Page 101 of Mad Girl

Nic tossed his napkin on the table. “Elliot, hurting people is not okay.”

“This time, Dad, it was warranted.”

“Oh, yeah?” asked Nic. “Tell me how.”

“He creeps me out. He won’t stop hitting on me. He wants me to ditch Casey sometime and sneak off with him. Today, he told me he’d like to pounce on me—whatever the hell that means—and when I told him I wasn’t into that, he called me a cunt.”

“He what?” you both said in unison.

Nic turned to you. “What do you think of this boy?”

You shook your head. “I don’t like the way he looks at her. I can tell she’s uncomfortable around him.”

“What’s his name?” demanded Nic.

“Dad, don’t make it worse,” I groaned. “I can handle him.”

“What’s his name, Elliot?”

Evasion was futile with my dad. If I didn’t answer, Nic would call my coach back and demand the name from him. So I sighed and said, “Greer Johnson.”

We went back to eating, the matter dropped, but the following day at school, I learned from Tinsley—who heard it from doe-eyed Gwen in the girls’ restroom—that Greer had been kicked off the tennis team.

And Greer was definitely angry about it. He openly glared when we passed each other in the hall—my teammates, too, at the following practice. They were so disgusted by what had happened with Greer that the coach was forced to bench me when it became apparent the entire team was taking a united stand against practicing with me. Every person he assigned to play doubles with me refused. I sat next to you on the ground that day, putting on the best I-couldn’t-care-less face I could muster, but the dirty looks made my stomach churn.

“Hey,” you said, leaning close. “Care to hear the story of me dropping trou to take a wee at a football game?”

I drew back. “What?”

“Yeah. I was only three. We were at Claire’s football game, and I kept telling my dad I needed to take a wee, but he was too invested in the game to take me. So I just wandered out in front of the bleachers and dropped my trousers, and—right there, with dozens of people watching on—took a wee.”

I bit the sides of my mouth to keep from laughing. “A wee?”

“Yes,” you said solemnly, but I definitely noted a smile tugging at the corners of your mouth. “Right on the football field.”

“This sounds made-up,” I said, eyebrows raised.

“I assure you it’s not. We’ll FaceTime Claire tomorrow, and she’ll tell you it’s true. Imagine being nine years old and your little brother takes a wee on the field—as you’re playing. It stopped the whole game. She was mortified.”

“What did your dad do?”

You straightened, pushing both hands down your thighs. “Oh. Well. He snatched me off the field and took me to the car, and I got—um—I got a good smacking for it.”

“He hit you?”

“No, smacking means to spank. He spanked me.”

“He hit you,” I said, “when he was the one who failed to do his job. Your adoptive dad sounds like an asshole.”

You shrugged.

I slid closer to you along the chain-link fence, touching one whole side of my body to yours, shoulder to knee. You were sturdy and warm, a harbor in the shitstorm that had become my life. My safe place. “Thanks.”

“For what?” you asked, voice dropped low.

“Making me feel better.”

You draped an arm across my shoulders and pressed your lips to my temple. “Don’t worry about them,” you whispered against my head, your raspy voice pulsing through me. “Someday, this will all be a blur, and you’ll never have to see them again.”