Caught Between My Bully and My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Ask Me

Corey didn't step back.

He was taller than Saylor's father by two inches, and for the first time I watched him use it.

"Yes, sir," he said. "I heard you."

"Good."

"I'll be back on the field the week after. You can come watch."

The man smiled, with nothing behind it.

Then he walked down the hall and out into the sunshine.

Corey stood there with his collar crooked.

"Why did you tell your coach?" I said.

"Because it was true."

"You could have waited. I wasn't going to send it."

"I know." He fixed his collar himself. "That's why."

He walked away before I could say anything back.

Crew watched him go.

Then he looked at me.

"You okay?"

"I'm a student," I said. "I'm still a student."

My voice broke on the last word.

He didn't hug me.

He just stood close enough that I could lean if I wanted.

I didn't lean.

Not in that hallway.

That night was my night off.

I showered and put on my black jeans and the soft green sweater that made me feel like someone who'd already won something.

I put my hair up in the claw clip.

Then I took it down.

Then I put it up again.

At 10:40 I climbed the outside stairs to Crew's apartment.

He lived above a tire shop two blocks off campus.

The stairwell was concrete and smelled like rubber, and the bulb at the top flickered.

I knocked before I could think.

He opened the door in a gray T-shirt and jeans.

His hair was wet again, from a shower this time.

He looked at me and didn't say anything at all.

"Are you going to let me in," I said, "or do I have to order you?"

He stepped back.

The apartment was one room.

A bed under the window.

A drafting table covered in drawings of engine parts, every line perfect.

A coffee maker, a hot plate, and a stack of library books on fluid dynamics.

The tire shop's red sign glowed through the blinds.

"You read," I said.

"Don't tell anyone."

"Top of your year. Corey told me. I didn't believe him."

"Nobody does."

I walked to the drafting table and looked at the drawings.

He stayed by the door.

Like the hallway at Ashgrove.

Like my bedroom in Bell Creek.

Always one step back, waiting.

"Fifth grade was one," I said without turning around. "What's two?"

He was quiet.

"The bus," he said. "You sat in the front seat the rest of the year, next to the driver. I made you do that."

"Three."

"The locker."

"Four."

"You wore a sweatshirt in June."

I turned around.

He hadn't moved from the door.

"You remember all of them," I said.

"I counted them the night you took the mic." His voice went rough. "I didn't sleep. I got to two hundred and something and quit, because it wasn't going to end."

I walked across the room to him.

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