Just before four o’clock, Melody knocked on my front door.

I let her in, tense from the awareness of how she must view the place her boyfriend’s dad called a shack and an eyesore and worse. Her parents probably felt the same way. And her friends.

I’d spread my project materials out over the kitchen table in hopes she wouldn’t ask about my room – but that plan bombed. ‘So where’s your room?’ she asked, right after I offered her a soda and she followed me to the kitchen to get it. Fuck, I thought, opening the pantry door and bracing myself for ridicule.

‘Whoa!’ Her eyes went wide. ‘This is so small! And … cosy …’

She hopped on to the edge of my bed, and my heart thudded. Melody Dover is sitting on my bed. Her eyes roved over my textbooks and novels, stacked on the shelves. She turned round to study the opposite wall, half covered in drawings like the ones she’d flipped through a couple of nights before – but better.

‘This is the coolest thing ever. It’s like this … artist’s cave.’ She smiled. ‘Can we work in here?’ Without waiting for my answer, she slung her laptop bag over her head and crawled towards the head of the bed.

‘Uh, sure …’

When Dad and Grandpa came home, we were sitting side by side against a mound of pillows, working on the citations page. They were arguing, as though they’d picked up right where I left them this morning, like a paused movie. My face burned when they each stopped right outside my door and peered in with mirrored expressions of shock. For what felt like eternity, neither said a word.

‘Makin’ dinner,’ Grandpa said eventually, turning away. Dad grunted and turned in the opposite direction.

Melody’s pale gaze shifted from the empty doorway to me. ‘So your mom …?’

I shook my head. ‘She … she died.’

‘Oh. That’s terrible. Was it recent? Is that why you moved here?’

I nodded, unwilling to elaborate or make eye contact or speak at all. My hands were fists in my lap. Please don’t ask.

I almost jumped out of my skin when she laid her hand on my arm, right over the wristbands I was wearing today. Her fingers grazed the top of my hand. ‘I’m sorry.’

She was apologizing for the fact that I lost my mother, like everyone did. I couldn’t say, It’s okay. Because it wasn’t, and it never would be.

But I couldn’t dwell on the loss of my mother with Melody’s soft hand on mine, her fingernails painted an electric, metallic blue, like a sports car. I couldn’t think of anything but where her hand rested, and its proximity to other, wide-awake parts of me. Angling her fingers, she rasped her nails along the back of my hand and inches away, my body responded, hardening fiercely. I prayed she couldn’t see. I was afraid to move.

‘She stayin’ for dinner?’ Grandpa said from the door, and we both jumped, snatching our hands apart. The laptop bounced on her lap.

‘Oh, no, thank you. I have to get home soon.’ Her face was as red as mine.

Then her boyfriend texted to ask where she was, and she lied and said she was home.

‘I’m real sorry about your mama, Landon.’ She leaned and kissed my cheek, and my whole body caught fire. It was uncomfortable and amazing, paralysing me like a poison-tipped dart and filling me with flares and embers. I couldn’t think straight. Sliding to the end of my bed, she stuck her laptop in her backpack. I followed her to the front door, silent, her kiss a brand on the side of my face.

The fight, when it came, was quick and dirty and unwitnessed by any teachers. It was raining again during lunch, and I wasn’t in the mood to get banished outside, so I had the asstastic idea to hang out in the library computer lab and check out the PowerPoint Melody had put together. Our presentation was two days away.

I rounded a corner and there he was – with a posse, one of whom was Clark Richards. Wynn’s lead moron, Rick Thompson, was acting as lookout.

‘Hey, Maxfield. Time to pay your dues,’ Wynn said, as unemotionally as if he’d just delivered a weather report. Then his fist flew at my face, almost slow motion, but so were my movements. I couldn’t reel back fast enough to avoid the blow, and he caught me square in the jaw. My teeth rattled and fireworks exploded behind my eyes.

I staggered back and he followed. ‘You sucker punched me in shop, motherfucker. That shit was not cool. Just try to hit me, now that I’m payin’ attention.’

I got lucky and blocked the next punch, but as he threw an arm round my neck and pulled me down into a low headlock, I knew he’d make up for missing. Twisting from his grip, I turned and slammed my right fist into his chin and my left into his kidney, determined not to make that payback easy. Another wrestling move from him and I was back in deep shit. He cuffed the side of my head and then punched me in the stomach.

‘Whatsa matter, mama’s boy? Useless piece-a-shit weirdo.’ My ears rang and his taunts almost grew unintelligible, but he kept dispensing them like he was looking for a panic button. ‘Daddy never taught you to fight, huh? Is he as big of a pu**y as you are?’ I couldn’t rotate into the right position to get a grip on him or throw a punch, and I’d lost count of how many he’d landed. ‘Maybe your mama needs a real man. Maybe I oughta pay her a little visit.’

And there it was.

With a roar, I threw both arms wide, breaking his hold, and then I hooked a foot behind his ankle and sent him sprawling to the ground. Jumping on top of him, I didn’t bother to hold him immobile before I began using both fists to hit him over and over. I couldn’t see. Sounds were muted. I could only feel the rage, and it drowned everything else. Striking his face and the side of his head repeatedly, my fists grew numb. I wanted to pound him flat, but his hard skull prevented me. I grabbed him by the hair and slammed the back of his head into the floor.

He bucked me off with a roar of his own, swinging wildly, one eye already purple and half shut. I rolled and stood, breathing heavily, but before I could launch myself at him again, Thompson hissed, ‘Teachers!’

Our altercation had gained an audience, I noted then. Fellow students surrounded us, inadvertently hiding us from view. We both stood, eyeing each other, slowly straightening, hands tense but at our sides.

‘What in tarnation is going on here?’ Mrs Powell said, pushing through. ‘Fighting is an expellable offence!’

Mr Zamora parted the spectators and came to stand behind her as Wynn, his face as battered as mine felt, deadpanned, ‘We weren’t fightin’.’