Chapter 24: Part 24 - Wednesday Afternoon, part 2

Part 24 -  Wednesday Afternoon, Part 2

“What are you two disgusting children doing in here?!”

The words twisted my stomach and squeezed the air around me, wringing a cold fear out of my senses. Everything felt close and thick and suffocating. Even though my heart was thrashing against my ribcage, I felt trapped. Immobile. Utterly paralyzed.

“I knew it!” Ms Pike snarled at me. “I knew it wouldn’t take long for one of your sort to start interfering with things!”

“Ms Pike, no—!” Jessie started to protest, but the gym teacher was having none of it. 

She grabbed me so violently by the wrist that I actually thought she’d dislocated it. 

“Do you people have no decency?!” she raged, pulling me out of the room at speed. “Do you people have no morals at all? It’s bad enough you’re in our schools, now you’re in our bathrooms as well!”

If I hadn’t been paralyzed by shock (and a healthy amount of fear), I’d have pointed out that this was the gender-neutral space they had set aside for me, and she was the one barging in uninvited. 

“Just wait til Principal McAvoy hears about this, you little pervert!” Ms Pike continued to rant. “And you?!” she spat, rounding on Jessie. “When your mother finds out what you’ve been doing,” then she looked me up and down, “and what you’ve been doing it with!”

“Ms Pike,” I protested, trying one last time to reach the one last vestige of humanity cowering inside her. “We were just talking!”

“Oh that’s how it starts,” she editorialized, “but you were doing a lot more than that when I burst in and bust up your little love ring!”

It was useless to argue with her. I rubbed my wrist. It was sore where she had grabbed it. I’m sure her ‘official statement’ of the incident would make much about how she thoguht I was ‘attacking’ Jessie, and how she’d only used ‘necessary force’ to keep another student safe.

And then it occurred to me. The simplest, stupidest, most dangerous idea I’ve ever had. Stupid doesn’t come to people like me all at once. It creeps in cautiously, checking its surroundings for hidden dangers. Like a wild dog sneaking up to a grill with barbecue on its mind.

“You really hurt my arm, Ms Pike,” I said, not exactly forcing a tear into my eye, but doing nothing to hold it back either.

“You’ll live,” she replied, derisorily. I got the feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d had to defend her use of ‘necessary force’.

“And the way you shoved Jessie into that basin over there was just cruel!” I added, looking past the hulking teacher and to my best friend.

The truth was that Ms Pike hadn’t shoved Jessie at all. She hadn’t touched her. But I knew – just knew – that Ms Pike was the sort of teacher to hide behind a lie to get away with what she had done. So I figured I’d hide behind a lie too. And maybe finally get even with her for the awful things she had said to me. And about me. And in front of me. I’d get more than even. I’d get everything I ever wanted. It all relied on Jessie being on my wavelength enough to pick up on what I was doing, without me clueing her in in front of Ms Pike. Fortunately, she was.

“Yeah, Ms Pike,” she cried, clutching her side. “I think I’m bleeding.”

Jessie put her hand down to her side and when it came up again, there was blood on it. The same blood that she must have spilled when she was scratching herself furiously with her pin.

“You’re–? I barely–?” This time it was Ms Pike’s turn to rock on the back foot. Rock and teeter. But she was a fighter, I wagered. And I had no difficulty imaging she’d come off the ropes and hit back with something even worse.

And that’s when I did it.

I was standing in front of one of the lockers, where she had thrown me. The door was open a little behind my head. I had seen it when I steadied myself a few moments earlier. It was only luck that I hadn’t hit it when Ms Pike threw me. It was a different kind of luck that was running out for her now.

“Ms Pike, no!” I screamed at the top of my voice. 

Then I forced my head backwards into the locker door with all my strength.

I saw black. People say you see stars when you hit your head, but that rubbish. You see black. Or white. And everything closes in.

There was a dent in the door where my head had hit it. An Ella-sized dent. The sound was still echoing around the phys ed department. A dull reverberation of metal that sang out a story untrue in every sense.

“Ow!” I cried, bringing my head forwards and putting my hand up to the wound. There was no blood, but I could feel an egg-like lump already starting to grow back there.

Talk your way out of this one, Ms Pike!

And then, just as the full realization of what had just happened was beginning to dawn on Ms Pike’s face - at that beautiful moment of unscripted revenge against the worst kind of bully - footsteps raced down the stairs and saw it all.

It was the girls. The soccer team girls. Sue-Ellen and Natalie, Sara and Jasmine – the girls who hadn’t seemed to care at all how Jessie was feeling – suddenly arrived and saw what must have looked to them like the aftermath of a teacher’s rage-induced violence. Jessie was bleeding. I was holding my head and wrist in genuine pain. And Ms Pike was desperately trying to calm the panic in her chest.

*

My mom came to collect me. We didn’t talk about what had happened any more than the statement she already heard me give to the principal. Ms Pike had gone home too, but she had less of a choice about it. Jessie had been collected by her mom and all the talk of the school was how a teacher had ‘lost it’ and ‘beaten the life’ out of two grade 9 girls. We’d been asked to stay off social media about it. They didn’t want us to ‘pejudice the investigation’. I was happy to let this one play out in the court of public opinion.

Dad was working late, so I didn’t get chance to see him when I got in. Mom had assured him that I was fine and that he didn’t need to rush home. He said he’d be taking the school to court. I’d talk him out of it. Maybe. I was feeling quite pleased with myself. I know I should have felt bad about what Jessie and I had done to Ms Pike, but I didn’t. Sometimes, when the system is rigged that much against you, the only way to beat it is to completely break it. Still, there was this niggling feeling at the back of my skull that I couldn’t get rid of. I wanted to take someone into my confidence; to run the truth of it all past the one person in the world that I thought would get it.

“Anna?” I asked, knocking on the door to her room. She’d been quiet these last couple of days. 

“What do you want?” she asked. was it my imagination, or was she more irritable than usual? 

“Can I come in?” I asked, peering my head around the corner of the door. 

“Sure,” she replied, giving an exasperated sigh. 

I’d expected her to be a little more concerned about me. The official story was still that I got into a fight with a teacher. Maybe she hadn’t heard that yet.

When I got into the room, I saw the reason for her irritation and her lack of sympathy for my fake fight. She was sat on her bed, doubled up, with a cushion over her abdomen. That’s what is was. 

Period pains. 

Anna used to get really bad periods when she was younger. Like the kind of cramps where you have to take two days off school. And the kind of bleeds where you had to change your pad every hour. They’d made her really ill for about two years. She used to joke, when I first started my transition, that I should be glad I didn’t have to get my period every month. But I would have given anything to feel what she felt. I’d have suffered the pain and the nausea and the debilitating cramps if it would have made me one inch more female than my body was. 

“Cramps?” I asked, concern in my voice. 

“Uh-huh,” she replied, and shot me a look that said, ‘Get to the point or get out!’

“I need to talk to you about something,” I said, looking down and suddenly ashamed.

“Now’s not a good time,” she replied.

Wow. She must be in real pain. It was so odd. She hadn’t had anything like that for ages.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Not really,” she replied, looking me up and down like it was somehow all my fault.

“Have you tired a heat pad?” I asked, looking at where her hands were cradling her abdomen. 

She shot me a look that made me instantly regret trying to help.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” I said, turning to leave.

“Uh-huh,” she replied and I left the room.

It wasn’t until later, when I was lying in the bath letting shaving my legs, that I remembered something. Something that just didn’t make sense. Anna had her period two weeks ago. Why would she be having another one now? Why would she–?

Oh no!

Her Microgestin! Her estrogen pills! Had I caused this?

I didn’t see how skipping one little pill could make her have such a heavy period. But it couldn’t be anything else. Somehow, I’d hurt the one person in the world who was there for me more than anyone else.

I’m a bad person. I pressed the egg-shape at the back of my head into the bathtub, let the stab of pain take me. I deserved this pain. I’d have doubled it just to take Anna’s away from her. I pressed harder. Like I could squeeze out all the wicked things I’d done by pressing on a little pain. And if it didn’t work then I’d just press harder. I had to do something to take away this feeling of guilt. 

I had to control it.

I let the razor glide across my skin, like it might erase any sign of what I’d done. Erase any unwelcome hairs with its metallic kiss. Erase me from the world. At least that way, I’d stop being a burden to others. The warm waters closed around me as I felt my temples throbbing. I put the razor back and drained the bath. 

Not today, Ella. 

Not today.