Knees

Every day after precalculus, Susie went to the room with the tweed carpet with Ken. She always kneeled and he always stood.
They hadn’t even known the room with the tweed carpet existed, until they had been told to go down there once during chemistry to get beakers. The room was full of old school supplies, ancient notebooks and moldy pencils. Susie hadn’t even known that pencils could be moldy until she and Ken saw them in that room that one day during chemistry when they had been sent to get beakers. There was only a single light in the room with the tweed carpet, a fluorescent one above a mirror, the mirror Ken always stood up against. The fluorescence could make anyone look ugly.
Susie hated the room with the tweed carpet because it meant that she would go home with red knees. Though she hated the Catholic school’s uniform, she liked the socks because it meant that only her knees would be red and not the rest of her legs too.
Whenever they went to the room with the tweed carpet, Susie’s friends got jealous because all the girls in the grade had crushes on Ken. Susie showed them her knees, but they didn’t care because it was Ken, and all the girls loved Ken.
Sometimes Ken took other girls to the room with the tweed carpet, but it was usually Susie. Sometimes he told her about these other girls, and Susie didn’t like to hear about them because sometimes these girls were in her classes, and sometimes she had to talk to them.
Even though she didn’t always want to, Susie always went to the room with the tweed carpet with Ken every day after precalculus. Precalculus was Susie’s last class of the day, and while her other friends went to go get ice cream at the diner down the street, she went to the room with the tweed carpet with Ken.
Ken had never been mean to her, but he had never asked her what she wanted, either. Susie didn’t consider him a friend, just a boy she went to school with and went to the room with the tweed carpet with. He had a girlfriend, a girl who was in Susie’s geography class, and who she could never make eye contact with. She was pretty, and Susie often saw them hugging in the halls between classes. He put his arm around her when they walked together, and always kissed her on the forehead before they went their separate ways at the end of the day, before he went to the room with the tweed carpet with Susie.
It was a Tuesday, and Susie met Ken in the room with the tweed carpet after precalculus. He was seven minutes late, but she didn’t ask questions. She had seen him and his girlfriend fighting before English. Ken didn’t look at Susie while she was kneeling on the tweed carpet, like always, but when she was done, and when she asked him if he was okay, he became angry. He looked straight into her eyes and told her more loudly than before that he was fine.
The next day, Ken was twelve minutes late to the room with the tweed carpet after precalculus. Again, Susie asked if he was okay. He repeated that he was fine, and to stop asking.
The third day, when Ken was twenty-one minutes late, Susie refused to kneel on the tweed carpet until he told her what was going on. He yelled at her and called her a bitch, and pushed her. Her knees skidded across the tweed carpet as she went sliding, crashing against the wall. She didn’t know he was so strong, merely because she had only seen him at his most vulnerable. When he stormed out of the room, Susie stood and caught a glimpse of her knees in the mirror Ken always leaned up against. They were bleeding profusely, dripping into the lace at the top of her socks. She did not cry, only let the blood fall onto the tweed carpet.