It was an hour so early that the only ones awake were the students, their teachers, and the moon, who grinned at the yellow school buses with its all-knowing crescent smile. Holed up in their classrooms, teachers had their hands wrapped around steaming six-dollar cups of coffee; their only line of defense against the October chill. No teacher stood watch in the courtyard. It was ruled by the students.
While waiting for the bell to ring, Juliet's eyes drifted over to where Bryce Colgress sat. He was the closest thing she did have to a friend here. Bryce could best be described as someone who was constantly in the middle of a war with his eyebrows, and was always losing against them tragically. They looked like caterpillars glued above his eyes.
Every time Juliet had seen him, his head was buried deep into a notebook. The notebook was his everything. He wrote in it so frequently and with such zeal, that it became a ritual as spiritual to him as prayer. Every single one of his dreams, hopes, plans, and secrets lived within its pages.
In all honesty, Juliet Harper didn't know much about Bryce Colgress. Not a single word had been exchanged between them. What Juliet did know was that Bryce was an outsider. A misfit. She was a misfit too. The only difference was that Juliet didn't mind her status and purposely avoided her classmates. Bryce had been thrown into the garbage like the unwanted crust of a PB&J.
Despite that difference, the two had drawn together in inexplicable ways. With the meeting of their eyes, they told each other more than words ever could. There was something about him that intrigued Juliet. He was different, but Juliet couldn't quite place her finger on how.
The sun was beginning to rise, turning the gray fog yellow. Cliques of students began to form, filling the courtyard. There was nothing their eyes missed; no face unjudged. Juliet was glad for the fog's protection. She wished the world always wore a veil. Without the student's eyes boring down on her as they usually did, she could relax and let herself breathe.
Juliet finally spotted Bryce. All she could clearly see of him from across the courtyard were his eyes, which were such a sharp color that they pierced straight through the fog. They were glaciers under a summer sun. Every time she gazed at them she shivered. It was a shame no one besides Juliet cared enough to admire them.
A group stomped towards Bryce, led by the baseball captain Chase Lipton. Juliet bristled. There were no teachers outside. No one was there to stop anything from happening, and she could tell the boys wanted to inflict pain. She watched Bryce look up from his notebook, and saw fear register on his face.
"Grab him!" a boy called, and the group leaped into action, swarming Bryce and pushing him to the ground.
"You aren't shit," someone sneered, as they grappled with the boy's arms, pinning them to the concrete.
Juliet watched while Chase ripped the notebook from Bryce's hands and waved his prize proudly in the air.
"Got it!" he announced triumphantly.
The group let go of Bryce, and he pushed himself off the floor, body slumped in defeat. There was no way he could fight them all and recover his treasured notebook.
In that moment, when his notebook was stolen, a memory from Bryce's past aligned with the present. The two became one, and he was transported to the day his first notebook was taken. He was fourteen, still a lanky jack-in-the-box whose arms bounced wildly and body teetered while he walked. Though he was smaller then and hadn't yet intruded on the 6-foot milestone, his crazy eyebrows were the same.
In his memory he was walking home from school, with his hoodie drawn overhead to keep off the rain. His efforts weren't reaping rewards. Water trickled down his face and covered it in a glossy sheen. When Bryce's house loomed into view he began to run, kicking up slush as he tramped through the puddles.
Inhaling the familiar scent of lavender laundry, Bryce kicked off his soggy sneakers and tossed them into the garage. After the four-mile walk, his home was a welcoming hearth of warmth. Pressed deep into a loveseat, eyes twitching nervously around the room, was Bryce's mother. Her long-sleeved T-shirt had bunched up, revealing circular scars where Bryce's dad had stubbed out cigarettes. Whenever she smiled Bryce saw lines of sadness crinkle around her blue eyes. Life, in general, was painful for her. It was an inescapable labyrinth.
"How was school?" she asked him in a mousy voice. Bryce had a feeling she didn't want to hear the truth. She didn't want to know that kids hated him, that he walked miles home every day, even in the rain, because if he took the bus they'd steal his books and drop trash on his head.
Mrs. Colgress was weak. She couldn't handle hearing the truth. Besides, what could she do about it? It was better to spoon her lies.
"Great," he said, trying not to grimace. No further questions were asked after that. Sometimes Bryce wanted to hit her. He wanted to smack the fuck out of her. It was what his dad did when she wasn't listening, and Bryce needed her to listen. "Wake up!" he wanted to scream, "wake the fuck up! We have to get out of here. Pack your bags and get in the car. By the time he realizes what we've done, we'll be long gone..."
It was a hopeless fantasy. Nothing could make her leave her husband. Even though he didn't allow her to have friends, beat her, and cut her down with words, Mrs. Colgress loved him. She clung to his few good traits. Not that Bryce thought he had any good traits. He had always hoped, though, that when she saw him start to beat his son, that she would draw the line. She hadn't.
"Sweetheart, I can still see the good in him," she had once explained to Bryce, justifying herself after her husband had given her a black eye.
Bryce didn't understand. Seeing "the good'' in someone wasn't a good enough reason to stay with them. Everyone had a bit of good in them. If good was universal, then his mother shouldn't have settled for good. She should have looked for someone perfect.
For however long his mother stayed with Mr. Colgress, Bryce would stay too. He couldn't leave her alone with a monster.
Mr. Colgress had been home early that day, hovered over a flurry of papers. If Bryce's father hopped in a time machine and came out twenty years younger, he would be Bryce's twin. Their eyes were both icy blue, and their mouths naturally perked into a frown. Bryce hated the way he looked, only because it was the way his father looked. He hated his father with a fervent passion and didn't want to be tied to him in any way.
"What are we eating tonight?" Bryce chirped, attempting to swat away the constant hot tension in the room. No one answered. No one breathed. Bryce was starting to become concerned. Silence always had its reasons, and his father was eerily quiet.
His dad glared up from the set of papers and his eyes were black-ice. Familiarity settled in Bryce. The papers; he knew where they were from. Instantly, he knew it was going to be one of the bad nights.
Bryce's heartbeat pounded in his ears, and he wished he hadn't come home. He wished he had hopped onto a train headed for Canada, whizzing by all the tar and factories and metal and tourist traps until his view gave way to eternal snow, then he could have gotten off and kept walking, walking somewhere, anywhere. He wished that he...
His thoughts crumbled like Papier-mâché.
The papers were from his notebook. No one was ever supposed to read it. Bryce wrote secrets in there, including things about himself, about the twisted dreams he had at night; opinions and thoughts; fantasies and nightmares. There were bad things in it. Very bad things.
With a lunging motion, Mr. Colgress punched Bryce across the face. Vaguely, through the ringing in his ears, Bryce thought he heard his mother scream. He picked himself off the floor in time to see his mother scurry into her bedroom. No one would be rescuing him tonight.
"Look what you've done, you selfish boy. You've scared away your mother again," said Mr. Colgress calmly, flicking a tongue over dry lips. "Can you tell me what the fuck this says?" his father asked, thrusting a paper at Bryce.
There was no need for him to look at it. Bryce knew exactly what was scrawled on the lines. Not too long ago he had a dream. It was after a particularly bad beating in which he went to bed with a busted lip. There were still bloodstains engraved on his pillow, much as his mother scrubbed to try and get them out. Some things can't be scrubbed away.
In his dream, it had been Thanksgiving. Platters of food engulfed the table, but nothing compared to the turkey, which was so juicy it slid right off the bone. His father raised a cocktail for a toast. Sparkles of light reflected off the glass as he laughed, flashing like a silver tooth. It was then that the poison kicked in. The glass shattered to the floor. Mr. Colgress laid on the ground, gyrating unnaturally. Seafoam trickled from his mouth.
"What did you do to me?" Mr. Colgress gagged in the dream. Bryce, hands clasped behind his back, meandered to his father's side.
"Only what you deserve," he had said, watching the life drain from his father's eyes.
That had been his sick dream. Sick, and yet Bryce wished it were reality. When he woke, he had jotted down the fine details -even added on to it- before the dream, like most dreams were, was forgotten.
Now Bryce's father had read the entire thing. With a flick of his wrist, his father tossed the notebook into the flames of the fireplace. Bryce watched his thoughts and dreams burn to nothing. Everything ended then. Just like an oyster scraped from the shell, his body was empty.
"Answer my question, boy" demanded his dad.
When an eagle knew it was his time to die, he flew towards the sun to hasten death. That was what Bryce wanted to do. He wanted to get the pain over with, quick and clean.
"I killed you in my dream, and you deserved it," he said blankly.
At first, there was only the sizzling of the fireplace and the smell of burnt paper. Time stretched out with a taffy-like consistency. Hours could have passed; seconds. Bryce waited for the inevitable fist.
"Upstairs. Now," his father demanded, clenching his fists at his sides.
Bryce scrambled upstairs and waited for the beating on his bed. His father wanted him to wait so the tension would build, and Bryce would think the worst. He had time to examine the dark bedroom with its bare, impersonal walls. The only sign that he lived there was a stack of books on the wooden desk that contained ROTC guides and a complete set of Edgar Allan Poe's work.
The door creaked open ever so slightly. Don't think about it, don't think about it, he told himself over and over. His dad stood in the doorway with his sleeves rolled and fists bunched. There was a floaty gaze in his eyes. Bryce's throat constricted. He let his mind run far from the world, concentrating on the list, closing his eyes.
Such a familiar occurrence, yet Bryce was still caught off guard when the first hit split his bottom lip in half, turning it into a hunk of butcher meat. There was no time-out before the second hit cracked his jaw. Blood spewed from his mouth like a whale clearing its blow-hole. The tip of Bryce's tongue was severed, caught in-between clashing teeth.
The next punch was so powerful that Bryce was knocked off the bed, sprawling out onto the floor. A kick sent sharp pain gushing into Bryce's ribs. His father must have broken his rib.
"This is your writing arm?" he grunted. Bryce nodded, strength sapped. "If you're gonna be writing demented shit 'bout me, then I'm not gonna let you write at all." One of his father's hands supported Bryce's elbow. The other gripped his wrist. Understanding passed through Bryce.
"No, please," he sobbed, face squished against the floor, but his father offered no sympathy. A great CRACK erupted through the room and Bryce felt his arm snap. It dangled by his side at an unnatural angle, severely broken.
All of a sudden, Bryce fell unusually silent. Mr. Colgress sat up, anger ebbing away to fear. He thought he had killed his son. That would not have been good. Bodies were hard to hide.
A shuddering breath escaped the bloody mess formerly known as Bryce Colgress. He was alive. Massaging his sore knuckles, Mr. Colgress stepped out of the room. He had knocked his son so good that his knuckles would be laced with purple bruises. He wouldn't be able to grip a pencil for weeks.
Bryce did not move, praying to every single God that he'd heard of to let him bleed to death. He drifted in and out of consciousness. When he slept he dreamt of a girl with a face the color of the full moon. He dreamt of Juliet.
When he woke, it was to the sound of his mother's voice. Years ago, when Mr. Colgress had given his wife permission to keep a job, she had practiced nursing. She cleaned her son's wounds, humming while she worked. When she was finished, she helped her son limp to bed, where he lay stick-straight, feet dangling off the frame. Mrs. Colgress's thoughts were a strange, murky puddle.
"I have to do some shopping," she said, stumbling from the room. With his one good eye, Bryce watched her leave. Most of his memories with her were of her leaving.
The next time he woke, it was to a needle weaving through his vision. His mom was stitching his lip back together. When she clipped the string from his face, Bryce dared a glance at his arm. Intricate colors of green and purple laced throughout it as if an abstract artist had used him as a canvas. He flexed it ever so slightly, and sparks of pain ignited in his brain. It would be a long time until he wrote again, if he ever could at all.
"I'm afraid your lip is going to have a scar, sweetheart," cooed his mother, putting her sewing needle back in the box.
A scar? That was the least of his concerns.
It had been a while since her days in the hospital, so Mrs. Colgress watched a couple of youtube videos that explained how to put a bone back into place. She started with his arm, which was supposed to be the most painful. When she did yank it back into place though, Bryce hardly made a sound.
"I ordered you a new bed frame. I had no idea you outgrew this one," she said while examining his rib. Concluding it was just a fracture, she tugged his shirt back down. They wouldn't go to the hospital for a fracture. Hospitals were risky. They asked too many questions.
"If you paid attention to me you would have known," the beaten boy remarked. He wasn't really talking about the bed frame.
"You know I love you, Bryce," she choked out, brushing a strand of his brown hair from his forehead. The words were hollow to Bryce. Love was unfamiliar territory to him, but he knew that if she loved him, she wouldn't let him get beat within an inch of his life.
Time passed, and Bryce began to heal. After two weeks his bruises turned blue instead of green and purple. Two more weeks, and he was back at Waylord like nothing had happened.
Even though he hadn't gotten professional medical care, Bryce's arm healed, and he could continue to write, as well as withstand the kick-back of his ROTC rifle. He trained so hard that if his father ever tried anything again, he would be able to kill him.
When his father had tossed his notebook into the fire, Bryce thought his soul had burned with the pages, but once his arm healed, Bryce had enough hope to believe that pages could be rewritten, and so he decided to give life another chance. He would write another notebook. In his second notebook, he wouldn't write about his father or any other topics that could get him in trouble. He would keep that information stored in his mind where no one could find it, but just in case, Bryce kept his notebook with him at all times. During the night he slid it under his pillow. At school, it was clasped tightly in his hand. It was a vital organ, and Chase had just ripped it off, leaving him gushing blood in the courtyard.