“Careful,” Brody says, lunging forward to grab your knee before your chair tips. He releases you with another “No homo.”
“Thanks.” You didn’t think it was homo. But anyway. “So? What’d you do?”
Brody rolls his eyes again. They’re big and brown and expressive, but the shadow of his heavy brow makes them look a little mischievous, too. “Ah, nothing as good as yours.” He sighs and rests his hands behind his head. “Ms. Wilson heard me and Chris joking about whacking it. Well, she heardmejoking abouthimdoing it too much, so he got off scot-free and I got ISS.”
He blows a raspberry.
“Three days, same as you. And no offense, but how is that fair? I didn’t even offend anyone.”
“Yeah. That sucks,” you agree, though your insides squirm.
Brody and Chris aren’t the only guys who joke about that kind of stuff. Everyone’s making jokes and hand motions whenever the teachers aren’t around. You don’t remember that being a thing, back in eighth grade. Well, except for that rumor about Bentley Morris doing it at the back of the bus on the way home from a field trip to the Nelson-Atkins. But you don’t think that was true.
Still, Bentley isn’t here this year. He transferred to a private high school.
“Right? Everybody does it,” Brody says. “It’s not like… sexual harassment or something.”
You don’t do it. Should you be?
You don’t even know how. You’ve touched yourself, sure, but nothing really… happened. Maybe you’re doing it wrong, but there’s no one you can ask, not your parents anddefinitelynot Marshall, who would never let you hear the end of it. Though now you think about it, he did start spending a lot longer in the shower back when he first started high school. You snicker.
“Yeah, my older brother likes to take long showers these days.”
Brody laughs, a wild, free sound that eases the tightness in your stomach. It’s not from hunger or anything: Your mom and dad finally got groceries this weekend, so you managed to grab a granola bar before school. But the ISS room makes you feel… weird.
Trapped.
Brody’s laughter makes you feel better.
“You get me,” he says. “We’re guys. It’s not a big deal.”
Somehow it feels like one. You’re not sure why.
Brody laughs again, and you find yourself laughing, too, because he’s right, you are just guys.
You’re still laughing when the door opens and Ms. Anderson walks in, holding a stuffed folder.
“No talking,” she says automatically, even though you and Brody both went silent as soon as she came in. “Face forward, please. Dayton, this is the work you’re missing today. Be sure to stop by the main office tomorrow morning to get your new one. You’ll do that every day you’re here.”
Three days. It’s only three days.
You won’t be here again after that.
You’re not a bad kid.
But then, Brody doesn’t seem that bad, either. Maybe he jokes a little too much, but he’s harmless. So maybe ISS isn’t for bad kids. Maybe it’s just for whoever they’ve decided to punish that day.
And for the next three days, that’s you.
So you nod and take your work. There’s no making up the rehearsal you’re missing in choir, so you pull out your English homework.
A reflection on last Friday’s talk. That you missed most of.
Great.
6FARSHID
You think you hear it in the halls again, but you can’t be sure. The hallways are noisy—friends laughing, teachers hurrying by, locker doors slamming, shoes squeaking—so maybe you heard it again, or maybe someone was talking about Dayton Reilly, or maybe you’re just becoming paranoid.
