Free The Sweetheart Deal by Polly Dugan Page B

the court past him, I whispered, “Asshole. You’re just an asshole.”
    That made him yell for the teacher, “Swearing! Now Andrew’s cursing at me!”
    Maybe Gannon had only liked me, or pretended to, because of my dad, and now that he was dead, Gannon didn’t have a reason to anymore. He didn’t have to like me—I didn’t care—but he didn’t have to be an asshole. I hated sitting on the bench outside the office and bringing home conduct referrals. The third one got me detention after school. But I hoped it made people a little afraid of me. I could be dangerous. If people pushed me, they’d find out what I would do.
    My mom was really mad.
    “Andrew, you’ve never been in trouble at school,” she said. We were standing in the kitchen after the third time, and I told her I had detention the next week. I knew she was saying the things she could think of that would be helpful. “We’re all going through this terrible time, I know. I’m angry a lot of days too. But you can’t fight like that, you just can’t—not during recess, at school, not anywhere. Can’t you come home and punch a pillow when you’re mad? Would that help?”
    “Punching a pillow, really? Mom, are you serious?” I shouted. I started to cry. “Gannon Keegan is who I need to punch. I hate him. I want to kill him. I’m not doing anything and he’s getting me in trouble.”
    She stared at me. She looked miserable. “I know,” she said. “I heard it. The pillow, that was dumb. Maybe it’s something you can talk about at Dougy?” She sat down in the middle of the kitchen with her legs crossed. “Come here,” she said, but I kept standing. “I know, Andrew, just come here.” I walked over and let her pull me into her lap and curl me up against her the best she could, even though I’m pretty tall, but not as tall as Gannon. “Oh, my baby,” she said. “Sweet boy, just sit with your mom for a minute. What are we going to do?” We sat like that for a long time on the kitchen floor even after I stopped crying, and I didn’t get up until she did.

Christopher
    W e didn’t go back to school until after the funeral, so that week Joe Assante texted and asked if he could come over. When he showed up I told my mom we were going for a walk, and we walked without talking until I started to cry, and without saying anything Joe put his hand on my shoulder and the weight of his hand helped me keep walking, and then I did both things. I kept walking and crying. Joe didn’t say anything and I didn’t know how long we walked that way, but it was long enough that I could go back to my house and be in it with everyone who was a mess.
    Joe came over again twice and brought homework for me, and when he asked me if I wanted to know about what was going on at school, I said sure and he filled me in with some funny things that might not have even been true, or could have, it didn’t matter, but I could tell he was trying to get my mind on something else, even for a few minutes, and that meant a lot.
    But I still woke up crying the morning of my dad’s funeral like I did most other mornings that week—crying overcame me as soon as I wasn’t sleeping anymore. When I was awake, I couldn’t ignore the reality that my dad was dead, and even though I felt like I had to do whatever I could to help my mom and my brothers, as soon as I was awake, the fact that my dad was gone made me want to sleep for years.
    And now, because he was dead, my mom had asked us to go to the Dougy Center, and we’d agreed to try it but I didn’t think I’d go more than once, or Brian either. I wasn’t much of a joiner, and Brian was so private, I knew it wasn’t his thing. They arranged the groups by age, and Brian and I were together but Andrew was in a different one. We went around the room and said our names and who had died and how. Some of the kids had been coming for a long time and talked about how much better they were than when they started. I wondered