Chapter #33Three Acts of Drama by: Seuzz   "Jesus," Seth Javits whispers in reaction to your (bullshit) story about Gordon nearly killing himself.
You hold his eye. For a moment you think that maybe he's going to crack.
But he rallies instead.
"Look, I'm sorry Gordon's going out with a— But I'm not going to break up with my girlfriend just 'cos someone else's girlfriend has a problem with mine!"
"I'm not telling you—"
"But—"
"I'm just telling you what's going on, how come it's got so bad. But it's got so bad to the point where we— Me and Gordon— Where we are gonna have to dig a trench between us and your girlfriend. Your choice—" You jab him in the shoulder again. "Is which side of that trench are you gonna stand on?"
Color rises in cheeks, and his hair crawls atop his scalp.
"So if I say I'm staying with Cindy—"
"Well then, you're on the other side of that trench. Don't worry," you assure him as his lips peel back. "We're not gonna go to the coach and tell him you're not a team player, get you kicked off the squad. But you're gonna give that key back, and stay where you are on the squad."
"I can live with that," Javits growls.
"We're also gonna clean out the bottom quarter of the squad. That means Lloyd, Nichols and Richards. They're gone."
Javits looks startled. "What—?"
"They're not good enough, which means they're no good. Gordon's been wanting them gone for a month now, but I've held him back. I finally told him on Friday I wanted to put you in charge of them, that you could lick 'em into shape. He said okay, and we agreed that we'd let you up here too, because you deserve it. Then he told this to Chelsea, and then— Well, Saturday night happened."
Javits's eyes widen.
"So now we can't. You're not going to get that position, so those guys are going to get gone. Only way they stay is if you ride point on them, and you can't do that and go around with Cindy both.
"Because, yeah," you conclude, "Chelsea's a little psychopath. But no one's perfect, you know."
* * * * *
Javits's eyes fall as he digests all this, and you back off to give him room to breathe. You pull a beer out of the fridge for yourself and crack it open. You watch him over its rim as you drink.
"This is some heavy shit," he says.
"Get used to it," you tell him. "I'm not gonna make it any easier, 'cos fuck you like a pussy if you ask me to."
He wobbles on his feet. "Do I gotta decide, like, right now?"
"First instinct's usually the best. One two three go. What do you say?"
His eyes bulge, but no sound comes out.
"Fine, you little cunt," you growl. "I'll give you till tomorrow morning. But don't come to practice this afternoon unless it's tell me you're keeping that key. Or to give it back."
Javits seems to melt before your eyes. His head lolls and his eyes wander. He sways. Then he stumbles over to the door.
"I'll talk t'you later," he mumbles as he heads out.
You wait until you're sure he's gone, then stride over to the big mirror in the corner. Steve Patterson stares back sternly at you from its depths.
His face is hard and his gaze is glacial. His jaw is set, and his mouth is a straight line. He lays a palm across his stomach, and you feel the hard abs through the front of your t-shirt.
But you don't flinch, and you wouldn't flinch even he wasn't you, because you've got him on the inside with you, and you're inside his insides as well as his skin, armoring you. At the moment, though, you feel that it isn't armor, you feel that it is you.
Until the facade briefly cracks with a twitch of the lips.
"Good job, man," you murmur at your reflection through frozen lips. "The real motherfucker couldn'a done it any better. Fuck him, he wouldn'a even tried."
You run a comb through your hair, then flop onto the workout mats and pull out some books so you can get a head-start on your math homework.
* * * * *
After fifth you have a weight training class, which is brainlessly satisfying work with heavy equipment, and wrap up the day with its two most challenging classes, Chemistry II and AP Physics II.
In both of them you recognize some of the people you met Saturday night at the party, though you can only put a name to the two girls: Nancy Crockett in seventh, and Marjorie Riker in eighth. Nancy, who is sitting with two guys, whirls to twitter at her friends when you walk in the door. But in eighth period, Marjorie rises from her desk and comes directly over to talk to you.
She's a short thing, probably only a bit over five-foot-five, with limp brown hair that hangs just to the top of her shoulders, and some unflattering cats-eye glasses. She is dressed unstylishly in a long-sleeve floral print blouse and tan slacks. About the best you can say for her figure is that there's not a lot of it, unlike the rest of her friends. In fact, you'd hazard (though the blouse imposes a burden on the imagination) that her waist is narrower than her hips and bust, though maybe not by so much.
But whatever points she'd get for figure are negated by her face. She's not unpretty, despite the fleshy nose and fleshy lips, and her skin is clear and her features regular. But she's got resting cunt face: the glinting eyes, the pursed lips, and the dour expression of a girl who is going to find her life's satisfaction in working behind the counter at a state licensing agency, where she can slow-walk each application and take a long coffee break before turning it down.
But the look she's giving you now, as she stands before you, is more like the look that an elementary school teacher gives a boy who she just knows has not done his homework, and is going to humiliate him for it in front of the entire class: an expression that combines smug triumph with amused disappointment.
"So, are you going to be an asshole to Brenda?" she demands. There's more than a hint of a nasal whine in her voice.
"What? The fuck business is it of yours?" you retort.
She plumps her lips in a mirthless smile.
"So, an asshole," she says, and turns to return to her desk. She makes a big show of ignoring you, even as her two friends from the other night stare back at you with slackened jaws.
You stare at her. Then you catch the eye of one of her friends—a dweeb with glasses, a weedy mustache, and a short mullet down the back of his neck—and beckon him over with a crook of your forefinger. He fumbles to his feet, and comes over.
"The fuck's your name?" you demand.
"Leo," he says.
"Leo the fuck what?"
"Shorter." He licks his lips.
"Okay Leo the fuck Shorter. You go back over and tell Marjorie that I don't hit girls who lip off at me, but I do hit guys who are dumb enough to hang out with girls who lip off at me. Tell her if she doesn't come over here and apologize, then I will need you to meet me in front of the gym at five o'clock so I can do something to one of your kidneys. If you don't meet me there, then tomorrow, before the start of this very class, I will take you out to the portables and give you three"—you hold up three fingers—"times what you would have had coming today. You can fuck off now."
You glare at his back as he staggers back to his seat. But instead of speaking to Marjorie, he just puts his head on his desk and buries it under his arms.
You catch Darren Green—one of your teammates, who sits near you—glancing at you askance, but he quickly looks away.
* * * * *
Javits skips practice after school, and Gordon wants to know why. You tell him you'll explain after. You spend almost the entirety of practice brutalizing Richards, Lloyd and Nichols, running them ragged and doing your best to rattle their confidence. You are so successful that they leave directly after practice without bothering to shower or change.
Upstairs, in the loft, you give Gordon the quick version of your talk with Javits, including notes on the bullshit suicide story, so that he'll know not to flat-out contradict it if called on it.
"Th'fuck you think he'll do?" Gordon asks.
"Fifty-fifty. Fifty percent he'll quit the team and stay with Cindy. Fifty percent he'll pretend to dump her while quietly keeping it going."
"Then what?"
"Then the boss lady will decide what to do."
Speaking of whom, Chelsea herself joins you only a minute or so later.
"So where was Seth today?" she asks. She's all a'twirl with smiles.
"Thinking it over," you tell her. "He'll have an answer in the morning."
"That's soon enough, I guess" she giggles. "We can't have too much drama all in one day."
Instinctively you glance at Gordon, who glances at you. "What drama?" you ask.
"What, you didn't hear?" She affects surprise. "Now Cindy's the one who got busted for having weed in her locker!"  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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