He Left Me Alone

45

The letters stopped, after a few weeks since I had stopped caring. With a couple of punches, some blue bruises on the faces, a big load of swearing words, and a week of detention, it did stop.

I didn’t do anything to stop it. He did.

So, that afternoon, when I sat in front of the teacher room, waiting for him, I knew he really meant it when he said he would stop them.

“They are going to stop from now on,” he said as I put on a bag of ice cubes over his bruises. “If they aren’t, I will do worse things than I did today.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was glad he did it. I really was. But I felt so useless because the fact that I didn’t do anything. He did everything by himself.

Instead I said, “Thank you.”

I didn’t like seeing him like this. Some fresh blue bruises were everywhere in his face. He kept cringing when the bag of ice cubes touched them.

“But you will have detention for a week.”

“If I can handle those assholes, don’t you think I will handle such a thing like detention?”

“You are badass”