where these kids could so easily look up synopses online and cheat their way through our entire semester together, he did not even have the respect to use CliffsNotes as kids my age would have done when we were in high school.
“Brian, in the future, you can just tell me you didn’t do the reading. I’ll have to dock your participation grade for the day, but it’s not the end of the world. That said, if you want to do well in my class, particularly when we get to tests, I suggest you crack open the book at some point.”
“Yeah, of course, Mr. Warner. Just been busy with practice.”
I detected a few eye rolls around the room, and I couldn’t let it slide. “I’m sure your peers have equally busy lives, yet they manage to make time for their assignments.”
“Of course, Mr. Warner.” He gave me that ever-obedient expression, the sort I was sure he gave his parents when they told him to behave before he went out and boozed the night away with his friends.
I moved on to Valerie, who, to my relief, offered a competent enough response to get our discussion going. As I turned to jot down a few character names and themes on the board, I heard Brian mutter, “What a fucking asshole.”
I froze mid-word.
It was that perfect volume he’d said it at, enough that everyone in class heard, a test to see if I would pretend not to hear him or if I would challenge him, make him deal with the repercussions of his actions. Expecting the denial and the insistence that he hadn’t said such a thing, creating an investigation out of the classroom, it was the sort of thing a kid like him banked on me avoiding, which was why I had to turn and deal with it.
As soon as I did, I noticed a desk topple over.
A figure dashed across the classroom, at a pace that startled me and earned gasps around the room. I hardly had time to react before Brian shifted in his seat. Kyle grabbed him by his shirt collar and yanked him from his desk, kicking it aside as he moved through the row of seats beside his, and pushed him up against the wall. I jumped into action as quickly as I could, moving over to them as Kyle got in Brian’s face.
“I think you should show Teach a little respect,” Kyle said.
“Fuck are you talking about? Get off me, dude.” Brian pushed, but Kyle firmed his hold, keeping Brian pinned against the wall. “I think you owe him a fucking apology.”
“Mr. Forsythe, this is unnecessary,” I said. “Please let go of Mr. Finnegan. He’s already in trouble, and this is only getting both of you detention.”
“I don’t give a shit about detention,” Kyle said. “He needs to apologize.”
Despite Kyle’s temperament—and he seemed ready to punch someone’s lights out—I stepped up to him to spare Brian, hoping Kyle didn’t lose it and turn his aggression on me. “Mr. Forsythe, this is not how we manage this. Please let him go.”
As Kyle turned to me, I could see something had been triggered. I hadn’t seen him look like that, totally out of himself, since the night he’d helped me in that alley in town.
But as if seeing me for the first time, he took a breath. Something changed in his expression as he seemed to understand that what seized him wasn’t all him. And now that I knew the source of his pain, I understood that he was in the grips of something far more powerful than anything Brian could have understood.
He stepped back, taking a breath.
“The fuck?” Brian asked.
I could tell by Brian’s reaction it wasn’t going to be enough to give them warnings. If I didn’t take this to the administrators, my job would be on the line if his prissy parents called and tried to hold me or Kyle accountable for what had just taken place.
Of course, when I took them to the principal, Brian acted as though he’d been decked, so we had to manage all the red tape. Brian, of course, was given a warning for his attitude during class, while Kyle would face detention, something that even as Dr. Henry gave it, she didn’t seem fazed by—it all clearly encouraged her very wrong assumptions about him.
When I finally managed to get Kyle on his own in the guidance counselor’s office, he sat on the sofa, looking about as put out as he