Page 15 of The Incredible Ordinary

Theo looks up. “You can ask me about the bruise,” he mumbles. “It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Wren says. “What’s with the bruise, Theo?”

Theo plays with his food some more, eyes firmly on his plate. “It’s like a rite of passage, isn’t it? Getting beat up at school.”

“Not really.” Sutton’s jaw tightens imperceptibly. “At least, it shouldn’t be.”

“What happened?” I ask.

Theo twirls his fork in the spaghetti moodily.

“It was my fault,” he finally says.

“And by fault, you mean…?” I prompt.

He sighs and drops the fork, then slouches back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest.

“I did that thing. The… Where I’m… He doesn’t talk to anybody at all at school.”

“Rory?” I ask.

Theo nods. “And I just… like, I don’t too much either? And it’s… I know what it feels like. Like, when you don’t have friends and stuff? So I don’t know why, but I just figured maybe he’d be… I figured I could have somebody, right? Like a friend.”

His cheeks flush. I clamp my mouth shut and wait silently.

It’s been getting better recently since Theo changed schools. His last one turned into a bit of a nightmare three years ago with all the bullying. That stopped in St. Patrick’s, but he’s still beenhaving trouble making friends. He has his soccer team friends, but kids spend so much time at school that not having even one friendly face there is incredibly difficult.

“He has this book he always carries around with him, and he draws in it all the time. I kind of went to him during lunchbreak, and I figured… You know that thing you said about making friends? To find a common interest. So I asked him what he was drawing, but he ignored me, and then I said I know somebody who draws really well.” Theo glances toward Wren quickly and then goes back to glowering at his plate. “I wasn’t going to take the book, I swear. I just… kind of touched it with the tip of my finger. I just wanted to take a look. I wasn’t going to, like, laugh at it or anything. He lost his shit, and then he pushed me, and I grabbed him to stay upright, and then he punched me in the face. And then the teacher came.”

The grown-ups around the table, all four of us, exchange glances.

“Theo, that wasn’t your fault,” I say.

“I shouldn’t have touched his stuff.”

“No, you probably shouldn’t have,” I say carefully. “But he shouldn’t have reacted the way he did either.”

He twirls his fork between his fingers for a bit before he looks at me. “Can I be excused?”

I nod. I’m not going to push for more right now. Theo is the kind of kid who sometimes needs a bit of quiet to figure out his own feelings.

We all watch him leave the table and then listen to him stomp up the stairs.

I lean back and blow out a big breath, rubbing my palms over my face.

“Who’s the kid?” Sutton asks. “The one with the quick fists.”

I sigh and lean forward on my elbows. “Rory. Never heard of him before. It’s a bit of a case. Apparently his father died, andnow he’s being raised by his two older brothers, who only found out he existed after the death of said father about three months ago.”

“Oof,” Wren says. “That’s not an easy situation.”

“There have been some growing pains.”

“How do you know?” Wren asks.

“I talked to the brother for a bit after. He seemed overwhelmed as fuck, to be honest.”

“I’d be overwhelmed as fuck too if I suddenly inherited a thirteen-year-old,” Wren says reasonably.