Reaching out gently he cupped my chin in his hand and tilted my head slightly to better see the damage done to my eye and my lip.
"Tell me who did this."
I shrugged my shoulders while avoiding his gaze which had grown more severe.
"Tim."
"I don't know."
"Yes you do, now tell me."
The last thing I wanted to do was to tell him and get beaten up more for being a snitch.
He exhaled and sat back onto his desk, looking at me sadly.
"You'll have to use soap to get that off," he gestured towards my forehead and what had been scrawled across it in black ink.
"Do you need the nurse," he asked tentatively, already knowing my answer.
"No, Sir."
"I'll get you some ice for your lip."
He left then and I looked at my reflection in the window pane, made visible against the dark sky outside. He came back sooner than I though with an icepack and a damp cloth; the staff room having been just down the hallway.
I scrubbed at the writing on my face and only made matters worse by smearing black ink all over me. He took the cloth from my hand and gently wiped at me until most of it had been removed.
"Thank you."
"Tim, I can't help you if you don't talk to me."
"I'm fine, really. I promise," I said with a charming smile and he seemed to falter.
"Why did they do this?"
I stared at him, confused. I had thought he was entirely aware of how things worked at the school. I'd thought he was a part of them.
"I wouldn't give him what he wanted," I replied darkly and Mr Walker looked unfazed.
"I see. What did he want," he asked calmly, casually regaining his stance against the desk.
I laughed.
"To sleep with me obviously."
"Mmm. I see. And of course, you didn't want to sleep with him," he affirmed and I shook my head.
"I don't do that anymore," I replied quietly and looked down at his shoes.
"Well," he said after a few minutes. "I can see that you are exhausted and it is past curfew so you had better head to bed. We can talk again tomorrow if you wish, Tim."
"I'm okay."
"Let me give you this," he said suddenly and reached around to search in his drawer.
"Robinson Crusoe," I read the cover and smiled at the coloured illustration.
"Thank you Sir."
He nodded at me and held the door for me as I left.
He left clutching the book to his chest and as soon as he had I sat down to have a cigarette. It would be a tiresome drive home and I needed to calm myself.
I had found him in a heap in the rain, blood seeping from his cut lip and the start of a black eye forming. The sick individual who had targeted him had written vile slander across his face and I was glad I had found him before he caught a cold, or worse, from the freezing temperatures.
It was a horrifying image to think of that sweet young boy being brutally beaten and worse to realise that he would no doubt have sat there, compliant, as they wrote on him. He didn't seem the type to fight back.
I rested my head in my hands and thought about what he had said.
'I don't do that anymore'.
The thought of what he had been doing before sent a chill through me.
