Kung Fu High School

by Ryan Gattis

  I wasn't really supposed to respond to that.

  "Well, he has. We'll be staging one next summer with a mixed company. It's going to be great. It's a murder mystery called The—"

  "I'm not getting this," I said.

  Ridley inhaled, manipulating the silence. Outside, a gust of wind skirted the building and rattled the thin walls.

  "See, Jen, I don't think anyone sees your potential. You're female. You come from a bad background. You're a half-breed. You're poor. You live in a shitbox and make ends meet with a little over nothing. You take care of your dad and your cousin, not to mention yourself. I know your circumstances and I admire that you pull through so commendably.

  "But you haven't been given any chances to succeed because people aren't seeing you. They don't see you for the same reasons that they don't see Freddy as a person. They only see his condition. My point is this: don't you think it's time you got a chance like real people get, like all the rich kids on the north side get? A good education? Training in the arts and sports? An opportunity to travel and see the world? I could make it happen for you, Jen. You're not just a fighter. You're so much more than that."

  My face was rock. Strike one for him on the "you're female" bit. A seething strike two for calling me a "half-breed," followed by a quick strike three for calling our home a "shitbox." Yeah, it needed the gas back on but it wasn't that bad. As for his supposed act of charity, it didn't matter. He was already out.

  "When you first got here you were ranked two up from the bottom, did you know that? If it wasn't for your brother you would've been gone in the first couple of weeks. Part of the yearly flies," Ridley said, leaning back 'til his chair squeaked.

  Kung Fu had the highest dropout rate in the state, about 20%, maybe higher. Those are the flies. Every year it happens at the same time pretty much, just after the freshman kick-in. Usually a few mothers squawk to the administration, to the cops, anyone really, about the beating their kids took but nobody ever listens. The cops write stuff down. They say they'll pass it on to their superiors, but they don't. That's just a show. The community is pretty much used to it. The silent acceptance took over long ago. That was just how it was.

  "I thought for sure you'd be gone after that first real beating WAN you took. Slipping away from the first one, only to get much worse the second time, huh, Jen? You were the damn skinniest girl that whole year, the skinniest girl I'd seen in a year or two, but you came back. You took a few more beatings and you kept coming back.

  "Damn. You're in the top twenty-five now, you know that? All in a little over a year. I've never seen anything like it. Guess I shouldn't have been surprised though. Cue probably beat you harder than anybody here, just so you'd make it." He looked at me right then, to see if it was true. I didn't move, didn't blink when he leaned forward and put both hands flat on the desk, oozing out two sweaty prints of palm skin onto the coffee-colored wood.

  He'd never know and I'd never tell him. He'd only ever have a real good idea, but yes, it was true. Aside from the broken leg, I got all the highlights to prove it: over eighty stitches total, torn muscles, plenty of fractures, shoulders that had tasted a dislocation each, ball-and-socket joints like cracked-tooth mouths with the tongue pulled out and put back in all nice, and a back-alley corneal surgery on my left eye. Got an infection from it too, but I was real lucky. No long-term damage. That was how we met Remo. He fixed it as best he could and we went back to him ever since.

  "You're the toughest fighter here. I don't know, I guess it reminds me of me. You remind me of me. It wasn't easy getting started. I had to keep coming back too. Even after I got run over. Even after I got stabbed. Yep, shot too." As he rubbed his shoulder, he spoke with all the pride of the survivor of an airplane crash that killed everyone else. "There's a rumor going around that you have a tattoo, a big one, on your back. I want to see it. I want to see your scars too, Jen. Something tells me they're a lot like mine."

  He had this look on his face that gave me the oil-slick feeling again. Like an ooze of petroleum got poured down the back of my shirt while he was sizing me up with a look that said he'd most likely put scars on my insides if I ever let him that close. Well, I knew rumors too. The one about how he liked scars way too much, a fetish or something. Or the one about how he cut himself ritually. Even cut up his girlfriends, not to hurt supposedly, just to bleed. It's called blood play or something. Yeah right, "play." Probably he drank some too. And who'd ever know if he got too carried away? No one'd ever find a body. Plenty of girls had disappeared before. Remembering what his chunky naked skin looked like underneath those polo shirts, I knew in my twisted-over gut that they weren't just rumors. It was all true.

  I was seriously going to lose it if he kept looking at me that way. Like his eyes were a little too big for the sockets. Like there wasn't enough pain and shit in the world, like there weren't enough people looking to cut him, that he had to cut himself too. Not me. I was just trying to stay intacto. My stomach was moving up now, wrestling with my lungs. Sick bastard, he sure knew how to make a girl feel special. Across the desk from me, the intake of breath was audible, just below a whine as Ridley pushed his glasses up and spun his loose platinum watch toward me on his wrist, out of habit.

  "So how did her face look when you told her there weren't going to be any Grand Championships?" Ridley got up from his chair and walked to the window. He probably saw it in a movie. Nobody really did that crap. But he was a damn good manipulator. I had to give it to him. I never knew where he was going next. I thought I did, then he was off in another direction.

  "Come on, I know you noticed. You're too smart not to. Your mind started asking questions the second you saw her veneer drop. The second you repeated my words to her. And as smart as Melinda is, that passion for winning is a serious weakness. It blinds her. It was so easy for me to promise that she'd win the GCs in a weak field. No Karl, no Jimmy. She'd waltz it. Right?"

  Damn, a sham win in the Grand Championships was enough to sell us down the river? For less than one second, I wished that Cue was still around.

  "See, Cue isn't around to win them anymore."

  Jesus, was he reading my mind?

  "There aren't going to be any more GCs. There will never be another tournament again. They've served their purpose and now it's time for the families to pack in, get a little smaller. Besides, it's my gift to you, to Cue's memory, that he be the last ever Grand Champion."

  Patronizing fuck.

  "It's inevitable, Jen. I will win. Join me and I'll take care of Melinda and let Jimmy leave to wherever Jimmy wants to leave to, but he can't stay here, and you know that." Ridley seemed to be implying that he would take care of me in Jimmy's absence. "Think about it, get back to me."

  Of course, the bastard thought it was a business deal. He was still trying to push me into corners. Flattering me about rankings. Giving me choices and taking them away. He knew I couldn't take that deal. Not with Jimmy gone. Besides, the second I let my guard down, Ridley'd pull the strings and send Jimmy to the morgue. But you know what the worst part in the whole thing was? I actually thought about his offer. I actually thought about going to Europe, about leaving Kung Fu for good on Ridley's dime. Going somewhere I'd have to learn a new language just to get by. Even if it was as a project, a pet. I hated myself for even thinking it.

  Mock pushed me down the steps and went back in, locking the door behind him. And in a day that could only get worse, there was a note on my locker when I got back to the main building. It said to report to Dermoody's office as soon as possible. I should've given it to Melinda to deal with, seeing as she was my family Mom now and it was her job to handle that stuff, but I decided not to; whether Ridley was right or not, I still wasn't 100% sure I could trust her.

  Besides, something was odd about the note. It looked different from any note I'd ever gotten before. It was yellow, not pink, and the handwriting was all different, in blue ink, not black. I wondered, did Dermoody actually write it his own self? And if
so, why? Curiosity may have killed that cat, but I had to go. As I saw it, the chances of me getting in a worse squeeze than I was already in were pretty damn low. I mean, I might as well include all the major players while I was at it. Maybe it'd give me something to work with: play them against each other. Keep 'em honest. So that was how I broke the biggest unwritten rule around when I took the long walk to the principal's office at the end of the main hall. It wasn't nicknamed "The Pit" for nothing.

  DERMOODY BLUES

  Denizen of "The Pit." Decorated veteran. The whole of Kung Fu knew about Lt. Col. (Ret.) Clarence W. Dermoody. He'd styled himself as the model of the rough-and-tumble high school principal, righting the sinking ship of a troubled learning institution. Two tours in Vietnam. Everyone knew that Dermoody saved Cap'n Joe's life when they were both serving there. Saved him from some kind of ambush in the jungle. Supposedly it was an amazing story, but I wouldn't know. I never really listened when people told it. I was always more interested in the present. In the last year or so, Dermoody had been on the cover of plenty of magazines preaching his own specific brand of "tough-love education." He even trademarked that term and sold a kit with a videotape in it of him just going off about how educators should handle themselves in tough environments. The man was vain.

  His office got called "The Pit" because there was an exit door in his second-floor office that opened into an inaccessible hallway that led to the parking lot. So it was possible to enter from his secretary's office and not leave via the same door. You know, like you just fell in a pit. That was the primary reason no one ever answered notes from Dermoody, not voluntarily anyway. Everything went through the heads of the families. But I had a feeling that Dermoody was just sending out notes, then marking down who showed up to take care of it, slowly compiling lists just to see who was in whose family. It was only a matter of time before he used that information to his own advantage.

  He couldn't turn us all in though. He needed us, well, certainly needed those families loyal to Ridley to keep pushing the product. He needed his 15% cut of the operation to finance his sizable gambling habit. Just seeing his face when the secretary opened the door let me know that he was ready for more than 15%. A lot more.

  "How good of you to join us. I was sure you wouldn't come. In fact, I was just telling Joe that, wasn't I, Joe?" Dermoody was red. Bright red from a nasty sunburn, which meant that he was probably off in Barbados again, banking offshore money. His big plum of a nose was peeling too.

  As a rule, it's best not to look at Dermoody, but to kind of bow your head instead. He loves that crap.

  "Yessir." Cap'n Joe stood at attention on the back wall, right next to the American flag in its little brass holder.

  "Don't sit, stand," Dermoody said.

  I stopped midsit and stood up to the left of the chair. I was a puppet, being walked from one office to another while fixing to snip these strings. That was the game though and, for now, I had to keep playing. Two picture frames full of medals were hung on the wall about the same height as my eye level. It was obvious why he didn't want me to sit. Because this way, I was forced to see the "mystique" of the man. Face to face with the reflected light from the medals that made me squint. I was pretty sure one of Dermoody's desk lamps had been purposely angled to create that effect.

  Next to the shiny brass lapel pins and pretty ribbons were pictures. Black-and-white mostly, there was one of Dermoody and Cap'n Joe together, both holding big guns and smiling like hunters, like kids. Even if it was from years and years ago, it was -RyKNW'4 weird seeing them smile. I guess the photo was taken in Vietnam. In it, a pack of cigarettes was tucked underneath Dermoody's helmet, covering his left ear, but he wasn't smoking in the picture. He had a real deep voice, Dermoody did. It brought me back to the situation at hand.

  "Ridley's gone soft," Dermoody said, and then exhaled like it was some huge revelation. "You know he just doesn't listen to me anymore, doesn't listen to good sound advice."

  Joe put a hand on my shoulder. When I say put, it was more like slammed. I slipped to my knees on the floor. Of course, I hammed it up a little. Made it look like it hurt worse than it did. Still though, it was bad.

  "Joe here tells me that you were a witness to a certain sack of Alfredo potatoes that needed to be buried in the garden. Now, how could that be? Ridley made sure to tell me that there was only one witness, this new friend of yours. What was his name, Joe?"

  "Chang, sir."

  Jimmy.

  "Ah yes, Chang."

  Why would Ridley protect me? Maybe he really did like me and it wasn't some kind of angle? Maybe he was running something on Dermoody as well? He had to be. Everything was an angle.

  "You know the score, young lady. Technically, you shouldn't be here and neither should your friend. This is the time of year when we need more fertilizer than ever for our greenhouse."

  Greenhouse? Fertilizer? He was just trying to scare me. The only good news was that if he meant to transfer me, he would've already done it. He wanted something or I wouldn't still be alive.

  "Now the way I see it, he's scared, Ridley is. I mean, it used to be minimal and manageable with his affection for you but now, with that little stunt your friend pulled yesterday, well, I'd say he's real scared and prone to doing something rash any day now. See, it doesn't help that this stunt is damn near causing hysteria around here.

  "Do you know that I've already had fifteen teachers telling me they had trouble keeping order because of it? And we both know that little Jimmy isn't even in fifteen classes. Such is the spillover effect. It's chaos, and I'll tell you what, we don't need chaos at King High School. We need order. We need rigidity for our wayward young minds."

  Ridley didn't seem scared to me, but I wouldn't blame him if he was. Jimmy was the X factor, the only thing in all of Kung Fu that could keep it from spinning out of control or tear it all apart before anyone was ready to make a move.

  "Yes sir, that sure was a real neat trick though. For my part, I can't understand how he did it, but more than that, I don't care. What I see is potential, and potential is such an important thing, young lady."

  Uh-oh. Here it comes.

  "But see, we can be friends here. Ridley's getting much too big for his britches and he's slipping. Everyone here at King would be so much better off if he wasn't running those despicable drugs through here." Dermoody took a sip from his big gray mug that said "Principal of the Year" on it. "Ah, that's good coffee, Joe."

  I had a pretty good idea what he meant by that. Good-bye days of the 15% cut, hello everything.

  "If Ridley had an accident and you and your friend didn't, well, I think neither one of you would need to go to class anymore. I could arrange a pass on your high school equivalency tests and you'd never have to fight for your survival again. No more circles, no more 'rolling' as you kids call it. Sound pretty tempting? You could just disappear into the hills and never come back." He licked his lips. "You could be free."

  With that, Cap'n Joe let go of my shoulder and opened the door behind me. The door to the secretary's office, thank god. I got up, dusted myself off, and walked out. Probably the only thing that made the ordeal worthwhile was the look of surprise on the secretary's face as I walked out that way. Apparently she hadn't figured me for using her door twice. I moved past her, swung the outer office door open so hard it banged against the wall, and ducked out.

  Everybody was still in class, so I walked the vacant halls solo. Needed to think. Dermoody wanted me to look at the carrot on the stick and not the person holding the pole that dangled the damn thing in front of me. Even if Jimmy and I survived a showdown with Ridley, Dermoody would transfer us permanently. He'd do what any good prince would do. Take power and clear out everyone who had anything to do with the taking of it. We'd seen Ridley kill 'Fredo and I'd seen Cap'n Joe doing his DBD thing for Dermoody. So even if Ridley didn't care, I was still a witness, and still too dangerous to keep around. The Ridleys and Dermoodys of Kung Fu certainly didn't get to where
they were by leaving people behind to rat on them.

  Maybe everyone was right, or at least half right. Ridley wanted Jimmy dead, Melinda out of the way, and me for himself. Melinda wanted survival, Jimmy for herself, and me out of the way? Hard to tell. Then again, Ridley would never let that happen because Jimmy was too much of a threat; that still wouldn't've stopped him from agreeing to it. And yet that meant Dermoody was probably right too, Ridley was slipping in even wanting to keep me alive, and they were both scared by the threat that Jimmy posed, especially now. Slipping or not, the scariest thing about Ridley was that he was invisible. That he could still do anything without needing to make a big show of it. He was as dangerous as ever, maybe even more so. And yeah, Dermoody was still scared of him. Otherwise he wouldn't hide in his office all day.

  It was enough to give me a headache. I slowed my steps, checked the hall clock. Second period wasn't over for another three minutes yet. So it was just little old me in the hallway in front of my locker, bending down, checking to make sure the scuff marks on my boots hadn't gotten any bigger. Kung Fu wasn't such a bad place when it was empty. I twisted the lock set into the flimsy metal, put in the combination, and pulled the handle when it clicked. I opened it damn sure the only thing I could count on was that the showdown was coming and whether it really was the Friday after next, or sooner, it was unavoidable.

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

  To top off yet another great day, I got called out on the afternoon circle. I was the first one. It was Merrick again, still a Hunter, now a new Blade. He was ready to make his name and get his revenge, not just for 'Fredo but for Karl. So I was an easy enough target.

  "You gonna do this?" It was Jimmy. Everywhere else in the quad was absolutely packed with people, but there was a six-foot radius of emptiness around him. Kids just backed up when he got near.

  "Got to," I said.

  My hip was better but still numb, then again, maybe that was to my advantage. Knee stiff enough that my left leg kicks wouldn't have much power. What was really bothering me was the hole I had in my jaw where my tooth used to be. I should've rinsed more. Ah well, I'd do it when I got home. I tucked my flannel in, tied my hair back even tighter, and wrapped my wrists and hands. One of the freshman Wolves was my corner-man and he helped with everything. Double-checked that my laces were tied and tucked in. That was always a sucker's way to go out, tripping over your own laces. I stretched real quick and did two simple breathing exercises to get the blood up. Merrick was already waiting.