by Dan Cummings
Fragments of the fight spun around inside his skull. Staubach. Noakes. Hagan. The gun. It certainly wasn’t any damn drunken misstep. The doctor mentioned something about a nasty slice around Neil’s right eye socket which he didn’t recall receiving, a slice which Matt had attributed to a sharp edge of stone. Through a thick soup Neil wasn’t sure if he recalled Staubach pinning his arms down with his knees and pulling a knife or if he was just taking some artistic freedom with his spotty memory.
Delicately washing away the make-up from the area, the doc explained that the gash required some stitches but he had been lucky that the cut hadn’t nicked any veins or arteries; he had then asked Sam to call Neil’s parents and expediently set about with the threading. Neil was relieved that he still felt numb, staring at the blue latex gloves as they sewed the flap of skin together. No doubt the pain was in the post, express delivery for first thing in the morning. Normality seemed to slowly settle in with ugly clarity once the physician showed him the stitches in the small round mirror. Squinting in the harsh light, Neil examined the black thread curling around one hideous swollen eye which resembled a tomato trying to wink.
Zoning out on the chair, with a despondent Sam and Matt flanking him in adjoining seats, Neil listened to the doctor explain to his parents how it wouldn’t be necessary for their son to stay overnight and how a CT scan wouldn’t be required; however, a small shopping list of important instructions was given for them to follow. Neil went full circle, back to the half-remembered ferocity of the party, and now that the adrenaline had subsided, he was truly terrified of returning to school on Monday. This was no game. Knives, guns, he had really stepped in it here.
His phone thrummed against his thigh, the glow lighting the dark backseat like a bedside monitor in a sterile hospital. Before he could check it Helen said something he only half heard. ‘What?’
She looked over the seat at him with her adoring eyes, willing to forgive his underage drinking; it was, after all, a high school seniors’ Halloween party. ‘Are you sure you don’t want us to pick you up something to eat? Chinese?’
‘Not a bad idea, Neil,’ Martin joined in. ‘Some junk food might help you get over how ugly you look.’
Neil tried to offer up some mild amusement but couldn’t quite muster it. He was too busy wondering how far this would go. That’s when a sudden realisation left him cold. What happened with Lindsey?
Neil quickly checked the message — it was actually two messages now — on his WhatsApp group. It seemed Sam and Matt were pacing fretfully around a potentially explosive issue, urging him to stick to their cock and bull story regarding his injuries and laying it on pretty thick about Noakes’s uncle and his police connections. Neil had no desire to test the validity of the town’s venal police force, he just wanted to find out if Lindsey got away okay. After a soul-sucking wait, Sam confirmed that she and Deb had acquiescently bit their tongues on the matter of the armed assault and received a lift home from Lindsey’s father. Sam and Matt had already dragged Neil into an Uber. Lying in the darkness of the backseat, his face cool but burning, Neil felt weightless, imagining how this could possibly end. They cut his face. Staubach cut his face, all the while Noakes held the party hostage. There was no rewrite, no fence mending, no going back. What if they decided to hurt Lindsey for shits and giggles? Or his parents? His lungs felt empty, his heart heavier than dry cement and he almost allowed himself to spill a tear at this hopeless situation. Can’t even call the police! FUCK! What can I do?
Dropping the issue of fast-food treats, Helen chose a more advisable topic. ‘The doctor said you can’t sleep for more than two hours tonight. Your father and I will keep an eye on you. Actually, he can since you’ll probably both insist on watching some of those disgusting horror movies you both like so much,’ she smiled gently. ‘Thank God I have my iPad.’
Neil imagined those fucks harming her or his father and felt that there would be nothing he wouldn’t be prepared to do to them in retaliation. His throbbing face attempted a grateful smile. ‘I think I’ve seen enough monsters for one night.’
‘Better take that mirror out of your bedroom then,’ his dad teased.
As they pulled into the drive, the motion sensor porch light chased away the shade. Neil was sure he spotted a squat but nimble shadow-form hop down from the side gate, retreating into their back garden. Well, maybe he had time for one more monster after all.
*****
It was a long night made even longer by the periodic sleep patterns he was forced to adhere to. He didn’t drop off for the first time until four am. A rough, restless doze fuelled by stress and structured around hateful hearts and cold steel.
Thankfully, he managed to wake himself up an hour later, finding himself alone and confused on the living room couch. No, actually, he wasn’t alone. Frogmore was sitting next to him, bathed in the blue light of infomercials and flicking through the stations. ‘Hell of a shiner, old chum. You’re mixed up with some nasty folk.’
Neil didn’t reply. His face stinging, tight and swollen, he felt like a bundle of barbed wire was embedded around his eye socket. Leaning against the arm of the couch, he heard either his mom or dad boiling a kettle in the kitchen, the ceramic knock of cups, whilst he listened to a giant anthropomorphic frog state the obvious. ‘You said you don’t want my help, so what are you going to do about it?’ Frogmore inquired, a threatening, over-protective glint forming in his eyes. ‘Because evidently your self-confidence was misplaced. You have nowhere to turn—’ he had removed his cap, giving Neil’s arm a friendly swat ‘—except me. Remember Ben and Max, right?’
It was either a stupid question or rhetorical. Of course Neil did, even with his counselling and little magic Risperdal pills they couldn’t erase that diseased summer which bubbled away like stagnant bog water in his memory, innocence decaying in shades of blood red and bruise black.
‘I know I scared you that day, but that wasn’t my intention. I meant well, Neil. Sincerely. I was just trying to protect you. But I’m not here to rehash that, I just want to get you out of this pickle.’ Frogmore leaned in a little closer, lowering the drawbridge between them, suffusing strength and trust. ‘Bullies need to know their place.’
Still Neil listened, an expression of tired resignation locked in place. Frogmore’s attention moved to the sound of an approaching parent. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow, in private.’ Dropping the remote control next to Neil’s leg, he placed his cap back on its rightful place and vanished through the back of the couch just before Helen entered with a cup of coffee.
‘Awake already?’ she asked quietly, coming over to hurt herself by viewing his scar and bruises for the hundredth time.
‘I’m going to try and get another few hours.’
‘Okay, hon, your dad will be down soon. You need any painkillers? Doctor Baker said its okay for you to take Tylenol.’
Neil declined sleepily. ‘I’m okay, Ma.’ He closed his left eye, afraid at what his mother might see behind that blue tortured window.
Chapter 17
Matt thwacked the baseball with every ounce of fear and anger he had carried home with him from the night before, sending it crashing against the black polyester netting of the cage. The pitching machine seemed to stare at him like a Glock, trading out hot lead for cowhide. The barrel of Noakes’s handgun was frozen in his thoughts, a staring contest with death itself. The machine pitched another 70 mph fastball. Everything slowed down for Matt, the world coming to a dead stop, his worries stalled for one all too brief moment of sweetness. He imagined Noakes holding that gun on him, and swung.
The sound of the connection was beautiful and he wondered if Noakes’s head would sound the same if he were to use that as target practice. Letting the bat hang limp in his hand, his violence and ire exhausted, he turned from the empty pitching machine and approached Joel, the burly, bearded employee behind the shack.
Joel’s gentle eyes could see Matt’s unusually wrought nerves as easily as he could see the o
vercast clouds threatening to turn sour on the fleeting weekend. ‘What’s the matter with you today?’
Matt removed his helmet, passing it over with the in-house bat. ‘Just a bit hungover.’
Joel cast his eye over to the cage where Matt had just demonstrated remarkable accuracy for someone with a bout of the shakes. ‘Shit, kid, don’t talk to me about hangovers. You’ve got youth on your side, damn near invincible at your age. You wait ’til you turn thirty, it’s like you turn into a goddamn faggot overnight. Excuse the language, you know what I mean, a pussy.’
‘Maybe I’m just a pussy.’
Joel hung the helmet up and returned the bat to the rack. ‘Nothing else bothering you?’
Matt tried a smile on, far too optimistic and saccharine, like a photo of a white picket fence owning, nuclear family.
Joel didn’t look convinced. ‘Okay, I’m not sticking my beak in. But if you do need to talk, remember you can flap your gums here. Of course, next time you’re paying for the damn cage rental.’
Matt returned a more natural smile, still stymied by uncertainty. ‘Thanks, Joel…really.’
Joel tried to shrug it off like it was nothing but registered the sincerity in Matt’s voice. ‘Don’t mention it, kid.’
Matt tapped the counter twice in farewell and pulled his phone out of his jeans. It rang five times before Sam answered.
‘I’m all set. Let’s go see Neil.’
*****
‘Je-sus.’ Sam inspected Neil’s eye in queasy shock. ‘Is it as painful as it looks?’
Neil silently nodded, feeling like the frigging Elephant Man. ‘I’m tired more than anything. Waking up every two fucking hours,’ he snapped, unable to shirk his stress. It tended to take quite a lot to get him worked up, but last night’s disaster was a pretty good way to do it. The three of them seemed to hover in a quiet space of morbid contemplation, the music filling them up like a sonic brew.
Sam started to trail about in agitation, swept up on the current of the collective discontent and practically chewing his thumb to the bone. ‘We can’t go back to school, you know that right? We can’t go to the police or tell our parents.’ He ran a restless hand through his tumbleweed of curls. ‘It was definitely those sick fucks who killed Ollie.’
Neil tracked his pacing with one good eye, feeling too empty to comment. A slow throb of pressure pleaded for him to get some shut-eye and he felt feverish. ‘We can’t just avoid school for a year.’
Matt laced his fingers together, flexing and relaxing his worn knuckles.
‘The fuck we can’t,’ Sam practically bellowed, receiving a sharp look from Neil. Sam threw a meek, apologetic glance at both Neil and the closed bedroom door, and took his hysteria down a notch. With his indoor voice he singled out Matt. ‘After last night? Noakes held a fucking gun on you, dude.’ Then with a frenetic spin he pointed to Neil’s battle scar. ‘Whilst that cunt Shit Storm carved up your fucking face.’ His hands clapped over his mouth in a desperate prayer gesture. ‘We can’t avoid school?’ he considered with a humourless laugh. ‘I didn’t really give a shit about graduating anyway.’
Matt kept his voice moderated. ‘Okay, Bueller, and when Principal Dipshit starts calling your house and sending letters and generally wondering where the hell you are, what happens then? Or better yet, pretend that alcoholic flat out doesn’t give a shit, what happens when your parents want to go to your graduation?’
‘We need to survive until graduation.’ Sam had the eyes of a condemned man.
‘Neil, you going to weigh in here?’ Matt asked diplomatically, pulling his cap off and using the bill to slap the hat into his palm.
Neil sighed, gathering his thoughts before making his decision. ‘I’m not hiding. I’m going in tomorrow.’
This seemed to blow Sam’s mind. ‘You’re nuts, wh—’
‘Sam.’ Neil’s voice was calm and firm. ‘Sam. You can’t hide from these guys. But if they really want to find us they will. You’re already blaming them for your cat, meaning if it was them, then they already know where you live.’
Sam seethed through his teeth, his eyes beginning to glisten with the first faint traces of frustrated tears. ‘We’re so fucked.’
Matt closed his eyes peacefully, trying to attain a fraction of the calm which Neil was exhibiting. ‘They made their point last night, in front of the whole senior year no less. It might be over.’ He was uncertain whether he was supposed to phrase that as a question or a statement. ‘Either way,’ he added, ‘I’m with Neil.’
Neil’s hands moved softly and smoothly, secretly toying with something in his palms. Sam’s blunt reaction made it clear what he thought of Matt’s idealism. Internally he wrestled with some pretty unwelcome facts. It was his actions which had first got him and by extension, Neil and Matt, mixed up with Staubach’s untamed furore. Compounding this acceptance was his disgust at his own weakness. Twice now he had been paralysed by fear whilst his friends took the brunt. With a deep reluctant sigh, he seemed to deflate, all the muscle-locking tension radiating out of him. ‘If you two are going in tomorrow,’ he hesitated, ‘I am too. But I’m going in armed.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Matt snapped, ‘great idea. Let’s go on a school shooting spree because that’s always the best course of action.’
‘Did I say that?’ Sam looked as shocked as Matt at the suggestion. ‘You both know I don’t own a gun on account of me not being a childish fucking dickhead. But shit, I’ll take a screwdriver or something. Something I can conceal.’
That seemed acceptable under the circumstances. What was the worst that could happen? Neil turned his head and stared off obsessively into a corner of the room next to his long-abandoned black Gibson SG — purchased in honour of Tony Iommi — and the window overlooking the back yard. ‘You’re not taking a weapon into school, Sam. Think it through. What do you think would happen if you pulled it or worse yet, used it?’
Sam and Matt were beginning to find the lack of emotion in his voice unsettling. ‘I think that if I’m in a situation where that’s even a choice then I’m fucked either way.’
Neil turned his head from the corner, the gloomy daylight highlighting his raw damage. ‘I’m not just talking about trouble with those guys. I’m talking about the police. But come to think of it, if you really want to give Staubach an excuse to go knife happy then pulling a screwdriver out on him would probably do it.’
‘I can’t believe this.’ Sam stopped walking miles in the ten-by-twelve bedroom and parked a haunch on the desk.
Neil watched the corner again. ‘Let’s just see how tomorrow goes before we do anything drastic.’
Matt fixed his cap back on his head and looked at how physically and emotionally drained Neil appeared. ‘You’ve had no real sleep. You’re probably in a lot of pain and want us to shut the fuck up so—’ he got Sam’s attention and thumbed the exit ‘—we’ll let you get some rest.’
Sam seemed to find a small measure of calm, the chance to get behind the wheel and carefully order his thoughts being what he really needed right now. ‘Neil, I’m sorry about this.’
Two eyes, one from a simpler time, the other from hell, settled on Sam. ‘It’ll be okay. We’ll all be okay.’
Sam leaned over to exchange a half-hearted palm slap with Neil. Quickly and carefully, Neil shoved the palmed object underneath the thigh of his jeans.
Matt repeated the bond. ‘See you tomorrow.’
With heavy heads they shuffled out, leaving Neil alone. He removed the sliver of the Firebird’s windshield from under his leg; it was still warm from his grip. Getting up, he went over and closed his door. ‘Against my better judgement, I’m giving you a second chance. Please don’t make me regret it.’
Frogmore materialised from the corner of the room. ‘I promise to follow your rules to the letter. I’ll take it easy on them.’
Chapter 18
It seemed funny how the school conformed to its usual patterns and routines after Neil’s life had
become endangered on Saturday night. Every student behaved the same as if nothing had transpired; well, maybe a few traded whispered comments and second glances, maybe placing bets on his life expectancy. All day long he had fended off solicitous looks and delicate questions from faculty members, explaining his slashed-up orbital by way of the same fictitious tumble down the embankment.
Dropping a handful of text books into his locker, he looked up and down the corridor, somewhat relieved not to find Frogmore dropping the bodies of any kid indulging in Chinese whispers or throwing lingering glances Neil’s way. The knot of doubt slowly dissolved in Neil’s stomach. He had kept his hood up; a minor attempt at anonymity couldn’t hurt despite the fact that his height made him stick out like a sore thumb.
Closing his locker door, he was caught by surprise, not by a fist, but by Lindsey’s shocked expression. ‘God, Neil.’ She hugged him then leaned back, her eyes appearing to memorise every shade and vivid detail. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m alive.’ He tried to be wry. But he actually did feel a little better just seeing her. ‘For now. How about you?’
She placed a hand on his chin, angling his head to get a clearer view. ‘Those fucking assholes. I was so scared, I wanted to go with you but Noakes kept his gun on us. I’m amazed he allowed Matt and Sam to carry you off.’
‘He’s a real sweetheart. They didn’t hurt you or Deb, did they?’