Leverage (36 page)

A tug on my elbow steals my drifting attention. I look down and I see Tina, her mouth moving in almost perfect lip-sync to the wailing demon in my ears. I increase my head bobbing, hoping she'll get the hint—
I'M HAVING A MOMENT. CATCH YOU LATER!
—but she just tugs again. Then her hand actually reaches up and pulls off my left earphone. Man, she is bossy!

“Earth to Kurt. Come in, Kurt!”

“What?” I ask, annoyed until I remember it's her music I'm listening to on my recorder—which I still haven't used for its intended purpose. I lied to Ms. Jinkle, my speech therapist, last time we met, told her I left the thing at home. Truth is I started to record myself but couldn't stand what I sounded like, so I erased it, listened to Tina's mix instead.

“One of my mixes?” Tina asks.

“Naw. It's the muh-muh-Metal Slayer disc you ruhripped for me.”

“Oh,” Tina says, and I can tell she's disappointed I'm not listening to her Walking in the Rain mix. “What are you doing for the long weekend?” Tina asks.

“Nuh-nuh-nothing. Lifting and ruh-ruh-resting up for the guh-guh-game.”

“Wow! You're a crazy man!” Tina teases. “Who knew the jock life was so mind-blowing.”

“Muh-muh-maybe I'll listen to yuh-yuh-your music,” I add. Tina breaks into a smile, a real smile, not a defensive smile, and I'm glad I told her that.

“Really? Cool. I can make you some more, you know. I mean, I'll bootleg more metal crap for you, but you need to hear this new guy out of Toronto. His stuff absolutely flows. I'll have to listen to it with you, though, make sure your cave-brain is catching the nuances. . . .”

My phone vibrates in my pocket while Tina continues trying to persuade me my music sucks and hers is way better. I nod along, pretending she may have a point, as I pull out my phone and glance at the text.

The Bat Signal. From Danny's phone. Shit!

“Got to find Danny,”
I whisper, staring at my phone, texting him back.

I send a reply: Where r u?

“Did you say you're looking for Danny?” Tina asks.

“Yeah.” I glance up at her, waiting for my phone to buzz, expecting it any second.

“That's funny,” she says more to herself. “I just saw him a couple minutes ago. Said he's meeting Bruce or something?” Tina ends this more like a question, like I'll know where they're meeting.

“Wuh-wuh-where?”

“Don't know.” Tina shrugs. “He just said downstairs.”

Downstairs. The locker rooms? The gym?

Feels like a static charge fills the air as the hair on the back of my neck begins to rise. Still no text from Danny. “Guh-guh-gotta go.”

“What is it with you guys, anyway? Everyone's gotta go, like there's a big party happening someplace. What's up with that?” Tina asks, but I'm already moving down the hall, ignoring her. Some guy, wrestling with his friend, backs up into me. I shove him out of my way, shove him too hard. He bounces off the lockers but I don't stop to apologize. No time. Something's wrong. The more steps I take, the stronger the feeling.

S
tudblatz clasps my neck with his meat-hook claw and marches me across the gym like a puppet. The tips of his fingers and thumb pinch deep, threatening to meet at my spine, forcing a squeal out of me. He laughs while toggling my skinny neck side to side. I pry at the iron grip, scrambling to keep my feet under me. His thumb and fingers keep drilling deeper until dark spots bloom in my vision.

It
kills!

I scream.

Just like Ronnie!

“Stop! Please! Stop! Stop!” I whimper.

“Shut up.”

The claw forces me toward Tom, Scott, and Bruce. A final shove whiplashes me forward. I trip over a three-inch mat and skid to my hands and knees beside Bruce. For a moment, all I feel is instant relief from that grip.

Bruce lies flat on his stomach, his face red from the pressure of Tom's weight. His eyes are scrunched half shut. Caught in his own world of hurt, he offers no recognition or explanation.

“About time you showed up, twerp,” Scott says. “Glad you got our invite in your locker. Didn't want to start the party without you.” The hyper-happy tone in his voice scares me as much as, if not more than, Studblatz's animal excitement.

“You're just in time, dipshit,” Tom growls. “Your butt buddy is going to give us a little demonstration on how he uses the harness here.”

Tom has Bruce wedged under him like a roped calf, sitting all his weight on Bruce's lower back so Bruce can do nothing but lie there gasping for air. Tom's not bothered, it seems, that Bruce might pass out.

“Yeah, we don't use things like that spotting harness in football. But maybe we should,” Scott says. “Looks like fun.”

Tom finally rises up off Bruce. I see they've already forced the harness around him before I arrived. It's a heavy canvas belt that normally cinches around the waist and attaches to two ropes hanging from the ceiling by pulleys. If you're strapped into one, you can throw any dangerous trick you want off any apparatus because another person can slow your fall—or even suspend you—by tightly anchoring the ropes. It works on the same principle that rock climbers use to catch each other if they slip off a cliff.

Whether they've done it on purpose or by accident, the harness is wrapped around Bruce's thighs, and not his waist, where it belongs. Tom drags Bruce, still gasping for breath, by the ankles underneath the ring stand. Scott snaps the two guide ropes to the metal harness clasps and then Studblatz starts yanking down on the other end of the ropes running through the pulleys. The three of them move efficiently, like they know exactly what they want to do, like they've planned it. Or at least one of them has. Studblatz heaves down on the ropes, winching Bruce up into the air. With the harness cinched around his thighs, Bruce's center of gravity is awkward. He lifts off the ground legs-first, hung upside down, same way an animal carcass swings above the butcher floor.

“Sons of bitches,” Bruce pants, meeting intimidation with anger, unwilling to give even an ounce of fear. His face deepens from pink to red as the blood rushes down into his head. His neck veins bulge and his eyes turn bloodshot. Studblatz keeps hoisting the rope, hand over hand, lifting Bruce higher and higher into the air, up toward the pulleys bolted into the gymnasium rafters thirty feet above us.

“You got something to say, tough guy?” Scott asks. “You want to brag about your little locker stunts? You really dig that stuff, huh? First piss, then graffiti. Nice touch calling us murderers. Make you feel tough hiding behind masks and words?”

Studblatz keeps heaving on the ropes, treating it like some sort of strength drill, until Bruce hangs twenty feet in the air, way higher than anyone is meant to go in the spotting harness.

“He looks like a pig we caught in a trap,” Jankowski says.

“Here, little piggy,” Scott taunts.

“Oink, oink,” Mike snorts.

“Stop!” Bruce yells down, but it comes out more like a heavy breath. He reaches for the harness ropes and pulls himself upright but there's no way to hold that position, even for someone as strong as Bruce. After thirty seconds his thick arms shake and then slacken and then he's dangling upside down again, his face flushing back to deep purple.

“You!” Scott walks over to me. “Now would be a good time to find out how much you like to snitch. You
are
the type that likes snitching, right?” Scott asks, stabbing a finger into my chest. “See, we've got our own snitch and he told us you were in the storage room that day with Gunderson. Our snitch told us you saw everything, that you and hanging piggy here are going to keep squealing about us. That true?”

Had Kurt not already told me he was their snitch, Scott's question might have stunned me. At least I'm prepared. “He's lying,” I lie myself. “I wasn't anywhere in the gym that day.”

“That a fact?” Scott asks, then turns away as if considering my story. A spark of hope lights up inside me. Maybe I can talk us out of this, I think, tell him we'll never say a word. Tell him whatever he wants to hear. I can do this—

Scott spins around, his arm trailing like a whip, back of his open hand slicing across my face.

“Lying son of a bitch!” Scott shouts. The slap spins my face toward the wall. “Think I'm going to believe you now?”

I reach a hand up to cover my scalded cheek, expecting a second slap, when Scott's attention diverts up to Bruce, who's loudly hawking up a world-class lung oyster. It sounds like he's scraping out the inside of his nose and throat. With the aim of a ninja, Bruce lets fly. A gob nails Studblatz on his head, thick and white as bird shit.

“Son!” Studblatz roars. “You are going to
pay
for that.” Studblatz opens his hands. Bruce drops like a rock for about ten feet and yelps before Studblatz regrasps the accelerating ropes. Bruce's momentum on the speeding ropes snags Studblatz's big arms skyward as he regrabs them, lifting him a foot off the ground before his heavier weight settles him back down to the ground. Bruce comes to a stop but bungees as the ropes stretch and contract. He wraps his head protectively in his arms.

“Let's tie that little piggy up nice and high,” Scott says, then jerks a thumb at me, “while we give this one our special treatment, since he liked to watch so much last time.” Scott locks his eyes on mine while suggesting this to the others. My reaction must please him because a smile eases across his mouth as he lays a firm grip on my shoulder like I'm a bad pet in need of training. That's when I feel it in me—something really awful is going to happen.

I feint to the left and cut to the right, slipping from Scott's grip, darting at an angle, never taking my eyes off the locker-room entrance across the gym. Halfway there, a solid wave rolls over me, throwing me down on the tumbling mats, pinning my arms beneath me and pushing all air from my chest.

Tom Jankowski's squatting on me same way he'd squatted on Bruce. He starts bouncing on me, forcing every last bit of air out of my lungs, threatening to crack my chest.

“Good catch, Tommy,” Scott says. “Work him over.”

“Can't . . . brea . . .”

“What's that, snitch?” Tom asks. “You can't breathe?”

Tom's weight finally rises off me, his hands grabbing me up like a rag doll and plopping me on my feet. I'm leaking tears and choking back snot, knowing what's coming, knowing what happened to Ronnie.

“Lookit him, crying like a little girl.”

“He
is
a little girl. Bet he don't have a single pubic hair on that scrawny little body.”

The three of them laugh as I try wiping away the slick wet veiling me in defeat. Bruce's face is dark purple by now, a thick vein on his forehead ready to burst. We watch each other for a moment and I'm not sure which of us thinks he's in a worse position.

“I've got a game we can play,” Scott says, his voice all fake friendly. “Your arms must be tired, Stud, from holding up the dipshit.”

“Naw, he's light,” Studblatz says in a creepy-cheerful voice. “And this pulley system is a beaut!”

“Give the ropes to the little guy, here,” Scott says. “Make him hold his captain up. Let's see how loyal he really is.”

Jankowski yanks me over to Studblatz, who shoves the ropes into my hands. “Now grab on real tight, fairy,” Studblatz growls. “You don't want your friend to fall.”

Soon as they're in my possession, I slowly let the ropes slip through my fingers, guiding Bruce gently back down to the floor.

“What the hell you think you're doing?” Scott barks. “We didn't say you could let him down. Pull him back up now or I'm going to smack you.” Studblatz comes over and cuffs me on the head, then takes back the ropes and heaves on them until Bruce dangles even higher than he did the first time.

“I'm sorry,”
I mouth up at Bruce. He doesn't respond. Studblatz forces the ropes back into my hand.

“You think he'll pass out in that position?” Tom asks Scott. “Being upside down that long?”

“Won't hurt him if he does.”

“Guys, why don't you let him come down for a bit,” I suggest. My throat's salty and raw. I start to let the ropes slide through my hands again. Studblatz gets in my face and I flinch. He grins, just standing there, enjoying the moment. Then he hauls back and slugs my shoulder, knuckles hitting deep to the bone. Feels like the socket's exploding. Beyond the pain, my fingers in that arm go numb. Bruce starts falling. I clutch at the sliding rope with my good hand, feel it burn through my callused fingers until I stop him with about eight feet to spare.