Bruiser

“It’s not you; it’s me,” Brew said, which is one of the lines guys use when they break up with you; but that wasn’t the case here. It was him. He was the one bleeding.

He pursed his lips. “Not good,” he said. “Not good at all.”

My anger didn’t exactly go away at that instant, but it did hop into the backseat. “I must have cut you with my watch,” I said, although I couldn’t imagine anything sharp enough on my watch to draw that much blood. “We’ve got to get you to the nurse.”

As Brew pressed on the wound to staunch the bleeding at the base of his thumb, I reached into my backpack and found a little pocket-pack of tissues. I pressed the whole pack to his hand and hurried with him down the hall.

“I can do it myself,” he said.

“I don’t care,” I told him.

We pushed through the door of the nurse’s office, where some boy I didn’t know looked up at me with feverish eyes and a God-help-me expression, like he thought he might die at any moment.

“Get in line,” he said.

“I don’t think so.” I shoved past him toward the nurse. By now the whole tissue pack on Brew’s hand was soaked through with blood, and the moment the nurse saw it, she went into triage mode. She quickly assessed the damage and began to clean the gash with gauze and antiseptic.

“What happened?”

“I got cut on my locker door,” Brew said.

Is that what happened? I thought. But he wasn’t even touching his locker.

“It looks worse than it is,” the nurse said once the wound had been cleaned. “You probably won’t even need stitches.” She talked about tetanus shots and gave him a thick piece of gauze. “Keep pressure on it.” Then she turned to me and my bloody fingers. “And you need to clean yourself up. There’s a sink over there. Wash all the way to your elbows. Do it twice.” She told Brew she’d be back to dress the wound, then went to deal with the plague-ridden boy by the door.

I went to the sink, crisis resolved, except, of course, for one minor thing:

The wound was gone from my hand.

It hadn’t healed—it was gone, like it had never been there at all. I kept washing my hands, certain I had just missed it and that it would reappear once I washed away the lather, but no. The cut was nowhere to be found.

I could feel something tugging on the edge of my awareness. Something both frightening and wonderful. I was at the barrier of some unknown place. Even as I stood there I could feel myself crossing over that line.

When I turned to Brew, he was watching me. “You didn’t cut yourself on a locker, did you?” I asked.

He shook his head. I sat beside him, not quite ready to believe what had happened.

“Let me see it.”

He raised the gauze. The wound had clotted; the blood had stopped flowing. I could see the wound clearly now. It was my wound. Same size, same place. Only now it was on his hand.

“Do you understand now?” he asked gently.

But how could I understand? This wasn’t an answer; it was a question—and one I didn’t even know how to ask. All I could say was “How?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It just happens.”

“Always? With everyone?”

“No,” he said. “Not everyone.” The wound had begun to ooze again, so he pressed the gauze to it. “But if I care about someone…”

He didn’t have to finish the thought, because it was there in his eyes. The reason why he ran—why he lied. People thought Brewster Rawlins was a dark unknown, a black hole best kept away from. Well, maybe he was, but what people don’t realize is that black holes generate an amazing amount of light. The problem is, their gravity is so great, the light can’t escape—it just gets pulled in along with everything else.

If he took away the sprains, cuts, and bruises of everyone he cared about, no wonder he’d rather be alone. How could I blame him for running last night as he tried to escape his own gravity?

I could feel my anger and turmoil draining away now that I had at least a part of the puzzle. The brooding expression on Brew’s face truly was inscrutable, so it was impossible to know what he was feeling; but I knew what I was feeling. It flowed in to fill the void once my anger was gone. As unexpected as the slap, I found myself kissing him; and although I heard the nurse protesting from across the room, her voice sounded miles away. I was caught in a gravity far greater than hers.

“I love you, Brew.”

“No you don’t,” he said.

“Just shut up and take it,” I told him.

He smiled. “Okay.”

He didn’t have to tell me that he felt the same, because I already knew. The evidence was there on the palm of his hand.

BREWSTER

24) INJURIOUS

I saw the weak hearts of my classmates shredded by
conformity, bloated and numb, as they iced the
wounds of acceptance in the primordial gym,
hoping to heal themselves into popularity,

Who have devolved into Play-Doh pumped through a
sleazy suburban press, stamped in identical
molds, all bearing chunks of bleak ice, comet-
cold in their chests,

Who look down their surgically set noses at me, the
boy most likely to die by lethal injection with no
crime beyond the refusal to permit their swollen,
shredded cardiac chill to fill my heart as well,

Yet out of this frigid pool of judgment stepped
Brontë, untainted by the cold, radiating warmth in
a rhythmic pulse through her veins, echoing now
in mine, just as the slice across her palm is now
my burden, taken by accident, yet held with
purposeful triumph,

As I now reach to double-check the unreliable lock
on my bathroom door, which gives no privacy,
least of all from Uncle Hoyt, who, in fits of
paranoia, must know everything,
everything that goes on beneath his termite-ridden,
shingle-shedding roof,

Where I now carefully peel the bandage from my
hand, revealing shades of brown and red, flesh
damaged and bruised, hoping to redress the
wound before my uncle can find out, the wound
that I have no idea how Brontë got, for in my fuzz-
brained love haze, I forgot to question,

Which will heal without mystery or magic at the
normal pace of life—in a week, two weeks, three
—like the raw-knuckle scabs of her brother, now
mine, too, like the bruises, breaks, and scrapes,
the scars of a lifelong battle that defines me,

Like the fresh wound that cannot be concealed as
my uncle swings open the maliciously disloyal
bathroom door, and getting a healthy look at the
fresh red line sliced across the heel of my hand,
knowing from my unmet gaze that I’m holding a
secret, which gives him permission to hold me
hostage.

“Get that cut today, did you?”
“Yes.”
“Didja take it from Cody?”
“No.”
“That boy’d cut his head off with safety scissors.”
“I didn’t take it from Cody; it happened at school.”