The Wrath of Dyllan Jesdom

I ran down the hospital halls. By the time I got to the nursing station I was breathing hard. They watched me patiently as my breathing started to slow down.
Finally, I was able to say what I came here for.
“Which room is Hanna Parker in?”
I thanked them when they told me and took off running again. At first I was in such a hurry that I couldn’t find the room. Then I calmed down and took some deep breaths. I walked around the halls for a few more minutes. Then I found the room and I walked in.
Hanna was lying in the one of the beds. Her face was the color of an aged plum. There was some bloody gauze on one on her cheeks. One of her eyes was a swollen mass of flesh, but the other one looked normal, beautiful even in sleep. Her orange-tinted hair was splayed out on the pillow above her head. I walked over to her and reached out to touch her. When my fingers made contact she flinched. I immediately withdrew my hand for fear of harming her more.
At first I only saw her, but then I heard a grunt and saw that someone was in the room with her. I looked up and saw Spencer. He was sitting in a chair with a nurse stitching up a gash on his forehead.
“Jeez lady, you want to make the hole bigger or smaller?”
“If you would stop moving it would be easier,” the nurse said in an exasperated voice.
He waved his hand at her in a dismissive gesture. He looked up and saw me for the first time. He tried lifting his head in a greeting, but the nurse pulled his head back down.
“How’s it going?” His voice sounded normal, but there was something in his eyes that I had never seen before.
“What happened?”
“Waylon Green. The son of a b-“ He grunted again as the nurse pulled a stitch tighter.
“Watch your mouth, young man.”
Again he dismissed her with a wave of his hand. He shifted his weight on the chair and continued his sentence.
“We were heading towards your house, when he snuck up behind us. Clocked me out and I guess did that to her.”
A rage filled my head. It was as dense as a fog and just as blinding. The day before I had embarrassed Waylon in front of his friends. He tried to jump me in the locker room. He got one hit in before I threw him off me. I jumped on him, my hand grabbing his throat. A fear immediately filled his eyes. He looked like he was about to cry when I heard a gym teacher yelling at me. I let go of him, and he fell to the ground and started rubbing his throat. I heard his friends laughing behind me. I put my clothes in the locker, and walked out. I thought that was going to be the end of it. Now I wished I would’ve proved my point while I had the chance.
“How is she?” I asked through the fog, indicating Hanna.
“The doctor says she’ll be alright. Her face is banged up, and she has a concussion, but that’s it.”
I grabbed her hand in mine and held it. The beeping of the machines was aggravating.
“I’m sorry,” his voice brought my attention back to him, “that I couldn’t protect her.”
It was then that I realized what I had seen in his eyes. The thing that looks so strange because it was never there before. It was shame.1

***2

The sun reflected off the cars in the parking lot. I was waiting for Dokata and the others to get here so I would have someone to talk to. I stood in front of the school. The other kids were running around me as if school was something important. I silently laughed as I watched them go about their business.
My thoughts wandered to the girl I beat yesterday. The way that freak Spencer went down with just one hit. The way his head bounced when my foot made contact. For a split, second I thought about just beating him up, but she would send a better message then he would.
She almost escaped me after I kicked Spencer. She would have if it wasn’t for her hair. I reached out and grabbed it to pull her back. My fist smashed down on her eye, her cheek, anything my fist could find. I let go of her hair and she fell to the ground in the fetal position. I kicked her around a little bit, then walked away.
I figured if I walked away like nothing happened nobody would notice me. At least, not as much as they would if I would have taken off running. I went down back to my house and hung out for the rest of the day. If they didn’t come for me by then, then I thought I would get away with it. I didn’t think Spencer saw me, and the girl would be so traumatized she wouldn’t know which way was up.
The bell rang for school to begin. As I walked towards the door I heard someone call out my name, but when I turned a fist smashed into my face. My head whiplashed into the brick wall and I fell.
The pain was immediate and excruciating. I looked up to see who had hit me. Whoever it was was going to be in a lot of pain when I got up. I saw the red-tipped spiked hair of Dyllan. His face was contorted with rage. I saw his foot coming up to kick me. I turned and tried to crawl away. The heel of his foot came down on my lower back. Fire crawled up my spine, leaving burning lakes of pain in its wake. I turned over on my back. I put my hands up to defend myself from his blows. His foot came down again and again. I heard my bones cracking under the hurricane of his foot.
“I’M SORRY!” My words came out in a gurgled scream.
His blurred face appeared in my vision. A smile crossed his lips. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see the smile’s savagery.
“No. You’re not,” his words were almost a snarl, “but you will be.”3

***
A beeping sound brought me back to consciousness. I tried to open my eyes, but found I could only open one. The other one refused to open despite my efforts. A pain tore through my head when I reached up to touch it. I turned my head and saw Spencer asleep in a chair beside me.
At first I didn’t know what had happened to me. Then I remembered a fist flying through the air and smashing into Spencer’s face. Then a hand pulling me back by my hair. After that it was fragmented and blurred.
“Spencer?”
My voice sounded scratchy when it reached my ears, and I realized my throat was as dry as the Sahara desert. I saw him begin to stir in his sleep. When he lifted his head, I saw a stitched cut on his forehead. It went about an inch on both sides of his left eye. I immediately felt sorry for him. He was a chaotic person and didn’t get along with very many people, but he didn’t deserve that.
“Hey, Hanna.”
“Hey. Where’s Dyllan?”
The smile on his face faltered. I saw something flicker across his face and then disappear.
“He…uhh…well….”
At that moment Dyllan walked through the door. His hair was a spiked mess of hair gel and sweat. He looked like he just went through some extraneous activity.
He saw that I was awake and ran over to beside my bed. He took my hand and kissed the back of my knuckles.
“I love you.”
The words caught me off guard. He had told me this before, but never with such fierceness in his voice.
“I love you too.”
He just smiled and continued to hold my hand. I knew something was wrong. His face told me a story, but I couldn’t read the fine print.
“Dyllan, what happened to…?”
He put his finger on my lips and stopped my words.
“Go to sleep, Hanna. I’ll explain when you wake up.”
Believing him, I closed my eyes, and waited for sleep to come. Then I knew what he had done. From the look on Spencer he knew about it too. I tried to tell him it was okay, but I was heavily medicated, so before I could I fell into a dreamless unconsciousness.