Author's Note: Please excuse any incomprehensibility; I'm running on less than five hours of sleep and a bad case of travel fatigue.
April
Johnson stepped out of the teacher's lounge and was immediately aware that something was wrong. Students were rushing passed the door, rule that there was to be no running in the hallways completely disregarded. He heard the sound of scuffling and cursing emanating from around the corner and tripped into a jog – almost forgetting the rule, himself.
He turned the corner and saw the ring of students that had congregated around the fight. Johnson could not see through their press of bodies, but could only hear the muffled yelps and struggling of the fighting students.
He forced himself into the throng, shoving students aside with his shoulders. When students realized it was a teacher they retreated to let him pass, jostling their neighbors into the lockers on the walls. He broke through the center of the circle and felt his stomach sink, but was somehow not at all surprised to see who it was whom was fighting.
It was Pierce, and another student – one who was not in Johnson's class but he thought his name was Warner. Johnson felt like kicking himself. It had been over three weeks since any sign of misconduct from Pierce. He should have known that it was too good to be true.
The boys were rolling on the ground, tearing at each other with their fists. Johnson couldn't tell whether or not Pierce was winning.
"Enough of this!" he demanded as Pierce's fist connected solidly with Warner's jaw. Warner thrust his knee into Pierce's gut, throwing the boy off of him from where he'd pinned him to the floor.
"Enough of this, I say!" Johnson lunged forward and grabbed hold of Pierce's shirt, yanking him backward as the boy tried to launch himself back at Warner. Perhaps encouraged by Johnson's interference, several students rushed forward to grab hold of Warner – who had managed to land a blow on Pierce's face while Johnson was pinning his arms back.
Pierce struggled to get free. Pierce was wiry, but surprising strong, and obviously his rage offered fuel to his strength. Johnson tried to get a firmer hold on the boy's arms. Still, Johnson had been wrestling champion at his alma mater and kept hold on the boy without too much trouble.
"Stop it, Pierce! Stop it this instant!"
Threatening, guttural sounds were coming from Pierce's throat, and Johnson was unsure whether or not they were directed at him or at Warner. The boy seemed incapable of forming coherent words.
The three students holding Warner back were having as little success of calming him down as Johnson was having with Pierce.
"Stop it, I say!" Johnson demanded, hauling Pierce further away from the circle of watching students. It wasn't until he heard the dull clang of metal that he realized he'd thrown the boy against a wall of lockers.
Behind him he could hear scuffling as the students pulled Warner away, as well.
Pierce's face was red. His dark hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat. His blue eyes were swimming with frenzied wrath. His chest heaved with breath.
"Get a hold on yourself, boy!" Johnson roared, pinning Pierce's shoulders against the locker.
Gradually the cloud of anger filling Pierce's eyes seemed to dissipate. His shoulders slumped in submission. Johnson released him and Pierce's gaze dropped to the floor, refusing to meet Johnson's eye.
Johnson heard the excited muttering of the students behind him and whipped around. "Well?" he demanded, "what are you all looking at? Get off to your classes!"
The watching students scurried away. All who were left in the hallway was Johnson, Pierce, Warner, and a couple of students who still held the other boy back. Warner's face was red and steaming, he looked perfectly capable of again launching himself at Pierce. Johnson felt perspiration bead at his hairline from the exertion it had taken to break up the fight.
As he felt his own tension ebb away Johnson felt discomfort take its place. Johnson hung uncertainly between the two boys. He should go to the principal. Clearly that was the right option – the only option. Clearly protocol called for it. He didn't know why he felt so hesitant. He didn't know what had started the fight or who. He knew Pierce had a hot temper – but the boy seemed to have been getting on so well….
"You may go," Johnson said with a nod to the lingering students, who released Warner's arms tentatively.
Johnson's eyes flickered almost hesitantly back to Pierce, who was still scowling at the floor. Johnson felt peculiarly glad that he didn't have to meet the boy's eyes. He had let the incident with Pierce and Miss McPherson slide, but this – well, of course this was entirely different. Pierce and Warner had been seen fighting in front of half the student population. Johnson couldn't very well let that go. Others might get the impression Johnson was soft. Behavior like that was never to be tolerated. Johnson shouldn't have to even think about it.
He opened his mouth to address Warner and Pierce. "Come with me, boys."
Johnson marched toward the office. He walked ahead but in the middle of the two boys, in case another fight should break out. Pierce and Warner, like equivalent sides of magnets, repelled each other and avoided each other's gazes.
Johnson reached Principal Thurston's office and held the door open to allow the boys to file through ahead of him. Warner slumped by and Pierce shuffled passed. He was still glaring at the floor.
It was a toiling, painful affair. The boys were interrogated. Parents were called in. Johnson stood by the wall, arms crossed over his chest, frowning and feeling…feeling strangely as though something had gone terribly wrong. He had begun to think that he and Pierce might be able to get through the rest of the year without incident. If only it had been another teacher to have come across the fight, then Johnson would have been able to avoid this situation. But, of course, that was only wishful thinking. Besides, Johnson had never been one to shirk his duty before. He didn't know why this situation seemed to merit such uneasiness.
Eventually the principal dismissed both boys home with their parents.
Johnson watched as Pierce was led away, his father's arm slung around his shoulder. Pierce's eyes were still trained on the floor, rarely had they left there even during his conference with the principal. Johnson wondered if it was shame that kept Pierce's eyes averted – or if it was only another subtle way to show disrespect. Another emotion trickled faintly into Johnson's consciousness, one he recognized as disappointment.
No matter how hard Johnson had tried not to set expectations for the boy, Pierce had somehow – with his deceptive innocence, subtle wit, and bewitching charm – managed to begin to impress Johnson. Johnson had almost begun to…if not like the boy than at least tentatively admire him – acknowledge the boy's talents, at least.
Before the door closed behind him, Pierce threw Johnson a glare. There was trickle of blood dried on the side of his head. A bruise was already blossoming on the corner of his jaw. His eyes were shining with anger and pain…and perhaps moisture of a different kind.
Johnson was shocked and slightly disconcerted, But of course he had imagined it. He couldn't fathom Pierce could ever actually be near tears…especially not over something like this.
His surprise threw him sharply back into the roiling waters of self-doubt. Johnson felt oddly…as if he had somehow betrayed the boy's trust. But of course that was ridiculous. Johnson had – well Johnson had had no choice.
It wasn't as if he had owed Pierce anything. True, they had been getting along with each other much better. Pierce's behavior in the classroom had improved tenfold – but that certainly didn't entail that Johnson should turn a blind eye to Pierce's other antics. It – this reflected on the interests of the entire school. It was no longer an issue just between Pierce and himself. He – he certainly hadn't breached upon any mutual understanding….
Pierce turned his head and the door shut behind him.
Pierce and Warner were both suspended for a handful of days. When the next Anatomy and Physiology class rolled around with Pierce back in the classroom, Johnson felt it irritatingly difficult to keep his mind on his lesson. Finally he dismissed the class and with an uneasy squirming inside his stomach, asked that Pierce please stay behind.
He had been thinking about it all the last days and had decided that he had to confront the boy. He wanted to…perhaps clear the air, perhaps relieve his conscious, or perhaps secure his conviction that Pierce was not – as he had begun to believe the contrary – worth his effort after all.
Pierce was uncharacteristically silent while waiting for Johnson to pack away his notes and address him. In all honestly, Johnson was dawdling in order to give him time to gather his thoughts.
Finally Johnson looked up, to find Pierce was once again willing to make eye contact, and was doing so – fiercely. Pierce was sporting a brilliant black eye and half his jaw was covered in a purple shadow, as if he had smudged charcoal all over his chin. Vaguely Johnson realized that it seemed that it had been a very long time since he'd seen the boy smile or crack a joke. It was a strangely troubling thought.
Johnson felt his lips press together. He cleared his throat. Pierce glared.
"Mr. Pierce – I think perhaps there is something needing saying between us."
"You might have stopped after "I think". I'm sure it's just as ridiculous as the rest of what you have to say to me." And tacked on as an afterthought and managing to sound far more of an insult as it ever had before: "Sir."
"Mr. Pierce," said Johnson, feeling his lips pull downward. "Perhaps I will disregard that jibe because I know you are obviously upset."
"Disregard whatever you'd like, sir."
"I think you are once again misinterpreting your position over me, Pierce."
The boy opened his mouth in shock and anger but Johnson cut him off.
"Trust me, the amount of drivel I have had to take from you this year is far passed the limit of what any teacher should have to tolerate from their combined students in their years of tenure. I warn you, tread carefully."
"It isn't as though you could possibly do anything else then bring me to the principal again, sir." To Johnson there seemed to be a fair bit of accusation in Pierce's tone. Johnson smothered a sudden, incongruent wave of guilt. It hadn't been his fault.
"I had thought we'd even reached a balance, Mr. Pierce," Johnson forced himself to continue, trying to snatch the end of his chain of thought before it clanked away, "some sort of an understanding between the two of us –"
"So had I!" Pierce yelled suddenly, as though he had been fighting back the words for the past week, stewing at home. "Darn it! I was even starting to believe you weren't half the dolt I thought you were! Then you had to go and pull a stunt like you did last week –"
"I!" Johnson faltered. "The stunt I pulled, Mr. Pierce? The only stunt we are discussing is the one you pulled with Mr. Warner."
"Why'd you have to go and do that, huh?" Pierce demanded, obviously deafened by anger and hardly acknowledging anything that Johnson said. "Why'd you have to interfere? What Warner and I were fighting about was none of your business! You didn't have to bring us to the principal! Did you know that my dad's grounded me for two weeks? Darn it, Mr. Johnson, he hasn't done that since I was eight-years-old!"
"Mr. Pierce, it is beyond my control how your father punishes you for your misconducts. If you were my son I can assure you that your sentence might have been much worse!" Johnson had been so riled that he hardly paused to consider the ghastly notion of having Pierce as his son.
"Why didn't you just let us be?" Pierce yelled. "I wouldn't have been in this mess if it hadn't been for you!"
"I had no choice, Mr. Pierce. The only one responsible for the mess you are in is you, not I, not the principal, not your father, and not even Mr. Warner."
"No one likes a snitch, Mr. Johnson," said Pierce, his voice falling darkly. "I had thought we'd decided to keep this as a private battle."
"The battle as you put it, was supposed to have been kept to the confines of this classroom, not to the hallways of school, nor including fights with students that are not even in my class. Besides, Mr. Pierce, I was under the impression that we had reached something of a truce."
"Maybe I don't like backstabbing, slimy, two-faced traitors."
Johnson frowned. He closed his fist tightly around the handle of his briefcase. Pierce seemed changed. The boy seemed angrier than Johnson had ever seen him before, yet he was not raising his voice, he was not even red-faced. In fact, he seemed oddly calm and matter-of-factly. Something, Johnson found, that seemed even chiller than if the boy had been rampaging across the classroom.
Johnson felt as if a line had unconsciously been crossed, that any restoration that had been done to his and Pierce's relationship had been suddenly and unequivocally wiped back to a state beyond repair. And he felt preposterously as though he had been the one to let Pierce down.
"So, Mr. Pierce, do you mean to tell me that my faith in your improvement has been unfounded?"
"Perhaps I never promised for your faith in anything, sir." Pierce clenched his jaw and hid a wince, as though the pressure had irritated the bruises on his chin.
"What were you and Mr. Warner fighting about?" Who had started it? But, of course Johnson wasn't going to ask that. It didn't matter. All the same, he would have liked to know.
"With all due respect, sir, it's none of your business, sir."
"You've disappointed me, Mr. Pierce."
Pierce frowned. A simmering fire burned beneath the startlingly blue irises of his eyes but Pierce seemed to master his rage, shrugging on an indifference that Johnson feared would be far harder to breach.
"You know what?" he spat. "You're not even worth it."
Pierce turned on his heel without dismissal and his dark head receded from sight before Johnson had been able to open his mouth or even think of a suitable retort.
Johnson was left feeling deflated. His fingers dissolved around the handle of his briefcase and he felt the cushion of his chair beneath him as he sunk to his seat. A week before he had seemed to have progressed so far, yet now, so unexpectedly and abruptly, all around him were ruins.
Starkly, as if Pierce's sudden absence and withering disregard had revealed it, Johnson knew that the boy had a great deal to offer. The boy was misdirected, surely, but Johnson felt as though, had things been different, Johnson might have been able to lead Pierce toward the right direction. But somewhere along the way he or Pierce, or perhaps both of them, had made a dire mistake.
And Johnson had no indication of how he was to fix it.
He was astounded that suddenly it seemed very important that he should.