HIDING - every scar has a story

20. Jon's business.

{Jon}

In the following days at school, Jon kept looking for Cary and then remembering he was suspended. At lunchtime he opened his sandwich bag on the grassy strip beside the north doors, the spring sunlight hot on his head. Halfway through his sandwich he thought about where Cary might be, and he wasn't hungry anymore. He threw his half-finished lunch away.

During the afternoon break everyone at the north doors was talking about the locker searches that had happened during class. Jon listened, slumped against the brick wall.

A fierce-faced girl was taking a poll. "Did they search your locker for drugs?" When she came to Jon he shrugged.

"Yeah. Mine and Cary's."

Mike huffed a laugh. "You got something you want to tell us Jon? You planning to do some business here?"

"No," Jon said.

"Where is Cary?" Mike looked around the yard.

"He's suspended," Fierce Girl said. "For fighting."

Mike's eyebrows went up. "Someone stupid enough to fuck with him?"

She lifted a bony shoulder, bare except for the strap of her tank top. "And he had a knife. That's what I heard."

"I bet they bled all over the hallway," another kid giggled. "Sliced and diced."

Fierce Girl rolled her eyes. "You get expelled for that."

"Huh." Mike crossed his arms over his massive chest. "Care's too smart for that."

Jon's eyes burned and he bent his head so no one could see his face. If he had climbed out of the gym locker, bled into the washroom sink and then gone to the library to keep his hurt to himself, Cary would not be in trouble now.

When the three minute bell rang, Mike and Jon were the only ones left standing on the concrete.

"You were there for the fight?" Mike asked.

Jon nodded. "Cary pulled his knife. He didn't use it."

Mike huffed a laugh. "He didn't have to. I bet the other kid was shittin' his pants."

Jon didn't say anything, looking sideways at Mike's broad face and crooked nose. He wasn't afraid of Mike now.

"How did you get out –that place you lived in grade five?" Jon asked.

Mike's eyebrows lifted. "I called the cops. They dragged that motherfucker out in cuffs." He laughed again, short and hard. "Best thing I ever did in my life."

Jon wrapped his arms around himself, thinking about that—calling the police to rescue Cary from wherever he was.

Mike's eye's narrowed. "This about Care?"

Jon looked at him sideways, longing for the relief of telling someone. His throat was so tight that he could barely get the words out. "I saw his dad hit him, when he came to pick him up. I think he's in trouble."

Mike was quiet a second. Then the tattoo on his neck rippled with his shrug. "I've seen Cary come to school beat to shit under his jacket. It's his skin." The words were like a rockslide.

Jon could hardly speak. "What? Why haven't you told someone?"

Mike frowned. "I figure he has his reasons for keeping quiet. You're the first person I know ever got him to talk." Mike considered him. "You know anything about this shit, Jon?"

Jon shook his head.

"Well you brought it up, so I'm going to tell you. You open your mouth on Care and his life is ended. Cops pull up to his house and put cuffs on his step-dad or whoever, and nothing is the same again. I say that's his call."

"Do you think he's okay?" Jon asked in a small voice.

Mike laughed. "You're giving yourself a hernia kid. Look, Care is tough. That guy he fought is lucky he didn't gut him from here to here." He drew his thumb from his waist to his throat. "He doesn't want help so I leave that shit alone. You should too." He shrugged his big shoulders.

Jon wanted to believe him. Mike would know. He tried to forget the way Cary looked half his normal size without his jacket on. Probably Cary was at home playing video games and eating cereal. Probably he was laughing about how stupid his suspension was. Probably he hadn't felt a thing because Cary was tough like stone.  

704 words.