Blood on the Ground

Blood on the Ground

I wasn't in class when it happened. I was in the bathroom. When I came back, Madame Lafont was still reciting her lesson, but God and the world were pissed off at Allen again. Especially Brandon.
         I sat beside Brandon and followed along. "Je gets an e, tu, es," and on and on.
         Brandon didn't say a word. He stared across the classroom, burning holes in the back of Allen's head. "I'm going to kill him," he said.
         "Who?" I asked.
         "That fuck over there, Allen."
         "Why? What'd he do?"
         "He pulled Sara out of her chair and threw her on the ground. He should know better than that. You don't touch a woman."
         He didn't know better. Two years ago, in the same classroom, he punched my friend in the face for standing in front of him and saying, "Cheerio, chap."
         "Just wait 'til class is over. I'm gonna punch him in his fucking nose."
         I ignored him and tried to listen to the teacher.
         "I mean it. I'm going to kill him."
         "Alright, Brandon. I believe you."
         Brandon transferred to our school in eighth grade. Since then, he'd never made it a semester without getting suspended or getting placed in ALC. We only saw him a few times a year. Whenever he came back, the whole class complained. He'd sit at the front of the class and talk loudly all day, and we'd wait for him to get kicked out again.
         Allen sat at the front too. He'd lay his head down every single class. The teacher would shake him on the shoulder, and he'd freak out and scare the whole class. They learned to tap on his desk to wake him.
         "What's the conjugated form of etre?" Madame Lafont asked.
         No one volunteered. In fact, the class didn't seem to move or breathe at all. We sat still in that moment of time, waiting. Allen's head hit his arms resting on his desk. Brandon squirmed in his seat. Class dragged onward.
         One day, in Lafont's class, Brandon bit me. No joke. He drew blood and everything. We both went to the office, and I explained what happened. He told me what he was going to do right before, and I laughed. Five seconds later, Lafont was running across the room screaming.
         But Allen was the crazy one.
         Lafont didn't sprint across the room that day. She kept spouting questions about French while the entire class stared dumbly at their desks. Fifty minutes was too long.
         Then the bell rang.
         Brandon hadn't cooled off at all; he spent the entire class brooding. Allen roused himself from sleep like usual and picked up his book bag. He stood beside his seat, holding his left arm with the opposite hand while the class filed out. But he wasn't the last to leave. As he made his way into the hall, Brandon followed behind him in a hurry. Outside the door, he dropped his bag and swung as hard as he could.
         The sound was sickening. The entire hallway stopped moving. Nobody screamed "fight," or surrounded them. We just stopped. Brandon swung again, this time landing a blow on the bridge of Allen's nose. Allen stood there. He didn't raise his hands to defend himself as Brandon let all of his anger loose. I looked around for a teacher. None of them had made it out of their classrooms yet. I looked back, and the blood from Allen's nosed splashed on the floor.
         I tried talking to Allen for the first time in sixth grade. He was already tall and lanky, red haired and pale. He hadn't grown into his body yet. We had science together second period. In middle school, two of the local elementary schools combined, and everyone was forced to make new friends. Allen sat alone at the back of the classroom. I didn't know anyone. At lunch, he sat by himself again.
         "Hey, you're in my science class, right?"
         He nodded.
         "What'd you think about Ms. Snyder? She seems kinda ditzy."
         He said nothing.
         We sat there in silence. He finished his food, stood up, and vanished for the rest of lunch. I tried talking to him a few more times after that. Eventually, I gave up.
         Brandon swung again and again. Each blow landed hard, thudding loudly. Finally, Allen pulled his hands up to protect his face, but Brandon swung around them, hitting him in the cheek and temple.
         The blood continued to drip.
         Connor tore through the crowd and grabbed Brandon, pulling him away from the fight. Brandon pushed back and shouted over his shoulder. He kept struggling to get away as Allen stood still in the same spot, not moving a muscle. A minute later, Mr. Porter pulled the three of them down to his office.
         Everyone made their way to class and the conversations resumed. I looked at the pool of blood on the ground that everyone tried their best to ignore. It looked so out of place on the white tile. No one stopped for a second. The bell rang, and I was the only one still standing in the hall.
         I heard nothing for the rest of the day. At home, my parents asked how my day went.
         "It was fine."
         "Anything interesting happen?"
         "No." I sat at the dinner table and chewed my food. In the back of my mind, I saw Allen standing defenseless in the crowd of students, his nose pouring blood.
         "May I be excused?" I asked, standing up. I made my way to my bedroom.
         Allen didn't come to school the next day. He didn't show the day after either. Over the weekend, my friends and I did the usual. We stayed up all night playing video games and drinking in my parents' basement.
         On Monday, classes resumed. I waited for French with bated breath. When third period came around, Allen was in his usual spot, head down. Madame Lafont started teaching when the bell rang. She walked up to his desk and tapped lightly. He looked up. Both of his eyes were black. His nose was clearly broken. You could tell even beneath the bandage that some serious damage had been done. Her eyes grew big, but she said nothing and continued with her lesson. Maybe she, like so many others, believed he deserved what he got. He laid his head down for the rest of the period.
         I didn't see him for a week after that. A couple rumors spread around the school. Allen had transferred, his mother had put him in home school, he had gone off and murdered Brandon in the middle of the night. But next week, he came back. He didn't look any better. His bruises had faded to yellow, giving his eyes a sickening color. It contrasted grossly with his pale skin, and people did their best to steer clear of him in the hallway.
         Every night, my parents asked about my day. I had nothing to tell them. What could I say? That I knew Brandon was going to attack Allen after class? That I let him get beaten so badly that he had to get reconstructive surgery, all because I didn't have the courage to do anything about it? There was nothing. I ate dinner then spent most of my nights in my room, my homework piling up in stacks on my desk.
         Allen's face returned to normal, although his nose had a slight bump afterward. Nobody mentioned the fight after a while, and no one had seen or heard anything about Brandon. We all figured he was in jail. Allen went back to sleeping through his classes and having random freak-outs once or twice a week.
We were all scared of the day when he'd come in and shoot up the school. You heard it in the hall when he walked by or in the back of the classroom while he slept. But he never did. He shot himself instead. Right through the back of the mouth.
The newspaper read, "Autistic teen commits suicide." I'll never forget that--"Autistic teen."  He wasn't just autistic; he was bullied, he was misunderstood. He was never given a chance. People wrote him off before they knew a thing about him. We were all guilty.
The whole town showed up for his funeral, even though they'd never been there for him before. I'd never seen his parents, but I knew who they were as soon as I walked in. No type of grieving compares to a parent mourning a lost child. Not husband and wife, not brother and sister, nothing. Allen's parents probably spent the rest of their lives asking themselves where they went wrong. But they would never be able to answer that question. They didn't do anything wrong. It was us. Nothing could have protected Allen from our cruelty. He couldn't leave school; there would be Brandons everywhere. Even if he were homeschooled, we would have found him. Everyone knew where he lived. We would have hunted him like Frankenstein's monster. Only we were the monsters. I see that now.
I still dream about him today. My wife and kids will never know his name. After high school, I moved away and went to college out of state. I met my wife my senior year and we started a family shortly afterward. Somewhere in Ohio, Allen's parents are still mourning. They're still cursing God for taking their boy before he had a chance to experience life. Twenty years later, I dare not speak his name. But I still see his blood on the ground, clear as day.