Chapter 1: THE BOY WHO NEVER FOUGHT BACK
The chair disappeared beneath me before I had even finished taking my lunch out of my bag.
One second, I was sitting at the far end of a crowded cafeteria table.
The next, my back struck the floor, my elbow slammed against the hard tile, and thirty students burst into laughter.
Above me stood Travis, the six-foot-four captain of our varsity football team, smiling as though he had just performed the funniest trick in school history.
“Oops.
Didn’t notice you there, little guy.”
His teammates laughed even harder.
I stared up at him, my elbow throbbing, and realized that after eight months of trying to stay invisible, I had finally become exactly what Travis wanted.
The center of everyone’s attention.
I had never wanted much from high school.
A place to sit during lunch, a few hours when nobody bothered me, and the chance to get through the day without becoming somebody else’s entertainment.
Travis had made even those simple things difficult.
And as I lay on the cafeteria floor with students pointing their phones at me, I understood that he wasn’t finished.
He was only getting started.
There is a particular sound a school cafeteria makes when somebody becomes the target of a joke.
It starts with one laugh, usually sharp and surprised.
Then another person joins in, sometimes without even understanding what happened.
Within seconds, the laughter spreads across nearby tables until the person in the middle of it can no longer tell who is laughing and who is simply watching.
I knew that sound better than I wanted to.
But hearing it while lying on the floor was different.
The ceiling lights seemed painfully bright.
Somewhere beside my shoulder, the metal chair scraped across the tile as it settled onto its side.
My lunch bag had slipped away from me, and the plastic container inside had knocked against the floor with a dull sound.
I could hear shoes shifting nearby.
Someone whistled.
A student at the next table said something I couldn’t make out, followed by another burst of laughter.
For a few seconds, I didn’t move.
Not because I couldn’t.
I was trying to figure out whether standing up would make things worse.
That had become a familiar calculation during the past eight months.
Every time Travis approached me, I found myself considering a dozen possible responses, most of which involved saying nothing and hoping he eventually became bored.
Sometimes that worked.
Usually, it didn’t.
A shadow fell across my face.
Travis had stepped closer.
From the floor, he seemed even taller than usual.
His broad shoulders filled the space between me and the cafeteria windows.
He wore the same varsity jacket he almost always wore to school, navy blue with the football team’s emblem stitched across the chest.
His hair was neatly cut, his sneakers looked almost new, and his expression carried the easy confidence of somebody who had rarely been told no.
He wasn’t breathing hard.
He wasn’t angry.
That almost made the situation worse.
Advertisement
Hotel advertisement 1
To him, what had just happened wasn’t a confrontation.
It was entertainment.
I shifted my weight onto my good arm and began pushing myself upright.
A hot ache traveled from my elbow into my forearm, but I could move my fingers.
Nothing seemed seriously injured.
I was grateful for that.
I was also angry that I had to be grateful for something so small.
Across the table, three of Travis’s teammates stood watching.
One had his mouth open in a wide grin.
Another kept looking from Travis to the floor, waiting for whatever happened next.
The third held a smartphone in front of his chest.
Its camera was pointed directly at me.
I noticed it, then looked away.
Eight months earlier, I would have thought somebody recording a scene like this might mean there was evidence of what had happened.
By that afternoon, I had learned not to assume that being watched meant being helped.
I got one foot beneath me.
The laughter continued.
Then I heard Travis chuckle.
It was a quiet, satisfied sound.
I had heard it enough times to know he was enjoying himself.
The first time Travis had bothered me, I hadn’t even realized I was being bullied.
That probably sounds strange.
But when someone is surrounded by friends, when everybody knows his name, and when he speaks to you with a grin, it’s easy to convince yourself that he is only joking.
Especially when you’re the sort of person who doesn’t like trouble.
I had been sitting in the cafeteria that day, just as I was now, trying to finish lunch before the next bell.
Travis had stopped beside my table with two teammates behind him.
