Photo by RDNE Stock project, pexels.com
by Catherine Buck
When I see Timothy leave the cafeteria all in a rush, I don’t mean to follow him, because it’s my prep period and I barely have time to scarf down my salad and grade the last of the vocabulary quizzes before all his classmates come trampling into my room fifth period, but he has that look in his eyes that I caught for just one second and I know that look even though I haven’t had reason to make it myself in two decades, so I turn on my heels back down the hallway towards the gym, and when he goes into the boys bathroom there isn’t anything I can do, but he’d made that look. So I wait outside reading all the papers on the bulletin board and the letters swim before my eyes, all out of order as if I’d never grown up, and in that minute they are just as legible as the scribbled notes that had flown over my head, folded into paper footballs never meant to land on my desk, or maybe they had, maybe I was the intended recipient after all, even though they swore I wasn’t, and laughed as they told the teacher that I must have written it myself, and my mom said she believed me but there was that look in her own eyes where she doubted for at least a minute and she still signed me up for the counselor who wanted to hear more about how maybe I wanted to die than he wanted to hear anything about the people who maybe made that true, allegedly, and I had to go to his office during lunch which gave them all something else to laugh about, which I’d have cared about more if it hadn’t also meant that for one hour once a week I could be behind a closed door and lie to that old man and not feel guilty about it, and at least there no one could see me, but now the bathroom door is opening for Timothy, and I spin around to see if his eyes are red, because I should say something, ask if he needs space or support, tell him that he’s not alone. And he isn’t. He’s with Chris, laughing. They glance at me.
“What’s up, Miss G.,” they ask, and disappear down the hallway without waiting for a response.
Catherine Buck lives in Jersey City, NJ. She holds an MFA from Rutgers University Camden. Her fiction has appeared in Cotton Xenomorph, Bending Genres, Vestal Review, CRAFT Literary, and elsewhere, and was nominated for Best Microfiction 2024.
