’t change anything. Who started it?”
“I did.”
Dad looked surprised. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I was mad.” Bret braced himself for the horrible words: I’m disappointed in you, son.
He felt like crying already, and Dad hadn’t said anything.
And he didn’t say anything. Instead, he put his arm around Bret’s shoulder and pulled him close. Bret climbed onto his dad’s big, comfortable lap. For once, he didn’t care if he looked like a baby.
Dad brushed the hair away from Bret’s face. “That’s going to be quite a shiner. Worse than the one Ian Allen got last Fourth of July. Why did you punch Billy?”
“He’s a bully.”
“But you’re not.”
Bret knew his dad would find out. Sharie’s aunt Georgia was best friends with Ida Mae at the diner, who served lunch every day to Carol, who worked in Dad’s office. In a town like Last Bend, it would be big news that Bret Campbell punched out Billy McAllister and