Page 5 of Indigo Sky

Nate didn't say anything else to my mom, but I watched his fingernails work tirelessly at the skin around his thumbnail. Picking, picking, picking until his thumb was red and bleeding, and he kept on picking still.And I guessed that was because something was always picking on him.

***

Nate had been right about the eyepatch though. Dad picked one up from the drugstore a few days later, and I wore it to school with my nerves zipping and begging for relief. But, man, not a single kid said a thing to me, and when they looked at me, they didn't flinch or cower or run away the way they used to with that empty socket looking back at them.

No, theycomplimentedme and said it looked cool—which was the craziest shit in the world—and I felt good for the first time in … fuck, probably since I’d lost the eye in the first place. I felt like they had meant it, that it might be true, and at lunch, a couple of kids even asked if I'd sit with them.

But they didn’t ask Nate, and I felt bad about leaving him to sit by himself, so I stayed at our table. But I smiled to myself as Nate and I ate our peanut-butter sandwiches.

"They're just saying it to be nice," Nate muttered, not even bothering to look up at me. "But they're scared of you now. Everybody is scared of the pirate, like Captain Hook. Remember that."

And I did remember, and for another three years, I went through middle school sitting at the same table as Nate and nobody else while donning the eyepatch with confidence. I grew taller and more secure in myself, and when our high school announced a school dance, I confessed to Nate that I was thinking of asking someone out.

The prick actually laughed at me. "You'regonna ask someone to that stupid dance?"

"Yeah," I replied, shrugging casually while my cheeks burned with my embarrassed flush. "I want to ask Becky."

"Becky?!" He threw himself back on my bed, cackling like it was the funniest thing in the world.

But I didn’t find it particularly funny at all. Becky sat next to me in English and Science. And she was always nice to me. I knew she didn't have a boyfriend, and I liked her. It didn't seem like some crazy risk or some shit, nor did it seem like anything to laugh about.

I mean, if I was being real here, he was pissing me the hell off.

"If you wanna go to the dance, we can go," Nate finally said, returning his attention to Super Mario 64 on the TV. "Maybe it'll be fine. Could be fun."

"You could ask someone too—"

"God, Rev, Becky's not gonna go with you," he replied with a snicker. "She's probably gonna go with Jordan. She hangs with him all the damn time."

"Jordan?"

He stared at me sidelong like I had lost my damn mind. "Yeah, you know that idiot on the football team?"

"I know who he is, but I didn't know Becky—"

He interrupted with a laugh. "You don'tknowBecky, Rev. Come on. She's got a boyfriend already. Stop dreaming. But we can go if you want. It's cool."

That was when I stopped talking because for all I knew, he was right. I didn't really know Becky outside of the couple of classes we shared together, and there was as good of a chance as any that she really did have a boyfriend and I just didn’t know about it.

So, long story short, Nate and I went to the dance together.

My mom dropped us off in our button-down shirts and black slacks, looking like we'd planned to match when we didn’t. The gym I knew from class had been transformed with streamers, balloons, tables of refreshments, and a disco ball. Every kid I knew from my classes and every other kid I didn't know at all were all dressed to the nines, thriving on the dance floor. Kids my age kept a safe distance from each other while the older kids couldn't seem to get closer, and I couldn't stop staring.

Fuck, I wanted to be that close to someone more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

I wanted to be that close to Becky.

"Let's get something to drink," Nate shouted over the thumping party music.

"Okay," I answered through a fog of hormones and curiosity, wondering if Becky had come and if she was, in fact, there with Jordan.

But more than anything, I wondered if she’d wanna be that close to me too.

We moved our way through the crowd and found ourselves at a table cluttered with cups and a punch bowl. The principal, Mr. Robbins, nodded a greeting and poured us each a cup of the bright red drink. I thanked him, and we were once again weaving our way through the dancing kids and speckled lights. Nate found us a corner to stand in and pulled something out of his pants pocket … a bottle of some sort.

"Give me your cup," he ordered.

"Why?" I asked, already handing it over.

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