The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty

doesn’t give way.
    “Ouch!” I am the one to say it.
    We stare at each other, both of us stunned. She puts her hand to her cheek, her eyes wide. And then, quickly, she is on me, grabbing my ear with one hand. She hits me on the mouth with the other, her fist solid and sharp. I see a burst of color, red and blue, little sparks going off in darkness. My glasses are gone. I reach forward, swinging. Libby is yelling something from the front of the bus.
    The bus stops, and we roll into the aisle like just one body, her fingernails pushed into the skin of my arms. I have her by the hair, one of her braids wrapped around my fingers twice. Victor is yelling words of encouragement, and I can smell the mud on the floor of the aisle, my face pressed up against it. My free hand moves up and down like a hammer until I feel her teeth biting into the skin at the bottom of my fist.
    And then I feel myself rising, being picked up, one of Randy’s large hands under each of my arms. “That’s enough!” he yells. “That’s enough!” He pushes me into a seat on the other side of the aisle. Traci stands up and tries to come at me again, but Randy pushes her back. She is crying, yelling something. The braid I was pulling on has come unraveled, and half of her hair hangs in front of her face, kinked up and wild.
    “You girls STOP IT! Stop it RIGHT NOW!” He points at Traci, and then at me. His John Deere hat has fallen off, and I see, for the first time, that he is bald. We are all realizing this at the same time, looking up at him. He reaches down for his hat, and puts it back on with a shaking hand.
    “YOU, Bucknow, to the back of the bus, NOW. YOU, Carmichael, to the very front, NOW! I won’t have this bullshit on my bus. You’re both kicked off for a week.”
    Randy gives me a look then, a look to let me know we aren’t friends anymore, and this is the worst part of the whole thing, even though my lips sting so much that it is everything I can do not to cry right there in front of everyone. I get up and creep to the back of the bus, tasting the blood on my lips. Traci is still crying in the front, stupid Libby Masterson consoling her.
    Victor Veltkamp hands me my glasses, the frames bent, the lenses unbroken. “Good job,” he whispers. “Nice work.”
    But the other kids only stare at me, at the blood trickling down my chin now, soaking through my white shirt that was new from Eileen for Easter. Randy turns off the country music. We ride along with no sound, except for Traci’s crying. The bus stops in front of Juvenile Corrections, and when Travis Rowley stands up to get off, I don’t look up.
    Randy does not say good-bye to Traci when she gets off at her stop, and he doesn’t say good-bye to me when I get off at mine. I forget the trophy, leave it on the bus.

    My mother is alarmed and very nice to me at first. She says, “Oh, baby, what happened?” in a worried voice, and before I can answer, she is pressing a wet washcloth against my mouth. But when I tell her, she narrows her eyes, and takes her hand away from the washcloth so I have to hold it myself.
    “You started it?”
    “She was saying things.” I touch my cheek lightly, marveling at the swelling that is already there, the tenderness. I will have a swollen lip, perhaps a black eye.
    “But you hit her first?”
    I say nothing, keeping the washcloth up against my mouth. My mother groans and covers her face with her hands, looking at me from between her fingers.
    “And I’m kicked off the bus for a week.”
    This part of the story seems the most difficult for her to take in. I watch red, comma-shaped splotches form on her throat and cheeks. “Go stand on the other side of the room, Evelyn. Hurry.”
    “Why?”
    She exhales, slowly. “Because if you don’t, I may kill you.”
    I go to the other side of the room. She walks around the kitchen, her arms moving up and down like she is trying to fly. She counts to ten three times in a row, all ten numbers