The only way John could pass the exam was by cheating. He knew it as surely as he knew that his father would beat him if he’d gotten anything less than a B on it, as surely as he’d always known that and more. But he did not want to cheat off of her. This girl sitting next to him. This pretty, well-off girl, the kind of girl he knew for a fact was alright in all the ways that he was not. The girl who went home to homemade lunch and a tail—wagging dog and a hug from her mother and a soft, kind smile from her father. The girl who’d never flinch at the swishing sound of a belt being pulled out of the pants’ loops.
Eliza Woodson was everything he was not. And he hated that the teacher had sat him next to her today. He caught her staring at the black and blue on his neck, the damn thing still showing even though it’s been days, and he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t ask her to help him. Because he knew in that moment that she would. That she pitied him enough to help him.
He stood, his page entirely empty and walked slowly, carefully to Mr Corville’s desk. He silently set it down, ignoring the harshly whispered command to go back to his desk and finish his work, and left the room.
"There you go, making up lies again." That is what they told me. But I wasn’t lying. I told them about the bruise on his neck, the one he had tried to cover up by pulling his shirt collar all the way up, though it was stiflingly hot in the room. I told them, too, that he knew this bit of math well enough to at least pass the test, so it didn’t make any sense for him to just walk out like that. I had seen him study for it in the library before and I watched his pencil move over the page, doing the graphs like he’d done it before, his lines fast and fluid. So I knew he could do well enough….
My mom waved her hand dismissively again. “They don’t beat him, Liz, no way they would,” she’d said. “They’re not those kinds of people, is all.”
But she didn’t know the kinds of people they were anymore than I did. They were John's father and uncle, the mechanic one. We’d never seen them come to school or anything. Or to any of John’s games, not even when everybody was cheering for him last season.
“That boy probably just got into a fight, Liz,” she’d said. The words made me flinch. John did not fight. Not even when I wished he would. And it wasn’t because he couldn’t. I could see it in his eyes - the choosing not to. Like he chose not to do the exam today.
But there was anger there as well, and embarrassment when he caught me looking at his bruise. He knew that I knew where it came from, felt it somehow and it made him run then. Maybe he never stopped running anyway, not since his mother did the thing she did to the brakes on the Honda, the thing that made it run headlong into a tree going too fast around the bend of the Main Street bridge. That’s what the news said about i; that she’d cut the brakes on purpose, that she’d meant to run into that tree.
I couldn’t wrap my brain around why anyone would do that. And Johnnie - he was only ten or eleven then, and she’d left him just like that, with that man who put bruises on his neck and likely elsewhere where nobody could see. But I remember Corey telling me last year how he saw them, all over his back in the lockeroom, and John did that thing where he wouldn’t look at him or anybody then, just threw his clothes back on and ran out, fast as he’d ever been on the field.
I pick up my phone and do a search for his number, one Annie gave me years ago, hoping it hasn’t changed. I can’t bring myself to call, so I type quickly, so I don’t lose the nerve: “You alright? Do you want to talk?” and click ‘send’.
I toss and turn all night, and finally get up when the light is still gray and soupy, unwarmed by the sun. I walk over to my window to open it, and there is John, looking up at me, waving at me to come down. It’s a Saturday, so he’s wearing dark jeans and a simple t-shirt, an old leather jacket hanging off one shoulder. There is a bouquet of pink daisies in his hand and for a small, embarrassing moment I think they’re for me.
He takes a step toward me when I finally make it downstairs, my morning routine shortened to throwing on sweats and brushing my teeth.
“Will you…. Will you come to the cemetery with me?” he asks, looks down. “It’s her…. It would have been her birthday today.” I want to pull him to me and hug him, but I stand there, blinking like an idiot. He looks up at me, smiles, sheepish, embarrassed.
“Yes, of course I’ll come,” I say, and I try and fail to remember her name. But all I can recall is that black and white photo of her in the newspaper, her face young and pretty and with too much makeup on…. Maybe she, too, was hiding something. Maybe we all are.
This is my entry to this weekend 3-prompt freewrite. If you want to learn more or participate, follow
for the latest prompts. The rules are simple. You get a prompt, write for five minutes and publish. The weekend one consists of 3 prompts, so this piece here was done in 15 minutes. This is unedited, except for 4 typos that I had removed.HERE is the link to the actual post with the prompts
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