He slides his hands into the back pockets of his slim black jeans and places one black-and-gold sneaker lightly in front of him, a ballerina relaxing for a moment between pirouettes. “You see anything?” he asks hopefully.
“Ooh! Ooh! I see something!” PJ says. “I! See! Tacoooooooos! ”
Yes, it’s taco day. The smell of hamburger meat is thick in the air, and I can tell that the cooks here have never eaten Mexican food before, because it smells like sloppy joes. I grab a mint-green tray with little sections in it for the different foods—the trays are a superheavy plastic that looks like it will still be here a thousand years from now, after the fall of humanity—and start assembling tacos from the steaming buffet before us.
Jake rolls up the sleeves of his white oxford—he has this special roll that makes the sleeves lie flat very neatly—as he grabs a tray and starts loading up his tacos with the different fixin’s. “Ooh!” he says with delight. “Guacamole.”
I have a tender stomach, so I don’t put much on my tacos: tomatoes, lettuce, a little hamburger. PJ gives my barren tacos a pitying glance. “Dude, at least put some cheese on there.”
“I can’t. Lactose intolerant, remember?” I almost add, Remember this morning? But I stop myself just in time.
“Oh right, I forgot your”—PJ flutters his fingers around his stomach—“stomach thing.”
“Lactose intolerance,” I specify.
“You shouldn’t be so intolerant,” Jake says. “Open your heart to dairy, Kirbo.”
“My heart’s not the body part I’ll be opening if I eat dairy.”
PJ smothers his tacos in jalapeños and hot sauce. He fills a couple of little cups with extra hot sauce, snaps lids on them, and puts them in his pockets too, along with some loose jalapeños.
“What the hell are you doing?”
PJ shrugs. “Never know when they might come in handy.”
“Dude, you guys are both crazy,” I say.
We leave the line holding our pale green trays of fake Mexican food and wander into the lunchroom proper, a wide space divided by long rows of lunch tables, maybe twenty rows wide, most tables already full of happily talking kids. The tables are tan, the floor an indescribable taupe, the walls a beige that just sucks the life out of you. It’s like a desert where colors go to die, our pale green trays the only hue struggling for survival in the tan wasteland.
I scan the lunchroom, but I still don’t see Mark, so I try to steer us toward the closest table. “Let’s sit over here, in the corner,” I suggest.
Jake continues drifting toward the center of the cafeteria. “Nah. C’mon, let’s go this way.” He smiles.
“Dude, c’mon! Quit messing around!”
And that’s when I spot Mark, sitting across the room, at a far-right corner table on the other side of the premade-food island. He’s easy to spot because he and Tommy are sitting near each other, and they’re the two tallest kids in the room. Also, Mark still has his big black eye, and Tommy’s nose is red and swollen. They stick out like two battle-scarred stuntmen at a day care.
Mark sits near the middle of the table, glaring at me with his one good eye as he spits a glob of Skoal juice into a chocolate milk carton. Tommy’s on the outside corner of the bench, a dangerous frown under his swollen nose. Myka hangs on his arm, and Cigarettes and Jono sit across from him, on the other side of the table. When Tommy nods in my direction, they both turn around and grin at me like hyenas.
Rob’s sitting with them too, and everyone at their table—a couple of other football players and cheerleaders, the cool kids—starts looking our way and chatting excitedly, ready for the big game to begin.
I was hoping Mark might not be mad anymore, but if anything, he looks angrier than he did this morning. He doesn’t take his cold eyes off me as he idly scratches the scar that runs up the side of his blond crew cut.
Fear stops me in my tracks, and Jake bumps into my back with the edge of his tray. “Yo, dude, what’s the holdup?” He follows my gaze to Mark and Tommy’s table.
“Hey! Let’s go sit with them!” Jake waves at them, and Tommy’s eyes bug out as he gives Jake the finger. Mark doesn’t react, just keeps staring at me with the focus of a hunter measuring the distance between his bow and a deer.
Jake laughs like Tommy and Mark are old friends he’s delighted to see and talks to me over his shoulder as he heads toward them. “Look at Tommy’s nose! Holy shit! C’mon, let’s say hi.”
“No! Dude, c’mon . . .”
“It’s fine,” Jake says, walking ahead of me and rounding the island. “Those punks ain’t gonna do shit. Watch.”
“No! Don’t! Jake! ” I grab his arm, but he rolls his shoulder and slides out of my grip gracefully without breaking his stride.
I scan the cafeteria desperately for a teacher and spot Herr Bronner’s safety-orange suspenders way across the room. It looks like he’s the closest teacher, but he’s still at least a dozen rows away. Not close at all, and looking in the other direction.
Jake strolls lightly between the rows of tables, behind the backs of kids eating, and I follow, pleading with him. “Jake? Please? Stop!”
That familiar charge is building in the air, heat lightning on a summer day, and kids turn—broken taco shells paused halfway to their mouths, the hair on their arms standing straight up—to watch Jake stride past.
Tommy leans down the table to talk to Mark, and I can just hear him ask, “Can I, Mark? Please?”
“Okay,” Mark replies, spitting his chewing tobacco onto his plate. “But save Kirby for me.”
We’re maybe ten steps away, about to cross into the empty aisle between the tables, when Tommy stands up. The kids at his table watch with avid fascination, the cheerleaders stifling mean giggles, everyone delighted to find themselves ringside at an impending fight, even one that’s clearly going to last only two seconds. Tommy is a refrigerator, a man cast from iron, his fists two sledgehammers. Jake is half his size, and he looks very slim in his tight black jeans and fitted white oxford. Tommy is going to knock Jake right out of his fancy sneakers with one punch, and we all wince in anticipation of Tommy’s fearful blow.
Everyone except Jake, who is so relaxed he’s acting like he’s still on the school’s roof admiring the view, approaching Mark’s table with catlike grace, almost dancing. He points at Tommy’s nose and sings in a high, clear voice, “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeeeeeer, had a very shiny noooooose. . . .”
Tommy lifts his tree-trunk legs over the cafeteria table’s bench and steps into the aisle to meet Jake.
I stop at the edge of the aisle, but Jake continues walking into the open space between the rows of tables. Tommy cocks his fist back and shifts his broad shoulders sideways, a freight train of meat bearing down on Jake, but Jake doesn’t slow down. He doesn’t even put his tray down—he’s still holding it with both his hands!
Tommy is about to swing forward and knock Jake’s head right off his shoulders when Jake tosses his tray at Tommy. He doesn’t throw it hard, just lobs it underhand, so for one second, at the top of its arc, the tray hangs suspended in front of Tommy’s shocked face, blobs of guacamole and hamburger meat floating weightless in midair.
Tommy jerks back from the mess of flying food, and Jake skips forward the last two steps between them and kicks Tommy in the balls, hard, a football player punting a field goal. Tommy bucks forward, grabbing his crotch, and as his face comes down, Jake hits him on the chin with a vicious uppercut.
The tray hits the ground a second before Tommy does. The loud flat BAM of the tray, a familiar lunchroom sound, makes everyone within earshot reflexively go, “Oooooooooh!”
Myka screams. Tommy crumples into a limp pile in the aisle, taco mess dripping all over his football jersey.
I’m still holding my tray, slowly backing away from the aisle. I desperately scan the cafeteria again for a teacher and see with relief that Herr Bronner is at least looking in our direction to see what the commotion is, but he’s stil
l halfway across the room, unsure what the disturbance is. Two teachers from other corners of the room are converging as well, one talking urgently into a walkie-talkie.
Jono and Cigarettes jump off the bench, so eager they trip over each other trying to get to Jake first. Jake steps over Tommy’s unconscious body and grabs the tray off his chest as he does. Jono is closest to Jake, and as he stumbles over the table’s bench, Jake steps forward to meet him, swings in a full circle, and smacks him flat in the face with the tray. There’s a dull crack, and as Jake pulls the tray back to hit him again, I see for a second that Jono’s face is covered in blood. Another flat crack and a wet smooch as Jake pulls the tray back and drops it with a clatter. Nobody goes “ooooooh” this time. Blood speckles the tan linoleum floor as Jono slides off the bench in a limp pile, and everyone around the carnage shies away in terror. The fun schoolyard scuffle they expected has turned into a horror movie.
Cigarettes tries to get away from Jake, but there’s a crowd behind him, and he still has one leg on either side of the bench. Realizing he’s cornered, he throws his hands up in surrender, and Jake drives his fist right between the upheld hands, knocking him back onto the table. His body hits a food tray hanging over the edge of the table, and it flips into the air like a catapult, spraying lettuce and salsa everywhere.
Some people are screaming and some are chanting: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” One high voice cuts through the noise and cries, “ Somebody, do something! ”
I catch motion on my left, Mark marching toward me from around the other side of the table. He shrugs his jacket off and pushes the sleeves up his muscled forearms, like he’s ready to bale some hay.
Jake spots him too and yells, “Not so fast, farm boy!” as he runs toward Mark, but Tommy lurches up off the floor like Jason Voorhees rising from the dead, his face green with guacamole, and tackles Jake in a drunken bear hug in the middle of the aisle. Jake pulls one arm free and punches Tommy over and over in the head, swinging his fist like a hammer, but Tommy holds on, squeezing him in his big meaty arms and ducking his chin so the top of his head absorbs most of the blows.
Mark rounds the corner of the table, coming straight for me, his face twisted with rage. “Fuckin’ finally,” he snarls, but just as he steps into the aisle in front of me, Herr Bronner runs up and pushes him back, away from Jake and Tommy rolling on the floor. “Stand back, everyone!” he yells, red-faced and out of breath. “Everyone, stand back!”
Tommy rolls on top of Jake and tries to strangle him with his huge hands, but Herr Bronner grabs Tommy by the shoulders. “Let go!” he shouts. “Boys, break it up!”
Tommy lets go of Jake, and the instant he does, Jake punches Tommy in the throat.
Tommy gags and rolls off Jake, onto his side, struggling to breathe.
Herr Bronner is yelling. Everyone is yelling. Screams fly around the cafeteria like bats. Separated from me by Herr Bronner and Tommy and Jake, Mark glares across the aisle like he might leap over the jumble of bodies and attack me anyhow, but then two more teachers run up and push the crowd back farther. The circle of students around the fight is thick now, and I step back, hiding myself in the crowd.
Tommy gasps for breath on the floor, hands around his neck. Herr Bronner gets down on his knees and elevates his head onto his ample lap. “Stay calm,” Herr Bronner says in his soothing instructor’s voice. “Breathe.”
Jono and Cigarettes are limp as spaghetti noodles, slumped across the table and covered in tacos. Kids are trying to help them sit up.
“Put pressure on it!” someone yells.
“Get his feet up!” offers another.
One teacher who I don’t recognize is yelling into his walkie-talkie. “Where is Hartman? Where is Hartman?!”
Everyone is screaming and horrified except Jake, who rises proud in the middle of the destruction and raises his fists like a champion prizefighter. Doing a slow turn, his arms held aloft, he spots me in the crowd and smiles. He looks way more high than he did when we found him in the bathroom, but it’s a different kind of high, not one that turns him into a sleepy, calm Jake I don’t recognize. This is the Jake I know, but more so. Like a butterfly breaking free of its chrysalis, spreading its beautiful bloodred wings, this is Jake’s final form.
He laughs deliriously. “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!”
CHAPTER 20
* * *
SOMEONE PUTS THEIR HAND ON my shoulder, and I have a very small heart attack until I turn and see it’s just PJ.
He’s looking past me, at the big show. “Wow,” he says, shaking his head. “That was . . . wow.” He has one hand over his mouth, and every time he tries to lower it, it pops back up like it’s on springs.
I don’t think Jake could’ve done more damage if he’d had the knife.
“Jake is in so much trouble,” I tell PJ. “He’s gonna get expelled for sure.”
PJ gives me a funny look.
I’m feeling light-headed, and then I realize it’s because my throat is shut tight in a full-blown asthma attack, my breath a thin whistle. I sit down on a bench and try to calm down as I use my inhaler.
Mr. Hartman still hasn’t shown up, but a couple of other teachers have, including Mr. Braun and the nurse, who’s holding one of Cigarette’s eyelids open and shining a penlight into his eye.
While everyone else looks like they were just in a car accident, Jake looks fresh as a daisy, not a scratch on him. A couple teachers have pushed him back into a corner and are surrounding him, like a rabid dog that could break loose at any moment.
After a few minutes the whole group heads to the principal’s office, and the two biggest teachers flank Jake like they’re transporting Hannibal Lecter.
I watch them walking away and realize I don’t want to be left alone in the lunchroom with Mark. Also, I don’t know, maybe I can help Jake. Maybe I can tell them that Tommy started it, that he was about to hit Jake. Even in my head it sounds lame.
Regardless, I chase after Herr Bronner, who’s bringing up the rear of the procession. One of his suspender straps has come unclipped and flaps behind him. “Entschuldigen Sie, bitte?” I automatically ask in German.
“Ja, was ist es?” Herr Bronner’s curly hair is all disheveled. He shakes his head. “Ich meine, uh, yes? What is it, Kirby?”
“Herr Bronner, can I come with you? I saw the fight. I know what happened.”
“Uh, ja. I mean, nein. I mean, uh . . .” The group is pulling away. “Yeah, okay. Fine.”
I wave for PJ to follow me as I jog to catch up with Jake.
When we get to the office, Mr. Braun ushers Tommy, Jono, Cigarettes, and Jake straight back into the inner office. I’m worried that someone will kick PJ and me out of the waiting room, but there’s so much commotion going on that nobody notices us aside from Trey, who I’m surprised to see is still in the waiting room, still slowly destroying the office furniture—and Mrs. Tews, who asks what we’re doing there.
“We saw the fight,” I respond. “Mr. Braun wants to talk to us,” I lie.
“Okay, okay,” she says. She puts her bifocals on and then takes them off again. Her phone rings. “Uh, that’s fine. Have a seat.”
PJ and I sit in the two chairs next to Trey, who is energized by all the chaos. “What’s going on?” he asks me, bouncing in his seat. “What’s going on?!”
We tell him about the fight, and he whistles appreciatively. “Oh boy,” he says. “Jake is fucked.”
“I know,” I say. “But I’m hoping I can tell Mr. Braun that Tommy started it. He sort of did. He was about to punch Jake. . . .” He was about to punch Jake because Jake and PJ and I painted Mark’s farm last night. Are we going to have to get into all of that, too? Shit. This is getting complicated. For once I wish I had listened to Jake and we had spent last night digging up one of his bottles of peach schnapps.
Trey shakes his head sadly. “I don’t think you understand. You’ll see.”
Before I have a chance to ask what he means by that, Mr. Ha
rtman storms into the office, sports coat unbuttoned and flapping. On his way to Mr. Braun’s door, he spots me and points. “You! Burns! Stay right where you are.”
He opens Mr. Braun’s door, and I almost don’t recognize Mr. Braun’s voice, it’s so angry. “Finally!” he shouts at Mr. Hartman. “Where the hell were you?”
Mr. Hartman slams the door behind him as the two of them argue.
The bell for the end of lunch rings. I watch kids walking to class and chattering in the lobby outside the office, and it feels weird not to be out there with them. The silence in the waiting room is funereal. PJ and I don’t talk. He’s busy messing with his phone.
A few teachers come and go from Mr. Braun’s office, and a couple of minutes later Jono and Cigarettes walk out, escorted by Mr. Hartman. They don’t even notice me sitting there; they’re still shaken up, soldiers returning from the war.
Mr. Hartman returns a few minutes later with Mr. Reali, who has the big bolt cutters I saw him with earlier, as well as a book bag that it takes me a moment to recognize as Jake’s.
Trey stops unscrewing one of the legs from the coffee table long enough to shoot me a significant look. “Game over, dude. Game over.”
Shortly thereafter, Mr. Hartman leads Tommy out of the office. Tommy sees me and scowls. Mr. Hartman waves me in, exhausted.
“C’mon, Burns, get in here. Jaramillo, you can go.”
“Uh, but PJ saw the fight too,” I say.
“Everyone saw the fight,” Mr. Hartman says, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. “Mrs. Tews, write Pablo a hall pass. Burns, get in here.”
As I walk past him, he stops me with a meaty hand on my chest. “I gave you a chance to tell me the truth before and you didn’t take it.” He lowers his voice and looks me right in the eyes. “This is your last chance.”
— — —
The sun is higher than the last time I was in Mr. Braun’s office, and the godlike glow that surrounded him before has been replaced by slanting shadows that hide his face. Mr. Braun leans forward behind his enormous desk, fingers steepled, his white hair wild like he’s been pulling it, and he does not smile or give me a “Welcome! Please come in!” like he did the last time I visited his office. This time I’m not a kitten he’s trying to find a home for. I’m a stray cat he’s deciding whether or not to drown.
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