Hercules

“Hey Meg,” Ness.
Ness walking, skipping, surging toward me like a storm cloud.
“How’s Cameron?”
My eyes grab onto a piece of wall. He smells like Axe.
Try not to look at him try not to inhale.
“He can’t use his left hand at all; and he had to drop out of band.” It’s so compact, that one sentence. So complete in itself, so far from the truth: from the hours I spent with Cameron, trying to convince him that no, he shouldn’t kill himself and yes, his life still had purpose. Cameron wanted to be in New York Philharmonic. Ness took that from him.
Ness is nodding solemnly. “What did he play again? ‘Sides you.” His smile is lukewarm soup and four hours of math homework and a weekend spent cleaning my room.
You’re the same, you know? You had the same smile in second grade.
“Saxophone; he played the sax. You think maybe I could get to class? I’m nearly late.” I’m grinding my molars now; I can hear them scraping against each other.
“Just one more thing.” Now he’s leaning over me.
Your breath smells like bleach why does it smell like bleach.
“Since you boyfriend is all incapacitated, how about you just forget him? How about you just reconsider us?” I shiver at the word “us.”
He’s not my boyfriend he’s not my boyfriend he’s not not not. Us? What us?
“I… just heard the final bell.” I try to walk away, but he grabs my arm. He squeezes hard.
“C’mon, Meg. You can’t just blow me off like that.”
“Can’t I? You stomped on Cameron’s arm. You broke his fucking arm, you creep.”
I look at his face, his greasy locks of hair, his dark, dull eyes. Disgust just sort of pulses through me, and I spit on his face.
“Bitch. Fucking bitch.” He pulls back his free hand like he’s going to hit me and I cower, turn my face away.
That’s when
that’s when
that’s when I saw him.
Ness notices him too, and sneers. He wipes the spit of his face and unto his jeans. His hand is still on my arm, trying to crush the bone, circling tighter and tighter. Whatever demeanor of—chivalry? he had before is gone. His eyes glint with a black shine. He pulls me closer to his side.
I barely see him, but I can tell that his hair golden, that he has a tan even though it’s January. He is tall, and broad, and as he approaches he seems to carry sunshine with him, and thunder, so that when he arrives all the sound and the light comes crashing around us and even Ness is dazzled.
“Hello,” he speaks like a politician, a daytime tv star, a messenger of god. “Megan, I was wondering. Do you need an escort? To your next class?”
To Ness he says, “You should leave.”
Ness releases my arm, and takes one step back. But he doesn’t look finished. “Who the hell are you, that you can interrupt our conversation and just—who the hell are you to tell me what to do?”
And then a teacher pokes his head out of a classroom.
“You kids, get a move on. Go on!”
And Ness just sort of eyes the both of us, and to me he says “Seeya kid.”
His name is Marcus Ercole. “It’s Italian,” He says, apologetic. “Or Greek or ancient Hebrew or something.”
I laugh and he blushes. His eyes are a deep, impossible blue.
He leaves me at class before I can thank him, carrying light and sound away with him, around the corner and out of site.
I spend all fourth period thinking about him—about how he came out of nowhere.

When I walk to my usual table, lunch in hand, I see Ness and a scream rises to my lips and I clamp my hand over my mouth, trapping it. His hands, their under the legs of the table, and the legs have bore holes right through them. And the same with his feet—white socks are are red-black with blood. His face is swollen, and there’s crusted blood all down his shirt, vomit stuck to his chin. I turn away, thinking “I’m going to be sick.”
Thinking “I know who did this”
Thinking “Where are you, Marcus?”
I’ve lost all appetite but I’m not sick. I throw away my lunch and sit alone, watching people gather around the scene, watch them lift up the table; turn it on its side. Watch the school nurse come and finally, the flashing lights of an ambulance. Ness is gone.