CALVIN

thirty-one: the saviour

After class, I stayed behind as the rest of the students left. In the dim, empty classroom, Ms Vecoli was packing her backpack, avoiding looking at me.  I waited awkwardly, standing by the desks, until she straightened up and began walking to the door. "See you on Monday, then," she said shortly, as she passed by.

"Ms Vecoli."

She turned around. "Yes?"

I knew what it was like from her perspective, and that was what made me hate it more. I knew that she liked me as a person. I knew I was her favourite student. So to be treated as partially nonexistent was both deserved and unbearable. "I..." I shook my head, shrugged, "I don't know what to do."

She stepped forward and put her arms around me. I buried my head in her shoulder, her thick curly hair. It smelled like coconut. She unclasped me just as quickly and looked at me from arm's length. "Elias, they're no longer viewing it with sympathy."

"What?"

"You ODing. They're treating it as being grounds for expulsion. Taking drugs. Causing potential harm to others around you. Missing six days of school. Leaving campus without anyone knowing, without parents' permission - "

"Ms Vecoli, how am I supposed to get my parents' permission if they don't even talk to me - ?"

"I'm just telling you, so that you know." she nodded her head, her eyes were serious and earnest. "You're on thin ice, Elias. Practically walking on water, at this point. And they're going to tie this back to the fight on the soccer field, as well as that time you went to Zürich with your housemates. Of course I don't agree with them. And if I had it my way, you'd be getting professional help at no extra charge, you'd be finishing your diploma right here. But it's not up to me, and the most you can do right now is watch out.

"Elias," she nodded her head as she backed towards the door, "you know I'm here to help you. But you also have to understand that we have to forget about everything that happened in the last few weeks, between us."

"Okay," I whispered.

...

The bathroom in the music wing was usually pretty deserted, which is why I chose to do it there. Marc came in just as things were starting to go downhill. He stopped for a moment in the entrance, then grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me into a stall, the door banging back against the wall. His fingers tasted like varnish and old paper when he stuck them down my throat. I gagged into the toilet, saliva dripping out of my mouth. He pushed his fingers down with more force and I dry-heaved, then vomited.

When I was finished I sat against the wall, sweating, eyes barely open, puke all over my chin. He grabbed the empty baggie from my hand and pocketed it, then pulled me to my feet. "Wash your face," he said. 

Back in my room, I told him about how I was going to get expelled.

"Really, Elias?" he said, sitting on my desk chair. "You were actually about to commit suicide over a fucking expulsion? That's a lame way to go out."

"I don't care if it's lame or not."

He sighed. His eyes scanned over the things on my desk. "You're not gonna get expelled."

"You don't know that." I was lying in my bed on my side, facing him. "This school expels so many people. And they have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to drugs." pause. "I don't have the cleanest record."

"Nobody has a clean record. And the only people in this school who get expelled are the ones who don't know my mum."

I waited for him to go on. He took a pen from my desk and ripped a piece of paper from my history notebook. Wrote something down on it, rolled the chair over and handed it to me. It was a phone number and a name. "Get your parents to contact this number, it's my mum. They'll have to join a club - there's a membership fee, an annual one - and from there they can work the logistics out with her."