The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Bullying the Bullies

Previously: "Protecting Your Interests" 

Yeah, you could run. That would be simplest.

You could also promise to give them all blows job if they leave you alone.

Yeah, fuck that. You keep your place at the sink.

They're chortling about something—probably sex—and their voices bounce harshly off the tiled walls. If she tried that—Mofo!—Yeah, but dude, when I was out at Catherine's this one time—Get Shawn to tell you 'bout—Shee-it, I bet if you patted her down you'd—

"Hey hey hey, guys!" Dylan Lloyd's shout rises over the others'. He's standing close enough to brush your arm with his as he works at his sink. "Guys! Shh! Listen! Hey, shut the fuck up! Listen!" The others fall silent, one by one.

"You hear that?" Lloyd says. Out of the corner of your eye you see him raise a finger, and you glimpse his grin in the mirror. The blood rushes into your ears in anticipation of trouble. "It's water dripping in the sink next to me," he says.

No, your faucet is shut tight. You feel yourself stiffen all over.

"Yeah," Dylan says. His grin widens. "It's dripping. It's going—" He pauses for effect. "It's going, 'gook' ... 'gook' ... 'gook' ..."

At least the others are smart enough not to laugh. Fuck, they're smart enough to freeze solid. You can almost hear their bowels loosening.

Maybe it's on account of they can hear something else—the sound of your hair bristling and the blood boiling up your neck.

Iron enters your arm and your hand. You grip Lloyd by the shoulder, pulling him around to face you. His jaw tightens. Then he smirks down into your face.

"Portables," you tell him. "Now."

You see just the tiniest flicker in his eye, a crack through which shines a splinter of fear. Then his smirk widens.

"Fuck, you hear this, guys?" he chortles over his shoulder. "He wants to suck me off behind the school." He crosses his arms and tilts his chin at you.

You hold his eye, then push your way past and through the knot of his friends. A snicker rolls through them.

But at the door you look back.

"Now, cocksucker, portables, or I come find you at practice. We do it at the portables or we do it in the gym, middle of the court, with all your friends watching."

You can sense the ripple that runs through the quartet, but you don't wait for an answer. You tear open the restroom door and pass into the hall.

You wait there, like a spike in the middle of the stream, and you don't have to wait long before the door opens again. You glare back at Lloyd, who stops to blink once at you. Then his lip curls, and he throws his hands up in a shrug.

Good, you think as you swagger off toward the nearest door outside. You would go find him at practice, if the chicken-shit tried weaseling out. But you know how that would end, with Black and Patterson yanking you off him before you could do him any hurt. It would be humiliating.

But it would be more humiliating for Lloyd to duck your challenge. You were counting on him figuring that.

At the exit, you blow one of the double-doors open with a kick.

Not that you're in good shape for a fight like this. His three friends are following too, and if you know these assholes, they're going to try to take you four-to-one.

Which means you've got to get in the first blow. Four first blows. Blows so hard that maybe you won't need to follow any of them up.

The ratty old portables—abandoned long before you were even a freshman—sag in a U-shaped formation out by the Agricultural Annex. You lead Lloyd and the others into the bowl of the formation, past the knots of sophomores and juniors eating there. You make like you're aiming to go out past the portables to the other side, where you'll be screened from view, but you slow up just after you pass the last of the underclassmen, and when one of them guffaws at something, you glance back long enough to judge the distance between you and Lloyd.

He's just close enough, you judge.

You hop, whirl, and crack his knee with a hard kick. He cries out and stumbles. You grab him as he falls, hurling him away and propelling yourself at Frazier, plunging a hard fist into his gut. Nichols comes at you, arms wide, but you kick him balls like you're trying to make a field goal.

That leaves Shuler, the meanest and meatiest of the bunch, but he's frozen on his feet, and Lloyd comes back up at you first. You knock him in the side of the head with your elbow, then bend double and throw yourself into Shuler. Down you go in a heap, but you twist off him like a scalded cat while he's still scrambling in the grass. Frazier, bent double, stumbles up at you you. You knee him the face, then twist around to kick Shuler savagely in the gut as he tries getting up.

Dylan Lloyd, crouching double and nursing the side of his head, is the last one still on his feet. He gapes at you. Your lips peel back as you grab his face with one hand and dent the wall of a portable with the back of his head.

"Whadda you hear now, motherfucker?" you hiss at him, and batter him into the wall again. "You still hear something making a funny noise? A dripping noise? You sure it ain't the sound of you shitting your own shor—?"

He grabs at you, but he's sloppy, and you only have to knee him once in the groin for him to go slack.

And as he sags, you bunch a fist and punch him in the side of the head. The jar of the blow instantly numbs your arm from knuckle to shoulder, but Lloyd flops to the ground.

You wheel around, fists at the ready.

But you've put them all down, all four, Lloyd and Frazier and Nichols and Shuler, and the undergraduates, who have scrambled to their feet, only hunch in a semicircle, staring at you with their mouths hanging open. But you got no beef with them, so you straighten up, shake your shoulders loose and—trying to ignore the burning agony in your right arm—swagger out through the crowd with a hard, tight scowl.

* * * * *

You pass the rest of the day feeling like you're hopped up on speed, your nerves vibrating like plucked strings. It's not fear. You're not worried about those assholes you thrashed, and you're not worried that any of their friends will come looking for you. If anything, Black and Patterson and the other guys will tell them that if one asshole was able to thrash all four of them, then they deserved to get their asses thrashed. Nor are you worried about getting called in by the administration. Lloyd and them won't run to complain—they'd have to confess to how they provoked you, and in your experience the school is a lot more sensitive to "bias incidents" than they are to actual punching and eye-gouging.

It's adrenaline, you finally realize, that's got you hopped up so hard. This was your—Chen's—first big fight of the year, and you're exhilarated at coming through it so well. Your arm hurts bad enough that you worry that you damaged it with that haymaker, but that was the only price you paid for laying out four big guys on the ground.

Yumi hasn't got anything to say to you during math class—she only makes shy little cooing noise when you meet up for her—but she's pink with excitement when she sees you in Orchestra, and she runs up to grab you by the jacket. "Are you alright?" she gasps, and flushes hard.

"Sure, why not?"

"I heard you got in a fight!"

You shrug. "Who with?" she asks.

"Coupla guys."

"Who?"

You shrug again and roll your tongue in your cheek. It tickles you that you get to brag to her, but it's way more awesome to play it cool. "Some assholes on the basketball squad. Lloyd, Nichols, Shuler. Frazier."

"Oh my God!" She grips you hard. "Gordon used to tell me—!" She catches herself. "Those are like the worst guys on the squad!"

Again you shrug. "Yeah, maybe. So you heard about that?" Your lips twitch into a smirk. "You worry about me?"

She crushes you in her arms and buries her face in your neck.

* * * * *

She is very quiet—shy, even—when class is over, and clings close as you walk together from the Orchestra room to her locker, and from your locker out to the parking lot. She only hugs you tighter when you ask what she wants to do next. With no other guidance, you steer for her house.

You're passing a strip center when she pokes you in the thigh and says, "Stop here, okay?" She points to the Walgreens.

"What, you need something?"

Dimples pop into her cheeks. "Prophylactics, silly."

From your toes to your hairline, every part of your body feels like it's caught an express elevator to a very high penthouse.

After you've gone in and come back out again, you ask where she wants to go.

She tugs her nose and says, "Do you know a good place?"

"Um—"

"Because I've never been to the Donna."

The name gives you a quick, hard jolt. It's a sleazy motel on the south side of town, where people go to ... use prophylactics.

And rumor has it that it's owned by the family of the class president, who is one of Yumi's—the real Yumi's—good friends.

Next: "Doing It at the Donna" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"