Kung Fu High School

by Ryan Gattis

  The banging sounds on the other side of the door had stopped and the hallway was dead quiet. That meant two things: the looters were probably back harvesting candy bars and the other thirty or so kids chasing us had split in two, fifteen to watch the door I was leaning against, while the other fifteen headed through the pool-side door and backtracked through the locker rooms to catch us in this very hallway. Whatever Jimmy was going to do, he needed to do it real fast.

  "D'ya know that I couldn't even move my hands to eat until yesterday because of what ya did? I dare ya to fight me without that paralysis magic-trick shit." Donnie was wrecked out of his mind. He had to be. Nobody sane or sober would call out Jimmy Chang and expect to lead a normal life with a functioning body afterward. Donnie'd been lucky and he didn't even realize it So Jimmy walked out to the middle of the hallway and Donnie backed off to the end, blocking our only exit: the boys' locker room.

  THE JB

  The other thing that Donnie didn't realize was that the extremely narrow hallway favored jimmy because Donnie's leg-fighting style had much less room to maneuver. Should've picked a better venue. There'd be no roundhouses. No dragon kicks. Only straightforward stuff. But, although the hallway was narrow, it didn't feel cramped. The ceiling was real high, about twenty feet off the floor. The redbrick walls extended all the way to the top, pinching in along the white paneled ceiling.

  It was Donnie that started it. Kicking furiously with high-low-high combos, he brought his kicks in faster than I've ever seen them: left, right, left, right, but every time he aimed for Jimmy and then slung a leg shot at him, Jimmy wasn't there. He'd already moved out of the way. The foot came left, Jimmy was right, the foot came right, Jimmy was left, every time. Jimmy didn't block a single kick. He didn't have to. Not a single one came close to hitting him.

  Jimmy crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. Mimed a yawn. That just pissed Donnie off worse. He came even harder. He got up on his standing leg and continued with a flurry led by his right foot, as he hopped forward and unleashed a series of hard high kicks at Jimmy's head. But each time Donnie kicked, Jimmy would move his head just enough to avoid them, then he'd sneak in the quickest of movements, and pinch Donnie's calf hard. Like Mr. Miyagi catching flies with chopsticks.

  I didn't even see them, just heard Donnie getting madder and more out of control, grunting and cussing, heard the strained movements of his clothing whipping about. So he kicked harder and each time he did, he got a pinch on the calf, a horse bite. He wasn't smart enough to realize that Jimmy was degrading his muscle strength, that eventually he wouldn't be able to lift his legs higher than his waist because of the bruising and blood rush. Like getting a real gradual dead leg instead of all at once.

  By the time Donnie was breathing heavily, Jimmy had jumped a foot up the walls. He was spread-eagled across the narrowness of the hallway, holding himself up with an arm and leg each on the opposite walls. Donnie fell for the bait. He kicked the wall where Jimmy's right hand was, but Jimmy moved it up, so Donnie brought the same foot left but missed again, crashing his foot hard against the wall. When he saw he had no chance of catching one of Jimmy's hands, Donnie kicked out at Jimmy's unprotected torso but Jimmy went from vertical to horizontal on the walls faster than I've ever seen a human being move, like he was defying gravity.

  If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would've sworn it was impossible the way he jumped and kicked his back legs out to new positions on the walls above, and his whole body was completely vertical, so that Donnie's foot flew past him by a few centimeters and I saw Jimmy's shorts ripple from the air created by the power of the kick. So stupid Donnie kept kicking. Back and forth like a pendulum at Jimmy's hands and feet, trying to bring him down, probably breaking his toes and mangling his heel but never once getting close. Jimmy just crab-walked up the walls, higher and higher until Donnie was jump kicking high above his head, missing all of Jimmy and getting slower and slower. If Jimmy was the fisherman, Donnie was the marlin and he'd fought his fight. He was done.

  So, as amusing as it was to watch Jimmy utterly humiliate Donnie, I knew we didn't have much more time before fifteen guys streamed right through the locker room entrance and cluttered up all the fighting space in the hall like hair in a drain.

  "Jimmy, we gots to go!" I yelled, and my words echoed off the high walls. Apparently, it was the only signal he needed.

  Donnie was hunched over, hands on his knees and breathing too hard when Jimmy sucked his arms and legs in and collapsed into a freefall of easily ten feet. But just above Donnie's head, Jimmy brought his hands together and behind his own head in what we at Kung Fu would call a preacher's punch, dropped his legs to a more vertical position as he slammed both fists down onto the top of Donnie's back as one, not very hard because he was arching backward and bringing his legs back to horizontal, already a goddam one-hundred-eighty-degree turn in midair, just as Donnie felt the preacher punch and stood straight up.

  Right then he caught the full force of Jimmy's uncoiling double-legged kick right in the abdomen. The kick was straight up old school kung fu. Aimed not at Donnie's body but three inches behind it, Jimmy finished the move clean through the ribs and then bounded off Donnie's body into a back handspring and landed easily on his feet. Donnie didn't have it so good. His broken body slid all the way down the hall, three feet, five, seven feet, nine, then slammed into the wall headfirst, cracking a bit of his skull off and leaving a nearly instant poodle-piss-size puddle of blood on the tile in front of the locker room door.

  HALL BRAWL

  It was the most badass move I'd ever seen in my life. I actually had to push my mouth closed with a duct-taped fist before wiping my own blood off my chin with a trailing sleeve.

  "Let me see those hands," Jimmy said.

  "We gots to go," I repeated.

  "Not if you can't punch!"

  He took my bleeding fists in his secretary hands and I couldn't look down at those trespassing fingers of his. He pulled a strand of tape up to see bone underneath and I was right back in the present.

  "Agh! Don't take it off, just retape me. Harder!" I demanded.

  He reached into my backpack and did them up quick, like fixing a leak on plumbing.

  Perfect timing too, because a group of five Fists busted right through the locker room door, slamming it hard against the brick. The first one slipped on Donnie's blood, tripped over the prone body, and then face-planted on the wall. Hello, Mr. Concussion. The other four didn't bother picking their compatriot up. They just came toward us one at a time, making sure to hop the body and avoid the blood. There was no other way: the hall was too narrow.

  Jimmy pushed my backpack up onto my back and pulled the drawstrings so that it stayed tight. Then he did the unexpected. He took one big step and jumped so high into the air that the first Fist had to look up to see the sole of Jimmy's bare foot coming down into his grill, and then Jimmy kept going, he actually "walked" on the heads of the Fists, jumping and kicking down hard on the crown of the second one, then to the third one, then to the last, before dropping down easily behind them all and blocking off an escape.

  Dazed and caught in the middle of a two-pronged assault, the Fists caved: the one nearest to me was still grimacing in pain and bringing his hands to his face by reflex when I pulled his left shoulder hard toward me, bending him forward as I kneed him hard in the gut. Pulling my patella out of his midsection quickly, I extended my same leg backward in a V-shaped follow-through, just to make sure my heel smashed the space on his face that his hands had vacated when I kneed him. Then he got tossed to the side.

  Jimmy had already finished off #3 and #4, and #2 couldn't decide whether to swing forward or backward so he displayed a little ingenuity when he kicked for me and then arched backward with a drunken-boxing-style punch toward Jimmy but there was only one problem: I caught his foot between my forearms and Jimmy caught his fist. We didn't let him squirm too long though. Jimmy did the honors with a perfectly swift elbow to the face. Good-bye,
Mr. Torched Eye Socket.

  I picked my way through the mess of contorted bodies like a football player running the tire drill, knees up. It was already starting to stink in that enclosed hallway, bad. Sometime between being kicked and hitting the wall, Donnie had lost all control of his bowels. He'd dropped his load right there in his pants. Either he was dead, or his body didn't know how to hang on anymore. The brain just lost contact with the large intestine, the sphincter. Sometimes systems screw up and evacuate. It happens.

  I dodged Donnie and ended up stepping on Mr. Concussion on my way through the open door and into the gridded locker room. To my right was a wall with a mirror and a scale. To my left were three C-shaped banks of lockers with a bench in the middle. Beyond them and through a portico with two sinks in it was a shower room and to the right of that was the exit to the pool. I'd never been in the boys' locker room before. It was exactly the same as the girls': gray concrete walls, rusting steel lockers, and alternating blue/light blue/white/turquoise blocks of tiny tile on the floor.

  "I saw your face, jimmy." I lobbed my words over his shoulder as he ducked a nasty right hook from a female Blade that leaped out from the second bank of lockers.

  Jimmy unloaded on her midsection. Five quick punches before she even knew what hit her, then he froze her. I saw the fingers of his right hand dig into her jacket above her heart and twist, almost like he was turning a doorknob while the left hand stabbed hard into a space near her stomach and did a similar movement rapid-fire to her neck. Must've been reflex. Her face even stayed the same. Just like all the others, a mixture of surprise and pain.

  "What?" he asked while jumping to his right and avoiding a swinging kick from some red-haired kid. He brought his fist down hard on the outstretched leg and brought the kicker to her knees before finishing off her face with a kick of his own. I heard the kid's head make a dent in a locker and then the rattle of the reverberating latch.

  "You liked it," I yelled while being pressed into my best Jackie Chan impersonation when a female Whip kicked past me and cornered me in the first locker bank. She jumped off the bench at me but I swung open the big locker and she didn't quite fall into it, more like smacked half her body on the corner of the open locker and bounced off.

  Reeling, she backed up but threw a punch and I opened a locker right into her fist. DING. She kicked, but before she could extend, I opened a locker fast into her knee. PWONG. Damn, right on the grated top section. That had to hurt. I didn't wait for her to make another move. I ducked her awkward hook and drove my fist into her stomach then popped up and KO'd her on the cranium by swinging open a corner locker door right into her ear.

  Nobody had locks on their lockers at Kung Fu. What was to steal? Athletic shorts masquerading as swim trunks? A moldy towel? Not even worth it. If anyone wore anything worth keeping they'd put it in a bag and set it on the wall alongside the pool to keep an eye on it during class.

  "Liked what?" Jimmy asked. He was in front of me. That meant he'd cleared the room.

  "Finishing Donnie," I said.

  "Let's go," was his only response.

  PLAYING POOL

  There must've been water or some mixture of leftover shampoo or soap on the shower room floor because it was slippery as hell. It was weird to watch Jimmy, by far the most coordinated person I knew, lose his balance while turning the corner and go into the tile face-first. He slid to the recessed drain along the shower wall before stopping.

  "Fuck. Just smacked my chin." Jimmy got up all wobbly and curled his tongue over his teeth, behind his lower lip, and stuck his bleeding chin out at me. Like he had a chaw in.

  His eyes were fine though. No concussion that I could tell, thank god.

  "Jenny," he said. And the moment it came out of his mouth I fuckin' knew he was gonna say something stupid about last night, something gross. He felt vulnerable or open and he wasn't sure we'd both live, so he wanted to assure me that he really did love me and didn't want me to worry about him or maybe he'd go off about his dream of us going somewhere where no one knew we were cousins so we could live in happy-fun-love-land and—

  "Don't," was all I could croak. Nobody needed his sentiment, me least of all.

  "Thanks." That was all he said. Maybe he meant to say more, or wanted to say more, but he didn't.

  So I forced my stored rebuttals to the back of my brain and I felt dumb as I kicked open the beat-up old door of the visiting coach's office. It'd been vacant for years because Kung Fu didn't exactly have a swim team. I pawed the dusty old first-aid kit off the wall shelf Thankfully the kit was still good. Jimmy opened it and I blotted him with an eye patch, then stuck it on good with both fists. I tried to help him duct tape it on because there was no med tape in the kit but I was worthless, my hands were still on fire and I couldn't use my fingers. So he used the office glass to see his reflection and tape lengthwise on the curve of his chin and then one from his voice box to the bottom of his mouth. They'd suck to pull off and it looked like a funny little patch of beard when he was finished.

  Solid news though, there was a backboard just inside the office. A tall, flat piece of wood with ovular holes that could be used as handles or places for straps should the patient have a busted neck and need to be tied tight. Sometimes that happens in diving. You know, people smacking their heads on the board. Jimmy lifted it and I took it between my forearms and squeezed it hard, so that I had a real good grip on it.

  "I've always wondered what it would feel like to hit someone as hard as I could," Jimmy said out of nowhere. "My whole life I've been holding back. I still haven't done it though. Hit someone with all of my strength."

  Then what the fuck was that thing he just did to Donnie that threw him ten feet and broke his cabeza? Before I could even begin to fully contemplate his statement and its ill-timing, Jimmy threw open the door and pushed me hard in the back.

  "Go!"

  I had no choice. I was a reverse battering ram. Flexing my abs hard against the board, I powered out into the open pool area, pushing with all my Jimmy-fied feelings of confusion and hurt. The smell of chlorine took up residence in my nose right before I plowed into two waiting Runners and let go of the backboard. My momentum drove them into the pool with two wicked splashes.

  I'd've laughed if I didn't have to dodge a ten-foot-long lifeguard hook getting stabbed at me. I yanked it right out of the guy's hands by wedging it underneath my arm against my body and then backhanded him with it. I spun and swept his legs before collaring him around the neck with the loop: him and the hook went right in the drink with a little push from Jimmy.

  Then my forearm got grabbed and Jimmy dragged me around the far side of the pool, around the diving board, away from two Runners who slipped in the splashed water of the two I pushed in with the now-floating backboard and we took the stairs two at a time to the three sets of double doors that led to the cafeteria.

  Jimmy busted through the fifth door from the right like a fuckin' locomotive and I was right behind him to slam the door shut when we were through. Now to find Melinda, I thought. But when I turned back to survey the cafeteria, I couldn't move. Jimmy was smothering me against the solid black doors with his body, holding me back with his arms and guiding me to the side. I soon saw why: Dermoody was holding a shotgun and keeping a group of six or eight Wolves at bay, including Melinda, while Cap'n Joe had Mark in a severe triangle choke near the cafeteria exit to the quad.

  Melinda was screaming at Cap'n Joe not to do it, not to break Mark's neck, but it was too late as far as I could see. Cap'n Joe opened his arms and let Mark drop forward. He slid through the air like a crash-test dummy going out of a windshield in slow motion. His head was facing me and Jimmy but his body was facing Melinda. More than just about anything I've ever been sure of in this life, I was sure that Mark's open eyes didn't see us as he wrinkled up limp on the floor like a discarded T-shirt.

  MELINDA A.K.A. MISS CHEMISTRY

  What I learned later: when Melinda got to her fifth-period science class
, the Bunsen burners had already been set up but not plugged into the natural gas spigots sticking out from the huge two-inch-thick black tabletops that covered the locked beaker drawers and extended four inches up the walls. There were six big black tables in the room and four seats at every table. The countertops beneath the elevated cabinets on the walls were of the exact same material. No one knew exactly what they were made out of, just that you could do anything in the world to them and it wouldn't matter. Light some shit on fire? Sure, no difference. Wipe the ash off when you're done being a joker. Acid? Why not? Once it's neutralized with a base all that's left is a small circular stain. That's it. The stuff was basically indestructible.

  Maybe they were going to make "snowflakes" that day, with alum, pipe cleaners, and string as a demonstration of crystal formation and precipitation. Mr. Wilkes loved that experiment. He called it one of his fun ones. Nearly sixty-six years young and with a big bushy gray beard, Wilkes was an institution at Kung Fu. He'd been teaching there since it was built. The guy was incorruptible too. Rumor had it that Ridley liked Wilkes so much that he tried to give him a ton of money to stop teaching so that he could go fish out the rest of his life at a stream somewhere but Wilkes said no flat-out and then tried to talk to Ridley about doing something good and decent with his life. See, Mr. Wilkes never wanted to see the bad in people, only the good. He had a way of looking at you, right down in you with his blue eyes and you'd just have to tell him the truth if he asked.

  Yes, sir, that really was my blood on my homework but I did do all the calculations myself sir. Wilkes and Dermoody were the only guys in all of Kung Fu that got called sir. Wilkes, for real, and Dermoody, because you didn't have a choice. You'd get a smack in the mouth if you weren't what he called respectful. The school board had a funny way of looking the other way. And who could blame them, really? Hard to tell what bruises were caused by Dermoody and what weren't. Not like they cared. If we hit each other then Dermoody could hit us, as long as we stayed in line enough that they didn't have to call in the National Guard.