Untouchable by Scott O'Connor Read Free Book Online Page A

the pants felt like wool.
    “I don’t really want a name, Whitley,” Mr. Bromwell said. “A name does us no good. We’re looking at a pattern of behavior. There are reasons why this happened. There are reasons why you are sitting here and not another student.”
    The Kid had an appointment with Mr. Bromwell on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons, after lunch. He’d had these appointments for almost a year now. He came from the cafeteria and sat in the visitor’s chair, sneakers dangling six inches above the floor. Mr. Bromwell sat on the other side of the desk, underneath the clock, and drummed the eraser tip of his pencil against his blotter and asked questions for The Kid to answer in his notebook. The questions weren’t about specific things that had happened to The Kid, incidents in the classroom or the locker room, but about why The Kid thought these things were happening to him, what The Kid thought he was doing to make these things happen. Mr. Bromwell would ask a question and then push back in his chair and stretch his legs out under his desk so that the tips of his shoes touched the feet of The Kid’s chair. Or sometimes he’d ask a question and then get up and stand next to the coat tree and pull his ankle up behind his back, stretching his leg muscles. There were posters tacked to the walls of the office, bright color pictures of waterfalls and mountain ranges with sayings underneath about hard work and endurance and determination. Mr. Bromwell liked to talk about these things, about being strong, being tough mentally and physically. He liked to talk about Responsibility For Our Actions , which meant that sometimes when other kids did bad things to The Kid, it was actually The Kid’s fault.
    “Can you think of a reason,” Mr. Bromwell said, “why something like this would happen to you and not to another student?” He stood and held onto the coat rack with one hand, pulling his ankle back behind him with the other, watching The Kid, waiting for an answer.
    It was known to The Kid’s teacher and all the other teachers that The Kid could visit Mr. Bromwell any time he needed to. This was a special arrangement, owing to The Kid’s circumstances. It was also known that The Kid could be sent to Mr. Bromwell’s office if something bad happened, if he locked himself in a stall in the bathroom and refused to come out, or if something like this happened, an incident in the locker room. The Kid didn’t like going to Mr. Bromwell’s office, didn’t like all the questions, but at least he could use the phone, could call his dad’s cell phone and send a Morse Code message. This usually made him feel a little better, even if he wasn’t calling for his dad to come pick him up and take him home. Just sending the message made him feel better, receiving his dad’s coded reply from somewhere in the city, knowing that his dad wasn’t so far away, that they were in contact somehow.
    The Kid looked at the clock, thought of his dad and three other neighbors leaving their street at the same time, three cars and the pickup, 25% of them involved in fatal accidents.
    It was always the moment between taking off his gym clothes and putting on his school clothes when bad things happened. An especially vulnerable moment. The Kid tried to change as quickly as possible, tried to minimize the length of time he was standing in the locker room in only his underpants, because that seemed to incite some of the other kids. But he wasn’t always fast enough, and this time his gym clothes were stolen as soon as he took them off, grabbed by one of the dodgeball boys who ran back toward the showers, waving The Kid’s shorts like a captured flag. The Kid didn’t even bother to run after him; he knew that would just be asking for trouble. He would think of some excuse to tell his dad for needing new gym clothes. He’d lost them, they’d gotten muddy, something that wouldn’t make him sound like such a wimp. He wouldn’t let