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Those piercing angry eyes and his aura made up for the few inches shorter than me that he is.
He slams his hand on the wall by my ear and something scratches the wall to my right. "My buddies and I... We know you did it."
"What are you—"
"Don't even try to play dumb with me," Liam hisses, slapping the wall. I wince away from his hand, my ear already aching. "We saw you coming out of the counselor's. It was on the cameras, you rat."
I decide keeping my eyes closed is probably the best course of action. I consider, from the atmosphere and his sheer proximity, that even a single look he deemed to be wrong could cause me to walk home with a pretty purple collection.
"I will not say it again." His breath is hot on my ear now, and I try to train my breath. I'm not scared, I'll be fine. "Stay away from Ryleigh. Stay away from her. Got it?"
Frustrated by my lack of response, he kicks the table beside me with full force. A screw falls loose from the wall and the floating shelf holding the class textbooks slants in our direction. The books, each at least two inches thick, cascade upon my head while Liam shields himself, scampering off towards the door.
My head is pounding. From the initial impact, from hitting the floor, from anxiety. The pain floods my head and I feel it all at once, and then not at all, as everything fades to black.

"West?" Someone is repeating my name. The voice seems vaguely familiar. "Son, can you hear me?"
When I open my eyes, my vision is too blurry to pick out a face, but I know it's my English teacher from the way the nurse addresses him.
"I found you unconscious in my classroom after lunch. What were you doing in there, bud?"
It wasn't my choice.
"Your head was bleeding and the shelf on the wall was wrecked with books all over the floor. Do you remember which hit your head?"
I shake my head. A mistake. That single movement triggers a wall of nausea that comes crawling all the way to the center of my face. I continue to gag, trying to hold back, until a lined bucket appears before me. I hurl all the colors of the rainbow inside, somehow managing to feel worse than before.
The nurse reacts with an "oh no" while my teacher backs away from the bed.
When I finish, the nurse informs me, "Elijah, I'm going to make a call home to your parents and inform them of your situation as well as recommend they take you to a doctor to see about a concussion."
"You think I have a concussion?" I barely get out, the words not even sounding like my own.
"I think it's possible. Heavy objects causing trauma to the head is one thing, passing out and hitting your head hard a second time is even more dangerous, and nausea to the point of vomiting is not a good sign.."

The nurse arranges for me to get sent home early on the tiny bus that takes the special needs kids home. I never expected my parents to pick up the phone in the first place.
Dead grass crunches under my feet as I make my way across adjacent lawns and cut straight to my front door. Leftover snows melts away on the handle and there's a spider lurking on the frame overhead, but neither are what stops me from going in.
Muffled shouts and thundering steps penetrate the door. I think to myself that's probably why even a spider doesn't enter the crack it could so easily slip into.

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