It’s a little better out of the hallways. But not much. In math class, the guy behind me keeps poking my back with his pencil. The first time he does it, I startle—which he thinks is hysterical. It doesn’t take me long to find that the guy’s name is Carl and this is a regular occurrence. I don’t find any memory of Moses fighting back. So I just sit there and take it. I look around for some sympathetic looks, but no one seems to care. Moses is not the only one who’s used to it.
At the end of class, the teacher asks for homework to be passed up to the front of the room, and I can’t find Moses’s in his backpack. Meanwhile, Carl is shoving his paper in my face, telling me to pass it up. I want to rip it into shreds. I want to shower the shreds over his head. And at the same time, I want to know why I’m letting him get to me. It’s like my navigation through the day has been stripped of any possibility of autopilot. I need autopilot.
The bell rings and Carl takes a bottle of Gatorade out of his bag, opens the cap, and pours the contents into my backpack. I don’t even see it happening at first, I’m so mad at myself about the homework. Then I see him dropping the empty bottle into my bag, and I remember that Moses’s phone is in there. Even though I know I should not engage, I take the bottle out of my backpack and hold it by its neck and swing it at Carl’s laughing face. It’s a plastic bottle, and the damage I do is minimal, but his surprise is immense. Now people are paying attention, and are yelling that it’s a fight. But I don’t want to fight, I just want to save the phone, so I go for my backpack, which gives Carl the opening he needs to throw me to the ground. I can feel myself being lifted, just for a second, and then I’m falling and I’m hitting and he’s yelling that he’s going to hurt me. The teacher’s coming over now, and Carl is claiming self-defense. School security comes and is only slightly less belligerent than Carl. I am marched to the vice principal’s office, and the whole time I’m trying to dry off the phone—I’m actually asking if there’s any way to get a bag of rice from the cafeteria, because I’ve heard that rice can help, but the security guard is completely ignoring anything I say. I look behind me, assuming I’ll see Carl marched in the same formation. But apparently I’m the only one being corralled. It’s the time between class periods now, so the halls are full. People look confused to see me being pulled along by security. I can see a few asking their friends who I am.
The phone won’t turn on. My backpack is leaking a trail on the linoleum floor of the hallway. The security guard is yelling at me to put the phone away, asking me what the hell I’m doing, as if having a dead phone out is an admission of guilt in all things.
I am shown into the vice principal’s office. He’s on the phone, and when he hangs up, I realize the call was about me, because straight off he says, “So…you hit a fellow student with a bottle.”
“It was plastic,” I tell him.
This is the wrong thing to say.
“I don’t care if it was made of feathers,” the vice principal fumes. “This school has zero tolerance for violence. Zero.”
“Please,” I say. “Let me give you some context.”
I know there’s a twisted code of honor about never tattling on another student, never speaking up against someone who’s done you wrong. I know I will only make it worse by breaking this code. But the code of honor was written by bullies for the protection of bullies, and I don’t want to follow it.
I tell the vice principal what happened. I tell him about all the abuses Moses has put up with from Carl and his friends—every single one I can find in Moses’s memory, leading up to today. When I tell the vice principal how the bottle came to be in my hand, I see him look at my bag and the pool of Gatorade gathering underneath it.
“I apologize for snapping,” I tell him. “I know that was wrong. But I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to protect myself.”
“Carl Richards says he was protecting himself,” the vice principal points out.
“Yeah,” I say, gesturing to my body. “Because I’m so threatening.”
The vice principal snort-laughs at that, then collects himself, picks up his phone again, and says, “Please find out what classroom Carl Richards is in now and have him sent to see me in five minutes. Thank you.” When he hangs up, he looks at me for a hard few seconds before saying, “Alright. I want you to go see Ms. Tate in the guidance office. Tell her everything you told me, and anything else you might come to remember. Then wait there until the end of school. I’ll talk to Mr. Richards and hear his ‘context,’ and then Ms. Tate and I will discuss our next steps. This is a very serious matter, and I am taking it very seriously.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I pick up my dripping bag and start to head out.
“You also have permission to go to the men’s room to dry that off. The guidance suite has carpeting.”
“Understood, sir.”
I know I have to get out quick, because I don’t want to run into Carl again. Which is cowardly of me, because Moses will have to face him eventually—and since I’m the one who messed up, I should shoulder the initial, inevitable blowback. But I dodge, because I can.
The bathroom is empty. I use about forty paper towels to dry everything off. Some of the books have pages stained orange, and anything that was sitting at the bottom of the backpack—a small notebook, a pack of gum, another granola bar—is now the consistency of pulp.
I try turning on the phone again. Nothing.
I want to go to the library, to use the computer to check Facebook.
Then I remember, no—I have to get to the “guidance suite.”
The minute I walk into Ms. Tate’s office, she says, “Moses, this isn’t like you. This isn’t like you at all.” I am not surprised that she would say this, but I am surprised that she knows him enough to make the distinction. They’ve clearly talked before, but never about the real problems. Now I have to tell her what I’ve already told the vice principal—and as I do, she looks more and more concerned. I don’t have time to verify it, but I imagine that Moses has only gone to the guidance counselor before to talk about grades and colleges.
“I see, I see,” she says when I’m done. Then she closes her eyes for the slightest of moments, breathes in, and resumes. “Look. You are a smart boy, Moses. And you did a stupid thing. But part of being smart is doing stupid things and learning from them. We do have a zero-tolerance policy at this school about violence. And we also have a zero-tolerance policy about bullying. When those two policies collide—well, it calls for a little tolerance on our part. But whatever happens—and it’s truly out of my hands—you must never attack anyone else here ever again. Period. Is that clear?”