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“Derek,” she breathed my name quietly and even then, at the age of eight, it made my insides squeeze hard with things I couldn’t identify.

I felt my cheeks heat, and it didn’t have anything to do with running around and catching the ball. I heard my friends calling my name, but I couldn’t just leave her there on the ground. Her hands were red with blood and it had to hurt a lot but she didn’t say anything.

“Are you okay?” I asked with an apologetic smile. Amelia didn’t say anything. She just nodded her head ‘yes’, her cheeks turning a pretty shade of pink, almost like her lips. That made me smile wider, and I extended my hand to help her get up.

At that moment Drew stopped next to me. “What are you doing, Derek?” he asked me impatiently. He was getting really moody lately. If things weren’t the way he wanted them, he would start yelling and screaming at everybody. He started to talk back to the teachers and sometimes he was really mean to people. I didn’t know what was wrong, but this wasn’t my best friend anymore. “Who is she?” he teased loudly, getting attention to all of us. “Is she your girlfriend? Did you kiss her?”

Loud snickering filled the playground making my cheeks heat in embarrassment.

“No!” I shouted loudly, raising my hands in the air for emphasis and trying to make him stop, and in the process knocking Amelia back on the floor. But I couldn’t think about it now. She wasn’t my girlfriend. And I didn’t kiss her.

Kissing was gross.

Girls were gross.

Andrew knew that. I didn’t know why he was being so mean to me. We were best friends. “She isn’t my girlfriend! Why would I kiss someone like her?”

“You were smiling at her and blushing.”

“I didn’t!” I protested. “Why would I do that? She is ugly. With all those freckles she looks like a Dalmatian or something.”

I knewIwas the one being mean now, but I couldn’t have the whole school tease me for liking a girl. My cheeks heated, this time in embarrassment. We heard a quiet sniffle and we both looked down at Amelia. She was on the floor, on her hands and knees, now both scraped and bloody.

“I don’t know her name so maybe we should call her that,” Andrew said, his wicked grin growing bigger. “Or maybe Dotty, after all, she is full of them.”

“I’m not Dalmatian…” she murmured softly through hiccups.

“Call her whatever you want,” I said, retreating to my friends. I wanted to give her my hand and help her get up and take her to see the nurse, but I couldn’t do that so I lied. “I don’t care. She isn’t important.”

I hear Andrew laugh and shout in a cheery voice: “See you later, Dotty Dalm!”

Andrew starts running to join our friends and everybody around us is laughing at Amelia. I want to yell at them to stop, that it’s not nice to treat people that way. Amelia didn’t do anything bad. Yet I couldn’t. If Andrew could be so mean with me once, his best friend, he could be again. And I didn’t want that. Still, it didn’t hurt any less when I heard Amelia’s sweet voice shout at me: “I hate you, Derek King!”

* * *

Shaking my head, I’m trying to clear my mind of the vivid memory of my past. In that moment, I didn’t know what was going on or what was wrong with my friend. One day he was a nice guy, always joking around and laughing, until the moment that he wasn’t.

When Andrew’s world fell apart with his mom cheating on his dad and leaving them both behind, he became cold-hearted, crude, and outright mean to everybody, but especially girls.

Knowing about it didn’t make things better. He wasn’t the same and it didn’t justify the way he acted. But who was I to talk about being a good person or justice when I stood by him and did nothing to make him stop? As stupid as it sounds, my friend was hurting and he needed me by his side. That was one part of me. The other part was scared shitless of what would he do if I said something that would set him off.

“Why do you keep calling her that?” I ask him, getting off the treadmill and taking one of the dumbbells to do a series of leg exercises.

“It’s a cute pet name.” He shrugs and joins me.

“She is a girl, not an animal,” I mutter angrily.

Andrew laughs, looks at me, and shakes his head in amusement. “You always did have a soft spot for her. You tapped that yet?”

“What?!” A dumbbell almost falls out of my hands and onto my foot in surprise.

“Don’t play dumb, King. You always liked her. She looks at you with those puppy brown eyes and you melt. You should bang her and get it out of your system.”

“You can be a real jackass sometimes, Hill.”

“Although,” he ignores me and keeps talking, “I don’t think Sanders will like that much. That guy is worse than even you, following her around all googly-eyed like some puppy. Makes me wonder if she has a magical pussy or something.”

My teeth clench hard and I want to punch him so bad I barely keep myself in check. “It’s all about pussy with you.”

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