Chapter #16David Kirkham by: Seuzz   The bell that rings sends you to the cafeteria for lunch, where you shove your way to a place at a table just next to where the alphas sit. The Molester, Dalton Douglas and some of the other minor bullies are sometimes able to join them. But not Kirkham, who you realize now is regarded even by them as a psycho on a par with Jason Lynch. So how come you don't get to be an alpha? What's he got that you haven't? Oh, yeah. He's an athlete, you reflect bitterly as you stab at the glop you picked up in line.
Still, they have to respect you. You're pretty much one of their creations. You went to the same middle school as Lynch and Black and Patterson, and tried out for the same teams. They bullied you, hard, for three years, which only had the effect of shaping and honing you into a dirty fighter. Of course, you acted out your frustrations at being persecuted by carving out a violent niche of your own and persecuting those below you. That and your hard-won ability to withstand punishment and deal out searing hurt of your own earned you a grudging respect from them, and they mostly leave you alone now. But you still hate them, have stored up a bottomless cistern of hatred for them ...
You smile grimly to yourself to recognize that Kirkham would glut and glory in the humiliation of Black and the others just as much as you would. Hell, yeah, you and the mask you wear are both gonna enjoy this.
* * * * *
The rest of the day isn't filled with much excitement, even after you hook up with Mendoza and Thomason and Evans in the parking lot after school. They are supposed to be Kirkham's "friends," but only because he's known them forever, and they're afraid of him, and he won't let them go.
"What are you ladies up for?" you ask in a bored tone.
"We could hit the mall," Mendoza suggests.
"Okay, one vote to go shopping," you sneer back.
"Fuck, I was thinking about scoping out the girls up there."
"You want jerk-off material? Stick to the girly magazines," you taunt. "The bitches in those don't have to look at you staring at them. Anyway, if I wanna look at something soft and feminine I can always rest my eyes on you guys."
"Well, what the fuck do you want to do?" Thomason asks peevishly.
You let your gaze drift slowly up to him, and he flinches. You pull a fresh toothpick your front pocket and slip it between your cheek and gum. "What's your sister doing, Thomason?"
He flushes. "That's not funny."
"Did I say I was joking?" He says nothing. "Well, let's check up on her, then," you say. "Thomason's place it is. Evans and Mendoza, you're with me."
Actually, to be technical, it's you and Evans with Mendoza, who has the car. You call shotgun and drum your fingers on the car roof as you drive along. Occasionally you give the finger to other drivers. Mostly it's a quiet drive.
* * * * *
"Fuck, man," you groan after your smoldering stares have driven Thomason's fifteen-year-old sister clean out of the house. "If I lived here I'd be up in her room every night. Take a jar of honey with me and spread it all over the backs of her thighs and ass and lick it all clean." Thomason's cheeks blush concentric circles of red and white, like bulls' eyes, which only inspires you to continue. "Then I'd spread her against the wall. Shit, she ain't got any tits worth talkin' about, so I'd just shove her face-first against the plaster. Take out my cock—" you scrape your palm down your crotch "—and take her up the ass. If she wanted some pussy action I'd turn her around and give her a couple of fingers—" you kiss the tip of your middle finger "—cos she's smokin', but she's gotta know who's being served and who's doing the serving, y'know? And if anyone came in, like your mom and dad, interruptin'?" You mime a gunshot. "Cap 'em in the head." You hold Thomason's eyes, which are practically vibrating in their sockets. "So when you gonna have me out for a sleepover?"
He stalks from the bedroom. It's enough to goad Evans into challenging you. "You're a fucking douchebag, Kirkham," he fumes. "You're a sick fuck."
"I'm just teasin'," you snigger, "and Thomason knows it. He knows she's got a nice ass, but she's a dog and I wouldn't fuck her for money."
No one says much after that. You root through Thomason's porn stash and spend thirty minutes belittling his taste and implying that even the trash that turns him on is too good for him—which is true—while Evans and Mendoza mutter and ignore you. The magazine exhausted, and Thomason still gone, you bully Mendoza into driving you home.
Your mother isn't home—she works late on Thursdays—and you trod heavily up the stairs to the bedroom of Kirkham's thirteen-year-old brother, Tad. The door is open and you lean in, staring hard at the back of his head as he plays on his game console. He flinches when he notices you.
"Done your homework yet," you ask.
"Yeah," he says, and kills an enemy soldier.
"Is it perfect?" He glares over his shoulder. "Lemme check."
He hunches, says nothing, and then as you take a step into his room he leaps over to his desk to grab up some notebook paper and thrust it toward you. You hurl Kirkham's backpack at him, catching him full in the chest. "You can do my math homework while I look over yours."
"Do your own fucking homework!"
"I already did, in study hall. I wanna see if you can hack it."
He snarls but reluctantly obeys. You take his own papers back into your bedroom and drop down at the cluttered desk. Impatiently you click at a red pen, anxious to find errors, but in fact he's done his algebra both neatly and perfectly. Both the Kirkham boys are stellar mathematicians, it nettles you to recognize.
Then there is nothing to do but stare out the window for a bit while fighting a powerful urge whose nature fills you with dismay. That, you are discovering, is the downside to having such an immediate intimacy with his mind and reflexes: you too are feeling the pull of the things that attract him. For instance, he has a weakness for chubby girls—not fat, just nicely padded all over—and your eye keeps wandering over to the image on his computer desktop, of a very naked but well-upholstered blonde. It's not the direction your native tastes incline, but you try concentrating on her, in preference to the activity you really want to indulge. You're grateful when a very sulky Tad appears in the doorway.
"I can't figure out anything after number 10," he says.
You chew the inside of your cheek and beckon him over. Patiently you explain how to do it; he is soon nodding along; when you are through, you give him a hard shove to restore the normal fraternal tension and send him back to complete the assignment, while gleefully wondering what he'll do when he hits number 22.
With nothing else to do—except that one thing you are trying to resist—you go down to the kitchen and put together the lasagna so that it will be ready when Margaret Kirkham gets home. That takes a good hour, and is a welcome distraction, but it means you are even sweatier with banked desires afterward. You feel your own will break as you mount the stairs, and back in the bedroom yield in despair as you yank the closet door open and shove shirts aside to grasp the thing that leans against the back wall. In the bedroom proper you drop down into the chair, cradling the thing between your legs and running your fingers gently up and down its neck. You grip the other instrument in your right hand and began to stroke and grind. You are hoping for ugly noises that will break the spell, but you are betrayed by long practice, and actually feel a thrill at the growl. And then light-headed relief and pleasure wash over you. A few loose scales and arpeggios, just to warm up, and then you lose all track of reality as under your expert fingers you unspool one of the Bach cello suites into the warm bedroom air.
* * * * *
That David Kirkham plays the cello isn't a secret around school, exactly, but he doesn't advertise the fact, and you didn't know it before donning his disguise. But he is good enough that he takes lessons from the faculty cellist at the university's music department. It is one of the two things—the other being an equation given an elegant solution—that give him a genuine sense of peace, and it is with a sense of exhaustion and exhilaration an hour later that you finish practicing, and you feel limp as you put the cello away.
You eat supper and then take a walk around to your secret place for a smoke. Pretty soon you'll have to head back to Blackwell's. Then your cell phone rings. It's Gary Chen, who is less a pal than a peer of Kirkham's, inviting you over.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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