Haffling (The Haffling series)

by Caleb James

  We turned the corner onto Houston. “What’s wrong is… oh shit!” I grabbed her hand and stopped.

  At first she thought I’d lost the game—not likely, considering the laundry list of what was wrong in our lives. And then she saw them, like a band of trolls from one of Marilyn’s paintings. Gregor Slotnik—six foot four and two hundred fifty pounds, and his gang of shaved-head, steroid-pumped, high school cretins. They were twenty feet away, hanging out in front of the Korean grocers.

  “What’s wrong,” I said, abruptly turning ninety degrees and heading to cross Houston and get away from them. Maybe they hadn’t spotted us. “Is we live in a shit hole, your clothes come from thrift stores, our mother has schizophrenia, I don’t have a boyfriend, and Gregor Slotnik wants to beat the crap out of me.”

  “Hey, Nevus, what’s the hurry?” Slotnik was right behind us.

  “Run?” Alice asked.

  I looked for escape routes. “Too late.” Across the busy four-lane street, I spotted Biff Knapp’s shaved head, and coming up on either side, two more of Slotnik’s thugs. “They were waiting for us.”

  “No,” she said, “they were waiting for someone. It’s just our lucky day.”

  “Leave us alone, Slotnik,” I shouted back.

  “Not a problem, fuck face. Give me twenty bucks, and you’ll be on your way.”

  We were on the corner where First becomes Allen. It’s a busy intersection, and as people hurried past on foot and in cars, a few glanced our way. Did anyone understand that a sixteen-year-old kid and his eleven-year-old sister were about to get mugged? If they did, would anyone stop or try to help? Sometimes I hated this city. If I had twenty bucks, I might give it to Slotnik. If I were alone, no way. But Alice was here, and she didn’t need this kind of shit. “I don’t have any money, Slotnik.”

  “Too bad.” And he and Knapp and three others were closing in, pushing us back toward a chain-link fence that separated a discount lighting store from a used restaurant supply house. It was clear they knew their flanking technique. Alice was probably right, and this wasn’t personal. I felt her hand in mine as she glared at Slotnik.

  “Your sister’s getting pretty.” He smirked and was so close I felt the spittle fly from his lips. “I know people who pay good money for little blonde girls.” And then he did the unforgiveable. He reached his meaty paw out and grabbed her by the arm.

  Suddenly, it was personal. In moments like this, my brain did funny things. I should have been scared or pissed off. But for me that came later. Right now all I could think of was how to get us out of this. Alice was on the same wavelength.

  She screamed like a banshee. And while New Yorkers were good at staying in their own iPod bubbles, the eardrum-shattering noise that came from Alice could not be ignored.

  I watched Slotnik hesitate, and the thought that ran through my head—take out the leader, and the others won’t stop you. I let go of Alice’s hand, and before Slotnik knew what I intended, I dropped to the ground, and with a practiced sweep, knocked his legs out from under him. Then a knee to the groin.

  He gagged and doubled over. His eyes bugged.

  I could have stopped there. Maybe I should have. But in war it was a mistake to leave your enemy mobile. I rolled to my feet, glared at Knapp and the other miscreants, and aimed my heel at Slotnik’s right kneecap. It was fast and surgical. A move I’d practiced thousands of times in Sifu William’s Dojo. I didn’t want to think about the crack of bone as my foot connected or the sick twist beneath my heel that let me know I’d hurt him bad. As in have-to-go-to-the-emergency-room bad. As in if this wasn’t self-defense, I-could-land-in-juvie-for-assault bad. As in I’m sixteen, and they’d probably try me as an adult bad.

  Alice had stopped screaming, and a circle of onlookers had formed. Several had their cell phones out, and I think a couple were filming.

  Gregor rolled, screaming on the sidewalk. His broad face was beet red, tears streamed, and snot ran.

  I heard a siren and saw a police cruiser turn off Houston. It was heading toward us.

  I grabbed Alice. “Run!”

  I wondered if Slotnik’s hoods would follow, but a glance back and I saw them running off in the other direction, leaving their leader bawling in pain.

  We ran. All I could think was how Alice’s starched white shirt practically glowed. We zigged and zagged toward Chinatown and had to slow when we hit the crush of Mulberry Street, which even at seven in the morning was jammed with foot traffic, cars, cabs, and double-parked delivery trucks.

  Alice whispered, “I think we’re okay.”

  My height was both an advantage in that I could look over most everybody’s head, and also a liability—tall white boy in killer clown shirt in Chinatown. If anyone were following, I wasn’t hard to spot. I didn’t see any cops in pursuit, and I was pretty sure Slotnik’s gang was several blocks north. And then it hit me. “Damn.”

  “Don’t think about it,” Alice said.

  I didn’t even have to tell her what I was thinking.

  “You had to hurt him, Alex. And you had to hurt him a lot or he’d just come after us. You had no choice.”

  Tears welled. I did not want to cry. But why did this stuff have to keep happening to us?

  “Let’s go in here,” she said, looking in the window of a Chinese bakery.

  “I don’t have any cash.”

  But she’d already gone in. I trailed after her, breathing the wonderful smells of fresh-baked pork buns and cream-filled pastries. A Chinese woman behind the counter was bringing out a tray of steaming almond cookies. She smiled at Alice. “Such a pretty girl.”

  Alice flashed her the sweetest smile. Her blue eyes practically glowed in the fluorescent light. There was something in her expression, and I’d seen her do this many times. The word that came to mind was “irresistible.”

  The baker woman put down her tray. “Would you like a cookie?”

  Alice beamed. She was looking directly at the woman, their gazes connected. “I don’t have any money.”

  The longer the woman looked at my sister, the brighter her own smile became. Without looking, she pulled a paper bag from the counter and filled it with half a dozen cookies. “Here,” she said. “When you have money, you’ll come back.” She handed Alice the pastries. As her fingers brushed my sister’s, I saw a spark in the woman’s eyes. Like just having that little contact with Alice had brought her joy.

  “Thank you,” Alice said. And clutching her bag of cookies, we left.

  Once outside, she passed me one of the still-warm treats.

  “How the hell do you do that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s kind of a feeling. Like it made her happy to give me those cookies.”

  “Great, you make people happy, and I make people want to beat me up. Awesome.” As I said that, I realized that before we went into the bakery I’d been on the verge of tears over how bad I felt for hurting Gregor Slotnik. And now…. “These are dammed good cookies.” They really were, crunchy on the outside, chewy inside with a rich almond flavor, and still warm.

  And for the three remaining blocks to get us to the School of the Transformation on Mott Street, where Alice was in the fifth grade, we ate the delicious cookies and nothing bad happened.

  Three

  I HELD the empty bag from the bakery and watched Alice line up with the other uniformed kids in her class. I was mesmerized by the neat patterns of children—a little army in blue-and-green plaid with bulging backpacks. “Off to war,” I muttered, and my thoughts were pulled uneasily back to Gregor Slotnik—you hurt him bad, Alex. I could still hear and feel the bone shatter beneath my heel. I reminded myself he was going to hurt us, that it was justified. But was it? Was it okay to hurt someone like that? Who was I to make that decision? Maybe he’d have left us alone once he realized I had no money to give him.

  “I know you.” A boy’s deep voice came from behind my back.

  I startled. “You talking to me?” I turne
d and met the most amazing pair of brown eyes, surrounded by incredibly long lashes. I swallowed as I took in the full effect of his shaggy hair that wasn’t brown or red, but somewhere in between. My mouth was dry. Say something, Alex. “We go to school together.”

  “Duh,” he said. “You’re Alex Nevus. I’m Jerod Haynes. We’re in like three classes together.”

  Of course you are, I thought, wondering what the hell I was supposed to say while making several rapid connections. Jerod sat two seats behind and off to my right in AP English. He was at the next table in Organic Chemistry lab with his partner Joanie something. In AP Calc he was also behind and to my right. He was dressed like me, only his jeans looked expensive, and his untucked polo shirt probably didn’t come from the dollar bin at the Goodwill. I snorted as I made the awful connection.

  “What?” he asked. “What’s so funny?”

  “You don’t want to know.” More importantly, I’d have to be held at gunpoint to tell this totally straight boy I’d just realized—he was the boy in my dreams. Okay, Alex, fine, you’re not going to say that. But for God’s sake say something. “So what are you doing here?”

  “My little brother’s in third.” He broke gaze and looked across the lines of kids as they got sucked into the doors. “And… he’s in.”

  “I’ve never seen you here before,” I said.

  “Yeah, our au pair’s sick… but I’ve been here before. I’ve seen you.”

  In three years of going to the same high school, this was probably the most I’d ever spoken to Jerod Haynes. What did you say to the most beautiful boy in class, who had an au pair and jeans that cost more than Alice and my entire wardrobes combined?

  “Oh,” I stammered, wondering how I could possibly have missed him and trying to think if it meant anything that he’d noticed me.

  “Yeah, you usually seem pretty focused on your sister. That’s her, right?”

  “Yup.” And while I normally had no trouble finding words, it seemed like I’d have to make do with single syllables and small sentences.

  “So you heading to Stuy, or what?”

  “Yeah.” Although with Mom AWOL, I’d contemplated cutting school to try and track her down. He was giving me a funny look, like I was slow or something.

  “We should get going,” he said. “I’ve got too many tardies as it is.”

  Walking helped. I didn’t have to look him dead-on and think about how in the sunlight his eyes were flecked with gold.

  “You kind of keep to yourself, don’t you?” he said.

  “I guess.” I knew he was being polite, doing what people do to fill the airspace. But it felt nice, and I don’t know what possessed me. “I don’t fit in.”

  “Because you skipped a grade?”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking the easy out.

  “I think it’s cool. If I could have cut a year or two off my time I would have jumped at it. Sadly, I’m not a genius.”

  “Give me a break. You’re in all AP classes, and you’re on two varsity sports? Then you had the lead in the senior class play and….”

  “Huh?” he responded.

  Suddenly, I felt like a stalker. That was way too much information, Alex.

  “But you don’t really try, do you?” he said. “I mean, we’ve been in the same classes for years, and this is the first we’ve spoken.”

  I didn’t want to contradict, but I could think of at least three occasions where words had passed. In chemistry he’d asked to borrow a reagent. In English, I’d commented on his essay about the roles of women in the medieval romances of Christian de Troyes—although maybe that didn’t really count, because it was more talking about than talking to. And finally, a couple weeks back in the cafeteria, he’d asked me about the specialty coffee I’d splurged on between classes. I’d tried to respond to him, but had just burned my tongue and had shrugged like a moron. “High school is just something to get through.”

  “You’re pretty intense, Alex Nevus. I wish I had your focus.”

  Is he making fun of me? I could only imagine what I must look like to him… tall dork who could barely string a sentence together. “Trust me, you don’t.” To make the awkwardness even worse, my mental brick wall constructed in the morning had crumbled. And while I’d mostly shut her out since the melee with Slotnik, Nimby had been batting at my shoulder for the last half hour. I would not look at her or listen as she sang, “Alex and Jerod kissing in a tree….” I couldn’t begin to explain to Jerod how spot-on he’d been about my focus. So while trying to appear like a normal person, I was simultaneously mortaring down imaginary bricks to block out my pointy-eared fairy. I’ve been doing this for so long it was automatic. But as we waited at a crosswalk for the light, I caught Jerod’s gaze.

  “Do you have any friends?” he asked. His tone seemed sincere.

  “Not really,” I admitted. “Just me and Alice… and I guess my Sifu.”

  “Like martial arts, Sifu?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s cool. What kind?”

  And I told him about Wing Chung, thinking like most people he wouldn’t know what it was, or think it had something to do with a weird band from the eighties, but no.

  “That was Bruce Lee’s form,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s like all close fighting stuff, right?”

  “Totally, which when I was little was great,” I said, finding my tongue had finally loosened. “It gave me confidence, so that even if I was fighting someone a lot bigger—” I am not going to think of Gregor Slotnik. But of course I did, and Nimby made a crunching sound in my ear. No, I wasn’t going to listen. I caught a glance of Jerod. He was smiling over perfect teeth. Was anything about this guy not right? What were we talking about? “Yeah,” I said. “So even when I was little I knew how to leverage my strength. Wing Chung pulls from your center, and your arms and legs are kind of like a praying mantis’s claws. Everything in tight.” Thinking about Sifu, I chuckled.

  “You laughed?” Jerod said, as if shocked.

  “You mocking me?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh.”

  Something in my chest fluttered. I clamped down the words that wanted to blurt out: “You’ve been watching me? You noticed my existence?” Instead, I shared what had flashed to mind. “Sifu William is a funny guy—funny good. He’s incredibly old, at least in his seventies, maybe eighties, smokes like a chimney… little guy. He says stuff like ‘little movement, much strength’. He’s not kidding. These big guys come into the studio and they’re all buffed up and have been doing martial arts forever. They take one look at Sifu and think the guy’s a pushover. So they challenge.”

  “Like in the movies?”

  What the hell? Just the sound of Jerod’s voice made my organs go squish. “Are you talking kung fu movies?”

  “Oh yeah. Love ’em. Not the new ones, but the old ones from Hong Kong. And all the Bruce Lee ones, those are amazing. So what happens when these guys challenge Sifu William?”

  “He teaches them an important lesson. Sometimes he doesn’t even put out his cigarette, but brings them down with one hand.”

  “No shit?”

  “No. After that, one of two things happens. The guy gets pissed off and leaves, or he realizes he’s been wasting a lot of time, asks Sifu if he can stay, and becomes a student.”

  “Do you think maybe sometime you could take me?” he asked. “It sounds awesome.”

  “It is.” But I wondered if I’d built up Sifu’s basement studio into more than it was. Would Jerod be disappointed and not see what I saw? And probably he was just saying he wanted to go to be polite. Although his voice sounded sincere, and I had a freakish ability to know when someone was lying. We rounded the block and came to Battery Park. The Tribeca Bridge was off to our right and Stuyvesant High School loomed in the distance. Ten stories high, with its central entryway and tan brick walls. To many, it was considered the top academic high school in the city. To get in, you n
eeded one of the highest scores on the admissions test they give in eighth grade. I was lucky to be going here. Kids would spend tens of thousands of dollars taking review courses for that stupid exam. I had just studied my ass off, knowing I needed to get in, as it had a lot to do with my bigger plans.

  Jerod and I headed toward the stairs outside the enclosed walkway that was the school’s official entry. My moment with Jerod was just about over. To drive that point home, a tall, model-pretty blonde girl with long curls tied back in a ponytail, flawless skin, and blue eyes waved to him. She was with an Asian girl and a tall Asian boy—Joseph Kwan. The blonde’s smile was bright, and from the way she was hanging by the bicycle racks I got the impression she was waiting for… Jerod. Yup, and Nimby was right in my ear. “Oh no.” Her tone was high-pitched and mocking. “He’s got a girlfriend.” Of course he does, I thought. I knew that.

  “I want you to meet some people,” Jerod said.

  Crap! “Sure,” I answered, feeling dull and awkward in my too-tall body.

  “Hey, Ash!” he called to the girl.

  “Hey, cutie.” Her tone was flirtatious. She skipped toward him, her skirt flaring out over her long, tanned legs.

  I felt him pull away, our walk and talk over. I watched pretty Ashley thread an arm through his. She tilted her face up, he leaned in, and they kissed.

  It felt like something had just landed on my chest. I looked away. Alex, I thought, this is pathetic. He’s straight, and of course he’s going to kiss the prettiest girl in the class.

  “Ashley, this is Alex,” he said, pulling back from the kiss.

  She wrinkled her nose, and dimples formed in her cheeks. Her smile seemed forced. “Hi.”

  I nodded, unable to rip my focus from her arm twined through his.

  The two other kids had joined us. I said hi to Joseph, who’d been my lab partner in Physics last year. And was introduced to Anna Sui, another junior.

  Ashley pulled Jerod toward the lines of kids going up the stairs. Anna was on the other side of him. I hung back with Joseph, who asked me if I’d started in on college applications. It was the kind of stuff we’d talk about, both of us wanting to get into good premed programs. His options wide open, mine much more limited.