Cheated Read Free

onto my lap. It didn’t hurt since the nearly empty pack weighed so little. I took a few college prep courses, but Brody’s college future vanished with his football banishment. He’d given up even caring about school.
    I was puzzled by the question: what time for what? What time was it? What time would we get together later that night? I was still thinking when Brody grabbed my wrist.
    â€œNice watch.” Brody grunted, then kicked the seat in front of him. “Your dad, right?”
    â€œYeah, ex-Dad,” I corrected him as his eyes closed. I should’ve said,
Brody, your dad left your life because of an accident on the road. My dad’s exit was no accident; it was because of the road I decided to take
.
    While Brody slept, I put the headphones back on, then clicked on the jPod to drown out the noise surrounding me. I was lost in crashing music and imaginary conversations as the bus made one of its last stops. The stop was in front of the WindGate trailer park, where Roxanne Gray slithered on board. She wore a denim jacket with a white skull patch, a tan wool cap that pushed her brown hair out like the top of a chocolate muffin, and her usual crooked half smile. I ignored her that morning like I had done most every day for years; like I wished I’d done weeks ago at Rex’s end-of-summer, life-ruining party. I wanted to ask her,
Roxanne, why did you choose me to fool around with? Why didn’t you pick somebody else?
Instead, I listened to Zeppelin and stayed mute until the jolt of the bus stopping woke up Brody.
    He coughed loudly, then looked outside as the bus lurched down Morrish Road toward school. “I wonder if the Scarecrow is out there yet?” Brody asked, then closed his eyes again.
    â€œToo early, probably sleeping it off,” I replied. “Like I wish I could’ve done.”
    â€œWell, you ain’t no Scarecrow,” Brody said, then bounced his beefy paw off my knee.
    â€œGuess not,” I offered, then looked near the entrance ramp to the expressway for the Scarecrow, a homeless guy with long, dirty blond hair, ratty clothes, and a straw hat, which was why Brody called him the Scarecrow. He held up a sign that said HUNGRY VET, PLEASE HELP, GOD BLESS , but few cars stopped. One day ex-Dad stopped, rolled down thewindow, and yelled at him, “Get a job,” then drove away. I heard his reply. If ex-Dad did, he never reacted when the Scarecrow yelled back, “Where?” I’d seen the Scarecrow by the road other times and by the Big K Market.
    The last part of the ride was as silent for Brody and me as it was noisy for the rest of the bus. The noise swirled with the force of a hurricane, but I acted calm as the bus pulled into the school’s circular driveway. Whitney World and the Dragon True Believers seemingly sprang from the bus and rushed toward school, while the stoners, the waking wild man Brody, and I stumbled like zombies from the grave toward the building’s front door.
    Do you know what it’s like to be paralyzed?
    That’s how I felt: I couldn’t make my mouth open or my tongue move. All I could do was listen and watch. Listen to the sick sound of a brick smashing against a human skull, then watch the blood splatter like red rain. From across the few feet that separated me from the very real scene before me, I could hear the smack of brick against bone. It sounded like someone dropping a heavy book off a desk. My eyes were wide, gazing at his eyes, open to the world and closed off to life. My nose cut through the rancid smells already in the air and the rancid mess he made in his pants as life left him. Another hard smash of the brick right above those lifeless eyes left me with the image I’ll never erase: his left eye swollen shut, the right one wide open, staring, it seemed, right into my soul. He was a nonliving answer to a question I had never asked: what did a dead body look like?

8:00 a.m.,