Beauty & Her Bruises

Chapter Eleven

Arriving to school early, I looked around for Liam's locker and saw the hateful graffiti on it. Feeling tears overcome my eyes, I wiped it and ripped a paper towel off from the whole roll. I instantly grabbed some cleaner and sprayed his whole locker down. Scrubbing as hard as I could, I did notice a small smear beginning to come off from his locker but otherwise, it was hopeless. This stuff was not going to come off with paper towels. Since I had no other choice, I searched through the school until I managed to find a janitor that was patrolling early hour shifts. When he spotted me, he almost had a heart attack. Nobody should be scaring this guy though because he is basically dead anyway. His pure white hair is receding back and his wrinkles are so deep and sunken in that he could be from The Tales From The Crypt.

"What are you doing here this early in the morning?" I know that the janitor was trying to be scary but it wasn't working and when he noticed that it wasn't working, he smiled and asked what I was doing. I pointed to the locker with graffiti on it and he shook his head at me and I followed him back to his closet. He made me wait outside of it for a bit but when he came back, he gave my something I knew would work on it. I thanked his briefly and ran because at any moment, more kids would be piling into school.

And I had no idea where Malcolm's locker was.

Quickly, I sprayed painted Liam's locker the original color and stepped back to look at it for a bit. It was definitely able to tell that it was just spray painted but I couldn't stay long because the nauseous fumes were making their way into my nose. Running, I searched every locker for more graffiti but when the bell started ringing to let everyone in, I immediately knew I was too late.

Malcolm would see the dirty and disgusting things that were on his locker.

Feeling like my mission had officially failed, I threw the paint can down the ahll and listened to it clatter against the hard tiled flooring. I felt tears roll down my cheeks and as I tried to stop myself from making noises, the sobbing grew worse and I ended up cracking. I wasn't necessarily crying because they had seen the things on their lockers but because I don't want them to know what bullying feels like. Even though Liam ignored me and blamed me for his parents kicking him out, he was always a really good friend to me. He protected me from what others were always saying about me and I couldn't be anymore thankful for that. I had just gotten closer to Malcolm since his job is usually the same shift as mine and he's the funniest person ever. Sometimes his sarcasm can be seen as cruel, but he knows when to stop and he could literally find something funny out of everything. If you hear him laughing, there's no way you can't laugh or crack a smile with him.

"Zara?" I heard my name as I stood in the middle of the crosswalk of everyone. I was pushed around harshly through it all and I didn't care that I was being tossed around from person to person. "Zara!"

The next moment, a body came in contact with me and they pulled me closer to them. He was bigger than me so I felt like I was swallowed up by him and he wrapped his arms around me and placed a hand on my head. He tried shushing my crying but when that didn't work, he simply picked me up and moved us to the side of the hall.

"Zara, talk to me." I shook my head and placed my hands in my face again before I could blubber out any words that could hurt him or me. "Did Serenity do this to you?" I nodded my head and he listed off more people before giving up and just sitting there with me. When I calmed down enough so that I wasn't blubbering, we were the only ones in the hall and I finally looked at Malcolm. "What's wrong?"

"Did you see your locker?" I asked. Malcolm nodded his head no but didn't look confused. "Please don't go to your locker."

"Zara I already know everything that's on it. Liam and I knew when everyone found out that we would be called all of these names. We prepared for it." I cocked an eyebrow up my face and Malcolm confirmed. "Liam took the week off though. He wants it to die a bit before he comes back."

"How'd they find out?" Malcolm shrugged his shoulders and I let my head fall on his shoulder. "I'm really sorry Malcolm, nobody deserves to be bullied." Malcolm shook his head and then his shoulder. I let my head fall off of his shoulder and then I smiled a bit. "Do you want to face it together?"

He nodded his head and we both walked to his locker. He pulled the spray can off of the floor and smiled at me. I nodded at him and let him do the honors of spraying his locker back to normal. Instead of giving it back to the janitor though, he placed it in his locker and did a side smirk.

"They'll probably do it every chance they get." I nodded my head again and laced my fingers between Malcolm's. He let me and we wandered the halls for a bit. He knew how the words would effect me so thankfully he didn't let me see them before he decided to spray them the locker color. "Zara?" he asked when we were outside of my homeroom.

"Yeah?"

"If you were being bullied, you would tell me or Liam right?" he asked. I stared at him for a minute before the door opened and I had to leave for the homeroom. I seated myself before noticing that Malcolm was still waiting for an answer. Without much confidence, I mustered up enough confidence to nod my head yes unconvincingly.

Malcolm didn't believe me.