Filed to story: Brace Face Betty Drama Story
When you say my name, it feels like love, Betty.
When he says my name, it feels like love too.
“She had a nickname for me,” he says, eyes casting around the gym. “She used to call me
Passarotto.”
“Ahh, yes. That was in your email address. You promised you were going to tell me what it meant.”
A shy, rueful smile flickers at his mouth, there one second, gone the next. “It means little sparrow,” he says reluctantly.
“Little
Sparrow?”
He bumps me with his shoulder. “Laugh and suffer the consequences. It’s common in Italy. It’s more like…precious. And I was a scrawny kid. All knock-kneed and weird looking. I think my head was too fucking big for my body.”
I reach up and run my fingers through the ends of his wavy hair, pretending to assess his head. “Hmm
…”
He leans back for me to get a better look at him. “Well? What do you think? Did I grow into it?”
I angle my head to one side, squinting.
“You are skating on such thin ice right now,” he growls.
“All right, all right. Yes, everything’s in proportion now. You’re lucky. You would have looked real weird riding around with an extra, extra large motorcycle helmet.”
We quietly joke with each other, our shoulders and our legs pressed up against one another, neither of us able to get close enough to the other person. After a while, the atmosphere in the gym changes, the air vibrating with tension, and the smiles fade from everyone’s faces.
Principle Darhower enters and walks stiffly toward the small microphone stand that’s been set up in front of the bleachers. His face is pale, and his hands shake as he reaches inside his suit pocket and pulls out a square of paper. You could hear a pin drop as he unfolds it and begins to read.
“When I was a kid, my father was my idol. He was a stock car racer, and every weekend my Mom would sit with me in the stands, and we would watch him race. In high school, I decided I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to be a Nascar driver, and that’s all there was to it. It was seriously all I could ever imagine myself doing.” His voice rings out, clear and loud, reaching every corner of the gym. “I didn’t care about math, or science, or history. I never paid attention in my language classes, and I didn’t care about my GPA. I didn’t need any of that to be a Nascar driver, so I didn’t even try. My father knew how badly I wanted to follow in his footsteps, so he suggested I get my GED and take an internship with his sponsor, learning how the industry worked, learning how to build and fix engines, and most importantly learning how to drive. But I decided not to get my GED.”
He pauses, taking a breath. His hands are shaking so badly now, the paper in his hands shakes too.
“I stayed in high school because I actually loved showing up every day. I loved my friends. I loved my teachers. I loved feeling like I was at a place that mattered, even if I didn’t particularly want to give my studies my all. School, for me, was a safe place, where I felt at home, and I didn’t want to miss any of it.
“My father died when I was the same age as many of you are now. Five days after my seventeenth birthday, another stock car crashed into him on a corner, and he went hurtling into the barricade at ninety-three miles an hour. He was killed instantly. I was there, sitting in the stands with my mother as I always was whenever he raced, and I watched that day as my hero died. It was…officially,” he says, his voice breaking, “the worst day of my life.
“A week later, I went back to school, and
I was a wreck. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t function. I was a zombie, stumbling through my day, a war raging inside me because I now hated something that had consumed my entire life. I didn’t want to be a Nascar driver anymore. I didn’t know who or what I wanted to be. All I wanted was to have my father back.
“Grief was a long, lonely road for me. I didn’t want to be consoled. I didn’t want to feel better, because feeling better somehow felt like I cared less, and that…” Principle Darhower dashes at his eyes with the back of his hands, and my throat begins to ache. “I didn’t want to do that. Eventually, when the grief became too much, it nearly finally broke me, and it was my friends and my teachers at school who I turned to for help. They consoled me. They held me together. They saved me. It was then that I decided to teach. To help continue on a legacy of support and care that had been shown to me at a time when I needed it.
“Two weeks ago, one of the students at this school, one of my students, did something terrible. People were hurt. Lives…were…” He clenches his jaw, his nostrils flaring. “Lives were taken,” he rushes out. “Many of you lost friends. Many of you are feeling the same way I felt after I lost my father, crippled with grief and alone…and I am standing before you now…humbly apologizing to each and every one of you. The world has changed so much since I was at school, but that is no excuse. It was my burden of responsibility to ensure that this school was a safe place for you to come to every day, and…two weeks ago, I failed you. This tragedy never should have happened. It should have been prevented long before any of my students ever felt the need to harm others. What he did was wrong. There’s no excuse…ever…for the kind of violence we suffered through here. But I became complacent. My vision became narrowed by years of routine and ritual, and I wasn’t looking for the unexpected. And I am profoundly and deeply sorry for that.
“Today, we return to Ravenshire with heavy and broken hearts, but please know…I will never allow anything like this to ever happen to our community again. I promise to keep you safe. I promise to do better. Now, let’s go and shine…and let’s help each other remember how to breathe again.”
* * *
BETTY
I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous. Marcus has been to the house before, but never under these circumstances. Never as the boy I’m dating. Not as my official boyfriend. God, it’s still so weird to think of him in those terms. It feels stupid. Childish. Immature. Marcus was shot not too long ago and nearly died. Seems to me there should be a weightier title for him now.
“Betty! Can you remember where we put that photo album with that one picture? Y’know, the one with you hiding behind the couch, taking a shit in your diaper?”
Dad is loving this.
In turn, I have learned that it’s possible to love a parent but also want them to writhe in pain. Nothing serious. A broken toe would be nice. Or surprise root canal surgery.
I almost trip over my own feet in my haste to make it down the stairs and into the dining room. Mom’s laid out the table with all the fancy cutlery and dishes, six places set around the massive, formal dining table that only gets used at holidays and for special occasions. I gape at the set-up, holding out my hands just as Dad enters the room. “What the hell is this?” I demand.
Dad takes a bite out of an apple. “Your mother went mad.”
“We’re not Catholic. We aren’t, are we? Why does it look like the Pope’s coming for dinner?”
“We’ve lapsed,” my father confirms. “But, sidenote. I’ve recently taken up praying again. Funnily enough, my renewed faith coincided with the night you asked to go spend the night with a guy who looks like something out of Sons of Anarchy.”
“Dad. Please shut up.”
He holds his hands in the air, still brandishing his half-eaten apple. “All I’m saying is, I think I’m greyer than I used to be. If I start clutching my chest at dinner and I slump over my plate, face-down in my stroganoff, it’s because I’m faking my own death and I can’t live with the knowledge that I basically gave that little punk permission to defile you.”
“DAD! Oh my fucking god.
No
! Don’t ever open your mouth again. Especially not in front of Marcus.”
He laughs like the evil monster that he is as he turns around and heads into the kitchen. I pace anxiously up and down the hallway for the next thirty minutes, worrying at my thumbnail with my front teeth, trying to come up with a decent excuse to call off the entire dinner. I come up with plenty of solid reasons, but every time I pull out my cell to text Marcus, I realize how stupid I’m being and talk myself out of it.
At six thirty on the dot, the doorbell chimes. I just so happen to be banging my head against my bedroom door at the time, so Max gets there before me, screeching like a banshee at the top of his lungs. “MARRRRRCUS! IT’S MARCUS!”
I’m hissing every dark, vicious curse word I can think as I thunder down the stairs, running to get to the door before Max can say anything to embarrass or humiliate me. When I arrive, however, Marcus is standing with his tattooed hands resting on the shoulders of a very pale, wide-eyed young boy, introducing him to my brother.
“Ben’s eleven, too. You guys are in the same year,” Marcus says. He looks up at me, and my heart stops dead in my chest.
Holy fucking Christ on a bike.
He’s wearing a button-down black shirt, the top button popped, that is tailored and fits him perfectly. I nearly faint at the sight of his sleeves rolled up, cuffed around his elbows-what the hell is it about rolled up sleeves?
I swear to god…
His black jeans are brand new, minus the usual rips and tears, and his Stan Smiths look like he spent a considerable amount of time scrubbing at them with a toothbrush. There isn’t a speck of dirt on them. Marcus smirks ruinously at me, biting down on his bottom lip. He begged me not to do that the first night we spent in the cabin because it was driving him crazy. I wonder if he’s aware that the action has the exact same effect on me when he does it.
“Betty, this my brother, Ben. Ben, this is Betty,” he says. There’s a cautious edge to his voice. Usually, he’s so confident and unshakable, but right now he seems downright nervous. It’s kind of adorable. I hold my hand out to the little boy, my breath catching in my throat when I look at him properly, square in the face, and I find a small, timid version of Marcus staring back up at me. The shape of his face, the cheekbones, the straight, no-nonsense nose. Even his chin looks identical to Marcus’s, and for a second I’m taken aback.
Marcus would have looked a lot like Ben when does now when he was six. When he walked into the house and found his mother lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Except he was even smaller, five years younger, and the mental image that conjures itself in my mind makes me want to burst into tears.
He doesn’t just look like Marcus. They both look so much like her.
Instead, I whisper out a greeting as Ben uncertainly takes my hand and shakes it. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Ben.”
“Pleased to meet you, too,” he mumbles in return. When I let go of his hand, he slips it underneath his other arm, tucking it against his body like he’s protecting it. He looks up at Marcus, big brown eyes wide and unsure, and Marcus nods, smiling down at him.
“S’okay, man. It’s just dinner. That okay? Betty told me Max likes to play Halo. Is that true, Max?”
Max’s never been shy a day in his life. He nods enthusiastically, grabbing Ben by the sleeve of his super smart blue button-down shirt. “I have my own room for gaming. There’s a forty-two-inch screen in there. Dad got it to watch the baseball, but it’s basically mine now. Have you got Red Dead Redemption two? I got it last week, but I’m not allowed to play it until I finish Halo. Which school do you go to?” He chatters the whole way down the hallway, leading Ben toward the game room. Marcus leans against the door jamb, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he watches them go.
“He’ll be fine as soon as he gets some sugar in him,” he says.
“Well, there’s plenty of that down there. Max has a number of gummy bear caches hidden in the cupboards that he thinks Mom doesn’t know about.” I step back, making room for him to pass me. “You coming in?”
“I don’t know. I brought the kid as a human shield to use against your dad, but that you just disarmed me I’m wondering if it’s safe…”
“I have excellent hearing!” my father yells from the kitchen. “You are so screwed.”
I flinch, screwing my eyes shut. “He’s basically going to be unbearable all night,” I admit. “Just don’t pay any attention and you’ll be fine.”
“Hey, Marcus? Any idea what cyanide tastes like?” Dad hollers.
Marcus glares over my shoulder. “Is he serious?”
I try not to laugh, but I give in in the end. If I don’t laugh, I’m only going to end up crying. “If he asks, it’s probably better to tell him you slept on the couch when I came over the other night. Just…act natural.”
“No one in the history of being told to act natural has ever acted natural,” Marcus fires back. He does step into the house, though, essentially sealing his fate. He wraps his arms around me, stealing a kiss. I’m flushed and a little breathless when he releases me, holding a finger to my lips, pretending to shush me.
I pretend to bite that finger in return. “I’m glad Jackie let you bring Ben.”
“Yeah. Well. She’s actually been okay with me recently. I know. Shocker. Still insisted on coming to pick him up from here, but I’ve got him until eight-thirty.”
“And after that?”
Marcus shrugs. “I’m yours to torture as you see fit.”
My pulse quickens as I look up into his eyes, bracing myself for what I want to say next. He can’t have had any idea, but I do have something planned for after dinner, and it really is going to be torture. I’m panicking, my anxiety through the roof, my-
Marcus cups his hands around my face, frowning deeply. “Hey. Hey, what is it? What’s wrong?”
He’s so damn attuned to me. I’m pretty sure my expression is still under control, but he can tell I’m freaking the fuck out. “I-I want to talk to them. About…what happened at Leon’s party. Tonight.”
Marcus’s eyes round out. “Oh.”
“And…” Jesus Christ, this is hard. “I was wondering…”
“You want me to stay with you. You want me to be there,” he says quietly.
“Yes. I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot to ask. It’s definitely not going to be fun, but-“
He cuts me off with his mouth. The kiss is light and gentle, designed to reassure and calm. Pulling me to him, he presses me up against him, and suddenly I’m safe in the circle of his arms. Sweeping a piece of hair back behind my ear, he rests his forehead against mine, his eyes fierce and firm. “Betty, you don’t need to ask. I will always be wherever you need me to be. I will sit right beside you. I will hold your hand. I will carry you out of here and steal you away if that’s what you want.
I’m not going anywhere.”
I’ve made it through so much recently without crying. The days I spent sitting in a chair next to Marcus’s hospital bed, not sleeping, not eating, hoping and praying every second that he was going to be okay, were the worst days of my life, but I was determined to be there every time he opened his eyes. I was strong for him because he needed me. Now, it’s me who needs him once again, and boy is he showing up. “I love you, Argento. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. Just you wait and see.”
And I do believe him. I trust him. I know that he’s right. He’s always right because he’s Marcusandro Moretti…and despite everything, despite seemingly insurmountable odds, he managed to accomplish something that I told him couldn’t be done.
—-The END