Authors: David Lubar

B005N8ZFUO EBOK (3 page)

BOOK: B005N8ZFUO EBOK

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I
thought of a million things to say. The problem was that out of those million things, there were probably at least nine hundred thousand that would instantly get me on Bloodbath’s bad side. Chances are, he didn’t even have a good side. He seemed like the sort of kid who’d hurt his friends as quickly as he’d hurt anyone else. I figured the best thing to do was to let him think I was a spineless wimp who’d stand there and take whatever he did to me.

“Lesson one,” Bloodbath said, moving very close to me. “This is my school. The teachers might think they run it, but I’m in charge. Got it?”

“You’re in charge,” I said. As ridiculous at that sounded, the parrot routine seemed the safest way to go. It took a lot of effort to keep my voice from sounding like I was mocking him. But so far he hadn’t knocked my head off, so I guess I was doing okay. He reminded me of those explosives that blow up if you touch them the wrong way. Sometimes they even blow up without being touched.

“Two, anything you get, you share with me. You get a package from home, you share with me.” He moved even closer, pressing his chest against mine. I tried not to gag as his breath washed over me. “Understand?”

“No problem,” I said. “You can have everything I get from my folks.” That was a painless promise. I wasn’t expecting anything. Mom might have a moment of weakness and think about mailing me a box of cookies
or something, but Dad wouldn’t let her do that.
you don’t reward bad behavior,
he’d say to her.

Bloodbath was so close now, I could count the hairs in his eyebrows. “Three, you tell anyone about this and I’ll kill you. Got it?”

I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth. One wrong word and he’d kick the crap out of me. And if there was anything I had a talent for, it was saying the wrong word. Lots of wrong words. The craziest thing is that, as tense as I felt, part of me wanted to laugh in his face.

Bloodbath smiled. “Good. Now, just to make sure you understand my rules, here’s a little something to help you remember.” He stepped back and nodded at the other kid.

“Yeah,” the kid said. His voice reminded me of someone who’d sucked a lungful of helium out of a balloon. He grinned, giving me a view of stained teeth jutting like a fifty-year-old picket fence from his rotting gums. “Here’s a little something to help you remember.” He punched me in the stomach.

My first thought was,
Huh
? I glanced down at his fist, which was still flat against my shirt, barely depressing the fabric. The kid had the weakest punch I’d ever felt. He’d hit me with about as much power as someone would use to burp a baby. My second thought was that it might be smart if I pretended he’d hurt me. Then they’d leave me alone. But that thought came a couple of seconds too late. If I dropped down now, I’d look as phony as one of those professional wrestlers who spends about five minutes reacting to a kick in the face.

“Lip, how many times have I told you?” Bloodbath asked. He reached out, grabbed Lip’s shoulder, and yanked him aside. “You’ve got to put your body into it. Your whole body. And turn your shoulder. Like this.”

Bloodbath lashed out and hit me in the stomach. As his fist shot into my gut and drove all the air out of my body, I bent over, then crumpled to the floor. For an instant, I didn’t feel anything other than a huge numbness. That didn’t last. Moments later, the pain flared out like an
explosion. I curled up, waiting for the hurt to go away and wondering if I’d ever be able to breathe again.

I could dimly hear Lip through the waves of pain, saying, “Yeah, I get it. Kind of like swinging a bat.”

I curled up tighter, hoping that Bloodbath wasn’t going to start throwing kicks into my ribs or let Lip practice his punches on me. But it sounded like they were leaving.

“Catch you later, pal,” Bloodbath said, walking out of the room and closing the door. I glanced over to make sure he’d left. A second later, he stuck his head back in. “Oh, don’t forget to shut the lights off when you leave.”

I turned my head away and closed my eyes. Even as I lay there, fighting the urge to throw up a breakfast I barely remembered eating, I thought about how I was going to get back at him. This was not the end of it. One way or another, Bloodbath would pay for hurting me. It might take a while, but I didn’t think either of us was going anywhere in the near future. I’d have plenty of time to get even.

The door opened again. I heard muffled footsteps. “Don’t feel bad,” Torchie said. “He greets all the new kids that way.”

I tried to answer, but I still couldn’t catch my breath. So I lay there with my face in the rug. At least it was a nice rug—very deep and plush.

“Hey, cheer up,” Torchie told me. “He’ll probably leave you alone for a while. He gets bored pretty easily. Come on, let me give you a hand.”

Torchie grabbed my arm and pulled. I managed to get to my knees. The pain was just a dull ache now—no worse than if a car had rolled over my stomach. I signaled for him to stop, then took several deep breaths. I felt like I was trying to force air into a hot water bottle. Finally, I got to my feet.

“So, want to see any more of the school?” Torchie asked. “The cafeteria and the gym are on the first floor.”

“No. I’ve seen enough. Thanks.” The effort to talk cost me more than I was willing to give at the moment.

I followed him upstairs toward the room. Our room. There were a lot more people in the halls than before. I figured they were checking me out. Almost all of the kids we passed stared at me, probably trying to guess how badly Bloodbath had hurt me. Word spreads faster than fire in a place like this. And most of the students had probably been through the same little ritual with Bloodbath. I had to show them I was tough. I stood up straight and managed to walk to the room without grabbing my stomach or groaning.

“You got a nickname?” Torchie asked after I’d collapsed on my bed.

“Nope.”

“Lots of the kids here have them.”

“I’ve noticed.” It didn’t hurt as much, but I still wasn’t eager to talk.

The conversation went on like that for a while, with Torchie carrying almost all of it. He kept talking as he got to work cleaning up the soggy mess of fire-extinguisher foam and charred paper on top of his desk. In the next half hour, I learned where he was from (Newlins Falls), where his parents were from (Irish and Scottish on his mom’s side, Swedish with a dash of French Canadian on his dad’s side), what he liked to eat (burgers, lasagna, grilled cheese sandwiches), and full biographies of his last seven pets—three fish, two hamsters, a bird, and a lizard named Scooter.

After a while, I rolled off the bed and started unpacking my clothes. At least I didn’t have to worry about how I looked. From what I’d seen so far, I wouldn’t stand out like some kind of clueless loser. When I was done, I kicked my empty bag into the corner of the room. It felt so good, I kicked it again. Naturally, I pretended the bag was the crumpled body of Lester Bloodbath.

Torchie glanced up from the comic book he was reading. “It’s not that bad here—honest.”

How could he say that? Until today—until this morning—I’d lived at home. Now I lived here. How in the world could it not be bad? It looked like it was time to tell Torchie exactly what I thought about him and this whole stinking place.

CRUMPLED LETTER IN THE WASTEBASKET OF DOROTHY ANDERSON

FROM STATE SENATE BILL SJ-35A

WHAT’S SHORT AND SMART AND FUN TO TEASE?

I
was interrupted by a knock on the door. A short kid wearing glasses with thick black frames stuck his head in. “I brought back your magazine,” he said to Torchie.

“Come on in,” Torchie said.

The kid walked in and handed a car magazine to Torchie. He turned to me and said, “Hi.”

“That’s Dennis Woo,” Torchie said. “But everyone calls him Cheater.”

Cheater glared at Torchie. “Not everyone. And it’s a lie. I never cheat. don’t have to.” He turned back toward me. “Let me ask you this. Do I look like someone who needs to cheat on tests?” He stood very still, as if that would help me see what a wise and honest person he was.

“No, you look awfully smart,” I told him. “Heck, you look so smart I’d probably try to copy off of your tests. Maybe I can sit next to you in class.”

He grinned. “Hey, thanks. You’re okay.”

I shrugged. Apparently, the subtle art of sarcasm was wasted on him. I glanced over at Torchie, trying not to grin. But I couldn’t help rolling my eyes toward the ceiling.

“Wait, I get it,” Cheater said. “You’re playing with me, aren’t you? You think I didn’t know what you meant.”

“Relax. I was just kidding.” I didn’t feel like making any more enemies—even little ones with thick glasses. I held out my hand. “No hard feelings?”

Cheater looked at me for a moment, as if trying to decide whether I was going to play some kind of joke on him. Then he reached out to shake hands. As he did, I suddenly wondered whether he was going to flip me through the air.

I guess my expression changed enough that he could figure out what was on my mind. “Relax,” he said. “You look like you think I’m going to kung fu you or something. Talk about stereotypes. Just because I’m Chinese, you think I’m some kind of karate kid. Let me tell you, I don’t know any of that stuff. I wish I did.”

We shook hands. “I really was just kidding,” I told him.

“Hey, I’m used to it,” Cheater said. “My ancestors have been kicked around for centuries. But you know what? I don’t think people hate us because we look different. I think they hate us because we’re smart. I have a cousin who gets beaten up at least once a week because he always gets one hundred on his tests. You see? That’s why people hate us.”

Wow, I didn’t want to get any deeper into that discussion. If someone hated you, did it really matter why? I didn’t know. Maybe it mattered. At least there didn’t seem to be any prejudice about who went to Edgeview. From what I’d seen, the place was about as mixed as any school I’d ever been to. Trouble was color-blind.

“I really do know lots of stuff,” Cheater said. “Ask me anything. Did you know karate started out in China? Then it went to Okinawa in the sixteen hundreds. Didn’t get to Japan until 1910. Edgeview Alternative School was built in 1932. But it started out as a factory. They rebuilt it twenty years ago. But it’s just been a school for the last four and a half years.”

“He really does know just about everything,” Torchie said. “It’s kind of amazing.”

“Come on, ask me anything,” Cheater said.

I realized he wasn’t going to stop until I asked him a question. “Who invented radium?”

“Marie Curie. With her husband Pierre. In 1898. For which they got the Nobel Prize in 1903.” He stared at me as if I’d just asked him to spell cat. “Come on. Torchie could have answered that one.”

“Hey,” Torchie said.

“Sorry,” Cheater told him. He looked back at me.

All right. I’d give him my hardest question. “Who played the monster in
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein
?” That was a real stumper. Most people would guess Boris Karloff. They’d be wrong.

Cheater didn’t even blink. “Glenn Strange,” he said, giving the correct answer.

Wow. I guess he really might know everything. Except how to stay out of trouble.

A bell rang in the hall.

“Dinnertime,” Torchie announced, getting to his feet like someone who had just been invited to take a stroll to the electric chair.

“I’ll grab some seats,” Cheater said, dashing out the door.

“They short on seats?” I asked Torchie.

He shook his head. “No. Cheater just likes to be first in line.” Then he leaned over to whisper, even though we were alone. “He doesn’t really need glasses. But he kept bugging his folks for them. Don’t tell him I told you. Okay?”

“Sure.” I followed Torchie out the door. “How’s the food?” I asked as we walked toward the stairs. I noticed that nobody seemed to be in a rush. I scanned the halls for Bloodbath and spotted him safely ahead of us.

“On a good day, it stinks,” Torchie said. “But you’ll get used to it.”

We joined the herd shuffling toward the cafeteria on the first floor. Even from far off, as the smells reached me I got the feeling Torchie wasn’t kidding about the food. I grabbed a tray and went through the line with Torchie, letting a bored-looking woman with a net over her hair and clear plastic gloves on her hands give me a plate loaded with various piles of glop. I wondered if the gloves were for our protection or for hers.

We wove our way between the round tables that seemed to have
been dropped at random on the cracked linoleum floor, heading toward Cheater, who stood there signaling his success in getting some seats by waving one arm. As I followed Torchie to our spot near the far wall and plunked down on a wobbly plastic chair, I could see that the kids were split up into different groups, with anywhere from four to eight kids at a table. I’d guess there were about two hundred kids altogether. Bloodbath was hanging out with a bunch of tough guys at a couple tables in one corner. Everything about them—clothes, hair, attitude—said,
Don’t mess with us.
The tables nearest them were empty. I guess nobody wanted to get too close to the sharks.

On a hunch, I looked at the table farthest from Bloodbath. Yup, the smallest, most scared kids were all clustered there, like a bunch of little bait fish.

“We used to have more tables,” Torchie said. “But they got rid of all the square ones last month.” He almost had to shout. There was a lot more talking than eating going on around us, filling the room with noise that seemed to wash over me from every direction.

“Rectangles,” Cheater said, correcting him. “They were longer than they were wide. So that made them—”

“Yeah, whatever,” Torchie said, glaring at Cheater. “Anyhow, I guess they figured round tables would make us behave better or something.”

“Fascinating.” I turned my attention to choking down the food. It’s hard to believe that anyone could ruin macaroni and cheese, but the school cooks had managed to do just that. And the potatoes were awful. “These mashed potatoes really suck,” I said.

“That’s because they’re turnips,” Cheater explained. “A popular food source in Germany before the introduction of the potato.”

I decided not to ask what the stringy green stuff was. Until now, I’d thought Mom was a pretty bad cook. Her idea of tomato sauce was ketchup with a dash of parmesan cheese. As I ate, I realized she could have been far worse. And at least back home we’d have takeout chicken once a week from Cluck Shack, and lots of pizza. I guess I wouldn’t be getting anything like that for a while.

Between bites, I checked out my companions. Besides Torchie and Cheater, there was one other kid at our table. He looked pretty tough. Big shoulders, dark hair, eyebrows that seemed to want to grow together to form one furry strip across his forehead, and the beginnings of a stubbly beard threatening to burst through his skin. A year or two from now, I’d bet he’d be shaving twice a day. They called him Lucky. I almost laughed when I heard that. I didn’t see how anyone who deserved that nickname could be stuck in a place like Edgeview.
Unlucky
was more like it. Or maybe
Unfriendly
. He didn’t seem all that happy to meet me.

Not that I cared.

By the time I’d choked down half the macaroni, I had the whole place figured out. Except for one person.