Educational Experience

Part II--Chapter Ten

I'm not sure this is entirely finished, so if there are typos or odd sentences, try to let it ride. I was just so delighted with the way Wyatt "told" me all this today, that I wanted to post it. Enjoy!

I didn’t wake Wyatt up as I’d promised, when I got back. So I was sitting in a window seat watching the sun rise when she I heard her little bare feet on the tiles.

When I looked up, it was like she was high def and everything else was just standard—it’s always that way. She’s like my own personal sun. When she shows up, I see better. On lots of levels.

But she must’ve seen something that told her I’d been fighting, because the first thing she said was, “Oh, my God--what happened?”

And I did the clueless dude thing—that dopey “What?” that drives women crazy.She said, “Who did this?!” And touched my cheekbone and winced like it hurt her, too.

I didn’t even remember getting hit there, but apparently somebody had connected. And she was ready to go after whoever had done it, too. Those eyes fired up like the sky outside.

“Yeah, it got a little crazy,” was all I wanted to tell her.

But she came back with, “And someone hit you?”

So, I tried a nonchalant shrug.

“Mutual combat,” I said. “Like they say at school when they suspend you, right?”

She laser beamed me with those angry eyes and asked, “What was it about?”

I hesitated, but since she’d lasered into my brain already, I just went on and said, “Your buddy Tonk was there. Drunk as a skunk and talkin’ a lotta nonsense.”

She folded her arms and said, “About me.” Not a question, a statement.

“Some of it was about you.”

“The part you fought about.”

“Way more complicated than that.”

She paused, reading me. And then sighed and said, “So what did he tell you?”

“I don’t care about what he told me.”

“Oh, I think you do,” she said. “I think this time he told you something you have to care about.”

I touched her face then. Trying to hold onto the way I’d felt when I first saw her come in.

And she said, “God, what?” Like she was almost sorry she’d asked me.

So I said, “He just...he made me think about some things.”

She didn’t get it. So I sighed and started over again.

“I just...well, he reminded me of how I felt, back when I was a little kid, when people stared at me—when they made me feel all pitiful and...shamed. I mean, like, even at those agencies and whatnot, when I had to go ask for help to keep us alive, basically, I’d be so angry sometimes. The nicer they treated me, the more I hated them. And I just...I don’t want--do you think people hate me, too, like that? Sometimes?”

Her “You cannot be serious” was so fierce that I felt better almost instantly.

But instead, I said, “I am, though. I mean, they have to, in a way, right? Think about it. How the hell does some...snot nosed kid get a break like that when there’s millions of people—“