HIDING - every scar has a story

16. Looking for trouble.

*Trigger warning: bullying, blood, smoking, implied abuse. Read somewhere cozy and safe, lovelies*

{Jon}

The next morning Todd cornered Jon in the locker room after gym class. "Hey Whitey—looking good out there. Must be tough having to work twice as hard to keep up with the rest of the girls."

Todd's friends laughed. Jon hunched his shoulders and kept shoving his gym clothes into his locker.

Todd whipped him around with a hand on his arm. "Hey faggot, I'm talking to you."

Jon's hands made fists against his legs. "So? What do you want?"

Todd gave him a shove, grinning. "Why don't you show me what you've got?"

For a second Jon wanted to smash Todd's face in. Kurtis and Pete and Jesus in his bedroom held him against the lockers. "I'm not going to fight you Todd. Maybe you should get a hobby."

That was how, ten minutes later, the gym teacher found Jon wedged into one of the lockers with a bloody nose.

"White," the man barked. "Get outta there—it's time for class."

Jon stumbled free, putting a hand under his nose to catch the bleeding. "Okay, I'm going," he said thickly.

The man looked more closely at him. "Aw for Christ sake. I suppose you need to see the nurse."

Jon was edging past him to get to the door. "No thank you, I'm fine."

The halls were empty; class had already started. Jon hurried to the nearest washroom and bent over the sink, pinching the bridge of his nose hard enough to hurt. The bleeding slowed and stopped. He rinsed his face and straightened, looking at himself in the mirror. There was a cut above his eyebrow where his face hit the locker room bench. He didn't think anyone who didn't know to look would notice.

He shivered, sick with anger and fear that Todd would corner him again. He had forty minutes until his next class. He went to the north doors. 

///

Cary was there in his faded army jacket, hunkered against the warm brick of the school. Jon put his shoulders against the brick a little distance away. He crossed his arms, fixing his eyes on the cigarette strewn concrete.

"Does smoking make you feel better?" Jon asked.

"Yuh," Cary said.

"Do you think I could get a cigarette off you?"

Cary seemed to absorb that, looking at him. He took his pack of smokes out of his jacket and got to his feet. "There's blood on your shirt."

Jon couldn't look at him. "Todd cornered me after gym."

Cary lit him a cigarette and passed it to him. Jon drew on it and coughed, then drew deeper and coughed again. He couldn't make his hands stop shaking.

"You don't want to report that?" Cary asked.

Jon saw his dad's warm, open face when he said, You are my good part right now Jon, and felt his tongue freeze to the roof of his mouth. He looked at Cary, silent and desperate.

Everything went out of Cary's face, diving deep. "'Kay," Cary said.

Jon lowered himself onto the concrete and Cary hunkered beside him without saying anything or doing anything or even looking at him. That helped. After a few more sips on the cigarette, Jon felt lifted a little above himself and able to speak again.

"Last night, I asked my dad about why... why crap happens." He knuckled his unbruised eye. It was stinging and he told himself it was the smoke. "He said that God is working everything for our good even if we can't see how. He really believes that."