by A. J. Lape
Finn aborted the typing and narrowed his blue eyes into glaciers. He then opened his mouth and snapped it shut. With a headshake, he finally murmured, “No one wants to be strung along, but there are some things you need to understand about Dylan. Number one…”
“Walker!” This from the door.
I didn’t even have time to form a response. All I could do was turn around, hands up in surrender.
It was Grumpy…no Dylan present.
Thank God for the little things.
“What are you two doing?” he barked. “Taylor’s going bonkers probably turning over every car in the lot.”
“Merde,” I heard Finn say…no kidding.
Grumpy schlepped in and fell down in a black folding chair. He didn’t push for an explanation. His mind was elsewhere—wondering, my guess, if he needed to convert to Judaism.
But oh, I thought the coast was clear too soon. Seconds later, Coach Wallace followed, expecting to find nothing but an empty office, but instead found his own personal effects being raped and pillaged. He went beet-red, all his energy turned on me instead of Finn who could’ve cared less if a raging bull was headed straight for his gut. Coach gruffed, “I would be tempted to say this was the Nerd Squad, but that’d insinuate there were three brains in this room.”
I felt a laugh building but somehow managed to look offended. I strode forward, hoping to shield Finn’s indiscretions. “I have confidence issues already, Coach. My therapist wouldn’t like your phrasing.”
He bobbed his afro’d head from side to side, attempting to peer around me toward Finn. “What are you up to, Lively?”
Finn ignored him, typing in names, and hitting the print button.
“There’s nothing in here but us drifters,” I told him.
Coach shook his head slowly, his frown growing more conspicuous. “Drifters or grifters?” he muttered. “Because I’m sure your pretty little smile swindled these two upstanding players of mine to do something they know I wouldn’t approve of. And what exactly would that offense be?”
What we were doing was barely legal. All right, it wasn’t legal at all, but when you had a job to do, sometimes you had to rationalize the crap out of your assignment. I opted for a version of the truth, telling him I had a brainstorm regarding who painted his car (um, no), and how I planned to catch them, not mentioning Finn dug through school records on possible identity thieves. I then went for broke, being overly dramatic about how I needed money, or I’d be forced into a life of walking dogs and picking up their poop.
I actually sniveled.
Luckily, Coach didn’t care because he pulled his buzzing cell phone out of his hoodie pocket, glanced at the number with a smile, and exited the room.
“Facebook girl?” I yelled to his backside.
He ignored me with a snap of his hand…holy crap on a cracker. Was the Milky Way about to collapse?
Grumpy leaned back in his seat, his eyes brimming with laughter. “Did I hear this correctly? You’re trying to figure out who painted Coach’s car? You couldn’t catch a fly if your big mouth was a Venus fly trap,” he chuckled.
Grumpy had a deep scar in his right eyebrow where he’d head-butted Finn in one of those guy moments where they tried to act cooler than they actually were. His eyebrow came out the loser. It was puffy with a dozen imperfect dots, appearing to have been stitched together by the guy who finished last in medical school. I got so angered at the insult I hauled off and smacked him twice in the scar.
“Use your words, Walker!” he bellowed.
I didn’t have time to use anything because the guy that I beat up yesterday (well, slapped around because he accosted the other girl) jumped me from behind, pulling me out the door by my hair. One moment I was sideways on the tile, the next I lay on my back and was so shocked-out I feared I’d have a stroke. Once through the door, I somehow made it to a standing position but not before he grabbed me by the hair and shoved me face-first up against the gym wall, banging my forehead so hard my teeth crunched and rattled.
“I’m going to kill you!” he barked.
Here’s the thing. This guy was shorter than me. And maybe even weighed less. Problem was, when a guy was mad, testosterone always overpowered estrogen. It was an oversight the powers-that-be should’ve thought through during creation.
With every ounce of fiber in my being, I elbowed him in the gut, then turned, and…spit on him. Yeah, that felt good.
“You…blankety-blanking, blank-blank-blank,” he cursed. I’d heard a lot of cursing in my life, but this guy took the cake, and I’m pretty sure Heaven just struck his name from the “maybe” list.
In what had only been a few seconds, Grumpy tore through the door like a bat running out of Hell, aiming for the guy I referred to as Jerk-wad. True to a real brother’s personality—you know, I can talk about her, but you can’t—Grumpy went ape poopoo and dove into the fight.
He pounded him once.
Twice.
And would’ve gone for a dozen more, if time permitted.
After a few headshakes, I realized Grumpy wasn’t in control of this fight. As much as he’d been dishing out, this other guy was meeting and sometimes exceeding. That was odd because Grumpy packed a mean punch. Made me think Jerk-wad was fueled by something other than anger and food. I dove back in the middle, not having any kind of form or end-game in mind other than for Jerk-wad to shut the freak up.
My bra strap ripped, my tights got a hole in the knee, and God Bless Native Americans, but the ponkey tore the shirt of my people. The lace of my black bra peeked through the tear, right there for everyone to see it was padded!! Ugh, the nerve! My instincts said to bite him, but I read somewhere cannibals could get some sort of brain disease. Instead, I chose the happies. Murphy said a swift shot to the groin would down any man. Unfortunately, that message didn’t make it to the execution part of my brain. So I just swung. I swung for the moon but got nothing but freaking air and Jerk-wad’s butt in my face.
FYI, I stunk at fighting. It was almost embarrassing.
Grumpy’s eyes had gone wide, and he had both thumbs trained on Jerk-wad’s eye sockets. Oh crap. Oh, crap, oh crap, oh crap. I heard Dylan’s running gait thunder across the floor. Dylan had this presence, like energy flowed off of him. Sometimes it was good; sometimes it was so bad only a moron wouldn’t be scared. I peered through my hair that had flipped over my face and crawled out of the pile. My scalp hurt. Scratches marred both arms and legs. And I felt cold air on one of my boobs. All I could hope for was that Jerk-wad didn’t carry rabies. When Dylan got closer, his face paled and his gaze went wide, giving my body a once-over like I was one step from a medevac. He went breathless, his chest not even heaving, eyes blinking from stark, cold fear to undeniable fury. I’d found when Dylan was really angry and wrestling with adrenaline, he was almost statue-like. As if his body conserved energy for one burst of power that’d be cataclysmic.
Dylan literally picked Grumpy and Jerk-wad up by the scruff, but right then Jerk-wad squared his stance, shoved his hand in his back pocket…and pulled out a knife. Popping the six-inch blade to an up position, he brought the crazy and took a swipe at Dylan’s gut. Dylan jumped back with a curse.
Dylan clenched and unclenched his left hand, taking one methodical step forward. Not worried in the slightest.
Grumpy bent at the waist, trying to retrain his lungs how to breathe. “He beat the crap out of Walker, man. He came at her first…and slammed her head up against the wall. Do something.”
OHHHHHH. CRAAAAPPPPP.
Another step. And another. “Let me take a guess,” Dylan said lowly. “You’re the asshole that Darcy stopped from molesting that girl.”
Jerk-wad squirmed.
Hemmed and hawed.
Dylan glanced to the ceiling. “Well, thank you, God,” he seethe
d sarcastically, “because I’d scheduled a little meet-and-greet with you anyway. Now it seems like you’ve been delivered up to me instead.”
“I do want to kill her,” Jerk-wad hissed, adding a psychopathic laugh. “And by God, I will.”
Dylan dove (jaws and fists clenched), and took Jerk-wad out in a rib-cracking explosion. The knife sky-rocketed, arcing up into a “U,” and coming to rest point-side down underneath the basketball goal. Jerk-wad writhed for two-point-something seconds (probably a reflex) and then flattened like he’d gotten trampled by a herd of angry elephants. Dylan pushed up on his hands, his I’m-going-to-play-with-you face grinning. But before he got off a shot with a fist, Finn met him in a full-bodied tackle, and they slid across the recently waxed floor like stones in a game of curling.
Dylan immediately scrambled to his feet; this time Grumpy lunged at him with his eyes closed. Guess he expected pain.
Dylan got knocked on his butt twice, trying to get to Jerk-wad which only made him angrier. Coach Wallace instantly appeared, distraught, quickly surmising Finn and Grumpy merely tried to keep Dylan’s beast on the chain. He wrenched his way between them, tailed by an even more distraught Principal Grim Ward.
Can you say…W. T. FFFuuuuuuudddGE!!
Grim Ward ran the place, and by goodness, we barely knew what the man looked like. I’d always thought he was of the mole genus because he rarely saw the light of day.
Coach blinked rapidly, pointing a shaking finger in Grumpy’s face while he bent over and angrily snatched a still-wrestling Dylan and Finn off the floor. “What in God’s name happened here?” he barked.
Grumpy served up an explanation.
He raised his shirt, spitting blood into the hem, furiously pointing to Jerk-wad who lay there, still not able to reclaim his breathing. “He hit Walker, Coach!” he barked back. “He claims he’s going to kill her, but I’ll kill him first. I want his dead body to lie on the pavement so the vultures can pick away at it.”
And this is why I loved Grumpy…
We all heard something. Maybe it was Dylan breathing; maybe it was Dylan’s heart beating, but whatever the case, the six of us took pause. Like you do before you go down one of those shark tanks and find their teeth look bigger than you initially thought. There was a flash of speed, and this time Coach and Finn brought Dylan down in a body slam.
I needed to barf.
Did they not know they asked him to willingly castrate himself?
Finn had one swinging arm and Coach had the other. Both were flung around like ragdolls in an angry dog’s mouth. Coach’s glasses went airborne, and he caught an elbow to the jaw—Finn took one to the cheek when he dodged Dylan’s headbutt. They made no headway at corralling Dylan until Principal Ward wormed his way between them. Principal Ward was a large man—head and shoulders above most—but he was no match for Dylan when his Darcy-switch had been flipped. His comb-over began to flap, this way and that. Last I saw him, he didn’t even have a comb-over. Once again, the mole thing.
Finn, Coach, and Principal Ward frantically locked on my gaze, begging for an assist. Pure unadulterated fear froze my body in place. After a few breaths, I fearfully tripped forward and braced both palms on Dylan’s chest—an effort to calm but push further away if need be. “I’m good,” I whispered.
“He hurt you,” he growled. Fat tears immediately spilled down my cheeks, and I’m pretty sure I had raccoon eyes from the sweaty brawl. When Dylan saw them, he clenched his teeth so hard it’s a wonder he didn’t crack a molar. Dylan was thisclose to doing permanent damage. I watched in tense anticipation, knowing he could freaking flatten the whole place if he so chose.
Pinky swear, his eyes demanded.
I searched for a pinky swear loophole and came up empty-handed. I gave him a subliminal I’m-good face, but by the heavy emotion crackling between us, I got the impression he didn’t buy it. I should’ve lied. At this, Dylan’s anger revved again, and after a few shoves and words you shouldn’t say in front of your principal, Dylan eventually heeled enough for Principal Ward to demand a reason for the rumble.
Coach verbally stumbled around, but as I brushed imaginary dust from my clothing, I calmly dispensed the details. “Jerk-wad here fondled a girl yesterday, I took up for her, he came at me like a spider monkey, Jon defended me, we all started punching, he pulled a knife on Dylan, blah, blah, blah, it got ugly.”
I made an exaggerated switchblade movement of decapitation, promising I’d find my girl cojones if he came at me again. Well, at least I planned to find them. Then I dumbly added—and let me emphasize the dumb—“You’d better find a safe house, Jerk-wad, because I’m not through with you yet.”
Then I giggled.
Giggled, I say. Who giggles when your boob is practically hanging out?
Principal Ward mulled those words over so long it began to make me nervous. Slowly, he walked underneath the basketball goal and pried the knife from the hardwood where it had firmly planted itself, pointing north. Once he flipped the blade down, with one slow blink, he drilled his angry brown eyes into Jerk-wad, then to Grumpy, and ended on me. “Detention,” he snapped, “all three of you!”
Well, well, well, words currently escaped me.
I slid my eyes to him, painting on a flabbergasted face—letting him know, point blank, he’d blown this. He’d blown this by incarcerating the kids who were the heroes. AP Unger and Murphy were friends—as in “real” friends. In fact, they dueled in Ruzzle almost nightly. That didn’t always bode well for me, but I can promise you AP Unger would’ve handled this situation differently. Principal Ward and Murphy didn’t have a relationship. In fact, he’d just guaranteed Murphy would now be his mortal enemy.
Pardon me, but the lousy, donkey lovin’, sack of shiz deserved it.
Dylan’s words rang like a gunshot through the room. “No frigging way,” he hissed, turning to him. “Some guy hit my best friend—a girl—her clothes are visibly damaged, and you’re okay with that? The guy has a knife. He took a swipe at me, for God’s sake, and should be expelled because of what he would’ve done with it had I not jumped out of the way.”
The record player screeched in my mind.
I’d cheated the Grim Reaper…AGAIN…how much longer could I outrun his scythe?
I buried my head in Dylan’s chest, and God love him, he kissed the top of my head. “I’m going to leave this world early, aren’t I?” I mumbled into his shirt. “And this was my best bra. Black and lacy, the recipe for sexy according to last month’s Cosmopolitan.” Good grief. I’d lost my mind. I said that out loud…right here in front of God and everybody. I glanced up into his face, tears stinging the backs of my eyes.
Dylan rubbed circles around my back.
“Please, don’t punish them,” Dylan begged Principal Ward. “Darcy and Jon are like brothers and sisters. They fight, but if someone else messes with the other, we get involved. This guy hit a girl and practically molested another. Doesn’t that count for something? You should be patting them on the back, not punishing them for having character.”
Principal Ward didn’t consider us all bros. He wanted blood.
My hands shook a little—maybe this was shock. Maybe for the first time in my sorry life I had a normal freaking reaction until…
I got to thinking. Detention wasn’t such a bad idea. Maybe detention is where I needed to be. Bean said Slapstick Wilson and Damon Whitehead were practically founding members. While there, I could also throw out random questions about Coach’s car being someone’s art project.
Simple math.
At that time, Finn sidled up alongside Dylan, giving me a nod that said, I got the information, and my genius powers gave you something a little extra. He threw his arm around Dylan’s shoulder before Dylan could dislocate Principal Ward’s. “It’s a lovely day, n’est-ce pas?” he asked him.
Dylan blinked at the statement.
Blinked like the whole thing was so preposterous it had to be an optical illusion.
Grumpy held his chin high, blatantly daring Principal Ward to throw him in the school’s boot camp for losers. “Listen, if that’s how you want to play this thing, then go ahead and put us in lockdown. You’re screwing up, Principal Ward, and you’re going to know it by the time everyone’s parents get a earful of what happened here.”
Yeah, it’d be Valley’s next political football if I had anything to say about it.
Principal Ward didn’t appreciate Grumpy’s choice of verbiage. Even told him to point blank, “Shut up.”
Jerk-wad had wisely kept his mouth in check, but Principal Ward bore a hole in his face (should’ve been his crotch) that said discussions with him specifically were far from over. He then unloaded a similar look on Coach Wallace. Coach was being blamed for not being present, I sighed, and all he’d wanted was to talk to his Facebook girlfriend.
“Can’t the man have a girlfriend?” my inner-idiot whispered in his defense.
Assuming I should be in tears, Coach gave a silent assessment of me, trying to figure out what made me tick and whether it was worth trying to un-tick.
Well, guess what? He hired me, and the road to success ain’t always pretty.
9. Hanukkah Hell
Hanukkah started this past weekend, and it was tradition for Marjorie and me to celebrate with Rookie. Rookie was a proud half Jew, but in truth, he only half observed the holidays. Partly because my mother’s twin, Tabitha Arthur, I think, was the one thing he truly worshiped.