Page 29 of Broken Pieces
Not straight away.
I stay on my feet, letting the silence stretch.
The weight presses down, fills the room, drags against my skin. He waits for me to fold, but I won’t… not yet.
I’ve seen how this plays out. Lived through it too many times to count. The script never changes. Troubled kid. The one with the fucked-up past stamped across his record. The one with fists for hands and anger for a spine. The walking cautionary tale everyone warns their sons not to become and their daughters to avoid.
Every glance, every sigh, every note scribbled in that fucking folder with my name on it says enough. They’ve already written me off. Waiting for me to prove them right again.
Eventually, I drop into the chair. Not because I’ve surrendered, but because my legs are heavy with a lifetime of this bullshit. I’m tired of this game, the labels, of pretending I’m not exactly what they’ve made me out to be.
I sit there with my arms folded tight across my chest, the kind of posture that saysfuck youwithout a sound. Because if I’m going to give them what they expect, I’ll do it on my own terms.
Granger folds his hands on the desk. His glasses slide down the bridge of his nose and he pushes them back up with one finger, as if the gesture alone makes him important.
He stares.
Not the casual kind you forget after a second. The kind that drags, peeling me apart without ever touching me. It’s quiet, calculating. His elbows sink into the desk, fingers laced, chin tilted forward to show he’s in control. As if he’s more than a bureaucrat who signs suspension slips the way most people sign checks. A man who plays God before breakfast, scribbling out futures with the flick of his pen.
I don’t give him anything.
Not a blink, a breath or even the satisfaction of a flinch. My eyes glaze over, locking on a spot past his shoulder until he’s nothing but a blur I refuse to focus on.
If he wants me to squirm, he’ll have to keep waiting.
Because the only thing worse than being their failure is giving them the show they came for.
He exhales, long and loaded, the kind of breath that carries judgment in the weight. This isn’t air leaving his lungs… it’s disappointment. A sound that tells me he’s written the ending before I’ve even opened my mouth.
“Zane.”
My name falls out of him like it’s too heavy to hold.
“Wanna tell me what happened?”
I don’t. I won’t.
I sit in that chair, still as stone, arms clamped tight across my chest, my body nothing but a barricade. Because the second I open my mouth, it’s over. They’ll twist every word, spin the story, use the truth against me until even that starts to feel false. So I stay silent. Let the weight settle. Let him choke on the silence.
He picks up the manila folder with my name on the cover, corners bent and edges frayed from being dragged out too many times. Thicker than it has any right to be. A history of everything I’ve ever done wrong.
Every late bell. Every detention. Every time I breathed in a way they didn’t approve of. Documented. Stamped. Filed away until I’m nothing more than paper cuts and ink.
He flips through it slow, like he’s savoring each page.
But I know he isn’t reading. He doesn’t need to. The story’s memorized by now.
His finger lands on the newest entry. He doesn’t even blink when he says it.
“Today: Violence.”
The word hangs in the room, heavy as stone.
He clicks his pen against the folder.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
