The Rule of Won

by Stefan Petrucha

  “Sorry, Dunne, this was the first time we even had a chance to visit Moore,” Guy said.

  “You’ve been suspended. You’ve got nothing but time.”

  “We can’t all run around accepting challenges from Ethan,” Mason said. “Think they’ll give you a room next to Alden?”

  I furrowed my brow. “I suppose by now I shouldn’t be surprised by what you know. Is it up on the Crave message board?”

  Guy waved off the thought. “We got blocked out. They changed passwords.”

  “We did find out that the police were showing Eldridge’s security video around all along, only they were doing it quietly, with local residents and a few students. No one was able to identify the attacker,” Mason said.

  “Another dead end,” I sighed. “Unless I lie and say I was there.”

  “Don’t bother. You’d never pass the poly. However . . . ,” Drik said. He looked mysteriously up and around. “We have been doing something a little more proactive . . .”

  “Drik . . . ,” Mason warned.

  “He should know,” Drik said. “He’s practically one of us.”

  “Know what?” I asked. “Come on! I went through a whole police interrogation, and I didn’t squeal.”

  Guy sidled up to me and lowered his voice even more. “Okay. Want to come over to my house tonight for a few hours? Around eight?”

  There are no ritzy sections of Screech Neck. During economic boom times, when you couldn’t help but make money, there were a few upscale developments planned. Concrete foundations were even poured, but not a single McMansion was ever completed, leaving Screech Neck pretty much all old and drab. There were apartment buildings near the center of town, where I lived, and 1960s single-and two-family houses at the outskirts of town, where Ethan and his family lived, but there was also a kind of dreary sameness to it all.

  On the one hand, you never felt like you were in a particularly bad neighborhood, but on the other, you never felt totally safe. That’s a roundabout way of saying that Davis Street, where Guy lived, was pretty nondescript, a row of two-family houses lining the street, so close to each other that if you opened a side window, you could reach into your neighbor’s kitchen to borrow the mustard.

  Once I reached the address, it took me a second of staring at the names beside the door to realize Guy’s family lived in the basement. A little arrow pointed down some cracked stone steps where I found a small white buzzer. After I pressed it, a light came on inside, the door creaked open, and I was greeted by a short woman in a housecoat. Her hair was up in curlers. A lit cigarette dangled from her mouth.

  I cleared my throat. “Guy here?”

  “Guy!” she howled. I was impressed the cigarette didn’t fall.

  His voice called from inside. “Send him back, Mom!”

  The dangler stepped out of my way and I entered. There was only one light on in the living room, a small lamp with maybe a twenty-watt bulb in it. Looking down, I realized I was standing on old newspapers, which seemed to cover most of the floor. The ceiling was low, and even though there wasn’t much furniture, it felt crowded.

  The creak of the door closing behind me made me whirl.

  The dangler was gone.

  “Guy?” I called out.

  “Here,” he said.

  I felt my way through the dimness to a door at the end of a hall. When I pushed it open, a dull green-blue glow met my eyes.

  Inside were Guy, Drik, and Mason, all in chairs facing the source of the glow, a monitor. It was an old tube-type, big, maybe twenty-one inches, with speakers on either side, hooked by a few wires to Guy’s laptop. Between the chairs, tables of snack food were laid out. No one acknowledged me. They were all busy munching and staring at the screen.

  “Think she’ll do it?” Guy said to Mason.

  Mason shook her head. “Nah. See how fed up she is?”

  Last time they’d showed me a monitor, I’d been shocked by what I saw. This time it was just the same. On it was a blocky webcam image, blown up way too big for the screen. The frame rate was low, the movement jerky. If it was in color, I couldn’t tell. There were two figures on it, a male standing in the center of the frame, arms out, like he was pleading, and a shorter girl, some papers in her hand, with her arms crossed, like she was saying no. The angle was off, the way you’d see in some hidden-camera TV show. Then I realized why.

  It was Ethan and Alyssa.

  That familiar dulcet voice came through the tinny speakers, tinged with impatience. “Just one picture, Alyssa. Just one drawing of me beating him. Please.”

  “Holy crap!” I shouted. “You put a webcam in Ethan’s room!? How did you—”

  “Shh!” they all said.

  “That’s breaking and entering! And . . . and . . . wiretapping! Do you know how many laws you’re—”

  “Shh!” they said again.

  Mason pointed to a chair next to her. Amazed, I sat.

  On screen, Alyssa was yelling at Ethan, shaking her head.

  “Come on, Ethan, this is just because my pictures remind you of Mom! What are you going to ask for next? You think I can bring her back from the dead?”

  “Maybe.”

  She was genuinely upset. “I can’t do it anymore anyway, even if I wanted!”

  He stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  Guy leaned forward and whispered, “We’ve been waiting for him to confess about cutting the brake lines, but so far, nothing.”

  “Shh!” Mason said again.

  “It never worked the way you said to begin with, and now it doesn’t work at all. I can’t even draw a decent picture.”

  “It can’t just stop working. It’s a natural law of the universe.”

  “Then maybe you should get a lawyer,” she said.

  Alyssa held up the papers in her hand, crinkling them as she thrust them toward Ethan. “I’ve been drawing for six days, and not one picture has happened. Not one.”

  He took them, looked at the pile, and unfolded one or two carefully, like they were holy relics. He shook his head as Alyssa continued to speak.

  “Maybe my battery wore out, okay? Or maybe I broke something or maybe it was like I’ve been saying all along, just a bunch of coincidences to begin with!”

  He put the papers down on his desk and shook his head furiously. “No, no, no! It’s not! There’s no such thing as coincidence! Do you understand? No such thing!”

  She snarled back in a voice that again reminded me whose sister she was. “Then maybe you’re being punished for being too greedy!”

  He slammed his hands down on the desk. “This was your last chance, Alyssa. Your talent was a gift from Mom, but you betrayed it. Your drawings don’t work anymore because you’ve let negativity creep into your mind. I don’t have that negativity. Not one ounce.”

  He went on like that for a while. By the time Ethan finally stopped, Alyssa was shivering. Not from cold. More like she was going to really just let loose and scream at him. She must’ve thought better of it, though, because she ran out.

  He closed the door behind her, then stood alone in the center of his room, inhaling slow and steady. His arms curved in time with his deep breathing, rolling out into the air, then back toward his body.

  “What’s all that about?” Mason asked.

  “He’s calming himself down,” Drik offered.

  “It’s yogic,” Guy said. “Look at his control. Dunne, you should take notes for the fight.”

  Right. Notes on how best to lose. Ethan repeated the motion, faster and faster, until his fists were snapping into the air. I could hear little popping noises, like he was punching air molecules. Then he bobbed on the balls of his feet and added some quick kicks, his heel reaching over his head.

  “Kung fu?”

  “It’s some kind of martial art.”

  My eyes got wide. “Holy crap,” I said.

  Until then, I was thinking I at least had a shot at beating Ethan. He was a little bigger than me, but not much more muscular,
and I figured I had rage on my side. Plus, he was so arrogant, he was easy to surprise. I thought if I took him down quickly, it could all be over in a minute.

  But as I watched him kick, punch, and twist in the air like a video game character, it dawned on me that imanifestations were the least of my worries. Even without the collected wishes of the club, odds were damn good that the son of a bitch was going to cream me.

  “Holy crap,” I repeated.

  Someone handed me a bottle of soda. I poured it over my head, let the cola drip down my face and sting my eyes. Maybe I was hoping it would wake me up from the nightmare, but it didn’t.

  Finally, Ethan shut the light in his room to go to sleep. Guy flicked the monitor off and said, “You’re utterly doomed.”

  Mason turned to me. “Still going?”

  I shrugged. “If I don’t, they’ll get me like they got Moore. At least you guys can be there to scrape me off the floor.”

  “Oh, we’re not going,” Drik said.

  “What?”

  Mason shook her head. “Too dangerous. They all want to kill us.”

  “And this is different from my situation how?”

  “We will be there in spirit,” Guy offered. “I planted another webcam in the gym. We’re going to break into the hospital and watch on my laptop with Moore.”

  I stared at them, unbelieving.

  “Sorry, dude,” Drik said. “But, hey, if it looks like you’re really dying or something, we’ll call the cops.”

  Guy patted me sympathetically on the shoulder. “Want another soda to pour over your head? There’s two left in the fridge.”

  I had nothing to say to that. I had nothing left to say. In fact, the next day, the day before the fight, I was real quiet, developing the kind of darkly fatal attitude that would have made Erica proud—if I’d told her about it.

  It got worse around midday. Much worse. I was walking along the hall to my locker when my foot found a sheet of paper on the floor. There was some kind of drawing on it, so I picked it up for a closer look. The art wasn’t Alyssa’s, but you could still make out that it was me and Ethan. Ethan was holding me up by my neck as blood streamed out of my eyes. Apparently the Cravers were branching out into their own adventures in drawing. Chanting was no longer enough. Or maybe Ethan was hedging his bets, trying to find an artist to replace Alyssa.

  I crumpled it up and tossed it out. When I opened my locker, though, a ton more tumbled out: loose-leaf sheets, pages torn from pads, matchbook covers, you name it. Each had a drawing, some with pencil stick figures, some full bodied. The Cravers were also diverse in their choice of medium—pencil, charcoal, watercolor, even oils. There wasn’t much variation in their subject, though. All of them showed Ethan triumphant and me lying dead, or near to it.

  At least I didn’t have to wonder what they’d decided this week’s Crave was going to be.

  I thought about showing the collection to Dr. Wyatt or the cops, but none were signed, and what would it change? I shoved them back in, closed the locker, and headed to class.

  On the way, I heard some steady whispering. As it got louder, I slowed down and stayed near the wall. Edging around the corner, I saw about ten kids in a huddle, kids I didn’t even know, all chanting, fast and low:

  Ethan will beat Caleb Dunne.

  Ethan will beat Caleb Dunne.

  Ethan will beat Caleb Dunne.

  I didn’t interrupt them, I just backed slowly away, found the nearest door, and cut the rest of the day. Funny, I’d been thinking I should stay as long as I could, especially since this might be my last day at Screech Neck High, if I got caught at the fight, but as I sat on the bus watching the scaffolding that surrounded the new gym wing vanish among the buildings and trees, I was just happy to get away.

  Sitting in the back where the smell of the exhaust was nice and strong, I closed my eyes and banged the back of my head against the window. I was thinking of calling upon my spork and trying to imanifest myself winning. Why not? Ethan and the book never talked about what would happen if people had opposing imanifestations.

  Would whoever wished hardest win, or was it more like a lot of little wishing added up to one great big wish? Or would the world split into two dimensions, one where I was triumphant and sanity was restored to Screech Neck, the other where I lay dead and everyone was forced to wear “1” pins by law?

  A little dose of reality snapped me out of that. The bus window I was leaning against doubled as an emergency exit. It must have been broken or at least loose, because when I pushed back harder, it swung open at the bottom, sending a blast of November chill into my hair. You get a nice cold blast of air on the back of your head like that, and really, all you can think of is how cold your head is.

  I appreciated the distraction. By the time I got home, I was realizing how totally stupid and insane I was for even thinking about showing up. I was a slacker, right? I could just not go. I could run away to another state and start over as a retail clerk.

  Joey, at the dining room table, raised his weathered head as I came in. “Cutting class?”

  “No. I just feel kind of sick.”

  I must have looked so miserable, he didn’t bother to challenge me on it. “Take a hot shower or something. That’ll perk you up.”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh,” he added in that gravelly voice of his. “Package came for you.”

  He pushed a small box, wrapped in brown paper, across the table. My name was written on it in pen.

  “Buy something on eBay?”

  “With what?” I smirked at him as I fumbled with the wrapping.

  The paper was held on with two small strips of Scotch tape. I was surprised it had held together this long, because it just came apart in my hands, revealing a worn sleeve. It was pocked with white where the ink had rubbed away, but you could still make out the title, Mondo Cane.

  “Hey, Joey,” I said. “Can I borrow your VHS player?”

  18

  • I see him just collapsing, eyes rolling into the back of his head. I picture Ethan punching him, over and over, bruising, then breaking the skin. I don’t picture Caleb Dunne dead, but he’s really wishing he was. —Colleen

  • I give my power to Ethan. I put my strength in his arms, behind his blows. I imagine myself slamming my clenched fist into Caleb Dunne’s face, feeling his nose collapse under my fingers. I see Ethan tower over him, only he’s not just Ethan, he’s all of us. We are part of it and part of everything. —Mike

  • Caleb Dunne is so going to get his ass totally kicked by Ethan, and when he’s finished, I’m next in line. —Dylan

  • The marines have taught my brother sixteen ways to kill a man with his hands. I picture Ethan using them all on Dunne. —Alex

  • According to the book, it’s okay to remove obstacles, but we really shouldn’t ever wish ill will on people. So we have to make sure we don’t think of Caleb Dunne as a person. He’s not really. He’s made himself an obstacle, a thing that stands in the way of spreading the truth. So it’s perfectly okay that he should lose and suffer for it. —Grace

  • I see Caleb Dunne getting whacked, over and over, with Nicole’s iPhone, until they both just . . . break. —Sophia

  • I’ve got some kind of freaky blood disease. The doctor thinks it’s because I somehow wore down my immune system, but I know the real explanation: Caleb Dunne and his downer thoughts. He’s what made me sick, so I’m devoting all my energies, all my imanifesting, to turning that negativity back on him, to give him the blurry vision, to give him the headaches and the crappy parents who want to send me to some detox camp, to give him the pain he wants to give everyone else. —Jane

  • I hope at the last minute Caleb Dunne realizes what a fool he’s been, that he sees the light, that he comes back to us with his head down and his heart open. —Jacob

  • Anyone who tries to destroy us deserves whatever they get. No pity for Caleb Dunne. He tried to hurt my family and now he’s going to see just how strong and t
ogether we all are. —Olivia

  • I would like the new Xbox 360 Elite System, with a premium black finish and three powerful core processors capable of producing the best in HD entertainment (up to 1080p, like any Xbox 360), 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio, anti-aliasing for smooth textures, full surround sound, HDMI output, and DVD playback with upscaling capabilities right out of the box. I would also like to see Ethan kick Caleb’s ass. —Landon

  • I don’t know if I can make it to the fight, but I’ll be there with you in spirit, imanifesting so hard, you’ll probably actually see me there! Go, Ethan! Down with Caleb Dunne! —Andrew

  • I’m worried about some of you. I’m still thinking there are dark thoughts out there, maybe even some we’re not aware of, like people afraid to show up because the cops might come. We’ll see who’s there and who’s not. We’ll see. —Jeff

  • I picture a warm white glow surrounding all of us with health and power. I picture a golden shield nothing can penetrate, not knives, not bullets, not hate. I picture it growing, swelling out and around us, taking in more and more of the world, welcoming in all the riches, and pushing out all the stalkers and all the Caleb Dunnes. —Kathleen

  • I guess I don’t see the connection between Caleb Dunne and global warming. Is he really that important? Shouldn’t we just ignore him? —Beth

  • Everyone’s watching this, everyone. I was talking to one of the members in the hall the other day about the fight and the PE teacher Mr. Canner was listening in. I was terrified he was going to turn us in, but he just winked and showed me the “1” pin he wears under his jacket. We cannot be defeated. —Tom

  • It’s like everything I’ve been afraid of is finally coming to a head. It’s going to end on Saturday, all of it, I just know it is. It’s going to end with this fight, and then I am going to be free. —Lauren

  • I see Caleb lying on the ground, pleading, crying, begging me to help him, showing more true emotion than I’ve ever seen from him, more than I even thought he was capable of. And then I tell him, This is what you wanted and now you’ve got it—you’ve got it all. —Vicky

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