He bucked me off with a roar of his own, swinging wildly, one eye already purple and half shut. I rolled and stood, breathing heavily, but before I could launch myself at him again, Thompson hissed, ‘Teachers!’
Our altercation had gained an audience, I noted then. Fellow students surrounded us, inadvertently hiding us from view. We both stood, eyeing each other, slowly straightening, hands tense but at our sides.
‘What in tarnation is going on here?’ Mrs Powell said, pushing through. ‘Fighting is an expellable offence!’
Mr Zamora parted the spectators and came to stand behind her as Wynn, his face as battered as mine felt, deadpanned, ‘We weren’t fightin’.’
Narrowing his eyes, Zamora pointed down the hall. ‘Principal’s office. Now.’
I tried to care that I was about to be expelled but couldn’t. Truth be told, it took every shred of self-control I had to walk calmly towards the office instead of leaping on to Wynn and thrashing him into dust.
Minutes later, my entire body was beginning to ache. My face hurt. My ears were ringing. My abdomen felt like I’d done crunches for four hours straight. My hazy vision was due to blood in my eye, which began to clear as I blinked. I fought nausea as Ingram stared at us from across her huge desk, where not a single file folder or receptionist’s message dared to be out of order. On the surface, the boy next to me seemed indifferent to the threat sitting feet away from us, but his hands dug into the arms of his chair.
‘There is zero tolerance in this school for fighting.’ She paused, letting this sink in. My clammy, blood-streaked hands pressed into my thighs and gripped hard, reminding me to remain silent. ‘I assume both of you are aware of this policy?’
I nodded. The dumbass next to me shrugged.
‘Mr Wynn? Did you just shrug your shoulders in answer to my politely stated question? Perhaps you need it stated in more … understandable terms?’
‘No, thanks.’ Oh, man. This guy was an even bigger idiot than I’d imagined.
Ingram’s eyes narrowed further – which I hadn’t thought possible. ‘Excuse me?’
‘No, ma’am,’ he mumbled.
‘No, ma’am, I didn’t just observe you shrugging your shoulders, or No, ma’am, you aren’t aware of the policy?’ she asked, knowing exactly what he’d meant, trying to get him to say or do something with expellable consequences.
‘No, ma’am, I don’t need it stated in more understandable terms. Yes, ma’am, I understand your policy. But I wasn’t fightin’.’
It took everything I had to keep my jaw from dropping. If he thought I was going to take the fall for this shit alone, he could think again. I wanted to turn that black eye into a matched set, though intuition kicked in enough to warn me that that reaction would definitely get me expelled – something this bitch had wanted all year.
Her mouth contracted into the type of pucker someone has after sucking on a lemon. ‘You weren’t … fighting.’ Her contemptuous tone carried a clear-cut warning. Somehow, I knew Wynn wasn’t going to heed it. ‘Then why all the blood and bruises?’ She leaned forward, her lips stretching into the beginnings of a gotcha grin.
‘I fell down the stairs.’
Her stare should have iced him over. ‘You live in a trailer.’
‘I didn’t say I was at home.’
Her gaze whipped to me. ‘And you?’
‘He fell down the stairs, too.’ Christ on a cracker, as Grandpa would say – Wynn was answering for both of us. I was so screwed. ‘We both did. It was epic. Pretty sure it’s on YouTube by now.’
Her eyes didn’t budge from me. ‘Mr Maxfield? Care to tell the truth?’
No matter what I thought of Wynn, Ingram was not on my side and I knew it. I took a breath. ‘I think we were pushed.’
Her eyes flared wide. ‘By whom?’
‘I don’t know. They were behind us.’
There was a long silence as she figured out that neither of us was willing to give up the other to benefit her. ‘You are both –’ she paused to harden her already-sharp jaw – ‘expected to follow my rules while you are in my house. If I find one teacher who will say they witnessed a single punch being thrown by either of you, I will toss both of your ill-bred carcasses back into the streets and on your butts without a moment of misgiving! Do. You. Feel. Me?’
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, because one, I had no doubt she wanted nothing more than to rid herself of both of us, which was anything but funny, and two, my lip was split in two places and would hurt like a motherfucker if I so much as smirked. But a middle-aged woman asking us Do you feel me? What the hell?
Wynn, fingering his chin, said, ‘This sounds familiar … Have you considered making a handout?’
I cough-laughed into a fist, wincing at the pain. Son of a bitch. My heart hammered as hard as it had when I’d first swung my fist at his face.
Her face mottled, and all I could think was the dragon was about to breathe fire. ‘Get out. I’m calling your parents. You are both suspended for a full week. Sit in the outer office until called. Do. Not. Talk.’
Under his breath, Wynn muttered, ‘Shit.’
Luckily, she didn’t hear him over my, ‘Yes, ma’am.’
We jumped up and exited her office, slouching into hard lobby chairs that did nothing for my sore back. I hoped Wynn was hurting even worse than I was. Facing the front counter of the main office, we left an empty chair between us.