“FUCKING RETARD,” Clint sneered at me the second day of school. Because that was his thing.
I ignored him, as I always did, shoving books into my locker. It was easier.
Apparently not for Carter, though. He grabbed Clint by the back of the head and threw him against the row of lockers, pressing his face against the cold metal. “You talk like that to him again and I’ll rip your fucking heart out,” he hissed. “Tell everyone that Ox is under Bennett protection and if anyone so much as looks at him funny, I’ll break their arms. Don’t fuck with Ox.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said quietly as Carter and Kelly pulled me away. Carter had his arm around my shoulders and Kelly held my elbow. “They go away eventually.”
“Fuck that,” Carter snarled.
“They don’t touch you,” Kelly growled. “Ever.”
THEY CAME into the school with their fancy clothes and their perfect faces and their secrets and everyone talked about them. The Bennett boys.
High school is the same wherever you go.
It’s rumors and clichés and innuendo.
They’re in a gang, people whispered.
They’re drug dealers.
They had to leave their other school because they killed a teacher.
They take turns fucking Ox.
Ox fucks them both.
I laughed and laughed.
We sat in the lunchroom and I had friends. Sometimes, I wanted to talk. Sometimes, I had nothing to say and opened my book. They always stayed.
They always sat on the same side of the table as me, crowding in close.
THEY WERE physical. The whole family.
A hand in my hair.
A hug.
Elizabeth’s kiss on my cheek.
Joe on the dirt road as I walked in the sun. His hand would go into mine and he would lean up against me as we headed home.
Kelly bumped my shoulders as we passed each other in the hallway.
The weight of Carter’s arm on me as we walked to class.
Thomas’s hand shaking mine, the grip strong and callused.
Mark’s thumb against my ear.
At first it was just me.
But as winter approached, they started to include my mother.
GORDO TOLD me about Joe. Part of it, anyway.
And I hated him for it.
“You have to be careful with him,” he said. We were on a smoke break, even though I didn’t smoke anymore.
“I know,” I said.
“You don’t. You don’t know the first thing.” He touched the raven on his arm. Smoke curled up around his fingers.
“Gordo—”
“He was taken, Ox.”
I stilled.
“They took him. In the middle of the night. To get back at his father. His family. They hurt him for weeks. He came back and he was broken. He didn’t even know his name—”
“Shut up,” I said hoarsely. “You shut your fucking mouth.”
He must have realized he’d gone too far. He closed his eyes. “Shit.”
“I love you,” I told him. “But I hate you right now. I’ve never hated you before, Gordo. But I hate you so fucking bad and I don’t know how to stop.”
We didn’t say anything for a very long time.
AND THEN everything changed.
or never/eight weeks
CHRIS’S MOM died and it was bad.
He cried in the middle of the shop, and I put my head on his shoulder. Rico touched his neck. Tanner laid his head on Chris’s back. Gordo ran his fingers over his buzzed hair.
He went away for a while.
He came back with Jessie. His little sister. She’d just turned seventeen and was going to live in Green Creek with him.
She looked like her brother. Brown hair and pretty green eyes. Fair skin with little freckles on her nose and cheeks and one on her ear that fascinated me. He brought her to the shop and she smiled quietly as he introduced her.
“And that’s Ox,” he said, and I walked into a wall.
The guys all stared at me.
“Did he just…?” Gordo asked.
“This is awesome,” Tanner said.
“Hi,” I said. My voice was much deeper than it’d ever been before. “I’m Ox. Oxnard. Call me Ox.” I tried to pose against a 2007 Chevy Tahoe but I slipped and skinned my elbow. I pulled myself back up. “Or Oxnard. Whatever.”
“Oh boy,” Rico said. “This is so awkward to witness. We should save him. Or leave.”
No one saved me. Or left.
“Hi, Ox,” Jessie said. “It’s nice to meet you.” She grinned and it was a mischievous thing with a hint of teeth. My mouth went dry because her lips were pretty and so were her eyes, and I thought, Well, that’s just fine.
“You… ah. You too?”
“Maybe Ox can show you around school next week when you start,” Chris said.
I dropped a socket wrench on my foot.
JESSIE STARTED school on a Tuesday in the spring. I was awkward, unsure, even when she laughed after I told a joke I didn’t mean to tell. It was low and throaty and I thought it was one of the nicest sounds I’d ever heard.
Carter and Kelly seemed to like her well enough, but they refused to leave my side between classes and crowded me more than usual at lunch. I suppose it must have looked odd to anyone else, seeing three big guys on one small bench while a girl sat opposite them with all the room in the world. She cocked her eyebrow at us, but Carter and Kelly refused to move and I explained to her later that’s just how they were.
“Protective?” she asked, eyeing the two of them.
“You could say that. Guys, come on.”
They glared at me before glaring at her.
She laughed at them.
Later, she walked with me to the shop after school and I turned red when her arm brushed mine. I held the door open for her, and she called me a gentleman. I tripped over my feet at that and almost knocked her to the ground. Rico said in a very loud voice that it must be love.
THE SUN was setting when I walked home, thoughts of pretty girls and brown hair swirling around in my head.
Joe was waiting for me, a smile on his face. The smile faded as I got closer.
“What is that?” he asked as I reached him.
“What?”
“That smell.”
I sniffed the air around me. It smelled the same. The forest and leaves and grass and blooming flowers, all sharp and heady. I told him so.
He shook his head. “Never mind.” The smile came back and he took my hand and we walked toward home. He told me about all he’d learned, how he couldn’t wait until he got to go to school with me and Carter and Kelly, and didn’t that tree look like a lady dancing? Did I see that rock with the crystal strip running down its side? Had I seen the commercial for that new superhero movie that we just had to go see this summer? Did I want to stay for dinner? Did I want to read comic books tonight?
“Yes, Joe,” I said.
Yes to it all.
IT WAS a Thursday that I finally worked up the nerve.
“She’s going to look at me weird and I won’t remember how to breathe!” I groaned to Carter and Kelly.