Knucklebones, Cheekbones, Brokenheartbones

Wham.

Stars burst, checkerboarding across my vision. For a couple seconds, I can't hear the music or the roaring crowd, don't see the big green field or the stage. I forget that Jackie Ghost and the Busters are wailing their best song just twenty yards away, which is impossible since I've been dying to see them live since I was thirteen. For a second, I even forget that just eight seconds ago I was kissing Lola Ramirez, which is impossible since I've been dying to taste her chapstick-flavored lips since I was fourteen. I forget that three seconds ago I heard Lola's boyfriend Dustin make a small dry sound of shock, this little puff of grief escaping out of him like steam.

I forget. There's just me and the white sparks behind my eyelids.

Heat blossoms on my cheek like a firework - pretty colors and a dizzying moment of wonder before the loud pop of pain crashes over me. I zigzag backwards a few steps. Strangers' hands reach out to steady me, fingers reach gently toward my cheek, curl back again before they touch skin, and I can hear sympathetic hisses from between wincing teeth.

The stars melt and drip out of my eyes, mixing and burning with the bright coppery blood that's leaking down my face. My eyebrows frown but my mouth smiles, wide and stupid, bright and crazy.

I can hear Lola screaming at her boyfriend, her weird cello voice saying she can't believe he'd hit a girl, saying she can't believe she ever wanted to be his. He's surrounded by a tightening noose of people, strangers united in righteousness. He looks suddenly winded and small. He's not made to deal with confrontation. In the rocketship mess of my brain, I feel a little stab of pity, seeing him stand there, skinny chest and fear in a vintage tee.

My cheek throbs and there's a moment of vengeful Batman pleasure that snarls along with the muttering crowd. But there's a little of my blood on his wimpy knuckles, and he's standing puppy-huddled like he's under a helicopter search light, and he's radiating heartbreak and confusion the way you can tell some people are drunk even when they're just sitting quietly, and Lola is holding my hand, and I try to get my zipping kaleidoscope thoughts to line up into words.

They get away from me, though. They just sizzle and sway around my body, lodging somewhere in the small of my back, or in the sole of my foot.

I don't know what I would have said anyway. Sorry I stole your girlfriend sort of by accident? Sorry my face got in the way of your desperate hopeless rage? Sorry everyone thinks you're a jerk now? Sorry I'm actually the jerk but no one will think so because you hit me and that makes me a hero, kind of? Sorry Lola will kiss the cut on my cheek to make it better?

I really am sorry. All of me except the palm I'm sharing with Lola. That part's electric lemon happy.

He's shrinking like an octopus, withdrawing into a secret hole in the universe. But I can feel him, I know he's going to run from the crowd, about to try to outdistance Lola's scorn. I know because I'm  him. Seeing Lola with Dustin and James and Heather  and Luke and all the others, I was tired and wounded and vicious and weak, like him.

His eyes flick around, as harsh and afraid as gunshots, looking for a gap in the closing mob. They meet mine for just the skin of a second, and I'm so sorry that my whole body shakes like a struck wineglass, high and singing and sad. There's nothing much in his eyes besides an animal fear. He's got that air of cat sorrow - a furtive, flinching shame and anger.

And then he's diving away, and the crowd starts to smear after him, and a noise happens at my mouth.

"Stop."

Heads turn. Eyes stick me with needle stares. Lola's hand tightens on mine.

There's a long moment of nothing.

And then we all remember that we're at a concert, drinking expensive cheap beer, our feet getting sore, our voices getting hoarse from singing along to our favorite songs. Needles recede.

Just like that, everyone forgets the time that one guy punched that girl.

Except me, the lightning lemon feeling spreading up my arm and into my ribcage and down my spine and into my brain.

Except Lola, soft and tempting and dangerous beautiful.

Except Dustin, brokenheartboned and bloody-knuckled.