Nausea twirled in the pit of Will’s gut. Just a flutter of it at first. Then, that flutter took shape and grew into solid a lump of sick. A cold stone in his belly. He’d known Sam might come looking for revenge—he’d mocked Sam in front of the whole school—but Will didn’t think that he would be this afraid when it happened. Sam spat on the ground and stomped forward.
The sheet of muscles along the side of Will’s neck clenched, and bent his head over. The truth chilled his blood. He wasn’t paralyzed with fear. He was about to seize. Will tried to yell, but all that came out of his throat was a wet, grinding honk. His skin was pins and needles. He felt a cold rope of his own spittle drip across his fingers. The ground collapsed under his feet.
Everything became white.
Warbling laughter was the first thing Will was aware of. He opened his eyes, and the light was blinding. He saw a human shape, all out of focus, standing above him. The top of the person’s head was a blurred blob of yellow. The person’s hazy foot swung back and then kicked forward.
Will’s balls exploded with pain. He tried to cup them with his hands and guard against another strike, but his arms flailed around like water weenies. They wouldn’t work right. Another kick, and Will retched.
Will tried to scream at Sam to stop, but it was just noise with no enunciation. His tongue was a dead lump in his mouth. Will’s eyes sharpened gradually. He could see the drop was over. Everyone was back on the sidelines, except for him, and Sam, and the Loners trying to pull Sam off of him.
He saw Sam knock down Leonard with an elbow to the chest. Sam shoved Mort off him like he was a paper doll. Mort got back up and came back for more punishment, throwing a crazed, ragged swing at Sam. Sam grabbed his deformed fist, mid-punch, and socked Mort in the eye with his other hand. Mort dropped to the dirt, unconscious. Ritchie limped over on a freshly twisted ankle, and Sam kicked him in it. Ritchie hollered and hit the ground, clutching his foot.
Will tried to stand, but his legs were another part of his system that had yet to come back online. He was able to get on his hands and knees in time to receive another heavy kick from Sam, in the kidney this time. Will crumpled, his face on the ground.
He saw a shiny red dot, a ladybug, moseying across ridges of dirt in front of his face. Beyond the ladybug, the crowd watched. Will could discern a mixture of pity and mockery across the different faces watching. Will felt himself urinate, he had no control over it. His bowels loosened and warm filth flooded his boxers. He saw Lucy running toward him. He shouted for her to stop.
“Agh oh shtuhh!” was the best he could muster.
Peripherally, he saw Sam punch Belinda in the stomach, and she folded over. The crowd groaned for her. Lucy rushed over to Will in a panic. Sam slapped her across the face, hard enough to knock her down. Will tried to attack Sam but he flopped around like a fish on a boat deck.
“Woh ganh fuff!” Will whelped.
Sam laughed with glee. He grabbed Will by the hair on the back of his head and twisted his head around so they could be face-to-face. Sam’s eyes were crazed.
“Where’s your big brother now?” Sam said, low at first. He shouted it again for the whole quad. “WHERE’S YOUR BIG BROTHER NOW?”
Sam pushed Will’s face into the dirt. He dragged it back and forth. Will tried to fight. He tried. But he couldn’t work his fingers well enough to grasp Sam’s wrists. He had to let the dirt and rocks scrape across his face, again and again. Sam let go. Will waited for the next strike. Nothing came.
Will got himself up on one elbow. His arms were beginning to listen to his brain. He looked back. Other Loners lay on the ground, defeated. Sam was a few feet away from Will now, facing Varsity, who watched the show, as stunned as anyone else.
“Are you satisfied now? Huh? I crushed the Loners,” Sam shouted at his gang. “What else do you need to see?”
All of Varsity turned and began to walk out of the quad. They shook their heads at Sam, or ignored him completely. Sam shuffled a few steps after them.
“Where are you going?” Sam said.
Other gangs like the Sluts and the Geeks began to leave as well. Sam turned his rant to everyone when Varsity stopped caring.
“You all saw that! I—I beat Will. You saw it.”
The crowd hissed and tsk’d at him. They made crying baby fists by their eyes. They laughed at him, they flipped him off. Sam’s face went wine red. He looked like he wanted to say something but he kept stopping. When the last Varsity stepped off the quad, there was no one left for him to shout at, and he ran for the nearest hallway. Laughter spread in his wake and stayed with the crowd even after he was gone.
As the rest of the quad cleared, the Loners got to their feet, except Ritchie, who only stood on one. They were beat up. Disrespected. The school had just seen the once mighty Loners get stomped by one guy. Will tasted mud and blood. Lucy walked toward him, a split in her lip and one red cheek. He wanted to scream at her to stay back, he didn’t want her to come close enough to smell him. She couldn’t know he’d just soiled himself, like an infant. She couldn’t know. But she soon did. They all did, when they helped Will to his feet. They smelled his shame. None of them would look him in the eye as they helped him wobble-walk out of the quad.
He’d never wanted for this to happen, not to him, not to any of them. He’d tried so hard to not let it happen, he’d tried with everything he had in him… He just wasn’t strong enough.
9
THE MARKET BUZZED WITH EXCITEMENT. This was the third one since the parents’ arrival. The first two had been disorganized and halfhearted, but not this one. This market was like Lucy remembered them, back when the military had still been feeding them. The wide hallway bustled with activity, with deals going down everywhere she looked.
Lucy stood with Ritchie, Mort, Leonard, Colin, and Belinda at the edge of the market. They watched kids from other gangs, with their hair freshly dyed, walk with their friends, joking and laughing, from one trading room to the next. Life was returning to normal, better than normal actually, because there was more food to go around. Varsity hadn’t hoarded most of the food this time. They’d only taken their share, a reasonable amount to support a gang, and didn’t try for any more. It had people talking. Had Varsity actually dethroned Sam as their leader? It looked that way. They didn’t seem concerned with keeping a mountain of food on display behind their trading tables to taunt the rest of the school. Without Varsity hoarding the lion’s share of the food, every gang ended up securing more supplies than they ever had. Every gang but the Loners.
They’d failed at the drop again. They weren’t gelling as a team. Will hadn’t gone because he said he had a cold, but Lucy thought that maybe he was too embarrassed to show his face in the quad. She understood, they all were embarrassed. Without Will, there were only six of them remaining, and they felt stupid standing with all the huge gangs, fully aware that everyone had seen them get trashed by Sam two weeks before. By the time this drop had started, almost every gang had sent a representative over to pitch joining their gang to the Loners. They all talked like it was an inevitability, like Violent had said, that the Loners were finished and now was the time to pick a new gang. Once the drop started, none of the Loners took the lead. Ritchie did well on his own, but all together they’d barely gathered enough stuff to trade for the eight rolls of toilet paper, two boxes of tampons, five packets of instant oatmeal, and the twelve-pack of ramen noodles that they held in their hands now.
Ritchie dropped the toilet paper rolls on the market floor.
“I’m going Skaters,” Ritchie said.
“What?” Lucy said.