Kung Fu High School (25 page)

The coach pushed open the big wooden double doors and led everyone onto the blue gymnastics flooring as the different-sounding bell went off and the idiot must not have known what it meant because he just kept on with class, saying something like:

"Alright, y'all got your circuit training forms, now I want those filled out before the end of the period, and Drew, Peter, and Billy, y'all better actually do the exercises this time. I'll be watching ya."

It was only Jimmy's second time in the combined gymnastics/weight-lifting room: L-shaped and large, it was yet another cost-cutting measure of the school district administration, severing what used to be a large rectangular room only meant for one thing, gymnastics, into three pieces and making it multiuse by bricking off a quarter of it for a wrestling room that was padded on every wall with the school colors and had a big red wrestling mat doubling as the floor. It had no windows. That was the county's money at work.

Right next to the wrestling room was the weight room, the skinny bottom part of the L, occupying the other quarter of the rectangle but it didn't have a wall between it and the gymnastics equipment. The uneven bars were right next to the leg press sled, the only border that separated them was the color of the carpet. Weight-lifting room: maroon pile. Nearly every piece of equipment was for free weights, bench press, leg curl, and shoulder press. Each little metal skeleton lined up along the wall except for the far one, which was full of mirrors and hand weights on metal shelves.

On the far side of the gymnastics room, in the corner, was a climbing rope only accessible by the giant pad in place for the vault and springboard. In front of that was the runway. Stretched out along the wall, next to the uneven bars, stood the balance beam. It was all too close together.

Normally, every class started with stretching. Everybody got in a circle and the coach would tell them what to do. But that didn't happen.

"Alright, y'all, circle up. Stretch it on down now," he said, and looked at his clipboard, shook each leg like he was about to start running, and then rolled his head on his neck and popped a new piece of gum in his mouth.

Jimmy was the only one who sat down. He knew that wasn't good. He didn't need to look up and survey the eyes of his classmates. He just pulled his right shoe off then the sock.

"What the hell? All y'all need to sit your asses down or we'll be running laps." He was starting to get mad. Coach was like, "Lots and lots of laps."

Three Whips and a Blade shut the big double doors and locked them by driving a metal rod from the shoulder press, which was conveniently lying next to the wall, down through the horizontal push bars. As it was, no one could pull them open from outside. Jimmy had his other shoe off, the sock too, and he was still sitting. The rest of the class moved behind Jimmy, blocking off the exit through the weight room.

"That's twenty laps right there, boys! Want more? Fifty! I can't wait to see ya puke. Whew, I didn't think y'all were that stupid. Besides, I got the keys." And the rest of his talk was really to himself as he turned his back on the doors. "Bunch of dumb-asses, man, I don't know where they get this stuff..." The sound of a ten-pound iron weight on the back of a skull isn't the most pleasant noise in the world. When the coach hit the floor face-first and bounced one inch up off the cushioned mat before settling, it began.

Jimmy hopped to his feet as if on a wire, took one step back and without even looking, grabbed the collar of the smallest kid in the whole class. He didn't strike the kid as the others gathered weapons: weights, bars, jump ropes. He just waited. The kid was so scared of Jimmy that he started to cry. Big, uncontrollable, where's-my-mommy tears and it wasn't long before the kid broke out in moans that came from the bottom of his lungs and sliced through the buzzing of the fluorescent lights high above them like double foghorns.

Fighting back didn't even occur to him, he was so terrified of Jimmy. He stood stock straight on his tiptoes and had his palms up in surrender. Just like a poisonous insect was on his neck, something that would sting if he moved, something he wasn't quick enough to take care of himself. This was psychological warfare. Jimmy turned three hundred and sixty degrees in a tight circle so that every class member in the room, even the stragglers trying to circle him, could see the urine soaking the smallest kid's thighs and look in his scrunched-up face as he pleaded to live. He had devolved to a six-year-old in Jimmy's grip and his noises were truly scaring everyone else, picking on the last nerve in all of them, but they had weapons. They had superior numbers. Most of them were high on at least one of Ridley's concoctions. They thought they had a chance.

It was no surprise that the biggest Runner brought his metal pole down hard on the face of the kid Jimmy had collared. Then he did it again. That shut him up. Crying wasn't aloud at Kung Fu. Never. Everyone indoctrinated into the school would've had no trouble with the punishment. If the kid wasn't helping to defeat Jimmy, he was only in the way. That was expected. What wasn't expected was Jimmy pushing the kid's body into the crowd and taking off on a diagonal across the room. He was running for the springboard before the kid's body settled on the floor next to the coach. The bright blue gymnastics flooring absorbed their blood like a hungry sponge, leaving only patches of purple-red behind.

The quickest kids to react to Jimmy's sudden surge in movement were two Blades. One used his long strides to attempt to intercept Jimmy before he hit the springboard, while the other one brought up the rear in case Jimmy doubled back. But he didn't. He kept on, full steam even when the long-legged Blade got to the springboard before him and effectively blocked it with his body and swung his metal pole toward the blazing figure in front of him.

That didn't stop Jimmy though, he leaped a good four feet before the board, sprang off the wall to dodge the pole, and brought a high kick to the forehead of the long-legged Blade who tried to block it at the last second but was merely crushed by the force of Jimmy's velocity and fell backward right onto the springboard. But Jimmy didn't stop there, he cracked the Blade's head against the end of the board and kept his momentum going, jumping up over the pommel horse, into the air, and grabbing the rope. He swung into the wall, pushed off, and turned one hundred and eighty degrees to catch the other chasing Blade in the face with a heel and sent him sprawling. Landing hard, Jimmy changed direction and ran toward the uneven bars, while not a single one of the larger group realized that he was herding them.

I sometimes wondered what Jimmy was thinking then. If he was thinking of me, of anything, as he methodically disposed of the other members of his class. How much did he worry about disappearing as he balanced on the beam and used his adversaries' momentum against them, as he paralyzed Whip after Whip and Blade after Blade just before they brought a heavy metal object down on his wrist, hard against his hip or neck? I mean, it had to be there somewhere in the back of his head. Every time he pivoted too quickly, focused his mind too strongly on where he needed to be next, was he relieved when he turned and chopped someone down immediately after that, happy he was still there? Or without the benefit of something like television cameras to scrutinize and rewind his movements was he free to act as he normally would? Really, he hadn't even known that he'd disappeared before. It was only after, looking at the footage of the fight, that he got scared thinking about it, racking his brain about it, wondering how it ever happened, how it was even physically possible.

In the weight room, the two groups that had retreated from the fracas on the balance beam were emptying the weight holders and readying the circular discs to throw at Jimmy. The plan-, get two people to go after Jimmy while the other six threw the weights at him and tried to slow him down. They expected him any second. But he didn't show. Any second. Still no Jimmy. It took a brave Whip to stick his head out around the corner and into the gymnastics room in the direction of the balance beam to confirm the truth: three bodies paralyzed standing up and all the rest on the ground, but the same Whip that peeked was confronted with an even worse sight, Jimmy from two feet away swinging hard and then there was blackness.

Jimmy dragged the Whip in front of him as a human shield and the unconscious body got pelted with twenty-five-pound weights as Jimmy slid under the leg press and out the other side. Springing forward from all fours, he rose high into the air and caught the chin-up bar—bolted to the wall above the bench-press benches—before shimmying across it like the nimblest of monkeys. He was headed toward the wrestling room, the unlocked door.

The weights came flying from the hands of all adversaries. Some hit high and left dents in the whitewashed brick wall, revealing the pale gray of the cinder block beneath, while others hit low and clanged off the weight-lifting machines like broken church bells. The rest, thrown like discuses, went awry and brought the huge panes of mirror crashing down on the next wall over. Not a single one hit Jimmy as he cruised through the air, landed, pivoted, and dispensed a high dragon kick to a Whip, pivoted, crushed his body low to the floor like a lizard, and swept through the doors to the weight room. Shutting them hard behind him, Jimmy could feel the clangs of weights against the doors through his arms, and the sounds of them echoed throughout the boxy wrestling room. His fingers found the latch and snapped it closed.

He'd just have to hurry out through the other double doors and into the hall, rush down the stairs, and make a beeline for the quad because maybe that was where I was. So it must've been disconcerting to turn away from the doors, just as the banging of the heaved weights was subsiding, to take a step forward and find that he was not alone in the cramped wrestling room. On the edge of the mat and its painted-on ring that separated the competition area from the out-of-bounds like a cutout piecrust, various weapon-wielding fighters stood at the ready. But now that Jimmy was standing there, feeling the warm smoothness of the plastic mat with the soles of his feet, it looked too much like an oversized target.

Maria R. was sitting in the middle of the room. Mom of the Fists. The most powerful fighter at Kung Fu. One well-placed shot from her could leave you needing plastic surgery. To welcome Jimmy, she stood up and unfolded her bulk from her sitting position. Not fat, strictly compact muscle built to destroy. The assortment of handpicked fighters was scattered about the room, five in all, plus Maria, six. It was impossible to tell what families they were from. It seemed it no longer mattered. Ridley had consolidated his forces.

All the other fighters in the room must've thought the odds were fair, considering Jimmy's rep. They had tied black masks around their faces, like generic, bargain-basement ninjas. Jimmy didn't have to be told the rules. He'd fight Maria but no one would watch his back. Every single fighter had throwing weapons and he was the mark.

The room was hot. Like sweating hot. It was kept that way on purpose. Long ago, the wrestling coach had ordered no ventilation to the room so that it would encourage his athletes to perspire, making it easier for them to lose weight. For lighting, there were only three large, circular fluorescent lights above the mat. Each was covered with a metal exoskeleton to protect it from being broken by a projectile. They were probably castoffs from the gym lights though, built to withstand direct hits from basketballs and all manner of large objects.

THE LIGHT

Maria held out her palm to Jimmy, an indication to begin when he wished. With precisely the same movement that had snagged the scared kid earlier, Jimmy seized a fighter crouched four feet away from him and broke a wrist, an arm, and a shoulder for the trouble. The scream ended in the throat before it really got started but the glottal stop of a sound lingered in the padded, windowless room. The other fighters pushed their backs to the walls, rigidly shifting well out of his reach. Five Chinese throwing stars dropped to the mat from the worthless fist of the limp fighter and Jimmy grabbed two and slung them at the right and left lights, which shattered easily and went out, leaving only the single light in the middle and shrouding the outer rim of the mat, and all four walls, in complete darkness. Jimmy took one large step backward and disappeared from view.

Chinese stars and throwing kinfés flew wildly across the room, embedding themselves into the padded walls and the thin stretch of painted wall below the ceiling. One hit Maria in the arm. She shrugged it off. Something whizzed past her ear. Another hit her in the leg. She turned sideways. Something hit her stomach, probably bounced off. She didn't even think about it, nor did she look down. She was wearing armor, what was to fear? Besides, none of the thrown objects was intentional. But one by one, the limp bodies of fighters tumbled into the single light from the center as evidence: an outstretched hand, a wrapped-up head facedown, two feet, until there were none left. The only audible noises were the loose thuds of bodies collapsing upon the mat, unexpected exhales, and the occasional, harsh crack of bone.