Chapter 31 - Avett

I’d only ever been in one fistfight in my entire life, and it was in sixth grade with Adrian’s bully, Tucker Higgins. Well, it wasn’t a “fistfight” so much as it was Tucker Higgins kicking the shit out of me. Still, after he got suspended for an entire month, he never picked on Adrian again, so it was goddamn worth it.

Tucker Higgins was an ugly homophobe who was into organized sports, so it was no surprise to me when ol’ jersey-wearing Jason opened his big, spitting mouth to say what he said, but I still wanted to be sure I heard him right. “What’d you just call me?” I asked. The words felt heavier on my tongue than Jason’s meaty red face looked, looming in the air inches from my own.

“I called you a fucking faggot,” he clarified in his phony Boston accent, booming to be heard over the music and the shouts from the beer pong table. “You and your little boyfriend are both lazy, freeloading faggots.”

I dropped Lily’s hand and dug every one of my nails into my palms. “Call me whatever the fuck you want, but talk shit about Adrian and I’ll kill you.”

Lily stepped between us like all hundred pounds of her could somehow shield Jason’s mountainous form. Her eyes were wide and wild. “Avett. Let’s go.”

Jason was busy laughing a humorless cackle. “Yeah? You gonna kill me, cocksucker?”

The pressure of Lily’s palms on my shoulders pushed me backwards. “Get out of the way,” I growled, easily sweeping her aside with an arm just as Jason lurched forward again.

“Come on. Kill me, faggot.”

Ignoring Lily’s helpless tugs at my wrist, I remembered a fun fact. “You know ... Old Tucker Higgins turned out to be gay.”

Confused, Jason’s leering faltered. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m just saying. It takes a faggot to know one.”

Nothing pisses off a drunk homophobe more than being called gay, so it was really no surprise when his meaty fist sprung out and collided with my face.

Lily screamed, as did several onlookers. I stumbled back, narrowly catching myself just before he shoved me hard enough to send me flying into the hard marble floor.

A few other oversized Red Sox fans swept in shouting and dragged Jason back, purple and sputtering. Lily crouched beside me, bringing her crumpled face close. “Oh my god. Are you okay?”

“Someone take that motherfucker to the principal’s office,” I called.

That got a couple of laughs out of the crowded ring around us, but most were still shocked and shouting. I folded my legs under myself and scrambled to my feet. A thick warmth spilled into my throat, choking me. “Oh my god,” Lily said again, looking like she’d seen a ghost, and not the last-minute-bedsheet-costume kind. “You’re bleeding.”

My hand raised to my nose and pulled back slick with shiny red. More drops fell to the front of my shirt and to the floor. “Damn. He got me good.” My words were slurred by the heavy metallic taste in my mouth, but everything was muffled as if underwater and I didn’t feel a goddamn thing.

“Holy fuck,” Cassie said, swimming into view. “What happened?”

Lily’s voice cracked. “He got in a fight.”

“I wouldn’t call that a ‘fight’ so much as—”

Cassie cut me off. “Dude, you gotta pinch your nose!”

“Alright, alright.” I clamped my nostrils between a thumb and forefinger, swallowing more salty blood.

“He went that way,” Lily was saying to Cassie, pointing down the hall. “I think they dragged him outside.”

“Who invited that loser, anyway?” I asked in a nasally voice.

“Tilt your fucking head back!” Cassie screamed in my face.

“Jesus Christ.” I tilted my head back and went on gasping air through my mouth. The adrenaline had worn off just enough for a dull pain to shoot through my tailbone, right where it had collided with the floor.

“I have to find Hunter,” Cassie said, careening off again.

The crowd of onlookers, apparently having concluded there was nothing else to see here, grew bored and dispersed. Lily was crying. I asked her, “Why are you crying?”

Her shoulders shook. “I don’t know! I’m scared, okay? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” I let go of my nose to gesture wildly, and a comically large amount of blood spurted out. “Are you actually pissed at me right now?”

“Pinch your nose,” she wailed, sobbing.

I pinched my nose. Both of my pockets vibrated at the exact same time. “Jesus Christ,” I laughed. “Not a good time, Sir.”

Lily did not laugh. She asked, “Is it broken?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It doesn’t hurt, like, at all.”

“Yeah, because you’re drunk,” she cried.

“You’re drunk.” I realized one of my pockets was vibrating with a rhythm oddly similar to a phone call, so I reached in and slid out my phone. “Oh, shit. Colin’s calling me.”

Lily checked her own phone. “Shit, shit. It’s 12:23.”

“Alright.” I closed my eyes and took a big, metallic breath in through my mouth, my sluggish head drifting through the air pounding aggressively with music. “Alright. You go find Adrian. I’m gonna go find my jacket.”

Lily wiped her face with her bare arm. “Are you seriously worried about your jacket right now?”

“Yeah...” I said lazily. “I like my jacket.”

She looked at me like she actually wanted to kill me. “You are a fucking dick,” she said, and walked off.

I answered my phone. “Hi, Colin.”

He said something inaudible as I swayed through the crowd to the basement stairs. “I can’t hear you,” I shouted. “We’ll be out in like, thirty seconds.”

I hung up and stumbled down the steps. The basement was crammed with a sea of people. I waded through them towards the couch by the piano, where a group of mimes were all shouting over each other in some sort of heated debate. My fringed jacket and Stetson were piled up on the end table. I grabbed them and called, “Mimes don’t talk, idiots,” as I navigated back to the stairwell.

In the foyer, I peered around with my nose pinched and my head tilted back, but there was no sign of Lily or Adrian. “Nice costume,” a girl giggled, slinking past. “That blood looks so real.”

I could almost taste the stench of the hazy air in my lolling mouth, so I grasped for the handle to the front door and swung onto the porch, slamming it behind me. I sucked in gulps of crisp, outdoor air. Somewhere past the jumble of cars in the driveway, Colin’s sedan idled in the street with the headlights on.

Fumbling with my accessories in my one free arm to pull out my phone, I called Adrian. It went straight to voicemail.

I called Lily instead. She picked up after the first ring and said, “I can’t find him.”

“Alright ... Where have you looked?”

“Everywhere, okay?” She still sounded pretty pissed, but at least she wasn’t crying, as far as I could tell. “Downstairs, out back, upstairs... ADRIAN?” After a pause, she sighed and a door clicked shut. “He’s not up here. There’s only people making out.”

“Did you check the bookshelves for secret rooms?”

“You’re not helping.”

“Alright...” I tried to force my brain to think, but it was as light as a helium-filled balloon.

In the distance, Colin’s headlights went dark and he climbed out. “Avett?”

“Just come out front,” I told Lily, and hung up.

I met Colin in the yard. “Oh my god, Avett. What happened to you?”

“Jason punched me in the face,” I said.

“Jason? As in, Jason Jason?”

“The goddamn pool boy,” I confirmed, removing my fingers from my nose. “Does it look broken?”

Colin reached up to grab my chin, tilting it to the light of the house. “It’s hard to tell, but ... I don’t think so.”

When he released me, I finally looked down at myself to find my whole front stained with red. “Ohhh God. I’m gonna pass out.”

“No, you’re not,” he said, quickly pushing my head back. “Just keep it pinched.”

I pinched it shut again and flopped down on the lawn, greeting the black void of sky. “I’m drunk, Colin.”

“Yes. That’s why it’s bleeding so much.” He was tapping around on his phone.

“Please don’t call Sir.”

“I have to, buddy.”

“No, you don’t,” I argued, just as Lily came to the rescue by walking onto the lawn and distracting Colin from his phone.

“I can’t find Adrian,” she said between shaky breaths, crying again. With Sir’s coat swallowing her up, she looked like a shrunken, makeup-smeared Sherlock Holmes. “I looked everywhere.”