“Get on with it!” someone shouted, to which Cox replied: “That’s what your mom said before I blew my load in her face!”
Everybody laughed except Cindy and Edmund.
“Okay, okay, seriously,” Cox said, and began reading from the top of his stack of lunch bags. “This first Brown Bag goes out to the guy playing Mentieth. It’s called the ‘Perils of Inbreeding Award.’ Jonathan Reynolds: To the porky freshman with one of the most fucked-up grills we’ve ever seen, your teeth look like a leftover makeup effect from Deliverance. In fact, every time you speak on stage, we keep expecting you to add, ‘He’s suuure got a purty mouth!’ Who knew that backwoods rednecks lived in eleventh-century Scotland? Your mom and dad, apparently. Hard to keep a secret like that in the house when you’re brother and sister!”
Some laughter, some groans, and the pudgy freshman who played Mentieth pushed through the applauding crowd to accept his award.
“Witty, aren’t they?” Cindy whispered, her tongue thick with beer. “Mine will come at the end. Watch. They usually go from smallest parts to biggest. With Bradley at the helm, it’s going to be pure poetry all night, I’m sure.”
Edmund smiled and squeezed her hand.
And Cindy was right. The awards went on for about half an hour, the seniors taking turns reading them. Juvenile insults, profanity, and bathroom humor mostly—nothing even remotely clever—and Cindy could tell that some of the underclassmen got their feelings hurt. The worst was the young man playing Macduff, who got the dreaded “Freshman Fuckup Award,” and whose Brown Bag stated in no uncertain terms that his was the worst performance ever to grace the Harriot stage.
Cindy felt sorry for him, but her sympathy was shortlived when she heard her award was to be next. It was pretty much what she expected. The “Monica Lewinsky Award” they called it this time: an eloquent, heartfelt missive about how Cindy got her role because she sucked George Kier-nan’s dick, and that her “Out, out, damn spot!” had something to do with a cum stain on her Harriot sweatshirt.
Cindy didn’t even look at her Brown Bag after she walked up to accept it; was just happy to get it over with and folded it into her purse when she joined Edmund at the other end of the deck. He looked upset.
“They shouldn’t say stuff like that about you,” he said. “It’s disrespectful.”
“Who cares?” Cindy said, aware of the stares from the crowd. “They’re just a bunch of idiots. It’s not nearly as bad as it could’ve been, trust me. Really, it doesn’t bother me at all. Don’t let it ruin our night, okay?”
Cindy smiled and tugged on his shirt. Edmund, stone-faced, narrowed his eyes at her—seemed to look right through her, Cindy thought—then gazed past her toward Cox and his friends.
“And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for,” said the guy who played Banquo. “The ‘My Wife Won’t Sleep With Me Award.’ Bradley Cox: We know how many times you begged Cindy Smith to go out with you this year. And we know how many times she rejected you, so it’s no shocker that you should be playing her bitch on stage—‘Will you fuck me if I kill Duncan, honey? Will you fuck me if I kill Banquo, sweetie?’”
Laughter from the crowd.
“Art imitates life,” Banquo continued. “So what’s next for you, Bradley? Wait a minute, wait a minute.” He pretended to answer his cell phone. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay I’ll tell him. That was your agent, Bradley. They’ve got an audition for you: an understudy role playing sloppy seconds to Edmund Lambert in Psycho Meets the Egocentric Bitch!”
A chorus of “oohs” as the heads whipped around to see Cindy and Edmund’s reactions. Cox stepped across from his chair onto Banquo’s—pushed him off as he snatched up his Brown Bag and waved it over his head.
“Thass-right,” he shouted, smiling, slurring. “I ain’t got in yet, but word from her ex at Sigma Chi is that it ain’t worth shit anyway!”
Gasps, uncomfortable laughter, and all heads turned to Edmund and Cindy.
Then Edmund stepped forward.
“Come here, Bradley,” he said calmly.
The crowd grew silent.
“Edmund, don’t,” Cindy whispered, her hand on his arm. Edmund ignored her, just stood staring at Cox, motioning with his finger for him to come.
“Dude, relax,” said the guy playing Banquo. “It’s all in fun.”
“All of you then,” said Edmund. “All of you who wrote that stuff about Cindy can come over here and apologize to her.”
A murmuring in the crowd—some saying “Relax, dude,” and “Calm down” while others barked out, “Fuck him up, Lambert!”
“What’s your problem, man?” asked Banquo. “It’s just a joke.”
“Now’s your chance,” said Edmund. “If I have to come to you, then your chance to apologize is gone.”
“Dude—”
“No!” said Cox, stumbling off his chair. “Fuck him—fuck you, Lambert—you and your bitch there. Can’t take a joke, then you can go fuck yourself after you fuck her.”
Another gasp, and the students began backing away off the deck.
“Everybody just calm down,” said Banquo, but Edmund was already heading across the deck—calmly, methodically, the students parting before him like the Red Sea.
“That’s right, come on, you little bitch,” said Cox, stumbling drunkenly. “Six of us against one of you—gonna fuck you up good ’n tight, soldier boy.”
Although Cindy remained on the opposite end of the deck, she had no trouble seeing what happened next.
Banquo and another senior bailed immediately—jumped over the railing and ran before Edmund could reach them—and thus only three of Cox’s constituents backed him up in the end.
Edmund floored them with a flurry of punches and kicks as Cox stumbled past him with a wild haymaker. Cox had been the first to swing—Cindy saw that clearly—but it took him too long to recover from his missed punch; and by the time he turned back, Edmund met him square in the face with a head butt.
Cox howled in pain—the blood gushing from his nose and onto his T-shirt like water from a faucet. Cindy felt as if her stomach was filled with cement; and time seemed to slow down. Cheering and screams, someone shouting, “Call 911!” while someone else (Amy Pratt, Cindy thought) shouted, “Let them fight!”—the sounds, the people, the light from the tiki torches swirling all around her in a haze.
And then suddenly there was Bradley Cox—his bloody, sobbing face presented before her in a sleeper hold.
“Apologize to her, Bradley,” Edmund whispered in his ear.
“Fuck you,” Cox spat—whimpering, struggling. “I can’t fucking br—”
“Apologize,” Edmund said again, squeezing harder.
Cox squealed in pain.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m sorry, okay? Now let me go you fuck—”
Edmund’s grip tightened, and Cindy heard him whisper something in Cox’s ear that she could not make out—something that sounded like French—and then Cox dropped to the deck, semiconscious, babbling incoherently in spurts of spitting blood.
“He’s dead!” someone shouted, while another cried out, “Good night, Irene!”
But when Cox quickly came to—when he looked around, dazed, and asked for a beer—the crowd of students applauded.
“Serves you assholes right!” one girl yelled; “Woo-hoo!” and “Way to go, Lambert!” cheered some of the guys.
“Come on, Cindy,” Edmund said, taking her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”