He won’t, though.
“So let’s find him then,” I go. “Bring your rake.”
“You think I won’t?” he asks.
But then we end up just sitting in his room, and he’s in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
“Why don’t you put bug powder in his milk?” I go. I’m looking at the booklet that comes with his Great Speeches CD. Something knocks me to the floor on my face, and he’s jumping up and down on my back with his knees.
I scream for him to quit it when I can, but he doesn’t and finally I’m able to twist around and get him on the side of the head with my fist. Once he’s off I keep using my right hand and he blocks it with his arm but not completely because he’s trying to protect his finger. He straight-arms me in the mouth with the heel of his palm. Then we both go nuts.
His mom runs upstairs and separates us. It takes her some time, and she ends up with a scratched face. We’re screaming at each other and she’s screaming at us. One of his fingers is bleeding through the bandage.
“Fucking maggot,” he keeps screaming.
“Suck me,” I scream back.
“Stop it, both of you,” his mom screams. We still won’t stop trying to beat on each other, so finally she drags me downstairs by the collar. “Don’t come back here, you fuck,” he yells down the stairs. “Fuck you,” I yell back up. “Stop it,” his mom yells, shaking me so hard that she almost breaks my neck. She shoves me out onto the driveway and slams the back door.
She calls my parents while I’m walking home.
“I hear you and the Nightrider thought you were in the Thunderdome,” my dad says when I walk in the door.
“I don’t know what that means,” I go.
“Are you all right?” my mom wants to know. I look in the mirror in the bathroom. My teeth are bloody and there’s dried blood on my chin and some on my shirt. My back hurts where he was jumping on it. My lip’s cut up again. Otherwise I’m fine. I feel like I’m going to cry, but that’s out of frustration.
“It’s all right,” my mom says when she sees my face once I finally come back out of the bathroom. I stand there in the middle of the kitchen like I got a load in my pants. My dad knows enough not to say anything.
“Want me to help you with your face?” she goes.
“Yeah,” I go. And start crying.
“It’s okay,” she goes. She comes over and puts her arms around me.
“Fucking asshole,” I go, barely able to understand myself. I hang on to her for a minute.
“Hey,” my dad says, about the language. My mom tells him to shush. Gus is up in their bedroom watching videos and misses the whole thing.
I don’t call Flake or hear from him for a week. He wanders by in the hall a few times at school. I get up in the morning, get my stuff together and head for the bus. I come home, go up to my room and dump my stuff on the floor. I do homework. I do better than the teacher expected on a social studies quiz.
My dad asks a few days into this if I want to play catch. The next night my mom calls up the stairs that there’s a special on about naval firepower.
After I’m supposed to be asleep I walk around the house without turning on the lights. I take the Bible out of their downstairs bookcase and read it in the afternoons. I think about copying down parts but never get around to it. I like Leviticus and Revelations. I look at the pictures in African Predators. There’s one of a leopard that got ahold of a baboon. The baboon’s face is being squeezed shut by the bite.
“So now you’re not eating?” my dad asks after a while.
Gus comes into my room and sits with me sometimes, then goes out again.
“Can I tell you something?” my dad says, another time, at dinner.
“No,” I go.
Finally, after a week and a half, I call Flake’s house. The phone rings and rings and no one picks up.
In the mornings when I look in the mirror to comb my hair it looks like I have two black eyes.
My dad sits there while I have breakfast. He asks how I’m sleeping. I tell him I have no idea.
Hermie starts hanging out with me before the homeroom bell rings in the morning. He doesn’t say anything about Flake. At first he doesn’t say much at all.
“Listen, you gotta help me get back at Budzinski,” he finally goes.
“Who is this kid?” I go.
He points across the playground but there’s like forty kids where he’s pointing.
It’s about the third day he’s been hanging around, and we’re both watching other kids have fun. A bunch of them are seeing how many it takes to clog the tunnel slide for the grammar school. They’re falling out and getting stuck and everybody’s screaming.
He scratches his back through his SCREW THE SYSTEM shirt.
“You ever wash that?” I ask him.
“My mom does,” he goes. “You ever wash those?” he says about my pants.
Near the window where Flake and I broke in I can see the girl who was crying three straight days last week. She’s creeping around trying to sneak up on a pigeon. The pigeon keeps walking just out of her reach.
“You don’t look so good,” he goes. I make a face and he drops the subject.
Two other girls are standing there making fun of the one who’s creeping around after the pigeon. Every so often she looks over when she doesn’t think they’re looking. She’s the kind of girl who follows along with all the conversations and smiles whenever she gets noticed. The sun comes out and the whole playground gets warmer.
“So would you help me?” he goes.
“Help you what?” I go.
“With Budzinski,” he goes.
“I’m not gonna help you beat up some sixth-grader,” I tell him.
“I don’t want you to help beat him up,” he goes. “I just need help with a plan.”
“A plan,” I go. “Just hide behind a bush and hit him with a stick.”
“That’s a plan?” Hermie goes.
“He’s a sixth-grader,” I go. “Take his candy. Push him down in the sandbox.”
This pisses him off so much he shuts up for a while.
“I went after him with a stick,” he finally goes.
“You went after him with a stick?” I ask him.
“He took it away and hit me with it.” He looks ashamed.
This is what my life has come down to. I’m talking to sixth-graders about who beat who with a stick.
Hermie’s tearing up, just thinking about it.
“Hey, it happens,” I tell him.
“No it doesn’t,” he goes. “Not to anyone else.”
“I get my ass kicked all the time,” I tell him. “Are you kidding?”
He wipes his face and looks at his feet. He has an expression like getting compared to me isn’t a help.
The bell rings for homeroom.
“Somebody’s gotta do something,” he goes as we stand up and head inside. We get shoved aside by everybody who’s more anxious than we are to get in.
“I’m gonna get the gun,” he tells me the next day before homeroom. “Let’s see what he does then.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“Let’s see what he does then,” he goes.
“What, you’re gonna get your dad’s gun and shoot him?” I go. I have this whirling in my stomach. I even put my hand on it.
“They’ll know they can’t fuck with me,” he goes.
“Of course they can fuck with you,” I go. “You’re like two feet tall.”
He looks out over the playground like it’d be hard to stop with just Budzinski.
“Don’t talk stupid,” I tell him. I don’t know what else to say.
“I’m not talking stupid,” he goes.
“It sure sounds like it,” I tell him.
“No it doesn’t,” he goes.