The Brave

“How’s your nose, Collin?” Principal Harris asks from under his thick tobacco-stained mustache.
“Eighteen,” I say, and wipe the small stream of blood escaping out of my right nostril.
Principal Harris and my dad, who sits beside me, both stare at me like I’m a stain that won’t come out of an expensive carpet.
“Can you not do that right now?” Principal Harris asks, with irritation aimed at me.
Again, each letter invades my skull, separating itself into a countable sequence. First, they appear as puffy white clouds, but then morph into smoky white numbers, similar to those planes you see in the sky that leave messages for people: “50% off sale!” or “Will You Marry Me?”
But mine aren’t cute. My letters are stubborn and invasive. And I can’t ignore them. They are in my head, pressing hard against the backs of my eyes until I give in and give them my attention.

“Twenty-three. And like I’ve told you a million times before, I’m not trying to do it, it just happens.”
Principal Harris shifts his eyes toward my father. “Oh, I see. It just happens, huh? Well, maybe it does, but you know what doesn’t just happen? Fighting. In my school. So, tell me why you decided to fight,” he says, like a lawyer trying to convince a judge that I’m guilty of something. Anything. Everything.
I watch his letters crawl into numbers at the same drawn-out pace in which he speaks. As much as I don’t like him, his letters are slow and easy to count, which is sometimes refreshing. Most people’s letters move fast like bees, stinging my mind until I release them, but this guy’s letters slink across my brain like a caterpillar.
“One hundred and thirteen. I didn’t decide to fight. He and all his friends were doing what they always do to me at lunch,” I say, hoping I don’t have to explain further and reveal to my dad what a wuss I usually am at school.
“Which is what?” my dad asks.
Great. I lost a fight, and now I’m going to have to inform my dad that I’m the kid who gets picked on every day. How much of a disappointment can one son be?