Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved.

CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN: EIGHTH GRADE

D A T E : May 2010

✖ the struggle ✖

I'd never hit someone so hard in my life. It made my hand numb and my entire arm tingle, like the feeling ya get when playing baseball, and the ball hits the metal bat and sends an earthquake up your arm with a satisfying crack! That's when you know you hit gold, when you hear the crack. I didn't hear Kole's nose crack at all, but boy did it feel like it.

No one really knew what exactly happened, because no one really believed that it was me who gave Kole a bloody nose and a black eye. The bruising on my knuckles said otherwise, but I covered them up with long sleeved sweatshirts and avoided anyones questions when we got back to school on Monday. The principle nearly suspended me for a day, but I was one of the quietest girls in the grade, next to Yui, and I had a perfect record. I was able to apologize, too, like the whole thing was an accident. I wasn't sure what it was.

They put Kole and I both in the principle's office before school on Monday, and seeing his eye made me all queasy, but I sat down anyway, even if he wouldn't stop looking at me. The principle closed the door behind himself and stepped around our chairs to seat himself in his own desk. It was only then that Kole looked away from me.

"My dad isn't angry about it at all, and I can promise you that-" Kole started, but the principle quieted him and looked sternly at me down his hunched nose.

"I understand, he called me yesterday morning about the whole ordeal. I just hope that the two of you get along better so that this doesn't happen. I don't want fights becoming a regular 'thing' in this school," he informed us, but his eyes kept looking at me, like he was singling me out particularly.

"It was a one-time thing. I won't start anymore fights, I promise," I told him. I felt like a robot. "I'm sorry about the trouble I caused."

"Don't tell me, tell Mr. Dashner," the principle said, nodding his head over to where Kole sat looking more derailed than ever. He was so utterly confused—I knew because he'd messaged me over ten times between the dance and now asking if we were "cool". When it came down to it, I never answered because I didn't know what Monday would bring, and some things were better said out loud even when words are easiest to manipulate on a page.

I can't remember exactly what it was I told Kole at that moment in the principle's office—I was probably out of it because he was staring at me, and if it were all a cartoon, there'd be a dribble of sweat running down my forehead, but I made it out alive. He sent us both to class, but before I could leave, the principle told Kole to take off his beanie and delivered news I already knew from the email he sent Mom; I'd have to serve an hour detention after school before all was said and done.

When I was finally able to leave the principle's office, Kole was waiting for me out in the hall where the secretaries could see him through the window. I tried to make a face that would show I wasn't angry, or sad, or any of that, but it must not've worked.

He fiddled with the edge of the beanie in his hand before deciding to fold it up and stuff one end of it into his back pocket. "Look, Skye, even if what you said in there was true, I really am sorry-"

"For what?" I inquired, which seemed to be a curve ball to him because he gave me a look that said, "Don't you know?"

"Are you sure you're not angry? I mean, Bluebell and I aren't- we aren't-"

"Why would I be mad about that? Now c'mon, we're gonna be late to class if we don't hurry up. I still need to go to my locker and all," I told him, turning and beginning to walk in the direction of the eighth grade hallway. He followed suit, but as soon as we were out of view of the front office windows, pulled me to a stop and forced me to look him in the eye.

I really didn't want to look at his eye—all blue and yellow and puffy like that—so I kept my eyes everywhere but his. Besides, he looked like he was terribly upset about something, and his hand was clammy on my arm. It was just as cold as when he didn't wear mittens that day in winter when I found him by the bike path.

"Seriously, Skye, I need to know if you're angry with me. I can't—I don't think I could handle it if you don't want to be friends anymore," he said, his voice so quiet like if he talked any louder, it would crack. "And I deserved to be punched. I was an idiot. You can punch me again if I get outta line again, too."

It was awful of me, but I laughed and had to cover my mouth to hide my smug smile. He breathed out a sigh of relief, which turned into an affectionate smile that damn near killed me. "So we're fine?" he clarified.

"Yeah, I guess. Just warn me next time, alright?" And I meant it.

We didn't shake on it or anything like that. We just walked to the eighth grade hall, and he mentioned going to Minnesota over the weekend because apparently, his sister was checking out colleges. Thinking about college threw me for a loop though, because I'd completely forgotten that we were eighth graders, which would make his sister a senior, and Parker a junior in high school.

The thought of Parker was like suddenly thinking about sponges in the middle of dinner. The last time we'd heard about Parker was when Mrs. Walton called a month ago, and we weren't even home when she called. I heard her little English voice on the answering machine all the way from upstairs, and to be honest, Fynn never even talked about his mom, his dad, or even Parker for that matter. All that business with Parker's girlfriend Zoey kind of beat him down for a while.

It was weird, but I thought about Fynn for the rest of the day, and thought maybe I'd message him on Facebook when I got home, just to see what he was up to, maybe he had a cool video coming out soon or something. Landon and I had just finished editing an advertisement for this new club starting up, and figured since a lot of our class watched our videos whenever they came out, they'd watch a fun skit about Nerds Unite and think to join. Who wouldn't want to get crazy about movies, books, card games, and board games? Zach was in charge of it all, and Joni would be second in command, if it weren't for her interfering studies and the overbearing eyes of her parents.

Fynn would get a kick outta that, I mused to myself as I sat down in algebra. Anything was better than algebra, so I thought about video tags that Fynn and I could use, like, "What's on your bucket list?", or perhaps he could send me knick knacks from London and I could send back cheese from Wisconsin. Hopefully it wouldn't mold.

It was in study hall when I'd normally go to the library that I decided instead to find Landon to talk to about the now extensive list I had. There were old ideas from past brainstorms on there as well, but that didn't matter. I was excited to see what he thought, but I didn't find him anywhere in his homeroom, and he wasn't in the library, so I checked in with Joni and Zack, who were manning the front counter where kids came to check out and return books. Mrs. Austen wasn't anywhere to be found, and Kole was way the hell on the other side of the library where the helpers sat. He wasn't even a helper, but Mrs. Austen didn't care. He was in here so often anyway.

"I'm sorry miss, you've been banned from this library for life. We don't tolerate hooligans and roughhousing," Joni announced, deepening her voice like she suddenly owned a badge and drove a police car. I rolled my eyes and stepped up to the counter anyway. "I'm unarmed, don't hurt me!" she shrieked, leaping from her stool and ducking behind the counter. Zack turned around from his work at the sound of her collapsing to the floor while I laughed and pretended like it was completely okay for her to be shouting like that in the library. Not everyone knew I was the instigator of the fight anyway.

"Hey Skye, what's up?" Zack asked me as Joni collected herself once more.

I smiled and greeted him, and said I was doing well. He nodded and turned back to work, leaving just Joni and I to chat.

"So what's up? Are you and Kole on good terms again?" she asked me.

"I guess, yeah. His black eye freaks me out, though," I admitted, and she had a good laugh about it. I was quick to change the topic after that, and said, "Have you seen Landon around?"

A frown fell on her features when I said that, like something had just clicked in her mind, and her eyebrows turned down. "No, why? I haven't seen him at all today."

"He was at lunch, though, wasn't he?" Neither of us remembered, and I felt like bashing my head into the counter for being such an idiot.

Joni paused her work at the library counter and told Zack she'd be right back. Before leaving the library altogether, though, I scurried across the carpeted floor to where Kole sat in one of the cushioned chairs playing on his PSP. He was facing me, his legs tossed over the armrest of the chair, and paused his game when he saw me come up.

"I need a favor," I told him.

"What for?"

"Have you seen Landon at all today?" He thought about it, and after a moment replied with an affirmative. I nearly collapsed in relief, but that still didn't tell me where he was.

"He was in math first hour. I didn't see him in gym at all fourth hour," he told me. "Why, are you looking for him?"

"Yeah, actually. He's not in his homeroom, and he's not in science or math, so I dunno where to look. Could you check the guys' bathroom?" I asked, clenching my hands together like I was praying, but it didn't take much for him to agree. I could tell he was weirded out by the request, but followed along after me across the library and to the exit where Joni was waiting impatiently.

She looked so worried when we came up, and spread her hands out over her face with a pained groan. "Ugh! What if he isn't in school? What if someone kidnapped him or-"

"We live in Port. We don't exactly have that high of a crime rate," Kole told her, but that didn't prevent her from worrying any less. "He's probably just taking a piss."

"Don't... word it that way. It sounds disgusting," I complained. He laughed and nudged me in the side playfully, but I didn't return the gesture. I turned to Joni and asked her, "Didn't he stay over last night?"

"No, my parents were being buttheads and wouldn't let him," she told me, folding her arms over her chest as the first male bathroom came into view, and Kole strolled in ahead of us. Joni and I hung around outside the door until he came out and shook his head. "Well, there's other bathrooms, aren't there? Let's check the ones by the locker rooms."

"I doubt it, but okay," he said, and together the three of us walked across the school to the gymnasium where, across the main hall, were two bathrooms, one for girls and one for boys. As we approached it, Kole and I stopped at the door to look at where Joni was walking up, arms folded over her chest and eyebrows curled inward, creating a deep crease above the bridge of her nose. When she saw us look at her—probably looking concerned about how concerned she looked—she raised her eyebrows and swiftly motioned for Kole to get on with it.

I imagined he walked in, saw that the urinals were not in use, and ducked down and checked for feet under the stalls. I'd never been in a guy's bathroom before, but I knew urinals were a thing because of Health class, and also the time when I was little and my family and the Waltons went camping, and Parker just whipped it out in the forest. I'd thought to myself at the time, "You can't pee standing up, can you?" so I tried it myself and soaked my sneakers stupid. Mom had the misfortune of explaining the whole dealio to me when she discovered my piss-soaked shoes and Parker's testimony.

Anyway, thinking about urinals made my bladder start to hurt because of the Capri Sun I drank during lunch. Before I even had the chance to excuse myself from the waiting game, we heard voices inside, and one of them clearly sounded like Landon, and the other Kole.

Kole came to the door and leaned out from the bathroom, and we could hear Landon whining from the inside, "Just leave me alone—don't let them come in!"

"Landon! What's wrong?" Joni peeped up from beside me, clenching her hands underneath her chin. We were both thrown by the shaking in his voice, and the tug on it like he'd been choked up in tears for hours.

It wasn't often that I was confronted with emotional breakdowns, and now whenever I did, I couldn't stop myself from looking at Kole. I couldn't tell exactly what he was thinking, or whether he was in the least bit affected by finding Landon this way, but I knew one thing—he would never mention it.

My heart was beating out of my chest, and my bladder was sort of aching too, but I knew now wasn't the time to slip to the little ladies room. When Landon didn't answer Joni's question, she barged straight in, bumping Kole to the side and leaving the door now wide open. I stared at the threshold of it, silently asking for Kole's permission before looking this way and that. Leaping inside, I followed Joni to where the only shadow in the stalls stood in the last one.

"Guys, just leave! You're not supposed to be here anyway," he ordered us, the last word draining into a sniffle. There was something about listening to Landon's choked up voice that was like a punch to the bladder.

"I'm not leaving," Joni answered stubbornly. "Now tell me what it is. I'll pound in the face of whoever made you sad." She stood directly outside of the stall, shoulders hunched and eyes pink.

Landon went rather silent at that, before murmuring, "You'll hate me."

"We won't hate you," I reassured him quietly. Bathrooms were always so quiet, and ya didn't have to talk too loud to hear a voice echo like a cave does.

"You will, I swear-"

"C'mon, Landon, you're my best pal. I don't care who it was or what happened someone's getting punched," Joni promised, eliciting a weak, half-assed laugh from Landon.

When he sobered up, he paused in thought. I saw his shadow shuffle over the tile, and his feet come in view near Joni's. He whispered something through the cracks of the door, and she turned to Kole and I. "He wants Kole to leave."

Without even a word on the matter, Kole left the bathroom, but as the door flopped closed behind him, I saw him standing out there, perhaps making sure no one burst in to bust Joni and I for sneaking into the guys' bathroom.

I had to step up close because I was aware Landon wasn't willing to talk much louder than a muffled whisper. He unlocked the door and let Joni and I into the stall—it was the last one, the one meant for handicapped people, but I guessed if a person needed privacy, it was the place to go. I wasn't even sure what I expected when I stood in that stall, but I wasn't prepared to see Landon, the goofy, lovable ginger, to be puffy eyed and filled to the rim with stressed-out tears.

It was awful, and it made my throat tense up at the sight.

I heard Joni make a short little gasp, and she went to hug him, but he shook her off and turned away, clasping his hands over his face. "Don't look at me like that. I hate it."

"I'm sorry. Just tell us what's going on, it can't be that bad," Joni told him, chewing on her bottom lip. As soon as he opened his mouth to say it, his voice squeaked and nothing happened for a while until he was able to compose himself.

"I can't even tell you guys, you'll hate me for the rest of your lives," he whined, looking up at the ceiling and taking a deep, shaky breath. Joni urged him to say whatever was on his mind anyway. At last he ducked his head and muttered it super low, to the point where neither one of us picked it up.

"What?"

"I'm gay," he hissed, throwing his fists down at his sides. "And I swear my parents hate me—my dad wants to slaughter me—and- and now-"

There was no reason for me to hesitate like I had. At that moment everything clicked, down to the very first day I saw him get off the bus with Julie in sixth grade camp. He'd never even mentioned anything like remote interest in a girl other than friendship, and fangirling over Zac Effron like that? Of course, it made sense now.

Joni was on the ball with everything though; she was there with all the right words to calm him down, all the right amount of hugs, and provided a small smile of relief at the sound of his confession. I was just broken—I didn't know what to do, what to say, because I was awful at making people feel better. I tended to just make things worse, so I shut my mouth and smiled when I had to.

"Why aren't you in class though?" she asked him after a while longer.

He rubbed at his forehead and admitted, "I would've stayed home, but I just... don't want to hang around my parents right now. They aren't exactly supportive, and I have a B in science and that's my second hour so..."

"You can't just chill in here all day though. Come back to study hall with us," she told him.

He shook his head. "No way! I'm a mess, trust me," he answered quickly. "I'll be back tomorrow, I swear."

And he was. There were very few things Landon lied about, and when it came to his sexuality, he'd been hesitant for over a year to tell someone. He'd first told his parents, which didn't roll over so well, and I felt awful because he'd even relayed some of their words, like, "It's just a phase, don't be so quick to jump to conclusions." They'd crushed his spirits perhaps harder than they intended, so Joni promised to set them straight that day after school.

She swung by my locker after school and urged me to come with her to hang out with Landon. When we'd made it over there, he was now standing outside of it, his backpack on the ground and his back leant up against the bricks. As soon as he saw us he stood up straight and slipped his phone into his pocket. He looked nervous, like he expected us to change our minds about him, spit on him, and run for it.

"I'm coming to your house," Joni told him before he could get out a single word. He blinked at her, and looked briefly over at me.

"Don't ask me. She came up with this on her own," I blurted out instantly, earning a nudge from her.

"Why?" he continued to ask.

"I'm gonna have a talk with your parents. I don't care that they're related to you—parents shouldn't say stuff like that to their kids," she told him, and he physically went pale at the thought of Joni straightening out his mom and dad.

"No, don't, it'll only make it worse. Besides, I think they'll come around eventually. My mom's not so mad as my dad is," he reassured her, but she insisted, looking angrier and angrier by the second.

We were all just a bunch of middle schoolers who didn't know what they were doing, but with Landon's emotional break and his coming out, I felt like he was ahead of the game. He knew exactly who he was, and come high school, he had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do when all was said and done. He'd become a successful surgeon in the medical field, he wanted to live in California where it wasn't so damn cold all the time, and he'd have Joni and I there every step of the way.

But what made Landon better than everyone else was how big his heart was. Even after his parents went and punched a hole straight through it, he ordered that Joni and I back off, and that he'd handle it. He didn't want to force them to accept him as he was, but they'd come through. Eventually.

We all walked outside where we waited for our parents to pick us up, but I only went there to see Joni and Landon off. Lucas was over at the elementary school and promised to drive me home. Mom worked late that night, so it was just me and my old elementary school teacher for dinner.

"I'll see you guys tomorrow," he told us, hoisting his backpack onto both shoulders. I smiled against the sunlight, and framed my hand over my eyes before he came over and engulfed us in a hug. I squeaked and laughed at my own surprise, causing the two of them to rumble with giggles and laughter. I shoved them away, still smiling like a madman.

"And I'm serious, ya know. If you wanna stay at my house tonight..." Joni started, but he shook his head and said he'd be fine where he was. He strolled off, to his mom's silver minivan and hopped into the passenger's seat. His mom looked at us funny and drove off.

While Joni waved to Landon, I saw something weird, behind where the silver minivan was parked. Clara had gotten into her mom's station wagon, and I nearly called out to her to say goodbye, but didn't, and was glad I didn't because it looked like her mom was pissed the hell off. She said something to Clara as soon as the door was closed, and I would've flinched, too, because whatever it was, it came out like venom.

She sped off, nearly taking out the bumper of one of the parked cars.

I felt like utter shit the rest of the day, picturing Clara's perpetual frown in her mom's station wagon, at the lunch table, in class. It was worse because I didn't think twice about it, or her disappearance from our friend group that first half of the year. My heart thrummed against my ribcage because while we saved Landon from further self-torment, Clara always looked like she'd been there and back.

Something was wrong.