Toto and the Boys III: Dannie

Chapter 5

A piece of the past…

They were having their lunch together, just the three of them, while listening to the school radio inside the classroom. They didn’t like spending lunch outside, especially the canteen unlike everybody else. George and Jackie always had packed lunches from their homes and they shared their food with Dannie most of the time.

Dannie knew her friends noticed the bruises all over her arms, George most especially because her friend’s jaw clenched every time her eyes hovered her arms. But since it was lunch time and it was one of the precious moments they could have for themselves without the presence of teachers or classmates, her two best friends chose to let it slide.

Their lunch hour was usually spent talking about fun things such as school gossips, most often involving teachers being too difficult and of course, the latest news on students. And at that time, the hottest news was about another girl from another class who tore another girl’s bag with a razor because of a guy and that guy was no other than Troy Brady.

Jackie’s ecstatic narration of the event immediately stopped when Troy came in all of a sudden with his two new friends, Miguel and Lee. They had unbuttoned their white uniform shirts, revealing their white plain shirts inside and the three of them were smiling as they approached.

“Hey, boys,” Troy greeted.

Jackie frowned. “Boys?”

“George, Jackie,” Troy said their names one by one, looking at each of Dannie’s friends with a wicked grin and then finally at her, “and Dannie. Your names sound manly so we decided to call you boys.”

“Yep. We just talked about it during lunch, actually,” explained Miguel.

“And we thought it would be cool to let you BOYS know before the whole school does.”

Jackie did not like the news because her nostrils were flaring with anger. She was too feminine to be called a boy. George just looked at the three guys standing before them with a bored look on her face. Dannie chose to stay silent.

“Hey, Danica,” Troy said, moving to stand before her.

“What?”

“Can I borrow your homework on Statistics?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t do charity. Go away.” When she looked up at him, she caught his eyes studying her arms. “Go away, Brady.”

He blinked and his grin came back. “Sure. But we’ll be back. See you later, boys!”

“’Bye, boys!” Lee and Miguel echoed before they walked out the door to spend the remaining minutes of their break with other girls from neighboring classes.

PRESENT DAY

“Are you okay?”

It was Troy who dared to ask the question first. George and Jackie were looking at her with concern, ready to jump and catch her if she fell over her chair. Jordan and Dean were looked on without a clue of what just happened. Lee and Miguel were still guarding the door as if expecting the woman to return any moment.

“I’m fine,” Dannie finally managed to utter. She began to stand up and Tory immediately reached out to help her but stepped back when she shook her head. “I think I need to rest for a while.”

No one spoke even after she closed the door behind her.

*****

The woman was heavy around the hips and she walked with a limp. Her face appeared to be older than her age and had obviously been neglected for years, but there was no doubt that she was Dannie’s mother. Sorry for the word, but I wanted to kick the bitch when I realized who she was. She had been knocking on the apartment door, looking over her shoulder from time to time and when it finally opened and Dannie’s friends came into view, it was apparent that Dannie was not coming out to see her.