The Corpse (Monday Afternoon)

John stood and his hand shot up to his nose, his fingers immediately stained red. He stemmed the bleeding with a wad of napkins but not before another drip of blood splattered across his sketchbook, the crimson blotch spreading like an ink stain across the page.
"Oh my God, are you okay?" dribbled out of my mouth. A metallic smell hit my nostrils, and my stomach twisted. If I'd eaten anything today, I'd have lost it right then. I stood up quickly, my eyes darting across the cafeteria. No teacher in sight. Not a single adult in the chaos of lunch hour.
"It's just a nosebleed, Evan," Chad said, standing to put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "John gets them once and a while. He'll live."
I calmed for a moment, then Angel ran to our table like a new student needing bullying had appeared. He took John's cheeks in his hand and examined him like a Jewish mom. "Nosebleed?"
No, paper cut.
Angel reached for John's arm. "Let's go to the bathroom."
"Shouldn't he go to the nurse?" I asked hesitantly then braced for Angel to pick me apart for opening my mouth.
"I help him clean up when he gets nosebleeds," Angel just said.
I sighed inwardly at having dodged a bullet.
"Our lunch is also the Nurse's lunchtime," Victor said.
John twisted away from Angel and pulled at my sleeve. "Come," he said, sounding like Victor because he was holding his nose.
Angel's eyebrows almost touched. "We don't need--what's your name again, bro?"
"Evan."
"Stay here, Evan."
"I want to go with him," John said.
Angel's glare was a warning, and I didn't want to test it. I resisted John's pull and tried to protest. "Uh, John, I--"
"Fine," Angel huffed. "Come on, Evan. Let's make it a party."
"Just Evan," John said, his flat tone making him sound like a guy version of Siri with a cold.
Just me! My heart leapt. He'd only just met me, and he was ready to be alone with me. It was only because he had a nosebleed and for some autistic reason, he didn't want to be alone when he cleaned up the blood. It meant a lot to me anyway. It just sucked that it meant a lot to Angel too.
"He doesn't want to go with you," Victor said, unafraid to look Angel in the eyes.
"Shut up, Victor," Angel replied. "You don't know nothing."
"He doesn't need no one to walk him to the bathroom," Romario said in a high pitch. His voice cracked, then got deeper when he added, "He's autistic, not a five-year-old."
Angel's eyes narrowed on Romario. "I told you. You don't get to talk to me until you get pubes."
Romario's face flushed, and he shrank back.
Angel never had anything to say about Victor's funny voice or his just being weird. Victor may have been only a little bit like John, but it was enough to work like shield.
I let John yank me into the isle between tables, so he wouldn't tear my shirt. Our table was entertaining the cafeteria. If the school didn't lock up cell phones, the video, Autistic Kid with Nosebleed Drags (ghost emoji) Boy Around, would've gone viral by now.
Angel threw up his hands in surrender. "Take him, Casper. Just make sure John blows his nose. The idea ain't to have him hold his head up until it stops. It's better to get the stuff out. The sink will be all bloody. Can you handle that?"
I nodded. I held down my breakfast when the soldier lost his head.
"Good, 'cause John can't, and he might lose it." Angel smiled at that. "Do you think your skinny butt can hold him down?"
I swallowed nervously. "You want me to hold him down?"
Angel made an eww face. "I don't want you to, you freak! I'm talking about keeping him from hurting himself if he flips out."
John, seeming not to care what Angel was saying about him, gripped my forearm through my shirtsleeve and dug his fingers into my arm.
"Ow," I yelped. "Let go. I'm coming."
He did and tossed me an offhand, "Sorry."
I rolled up my sleeve and rubbed the hand mark that stood out like red paint against my white skin.
"Scream if you need me!" Angel yelled, sneering because I stole John from him.
John walked beside me in the hallway. He was on the short side. His large afro gave him a few inches, but I was still half-a-head taller.
The napkins pressed to his nose hand soaked through, but no more blood leaked out of the red rags. It didn't gross me out. We were alone together, and my heart would explode if it didn't slow down.
I followed him into the boys' room that to my surprise smelled like pine, not pee. Maintenance was just afraid of the pool, not the bathrooms.
I turned away when John leaned over the sink and blew his nose. He didn't seem to care about the blood and turned on the faucet. Hold him down? Angel was just trying to scare me.
"Wait. Before you wash up, are your headphones waterproof?"
He shrugged.
I took that as a no, and they looked expensive. He might've used them for music when he had his phone. "I'll hold them for you."
He didn't say anything as I gently pulled them from his ears. While he splashed his face, I tried the headphones on. They totally encased my ears and muffled the faucet and all other sound. I wouldn't have known some kid came in if I hadn't seen him in the mirror.
The swinging closed of the stall door was only a thump to me, but John straightened at the slam, his eyes wide with terror. "Run," he yelled at the mirror. I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or his reflection. He bolted out the door, and I slipped through sideways before it swung back in my face.
Just outside, Angel caught John by wrapping his arm around John's waist. "Bro, you okay," he said with a gentleness I didn't think the bully had in him. "You safe."
John tried to pry off Angel's arm. "I heard a shot," he yelled.
Angel threw his other arm around John and grunted. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead as his face twisted with effort. John had to be mad strong to give the much bigger kid a workout. "There was no gunshot." Angel promised.
"You need help, bro?" asked a kid from another class, as tall as Angel but with muscular arms. A basketball player too, I guessed. Kids were spilling out from the cafeteria to watch the show.
"No," Angel snapped, then added a much nicer, "Thank you. He's got autism. If it gets crowded, he won't calm down."
Autism? This had nothing to do with that. He thought he heard gunfire. He'd been through something. This was PTSD!
The dude nodded and took charge of the crowd like a cop, ordering everyone back into the cafeteria. He stayed, though. "He your cousin or something?"
Before Angel could answer, John went limp in Angel's arms. Angel dropped his hands to his sides, and John moved away from him. While struggling to catch his breath, John managed to say, "I'm...not...his cousin."
Angel held his finger up to signal the kid to wait while he caught his breath then said, "I just be looking out for him."
"He okay now?" the kid asked.
"Yeah." Angel held his thumb up.
The kid went back into the cafeteria.
Angel glared at me like this was my fault. "Give him back his headphones, stupid."
I realized they were hanging from my neck and pulled them off. "S-Sorry."
John took them from my shaking hands and put them over his ears.
I began to shakily apologize to Angel. "I-I'm really--"
Angel dug his pointer finger into my chest. "I knew you'd mess this up, so I was waiting here." He pulled his hand away, but my chest still hurt where he'd poked me. "Did you take off John's headphones?"
I swallowed hard. "I, uh, didn't want them to get wet--"
Talking to me real slow like I was dumber than I already felt, Angel said, "Never take off John's headphones."
"I won't." I wanted to teleport away. "Sh-shouldn't we get a teacher or someone?"
"No, they'll just get the principal, and seeing Dr. H. will freak John out again."
Why? I wanted to ask, but Angel was in no mood to talk to me more than he had to.
John took a deep breath then, returning to his soft monotone voice, said, "I'm okay now. I need to be alone."
Angel raised an eyebrow. "You sure you okay enough to be alone?"
John looked away. "I'll stay with Evan." He liked me, but I really had to find out if an autistic kid could like me like me.
"That's cool," Angel said, sighing because it wasn't. He grabbed me by the shoulders and maneuvered me into a huddle, our backs to John. "I think John's interested in you 'cause you're strange looking," Angel whispered. "No offense."
As Angel's words sank in, my chest tightened. The thrill of John's attention faded, replaced by something cold and uncomfortable.
"Autistic people get stuck on stuff like that," he added. "It's what they do."
"No, we don't," John argued, still panting.
Angel rolled his eyes, more annoyed than surprised that John heard him whispering through his headphones. They were so good at canceling out noise, I was amazed John picked up Angel's whispering.
When John said 'no' to Angel, did he mean people with autism don't get stuck on things or that they don't obsess about people and things just because they were strange?
"Lunch is about over, John," Angel said. "Remember, the bell's louder in the hall."
God, what was John like during a fire drill?
Angel headed into the cafeteria but not without looking back twice. The 'don't-mess-up-again' look he gave me was as good as my mother's.
John stared at the floor.
"You okay?" I asked. "Why'd you, uh, think you heard a shot before? Was there a shooting where you live?"
Back when I was in the hospital, my roommate on the ward had seen a shooting. That caused his PTSD. Certain sounds would make him wild out in front of everyone.
"Shooting? Where I live? No, not there..." His face scrunched, and he rubbed his forehead like he was trying so hard to remember something, it hurt. "But a lot of fighting near there...a long time ago."
"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, but let's move. Okay?" I pointed up to the red bell on the wall. We were standing right under it. "I know you're not into loud noise." I smiled, but he didn't. Did he ever?
He looked up and nodded. He motioned for me to follow him down the hall in the opposite direction of the cafeteria. Angel was not going to like this.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
John put his finger to his lips and led me to the staircase. Instead of up to class we went down a floor. The temperature dropped by at least five degrees.
A short hallway led to a set of double doors. John opened them into an empty gym, their creaking making him wince. The doors slowly closed behind us.
With the lights off, the outline of the double doors at the gym's far end was shrouded in darkness, save for the exit sign's faint red glow. It smeared across the nearest basketball hoop like spilled paint, casting long, strange shadows over the abandoned court. Without a word, John ran to the opposite side.
"Wait," I called and ran after him. He plowed through the right door. I crashed into the left bar, which was locked, before pushing the right open. My nose wrinkled at the musty odor of the little hall we entered.
The only way out besides the way we came was a left turn and a short walk to a set of ancient, wooden double doors. John stopped in front of them and crouched, peering through one of two holes where the knobs used to be. "Come look," he whispered and stepped back.
"At what?" I asked, walking up to him. Thick brown paint covering the doors sealed the space between them and filled in old fashioned keyhole. The smell wafted in from under the doors.
"You can see the pool from here."
I peered through the other hole. The doors once opened to a little balcony overlooking a pool twenty-five yards long and wide enough to have had six swimming lanes when it was in use. Windows set high on the pool area walls, just above ground, allowed a bit of sun through their grime and wire mesh-covered panes. The light made the diving board's shadow stretch over the pool's deep end. The shadow warped into a clawed hand when it fell on the jumble of old, metal student desks, busted and rusting, stored within.
The bloated body of a teenaged boy, skin the white of a maggot, with cracked goggles and a torn swimsuit lay atop the pile. His limbs were twisted, tangled in the debris. The body slowly disappeared into the hungry metal mass as if bit by bit it were being chewed and swallowed.
I pushed away from the door and shook my head. "Uh uh, he is not there! No way, Jose."
"I'm John, not Jose," John said, a small, confused frown crossing his face. "Who's not there?"
I'd said that out loud? "N-nobody. Nobody's there." I'd've known that if the meds were in my system. But for weeks I'd been stowing them in my cheeks, like a chipmunk with acorns, then spitting them out. There were two yellow and white capsules in the garbage of the boys' room by the Nurse's Office. They were interfering with my psychic visions. But if this and headless soldiers were psychic visions, then psychic visions sucked. Dr. Sarah also said if I went long enough without my medication, I'd get paranoid. Did I want that too?
"I thought I saw somebody in the pool for a second, but it-it was just my imagination." I forced a laugh and shrugged.
John looked through the hole. "Nobody's there now," he said, turning away from the door, a blank expression on his handsome face. "The Swimmer haunts that pool. You may have seen him."
From the gym, the bell marking the end of the period sounded. Holding my breath, I forced myself to look through the hole again. A smooth tarp covered the whole length of the pool. No body, no old desks either. "Let's just go back to class," I pleaded.