The nurse’s office at Northbridge High reeked of cheap antiseptic and teenage despair.
Sitting on the edge of an examination bed lined with crinkled paper, I clenched my teeth as Mrs. Higgins—the school nurse whose legendary tenderness rivaled that of a cheese grater—manipulated my wrist.
“You are a walking disaster, Frey!” she barked, pulling my joint straight with a sharp yank.
“Ow! Easy, that’s my writing arm!”
“You write with your contrariness, not your hands.”
Behind me, a muffled, choking sound echoed.
Aamir, leaning against the medicine cabinet, was literally doubled over.
He was crying tears of laughter, his face bright red, unable to hold it in ever since Coach Miller had me escorted out of the gym.
Mrs. Higgins spun on her heels, her index finger pointing toward the door like a loaded gun.
“You, the clown! Out! Immediately! Your friend will survive his own clumsiness. Get to class before I stick a thermometer where the sun don’t shine!”
Aamir raised his hands in a peace sign, still hilarious.
“I’m going, I’m going, I surrender! Hang in there, Soldier Frey. If they have to amputate, I call dibs on your comic book collection!”
He vanished into the hallway, leaving me alone with the medical Cerberus.
Mrs. Higgins sighed, shaking her head, then leaned in to inspect my shoulder.
As she pulled lightly on the collar of my T-shirt to check if the dislocation had caused any further damage, she froze.
Her bushy eyebrows furrowed.
Her usually annoyed expression suddenly turned dead serious.
Beneath the fabric, the yellow-purple bruise left by the symbiote’s backlash still covered a massive portion of my right flank.
It looked less like a sports mishap and more like a beating by a gang armed with baseball bats.
“Owen…” she murmured, her voice suddenly softening.
“What is this?”
I swallowed hard, hastily pulling my T-shirt back into place with my functional hand.
Damn parasite.
“Is someone hurting you?” she insisted, locking her eyes onto mine.
“If it’s Sam Kodd or someone else… you can tell me. This is more than just a dodgeball tumble.”
“Nobody’s bullying me, Mrs. Higgins. It’s just… I signed up for a pretty sketchy boxing club last night. Down in a basement. My stage name is ‘The Human Punching Bag.’ The concept is that I parry the blows with my internal organs. It’s very avant-garde.”
She remained silent for a moment, weighing my usual sarcasm.
Realizing she wouldn’t get anything else out of me, she surrendered with a long, weary sigh, pulling an ice pack from the mini-fridge and two anti-inflammatory pills from a drawer.
“Swallow these and lie down. You’re staying under observation until the end of the period. And find yourself another sport, Frey. Chess, for instance.”
She walked back into her glass-paneled office.
I swallowed the pills dry, placed the ice on my burning wrist, and lay down on the hard mattress.
The nurse’s office was quiet.
Until a creaking of springs echoed from the adjacent bed, hidden behind a faded blue curtain.
The fabric parted slowly.
A disheveled head popped out.
Dark circles as deep as trenches, messy dark hair, and a jaded stare that seemed to judge the entire universe and find it disappointing.
Beneath her oversized hoodie, you could spot the faded red polo shirt of her local supermarket uniform.
Maya.
My childhood friend.
The other member of the misfit trinity I formed with Aamir.
If I was considered the school’s official loser—a prime target for bullies low on self-esteem—Maya was the ghost.
She was absent ninety percent of the time.
Officially, she suffered from a “fragile constitution” requiring constant rest.
Unofficially, she just had an Olympic-level laziness about attending class and spent her days sleeping here before clocking into her shifts at the local Super-Mart.
“I heard a foam ball almost tore your arm off,” she rasped, barely awake.
“It was heavy rubber, Maya,” I corrected, staring at the ceiling.
“And I didn’t cry.”
“Your sniffing said otherwise.”
I turned my head toward her.
“What are you even doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in history? The teacher asked again if ‘Maya’ was an urban legend invented by the administration to secure funding.”
“I claimed an ocular migraine. I have a six-hour cashier shift tonight, no way I’m wasting my energy listening to some sweaty guy talk about the Industrial Revolution. Between the two of us, you’re still the pathetic one. Breaking your wrist by falling over your own feet… Bravo, maestro.”
“I am a complex being with an unstable center of gravity,” I replied in dead earnest.
“You’re mostly just a trouble magnet.”
She pulled a crushed granola bar from her pocket and started nibbling on it.
This cynical back-and-forth was our language.
We didn’t do hugs; we didn’t say comforting words.
We hurled barbs dipped in irony to mask the fact that we were just two lost kids trying to survive the jungle of high school and Northbridge.
“Seriously though,” she resumed, pointing her bar at my ribs.
“What’s up with that space-grade bruise? Did you play chicken with a truck?”
My heart skipped a beat, but my face remained a mask.
If Maya knew what was hiding in my backpack at this very moment, she’d probably report me to the S.R.B. just to collect the bounty and quit her supermarket job.
“Boxing club,” I replied without blinking.
“You’re a terrible liar, Owen. But hey, if you want to die in denial, that’s your call.”
DRIIIIIING!
The shrill bell announcing the end of the period cut our exchange short.
Mrs. Higgins stepped out of her office, a hall pass in hand, which she handed to me with the grace of a prison warden handing over a release slip.
“To class, Frey. Mr. Harris is waiting for you in Science. Try not to trip in the hallways.”
I stood up, wincing, my wrist tightly wrapped in a support bandage.
I cast one last glance toward the next bed.
Maya had already laid back down, pulling the blanket over her head to resume her role as an institutional ghost.
“Later, Casper,” I muttered.
“Don’t croak in Bio class,” the blanket grumbled back.
I grabbed my backpack with my left hand.
The weight suddenly felt much heavier than usual.
The armor slept inside it—silent, monstrous.
I took a deep breath, pushed open the door of the nurse’s office, and headed toward Mr. Harris’s class, ready to face the rest of the day with the chilling certainty that I was never truly alone again.