Nazz had been guilty of jumping to conclusions, too, at first. Upon finding out that Kevin was in the nurse's office for a bloody nose, two splits in his lip, and a black eye, her immediate reaction was to blame Eddward.
Her second reaction, however, was not to go out and try to destroy his self-esteem with words; it was to fake a stomachache and go to the office to make sure her friend was okay, where she found out that her assumption, while reasonable, had been entirely untrue.
You know, basically what decent human beings do.
She sat next to him as he held a tissue to his nose and waited for an ice pack, and heard the full story from him. Well, an abridged version, anyway; he was using simple sentences and small words, and she knew better than to push him for more.
The nurse was focusing on Kevin, which was a good thing for two reasons; one, Kevin needed care and Nazz didn't, and two, said nurse would take her time with the Tums tablets, which meant Nazz could stay longer. (In fact, Nazz would not have been surprised if the nurse knew exactly why she was there, in spite of any lies she might have told in order to get there.) Kevin's hands were already full with treating his nose, so Nazz simply rested her hand on his shoulder, doing her best to offer her silent support.
"I just don't see the point."
The suddenness of the statement startled Nazz, though thankfully it only showed in a twitch. "What?"
Kevin lowered the tissue and turned to face her, and it took all of her willpower to keep from wincing. He looked somehow smaller without his hat on, to start. It was a silly thing to think, since one measly baseball cap was hardly ample protection against sunlight, much less anything else, but he seemed so much more exposed and vulnerable without it. But that wasn't what struck her. What struck her was... well... everything else. His hair was a dirty, untidy mess, his bangs hanging in tangles over his bruised, battered face. The trickles of blood from his nose and mouth, which had reached his chin before dripping down to stain the front of his sweater, had long since dried and crusted. The eye closest to her was swollen halfway shut, and she could see a bruise darkening on his jaw.
"It was stupid," Kevin went on quietly, and the look on his face made Nazz's every instinct scream at her tohug, hug now, but she wasn't sure he would thank her for interrupting him. "I know that. But... it was still right, wasn't it? I mean, they were his, those guys straight upstole from him, and giving them back didn't hurt anyone any more than taking them helped. Right?"
Nazz nodded. "Of course," she said quietly. "But did it have to be you?"
"I saw them. I had that one chance when I was cleaning the locker room. It was stupid," he repeated. "But... didn't I do the right thing?"
"Of course, Kevin."
"And that's what's wrong," Kevin said. "If I do the right thing, i-if I turn the other cheek and go out of my way to do something nice for someone who treats me like crap, and this happens-" He gestured to himself. "...then why should I bother at all?" He didn't sound bitter, or even angry; he just sounded... disheartened. He looked back to her again. "What's the point?"
She opened her mouth to console him, to offer words of encouragement, and closed it. Instead, she simply rested her hand on his shoulder and resolved to sit with him quietly until she wasn't sure how much longer she could bluff the nurse.
It's hard to think of the words to reassure someone when every direction looks like bullshit.
It was upsetting, to say the least. He should have been more vigilant. He should have known better.
Eddward was good at many things, and that knowledge made confidence one of them. However, he found himself now reminded how easily arrogance could be misconstrued as self-assurance. He must notbe arrogant. Arrogance was dangerous. Arrogance was a smokescreen against proper judgment, a threshold for critical errors just waiting to happen.
The outline of his tags were red lines impressed into the palm of his hand, bordering a similar imprint of an 'M'. He had discovered over the past two days that he really only needed one hand to write, or to eat, or to open his locker. His left was right at home, gripping his tags until he was almost sure that the marks on his palm would be permanent. As for swim practice... well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
He missed Marie. He hoped that she was recovering.
And yet, he found himself strangely resenting her. He had never begrudged her friendships before - she had her friends and he retained his - but he felt a slight stab of annoyance now, when he remembered that she was friendly with Kevin Anderson. Thoughts of the little - cretin no longer communicated the feeling behind it - had once irritated Eddward as simply a waste of thinking, but now they aroused something dark and angry and careening dangerously toward hatred.
The fact that this little nobody, who he manipulated and harassed for the sake of mild amusement, whose intellect (if one could call it that) was dull and average and utterly ordinary, whose name Eddward could barely remember on the best of days, had slipped beneath his radar and driven him to such a depth of disquiet, was almost more than he could bear. The fact of the matter was that, for all his suspicion at Kevin's evasive behavior in the past few days, for all of Eddward's bluster when actually confronting him, notonce in his entire search had it actually crossed his mind that Kevin might have taken them. Not once had he even entertained the notion.
But then, of course he wouldn't have. Kevin wasn't someone he suspected; Kevin was something he stepped over.
He had been surprised, to put it at its most basic level. Perhaps, from here on out, he might be more alert. He might actually look at the the boy, really look at him, when he spoke at him.
To begin, Eddward might as well make an effort to remember his name.
It struck him with the force of a freight train.
One moment, Kevin was staring in the school bathroom mirror, dabbing gingerly at his eye with the soaked paper towel he clutched in both hands. Tears beaded in his eyes, a natural pain response to poking at his injured face. The next, he was staring downward in the general direction of the sink, wide-eyed, seeing nothing, as his fingers curled tightly into the cool, wet paper. He felt it give way in his hands until it ripped in half entirely, and the pain-tears in his eyes became real ones. His chest felt tight, his throat burned. He could not breathe, he could barely see or hear, and yet...
There was a power to what he was feeling, and it simultaneously frightened and exhilarated him. He released the paper towel pieces, only to curl his hands into fists again, before cocking the right one back and smashing it straight into the wall.
Pain shot up to his shoulder, and he gasped but did not cry out. The wall did not give way, but the skin of his knuckles did, and he was lucky that the bones did not follow suit. He shook out his hand, feeling the cool air sting the newly-opened cuts. His breath came in furious gasps, the tears continued, and he would later be grateful that this moment had no witnesses.
He was angry.
He had never been so angry.
Perhaps, in another life, if he had been born with more physical strength and were more prone to this kind of anger, then he might have been a bully himself. The thought unsettled him. And yet, part of him, that dark part from which this rush of rage has reared its ugly head, could not help but envy this hypothetical Kevin. He could not help but wish for a world in which he was the strong one and Eddward was weak. In that moment, just in the span of a few breaths, Kevin honestly wanted nothing more than to see Eddward feel what Kevin felt now, when he was only able to imagine saying things that he could never say out loud, or to Eddward's face.
Every day. Every time you talk to me, every time you open your mouth, you make me feel weak, and pathetic, and tiny. You have no right. Do you hear me? NO RIGHT. Because the only one who's weak and pathetic and tiny is YOU.
He took a breath again, and nearly choked on it. The near-hyperventilating turned to gasping sobs. His throat was tight and painful.
Yeah, right.
As if he would ever say that. Nice thought, though.
The freight train moved on, leaving him battered and limp on the side of the tracks. With a shaking hand, he turned on the faucet and ran cool water over his knuckles until the blood was swirling down the drain.
It wasn't fair.
Karma was supposed to be a thing, wasn't it? What goes around comes around, and all that stupid garbage? Or maybe that was a bunch of crock, too.
He wiped his eyes with his uninjured hand.
He couldn't even blame Eddward for his physical hurts and get him in trouble for that. Because Eddward had never laid a hand on him, had never needed to. He had a silver tongue, with barbs if he needed them, and could probably refute any lie Kevin could think of.
Kevin wasn't sure what made him angrier, the fact that he could never get away with it, or the painful awareness that he probably wouldn't have told the lie even if he could.