was still attacking Andrew, too involved in the fight to notice me until I grabbed him firmly and moved him off.
Andrew was screaming. When I went to pick him up, he lashed out, scrambling to get away. It took several attempts to grab his shoulders and get him to look at me. There was a trickle of blood from his nose and a split lip. But it was the deep, deep hurt in Andrew’s eyes that knocked the wind from me.
Those eyes filled with tears as recognition hit him, and I could tell he wanted to hug me but couldn’t in front of the other kids. I got that—sometimes appearing tough could be more important. I just hated that he was experiencing that lesson at all.
As I stood to help get him inside, I looked up and froze. Gordo was there, wrangling the other boys into a line and keeping the one boy who was glaring daggers at Andrew in check.
“I’ve got this handled. Get him to the nurse’s office,” Gordo called out over his shoulder. I didn’t hesitate, placing a hand on Andrew’s shoulder and escorting him inside.
“Nurse’s office” was a bit of a stretch. The center had an empty office with an old refrigerator/freezer combo, a few plastic chairs, and a cot. There was also a filing cabinet that held first aid items instead of folders. When we reached the room, Andrew lay down on the cot without prompting while I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer.
We sat in silence long enough for his shoulders to stop quaking and his sniffling to cease. When he sat up and looked at me, sheepish, I signed, “What happened?”
“They were calling me names.”
“How do you know?” I wasn’t trying to be a dick, but I remembered how quick I used to be to assume the worst of people, and Andrew had been sensitive for as long as I knew him.
He called me on it with a wry look. “I can read lips, Javi.”
Smiling, I held up my hands in submission. “Okay. So they were calling your names. Why didn’t you tell them to stop?”
His frown deepened. I could almost see the cogs turning as he figured out what to say. One of the best things about my time with Andrew was how we’d learned to give each other space to think. When words take work, they become sacred. He and I shared an understanding of the importance of making them mean something.
“I already don’t like speaking. I know my voice sounds stupid because of how other people look when they listen to me. But when I get so angry, I can’t speak.” His hands moved in sharp, emphatic gestures. “I couldn’t tell them to stop, even though I wanted to, because my mouth and voice wouldn’t work. I hate being trapped by this stupid fucking disability sometimes.”
Mother. Fucking. Ooph. Because holy shit, I got that. I felt every word in my bones, my marrow buzzing with the years of struggling to speak, of feeling trapped in my own head by my speech impediment. It too often felt like a shackle, designed to hold me back—and yeah, when I got upset, I couldn’t speak either.
But I also knew what happened when you let anger be your choice instead of walking away. I didn’t want to think of Andrew having to learn the hard lessons I did. Or worse lessons.
“I’m going to be that asshole adult who tells you a story and hopes you learn from it. Bear with me, okay?”
Andrew cracked a smile and winced when it tugged at his hurt lip. But he didn’t argue or roll his eyes. I knew he was ready to listen.
“When I was young, I had a temper like you do. Real hot, and it didn’t take much for me to pop off. Especially when some jerk said something ugly. Which they did, all the time.” I shot Andrew a knowing look and he nodded. He knew how shitty kids could be—hell, I’d just pulled him out of a firsthand example of it. “So one kid managed to find out about my parents. Both of my parents were junkies. My dad overdosed and died, and not long after my mom disappeared.”
My signing slowed, not because the story was upsetting me, but because I knew that things like this needed time to settle in. Andrew would need to absorb the shock of my history before I could move on to the meat of my story. His