You Know the Rules

There was a smell associated with school.

It went beyond cleaning supplies and bad deodorant. Beyond reheated food, dusty vents, and too many bodies packed into too little space.

It was what abandonment smelled like.

Death had a smell. Hope had a smell. Abandonment must have one too.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” Tomas whispered as he crossed the threshold.

His daily ritual.

The metal-blue doors clanged against the brick behind him.

School isn’t as bad as you make it out to be.

Tomas felt eyes turn.

Felt them linger.

“No,” he muttered. “It’s worse.”

Whispers followed him down the hall.

“He’s the one.”

“Did you hear what happened yesterday?”

“Coach almost opened it.”

“I heard the bag moved.”

“He had fishing line.”

Tomas had heard it all before. Most of it was invented. If he cared, he might have felt sorry for them.

Rumors didn’t become true because they were real.

They became true because the right person repeated them.

Red shifted against his back.

You were dreaming again.

“I was sleeping.”

Violently.

“Maybe I was dreaming about school.”

You said something about your dad.

Tomas kept walking.

“I don’t have one.”

Red went quiet for half a step.

Maybe we ditch. Take a mental-health day.

“Today is the plan. We’re not ditching.”

I hate being carried by someone who radiates despair. It throws off my chi.

“I didn’t know you were spiritual.”

Deeply spiritual. I just don’t brag.

Cayden Toliver shouldered past him and drove a fist into Tomas’s arm.

Hard.

Tomas stumbled into the lockers.

Metal rang against his shoulder.

“Ow.”

Cayden turned, grinning.

Noah stood behind him, already laughing.

“What?” Cayden asked. “Bookbag Boy can’t take a punch?”

He raised his fist again.

Tomas flinched before he could stop himself.

Cayden’s smile widened.

“I warned you. Every time I hear you talking to yourself, you get one.”

His knuckles hovered inches from Tomas’s face.

“You want another?”

Red leaned closer to Tomas’s ear.

This guy cries at dog-food commercials.

A laugh escaped Tomas.

Short.

Broken.

Cayden’s smile disappeared.

“You think you’re funny?”

Noah leaned forward.

“He’s dissing you, man. Says he ain’t scared.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Tomas said.

Cayden hit him anyway.

One fist caught the side of his head.

Another drove into his stomach.

Tomas’s skull cracked against the locker. White flashed behind his eyes.

He folded around the second punch, breath gone.

Cayden and Noah chest-bumped.

Their celebration twisted into a complicated handshake Tomas would never understand.

Red’s strap brushed his hand.

Why don’t we chest-bump after beatings?

Tomas couldn’t answer.

The hallway had started to tilt.

“You okay?”

Courtney pushed through the thinning crowd.

“I’m fine.”

He wasn’t.

Her eyes took in the swelling beneath his eye, the arm pressed against his stomach, and the two boys disappearing around the corner.

Then her attention moved to Red.

Checking.

Making sure.

“What’s going on here?”

Coach Chad bulldozed through the remaining students and planted himself in front of Tomas.

He looked at the dented locker.

Then at Tomas.

“Should’ve known you’d be at the center of this, Thomas.”

Tomas didn’t correct him.

Courtney did.

“Tomas. No H.”

Chad’s head turned.

“And you are?”

“The person who saw what happened.”

“Then you can tell the office.”

“Cayden hit him.”

“I’m sure Tomas bears some responsibility.”

“You didn’t even ask.”

“I don’t need students telling me how to do my job.”

Courtney looked at the swelling beneath Tomas’s eye.

Then back at Chad.

“Someone should.”

A ripple of sound moved through the students who hadn’t made it to class.

Chad’s face reddened.

“You want detention?”

“You don’t know my name.”

“I’ll find it.”

The late bell rang.

Chad pointed down the hall.

“Everyone to class. Tomas, office.”

He said the name correctly.

On purpose.

Chad turned and walked away, already reaching for the radio clipped to his waistband.

Courtney took Tomas’s hand.

“Come on.”

She led him around the corner, past dented lockers and carved initials. When they were out of Chad’s sight, she stopped.

“You should’ve seen his face,” she said. “I thought his mustache was going to crawl off and save itself.”

Red’s strap lifted from Tomas’s shoulder.

I thought he was going to swallow his whistle.

Courtney looked at Red.

Directly.

“Oh, hello to you too.”

Tomas stopped breathing.

Courtney raised one hand.

Red hesitated.

Only for a fraction of a second.

Then his strap snapped upward and slapped against her palm.

Fabric against skin.

A high five.

Courtney blinked.

Relief moved across her face.

Red froze.

She heard me.

Tomas stared at Courtney’s hand.

She had touched Red the night before. Carried him. Held him as though she were waiting for something.

Now the strap remained lifted between them.

“Did you—”

The PA crackled overhead.

“Tomas Calder, report to the office. Tomas Calder.”

His name came through cleanly.

No joke.

No emphasis.

Somehow, that was worse.

Red recoiled.

That’s not good.

Tomas should have moved.

Every second he remained in the hallway would become another mark against him.

Courtney was still looking at Red.

Not confused.

Not curious.

Recognizing.

“You need to go,” she said.

“You heard him.”

“Not here.”

“No one else can hear him.”

“I know.”

The PA crackled again.

Impatient.

Red’s strap lowered slowly.

I don’t understand.

Courtney brushed her fingers against the strap.

Gentler this time.

Intentional.

Red inhaled sharply.

For half a second, he remembered the smell of rain striking warm stone.

Then it vanished.

Courtney stepped back.

“After school,” she said. “Your place.”

“How can you hear him?”

She folded herself into the movement of the hallway, already preparing to disappear among the other students.

“Later.”

“You can hear him,” Tomas said.

It wasn’t a question anymore.

Courtney smiled.

Not wide.

Not playful.

Certain.

Almost relieved.

“Yeah,” she said. “I can.”

Then she turned and vanished into the crowd.

Tomas stood there too long.

Red tugged gently at his shoulder.

We should go before the grown-ups get ideas.

Tomas started toward the office, legs moving on instinct while his mind remained behind.

“She touched you.”

Red didn’t joke.

I guess she knew where to touch.

The school office smelled like lemon cleaner and old air.

Nothing had been replaced. Only preserved, the way people kept trophies polished long after the team stopped winning.

The carpet was thick and tired. Decades of nervous feet had worn familiar paths through its pattern.

That carpet remembers everyone, Red said.

“I don’t want to know.”

Mrs. Donnelly looked up from behind the counter.

Her hair was sprayed into careful waves, unmoved by fashion or time. Her lipstick was precise. Her eyeliner sharp. She had the practiced appearance of someone who had once been looked at often and expected it to continue.

“You again,” she said.

Not annoyed.

Not concerned.

Certain.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She pushed a clipboard toward him. Her rings clinked against the counter.

“Sign in. Then sit.”

Tomas chose the chair farthest from the principal’s door.

The Blanchette brothers occupied the two closest. Marlon and Creighton sat with their knees spread and shoulders loose, comfortable enough to suggest they had done this before.

They didn’t acknowledge Tomas.

They didn’t need to.

They look comfortable.

Tomas didn’t answer.

His mind kept snapping back to the hallway.

Courtney’s hand.

Red’s strap striking it.

Her answering something only Tomas should have heard.

Marlon noticed him staring.

“You got a problem?”

The office rushed back around Tomas.

The carpet.

The counter.

The air that smelled like cleaner and old secrets.

He raised his hands slightly.

Empty.

An apology without words.

“No.”

Creighton smiled and rolled one shoulder. His bicep swelled beneath his sleeve.

Not a threat.

A reminder.

Mrs. Donnelly cleared her throat.

Both brothers immediately faced forward, obedient as altar boys.

They knew exactly where they stood in the order of things.

The principal’s door opened.

Mr. Duong stepped into the office with his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled to his forearms. He already looked finished with the day.

“Marlon. Creighton.”

The brothers stood together and followed him inside.

Mr. Duong’s eyes passed over Tomas’s face.

The swelling beneath his eye had finished blooming—a dark petal spreading across his cheek.

Mr. Duong saw it.

Tomas knew he saw it.

He didn’t ask what had happened.

“Tomas,” he said. “Guidance.”

Mrs. Donnelly was already reaching for the phone.

“I’ll let Mrs. McKinley know you’re coming.”

Tomas stood.

The room tilted slightly, then settled.

As he reached the office door, Mrs. Donnelly opened a drawer. A red cross sticker curled away from one corner.

She slid an ice pack across the counter without looking at him.

“Ten minutes,” she said. “Not directly against the skin.”

Tomas took it.

“Thank you.”

“No trouble.”

She resumed humming as he opened the door.

Then she added pleasantly, “Try to make better choices, dear.”

The hallway swallowed him.

Guidance was to the right.

Tomas turned left.

This isn’t the way to guidance, Red said.

“I know.”

That feels worth mentioning.

Tomas kept walking.

The storage room smelled like dust and forgotten promises.

Old textbooks sagged on bent metal shelves. A box labeled LOST & FOUND—DO NOT THROW AWAY had split open, spilling mismatched gloves and single shoes across the floor.

Posters leaned against one wall.

ANTI-BULLYING WEEK!

BE KIND!

Their corners had curled. The tape had yellowed with age.

Tomas closed the door behind him.

He set Red on a shelf at chest height and lowered himself into a swivel chair. The chair squealed beneath him.

He leaned back, holding the ice pack over one eye, and stared at the water-stained ceiling tiles.

One tile was missing entirely.

Want to talk?

“No.”

You’re thinking very loudly.

“We can’t talk in here. Someone will hear.”

I can whisper.

“You can’t whisper. You project.”

No one can hear me.

“Courtney can.”

Red fell silent.

Tomas pushed against the floor with one foot.

The chair spun.

Red slid in and out of view.

Bookbag.

Wall.

Bookbag.

Wall.

“You get louder when you’re avoiding something.”

A fascinating theory.

“Courtney touched you.”

High five. Very affirming.

“She heard you.”

Apparently.

“She carried you last night.”

Also true.

“She keeps looking at you like she knows something.”

Red didn’t answer.

Tomas stopped the chair with one foot.

“You recognized her.”

You were dreaming about your father.

The words hit harder than Cayden’s fist.

Tomas laughed once.

Sharp.

“Wow. Subtle.”

You were shouting in your sleep.

“So?”

So maybe we talk about that.

“Why do you care?”

Because you don’t sleep. And when you do, you wake up like you’ve been running.

“That’s none of your business.”

Everything about you is my business. I’m literally carried by you.

Tomas stood.

The chair rolled backward and struck the wall.

“Stop pretending this is about me.”

Red’s straps tightened.

“Tomas—”

“You don’t want to talk about Courtney.”

I don’t know anything about Courtney.

“That isn’t what you said last night.”

I said she felt familiar.

“You said you knew her.”

I don’t know why.

“Then just say that!”

I did.

Tomas paced between the shelves.

His eye throbbed beneath the ice pack. His stomach hurt where Cayden had hit him. His arm had already begun to stiffen.

Red watched him.

You said something about your father, he said again.

Tomas laughed.

Louder this time.

“Oh, good. Him. The ghost. The man-shaped rumor.”

I wasn’t trying to—

“I don’t even know what he looks like.”

His voice bounced off the shelves.

“I don’t know his name. I don’t know why he left. I don’t know why Mom goes nuclear every time I ask. Everyone at the farm acts like I fell out of the sky.”

He threw one hand into the air.

“Congratulations, Kay. You won a baby. No receipt. No return policy.”

You’re shouting.

“Oh, now you care about volume?”

I’m just saying—

“You’re always just saying!”

The words tore out of him.

“You won’t tell me where you came from. You won’t tell me what you are. You don’t even know what’s inside you. And now you’re lecturing me about a man I’ve never met?”

The door slammed open.

“What is going on in here?”

Ms. Halvorsen stood in the doorway, lips thin, cardigan buttoned too tightly.

Two girls hovered behind her.

One already had her phone raised.

“This room is off-limits,” Ms. Halvorsen said. “I heard yelling.”

“I was just—”

Her eyes moved from Tomas to Red.

“You were in here talking to that thing?”

“Oh my God,” one of the girls whispered. “It’s his bag.”

She stepped around Ms. Halvorsen and reached for Red.

“No!”

Tomas moved without thinking.

He stepped between them.

The ice pack slipped from his face.

It hit the floor with a wet smack and skidded forward.

Ms. Halvorsen stepped back.

Her shoe landed on it.

Her foot shot sideways.

She went down hard, arms flailing. One shoulder struck the metal shelving.

Boxes toppled.

Books crashed onto the floor.

Someone screamed.

The girl’s phone remained pointed at Tomas.

The hallway filled almost instantly—students leaving classrooms, teachers appearing in doorways, curiosity spreading like heat.

“Why would you do that?” the girl demanded.

“I didn’t touch her.”

“You threw that under her foot.”

“It fell.”

“Sure.”

The second girl crouched beside Ms. Halvorsen.

“We have it on video.”

The video would show the ice pack falling.

By lunch, it would show Tomas throwing it.

By tomorrow, he would have planned the whole thing.

Tomas knew how this worked.

The girls helped Ms. Halvorsen stand, surrounding her with concern no one had offered Tomas.

He tried to move past them.

One blocked the doorway.

“Wait for another teacher.”

“Move.”

“You’re not supposed to leave.”

“Move.”

She didn’t.

Tomas shoved through them.

Hard.

Someone struck the wall.

A phone hit the floor.

A teacher shouted his name.

The instant Tomas did it, he knew they would forget everything that had happened before.

Now they had the part they needed.

“Tomas!”

“Stop!”

He didn’t run.

Running would make it worse.

He walked quickly, jaw locked, shoulders tight, eyes forward.

At his locker, he stopped so abruptly that Red swung against his back.

Tomas grabbed the strap.

Don’t.

“I can’t.”

His voice cracked.

He stared at the dented locker door as though it had personally wronged him.

“I can’t handle this today.”

I know you’re angry.

“Angry?”

Tomas laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.

“I’m exhausted.”

He looked down at Red.

The zipper mouth.

The straps twisted around his fist.

“Yesterday in the cafeteria. This morning I get punched. Coach Chad sees my face and sends me to the office.”

He swallowed.

“And the bus. You remember the bus.”

Red didn’t answer.

“Every single thing,” Tomas said. “Every single thing because I talk to a bookbag no one else can hear.”

Courtney heard me.

“That doesn’t make it better!”

His voice echoed through the hallway.

“You’re always in my head. I don’t get one minute where it’s quiet.”

That isn’t what I’m doing.

“It’s what it feels like.”

Tomas opened the locker.

Darkness waited inside.

Red had only ever given him two rules.

Don’t leave me alone.

Don’t leave me in the dark.

Tomas had never asked why.

He had understood the fear in Red’s voice and promised.

Now Red’s straps tightened around Tomas’s wrist.

Bad things happen in the dark.

Tomas closed his eyes.

“I know.”

Then don’t.

“I don’t have a choice.”

That wasn’t true.

Both of them knew it.

Tomas pushed Red into the locker.

The metal rang when the bookbag struck the back wall.

Darkness swallowed him.

The straps slipped from Tomas’s wrist.

The locker door slammed shut.

Tomas stood with one hand pressed flat against the cold metal.

His chest heaved.

His feet remained rooted, as though moving would cause something else to break.

Tap.

Tap.

Two quiet knocks from inside.

“I’m sorry,” Tomas whispered.

He rested his forehead against the locker.

“Just give me until the bell.”

He waited.

Nothing answered.

The bell shrieked overhead.

Tomas stepped away.

“See you later,” he told the locker.

A lie he needed to practice.

He made it through twenty minutes of class before the assistant principal appeared at the door.

Tomas was escorted to the office.

Ms. Halvorsen had filed a report. The girls had given statements. The video had already been shared. He was suspended pending a meeting with Kay.

Tomas asked to return to his locker.

The assistant principal told him his mother could collect his belongings later.

Kay was waiting outside.

Tomas left without Red.

The manure pile steamed in the afternoon heat.

Sweet and rotten at the same time.

Tomas drove the shovel into it, lifted, and dumped another load into the wheelbarrow. He didn’t wipe his hands before sinking the blade in again.

Kay had listened to the school’s version of events without interrupting.

That was worse than yelling.

When they reached the farm, she handed Tomas a shovel.

That had been the entire conversation.

“Everyone’s talking about you.”

Tomas recognized Courtney’s voice behind him.

“Let them.”

Metal scraped earth.

A horse snorted beyond the barn.

The house sat too quietly in the distance, its windows watching.

Courtney stopped a few steps away, just outside the worst of the smell.

Her eyes moved over Tomas.

The black eye.

The dirt.

The empty space where Red should have been.

“Where is he?”

Tomas drove the shovel down again.

“In my locker.”

Courtney’s face changed instantly.

Not surprise.

Fear.

“You left him at school?”

The shovel stalled.

“You can’t do that,” she said. “You can’t leave him alone.”

“I know.”

“In the dark?”

Tomas slammed the shovel into the pile. Manure spilled over the side of the wheelbarrow.

“I know.”

Courtney stepped closer.

“That’s both rules, Tomas.”

He turned toward her.

“How do you know the rules?”

Courtney stopped.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then she looked toward the house.

“He’s afraid.”

“You can feel that?”

She didn’t answer.

“Courtney.”

“I know you don’t understand what’s happening.”

“No. I don’t.”

“I know this is a lot.”

“You can hear my bookbag. You lied about where you live. You knew rules I never told you.” Tomas tightened both hands around the shovel. “You think?”

Courtney absorbed that without defending herself.

“Red needs you.”

“How?”

Still nothing.

“Why?”

She moved closer, lowering her voice.

“He doesn’t do well alone. Especially like that.”

Tomas looked away.

His knuckles had gone white around the shovel handle.

“I didn’t mean to leave him.”

Courtney’s expression softened.

“They sent me home,” he continued. “I wasn’t allowed to go back to my locker. Kay hasn’t taken her eyes off me since.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I told him I’d come back.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“We should go now.”

Tomas shook his head.

“The school will still be open. The office called guidance. Ms. Halvorsen filed a report. Teachers are probably waiting for me to do something stupid.”

“Red is alone.”

“I know!”

The horses shifted inside the barn.

Tomas looked toward the house.

When he spoke again, he kept his voice low.

“The doors will be locked. Even if they aren’t, someone will see us. And Kay is waiting for me to mess up again.”

Courtney paced once.

Tight.

Restless.

Every part of her wanted to move.

“Fine,” she said. “After dark.”

“After midnight. When the roads are quiet.”

Courtney studied him differently.

“You sound like you’ve done this before.”

Tomas drove the shovel into the pile.

He didn’t answer.

“Where do we meet?”

“End of the driveway.”

“How are we getting to the school?”

Tomas hesitated.

“Do you have a car?”

A flicker crossed Courtney’s face.

Not surprise.

Not concern.

Calculation.

“I can get one.”

She let the words remain between them.

Then she stepped close and touched two fingers gently beneath the edge of Tomas’s bruised eye.

He flinched.

Courtney lowered her hand.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

She leaned forward and kissed his uninjured cheek.

Light.

Quick.

Not teasing.

Almost an apology.

Tomas forgot about the shovel in his hands.

“What was that for?”

“You’re doing your best,” she said. “Even when it doesn’t feel like it.”

She was halfway to the trees when the barn door creaked open.

“That your girl from last night?” Kay called.

Tomas returned to shoveling.

The metal blade entered the pile with a wet, ugly sound.

Lift.

Dump.

Don’t turn around.

“Yeah.”

He could feel the heat in his face.

Stupid.

One kiss on the cheek and his entire body forgot how to behave.

Kay didn’t answer immediately.

That was worse.

“You know she doesn’t live at the Barlow place, don’t you?”

The shovel stopped in midair.

Tomas turned.

“What?”

Kay stood in the barn doorway with her arms crossed. Her eyes remained sharp despite the dimness behind her.

“She doesn’t live there.”

“She said her parents bought it.”

“No one bought it.”

The air felt thinner.

As though someone had opened a door Tomas hadn’t noticed before.

“She said—”

He stopped.

He didn’t know exactly what Courtney had said.

Not really.

He had wanted it to be true, so he had allowed it to become true.

Kay watched his face change.

The black eye.

The dirt.

The flush that hadn’t completely faded.

The way he stood as though he expected another hit.

“No one lives at the Barlow place,” she said. “No one has in years.”

Something cold settled in Tomas’s chest.

“Something is going on with that girl.”

Kay didn’t sound accusing.

She didn’t sound curious.

She sounded certain.

Her gaze moved to his injured eye.

“And something is going on with you.”

Tomas bent and grabbed the wheelbarrow handles.

“She helped me.”

The defense sounded thin, even to him.

Kay didn’t argue.

She rarely argued when she was already three steps ahead.

“Get cleaned up,” she said. “Dinner’s in twenty.”

Tomas pushed the wheelbarrow toward the far fence. The boards rattled beneath the weight.

He didn’t look back.

Something was going on with Courtney.

Something was going on with Red.

And Red was alone in the dark.

Midnight was coming.