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dancing around. I lay down there covering my face while they all laughed at Lewis’s foot. I waited for more. But it didn’t come. The laughter faded, and then they were gone.
    For a while I lay on the ground and looked at I LOVE YOU BITCH ! Then I got up. I went to the toilet stalls and sat on one of the toilets and waited for the period to end. Just sat there. When the warning bell rang, I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror. My right eye was purple on the inside bottom, and my nose had bled all over my lips and down my neck and onto my off-white PE T-shirt. A nice splatter across the neckline. All the kids were coming in now. Some looked at me, but I didn’t wash off and I didn’t change my clothes. I leftmy things in my locker and walked to my next class, American History with Mr. Hurston.
    I was there before everyone. I sat at my desk and waited. The middle of my face was throbbing. My classmates started coming in, but no one noticed me. My seat was toward the back. Finally Stacey came in and sat down. She didn’t look at me because she never looks at me, but I stared at her really hard until she finally looked.
    “Oh my God,” she said. “What’s wrong with your face?”
    “Nothing is wrong with it.”
    “You’re bleeding, Jeremy,” she said loudly. “Oh, Jesus, you’re
bleeding
!” Other people looked.
    “I know,” I said. I didn’t say anything else; I just stared at her. Real hard.
    “Why are you looking at me like that?” she said.
    “Because,” I said.
    “Because what?” She said that quietly, like she was scared.
    Then Mr. Hurston came in. He said, “Hello, class, new morning, same old history,” like he always did.
    “Mr. Hurston,” said good Jerry Holtz. “Mr. Hurston, look, Jeremy’s bleeding.”
    “Mr. Hurston, he’s staring at me,” said Stacey. She was right; I
was
staring at her. Mr. Hurston walked over to my desk. He put his hand under my chin, in the blood, and held my face up to his. I looked into his empty blue eyes. His eyebrows were silvery like his hair.
    “What happened?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” I said.
    “Who did this to you?”
    “No one.”
    “Okay, no one did it, right. All right, who?”
    “No one.”
    “Fine, if you won’t tell me, I want you to go to the office right now and see Mrs. Moore.” He looked around the room. “Jerry, I want you to take Jeremy to the office, to see Mrs. Moore, okay?”
    “Sure, Mr. Hurston,” said Jerry. He walked to the door and waited for me.
    Mr. Hurston let my face go. I didn’t stand up yet. I just turned my head and stared at Stacey again.
    “What?”
she said. She sounded mad now. Everyone was watching.
    Then I leaned in and whispered, “I did it for you.”
    “You did what for me? What are you talking about?”
    But I was already standing and walking toward Jerry at the door. There was Lewis walking in with his dumb look.
    “Did Thomas Jefferson do that?” I said. And walked past him. I didn’t look back, but I could hear people asking Stacey what it was all about.
    In the hall Jerry asked me what happened. I told him I was fighting for a girl. He asked who. I told him he wouldn’t understand.
    “Why did you say you did it for Stacey?” he asked as we crossed the quad toward the tower building.
    “What? I didn’t.”
    “I thought you did.”
    “No.”
    “Well that’s good,” he said. “That would have been a shame.”
    “Why?”
    “No, I mean if you had done anything for her.” The sun was warm on my back and reflecting off the windows of the office, a bright circle into my eyes.
    “I didn’t do it for her.”
    “Cuz she’s a total slut,” he said.
    “I fucking know,” I said. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything.
    We were almost at the office. The office was an old brick building with a tower in the center with a Spanish cupola. We called it the Tower Building.
    As we got closer each window in the tower flashed yellow and white.
    At the office Jerry ran up the