Book of Dark #1: Always Stand Up

by Deepak Khanchandani

  Chapter 4

  The Bullies of John Atkins High

  As Keane finally entered the main school building, with Brok just behind him, he was vexed by the eventfulness of the morning so far. He wished for the rest of the day to be as dull and uninteresting as possible. He was far too sleep-deprived and irritable to be bothered with the whole business of concentration.

  And that’s when he spotted it. The alternating blue, red and white edge of the airmail envelope sticking out of his locker. The article he’d ordered all those months ago. It had finally arrived!

  His heart skipped a beat. He wanted to rush to the envelope and rip it open, but he knew that this would pique Brok’s curiosity, which would be far from ideal seeing as this was yet another thing Keane had decided to keep secret.

  It troubled him to acknowledge just how much he was hiding from his best friend. He vowed to divulge absolutely everything the very instant he got to the bottom of things. For now, though, he’d have to maneuver very carefully so as to not draw Brok’s attention.

  He beat Brok to the lockers by a second and poked in the envelope. Then, behind the cover of his locker door, he rapidly but quietly slit it open, and out popped an old newspaper cutting. He picked it up as delicately as he could, noting how brittle and yellowing the paper was.

  Could this really be the article? Was his search was finally over?

  Someone had once said something about his link to a Wilson power plant, and that had sparked the search. It transpired that, while there once was a Wilson power plant, no one seemed to know or remember anything about it. There was no information in any of the commercial archives he had checked, nor in the school library, which he had braved despite the fact that he hated libraries, and reading, and books even. The Internet remained ominously mute on the matter as well.

  Then one day he’d received a phone call from a very sketchy-sounding vendor. The man hadn’t wasted any time with pleasantries or even introduced himself, mumbling something about the power plant and whether Keane was interested to know more. Keane had said ‘yes’ almost before the man could finish speaking.

  The vendor confirmed that he was in possession of the final copy of an article pertaining to the incident at the Wilson plant. Seeing as the rest had been destroyed, and even the one he possessed had restrictions on distribution and copying, he had quoted his fee accordingly—a sum that amounted to just over two months of Keane’s allowance. Keane had confirmed the order without a moment’s hesitation.

  Once he’d given Keane details of where the payment should be sent, the shady dealer had reminded him that he shouldn’t try to copy or sell the article once it arrived because ‘they’ would be watching. Then he’d promptly hung up.

  Despite being quite certain that the vendor had acquired the article through highly dubious means, Keane had made payment anyway because, if there really was an article that could finally shed light on what the power plant was and why it was so shrouded in mystery, it would be a very precious one indeed.

  The large, bold title at the very top of the cutting read: “DISASTER AT WILSON POWER PLANT”. The article was subtitled: “OWNER & 27 KILLED”. This was great! Not the disaster or the deaths, of course, but the fact that, for the first time since he’d began his search, he held in his hands something that dared to directly mention the plant!

  He could feel his heart in his throat as his eyes bore holes into the page where the date was printed.

  Just like most of the orphans at St. Martins, Keane had never celebrated a birthday before. Not knowing which day you were born on made that tradition somewhat difficult. Besides, the orphanage housed so many boys that a birthday would have to be celebrated almost every single day, a luxury they just couldn’t afford. The only reason anyone even knew Keane was fourteen was that they’d identified him as a newborn the day they’d found him at their doorstep. The article’s date—the first of August—preceded this day by just over a week.

  Excited by the prospect of learning exactly how he was connected to the Wilson plant and about the disaster that seemed to coincide with the time of his birth, he eagerly began to read.

  And before he knew it, he’d read the first sentence six times and, in his exhilaration, not absorbed a single word.

  He was just about to commence his seventh try when the page was whipped from his hands. Even before he turned, Keane knew exactly who he would see standing behind him.

  Randy was a tall, athletic freshman who looked far too old for his years. There were rumors that he’d hit puberty when he was only eight. Looking at the size of the boy now, Keane didn’t doubt this for a second.

  Randy was not only annoyingly good-looking and infuriatingly popular, but somehow managed to maintain good grades all year round as well. In short, there wasn’t a boy that more encapsulated the opposite of everything Keane was than Randy.

  And he would almost definitely have been an A-Lister, too, had it not been for the three cronies who followed him around everywhere, like little ducklings waddling after mother—cronies who, Keane noticed, were now slowly beginning to surround him.

  The one to Randy’s right, standing by him like a faithful hound, was his best friend Pete, a tall but gangly boy wearing dark eyeliner and sporting maroon-tinted hair that always seemed to be flowing over some part of his face or another. He had known Randy since the first grade, but even Randy was oftentimes frightened by the volatile, violent-sarcastic-emo combination that lay beneath Pete’s surface.

  Don, standing to their left, was the brains of the group. He used to be a quiet boy back in elementary school, a certified member of the Uncool Nerds. It was the early growth spurt and the height advantage that came with it which had drawn Randy’s attention and had landed Don a place in the clan. Even now, as he adjusted his glasses, he seemed to tower over Randy and Pete.

  Keane, having had the misfortune of also going to the same elementary school as these three, knew only too well how capable they were of instilling fear into people’s hearts. They had succeeded in doing so with the entire student body back then, and, within a mere month of starting at John Atkins High, had managed to terrorize just about everyone here too, seniors and teachers included.

  The fourth Bully, Johnny, was a truly special case indeed. He was much too old for the ninth grade, but large enough so that no one dared to ask him about it. As a result, no one knew quite how long he’d been in high school.

  His involvement with the gang had started earlier in the year when Randy had used him to collect protection money due from one of the bigger boys at St. Martins. Before long, Johnny was hanging out with the trio on a regular basis.

  And, just like that, John Atkins High had acquired its newest, most feared clique, aptly named the Bullies, a clique that sat at the very top of the social pecking order, above even the A-listers.

  Randy dangled the article he’d snatched over Keane’s head, teasing the boy while his partners-in-crime closed in.

  Keane lunged forward to reclaim his property, but it only took Randy a quick toe-swivel to comprehensively evade his grasp.

  As Keane grabbed the bank of lockers to steady his stumbling feet, he spotted Brok slowly backing away from proceedings. Good, thought Keane, because ‘run and hide’ was the third and most important rule of bully evasion. ‘Run and hide’ was also their agreed upon protocol for dealing with such perilous situations.

  Keane knew that he should be running too, but couldn’t get himself to leave the rare and impossible to find article in the hands of the Bullies. It simply meant too much to him.

  “Randy, please,” he said, flustered. “Not that… Anything but that…”

  The Bully rubbed his chin as he studied the article. Keane hoped—prayed, even—that the boy would see just how important it was to him and return it.

  Randy studied Keane with something bordering on empathy. He looked from the article to Keane and back. Finally, he sighed and held it out for Keane, much to the chagrin of his cronies. Keane nearl
y collapsed with relief as he reached for the cutting.

  His fingers were almost on it, too, before Randy exploded into mischievous laughter and tossed the article to Pete.

  With a belligerent grunt, Keane jumped up at Pete, but Pete was quick in passing the cutting on to Don. Before Keane could get to Don, the article was in Johnny’s hands. And Johnny finally threw the now balled-up piece of newspaper back into Randy’s grubby mitts.

  Even as he looked helplessly to the other students who passed by, Keane knew that, just as they hadn’t stopped to help Eugene, they wouldn’t be stopping for him either.

  “You haven’t paid us for a week,” said Randy.

  “Fine! Give it back and I’ll pay double… triple even!” said Keane, struggling to follow the crumpled cutting around while the boys tossed it amongst themselves, as if running baseball drills.

  “A week is seven days, dumb-ass. I thought you geeks were supposed to be good at math.”

  “I’m not a geek!” protested Keane, reaching over Don’s head now.

  “Whatever,” said Randy. “As long as we get paid. Go on, hand it over then.”

  Keane was grunting and jumping up at Don, but the Bully was so high up that he didn’t even need to fully extend his elbows to keep the article from the scrawny orphan.

  “I… I don’t have any money on me right now…” said Keane, once again glad that he’d given it all to the homeless man instead of having Randy help himself to it.

  “Tsk tsk! Such bad luck then, isn’t it?” said Randy.

  Eventually, Don grew bored and passed to Pete. As Keane sprinted after the article, Brok, who had wedged himself into the tiny space between the wall and a locker, popped his head out.

  “Pssst! Keane!” whispered Brok. “Let it go! Whatever it is, it’s not worth it!”

  But Keane neither heard nor saw Brok because, just then, the school bell rang and students erupted in chatter as they swarmed to get to the first class of the day.

  “It’s mine!” Keane screamed at Pete, who was tauntingly passing the balled up piece of paper from hand to hand. “Give it back!”

  But Pete only laughed harder. Holding back the furiously charging Keane with the lightest touch of his left hand, he cocked back his right shoulder as if about to throw a touchdown pass.

  “Hey, Randy!” he yelled. “Go long!” He launched the crumpled ball over Keane’s head.

  As Keane followed the airborne pellet across the hallway, Brok’s eyes widened with fear.

  “Keane,” he warned, “Instant zinger wrap! Remember?”

  Finally, Keane spotted the little face peeking out from behind the lockers. He frowned, wondering why Brok was still here. What happened to ‘run and hide’? Did he need yet another lecture on the topic?

  Then Brok widened his eyes further still and began to point urgently at something over Keane’s shoulder. Keane felt a sudden thump on his elbow.

  He froze stiff with fear.

  Thanks to Brok’s distraction, he hadn’t been looking where he was reaching and had accidentally ploughed his elbow straight into Randy’s chin.

  Watching Randy recoil and clutch his face in pain made Keane’s stomach churn. It was as if a building were collapsing in on him and he was already too late to save himself.

  Randy’s cronies gawked in stunned silence, too, their mouths agape; it had been a long, long time since Randy had taken a hit, intentional or not.

  “Oh, yeah. This is much better,” said Brok, his pout skewed inhumanly to the right with sarcasm.

  But this only made Johnny look straight at him. Brok’s panicked face revealed just how badly he’d miscalculated how far his voice would travel, especially now that the students were in their classes and all was silent.

  “Why you little—” Johnny lurched toward Brok.

  “Johnny boy! Look!” Brok pointed over his attackers shoulder. “A bird!”

  “A bird!” Johnny squealed with delight as he turned to look.

  And with the other three Bullies distracted by the hilarity of Johnny’s antics, only Keane saw Brok narrow his body, squeeze his shoulders together, clench his gut and bottom in, and slip stealthily into what was probably the best hiding place in school, perhaps even in the world—the Wall Gap.

  Keane and Brok had discovered this structural anomaly quite by mistake earlier that school year. Running from yet another potential pounding, they had taken cover behind one of the lockers and had spotted the narrow crease in the wall. It had looked too small to be useful, but, out of pure desperation, they’d squeezed through. And at the other end they’d discovered a small cavity which looked like an extra supply cabinet that had been walled in. They had christened it the Wall Gap and, since then, it had become the very foundation of their bully-evasion strategy.

  By the time Johnny turned back, stumped that there was no bird (a good few seconds later than Keane had expected, even for Johnny), he was doubly confused to see that Brok had vanished. This seemed to amuse Pete and Don to no end.

  But Randy had lost interest in the joke. He grabbed Keane by the collar and yanked him clean off the ground.

  Keane struggled to breathe as his t-shirt tightened around his neck. His eyes started to water. The world began to darken, as if it were fading away. He thought he was about to pass out…

  And that’s when he felt it. That odd tingling sensation in his hands. The same one that had woken him up just the night before.

  Without even looking, he knew that sparks of emerald were running through his hands again. He couldn’t believe that it was happening right here and right now, in full view of the Bullies. It wasn’t that they hadn’t seen his hands turn green before, because they had. Keane just didn’t want to give the four boys more reason to continue inflicting this torture on him.

  He’d heard that your life flashed before your eyes just before you died. But as Randy’s grip tightened around his neck, he couldn’t see anything flash anywhere. In fact, the strain on the neck was making his eyes close, and soon he could see absolutely nothing at all.

  Sounds echoed and dissolved. The world went dark.

  And from the darkness, it was anger that rose up and gripped him.

  He’d had enough of the Bullies forever picking on him. He’d had enough of them forever getting away with it too. Most of all, though, he’d had enough of not being able to protect himself.

  His eyes snapped open. He teeth gnashed in anger. His neck flexed to fight the strength of Randy’s hands. And with his promise to Brok forgotten, he aimed his palms at Randy and willed the trickle of neon green in his splayed fingers to lash out at the boy. Perhaps even turn him into a pile of smoking cinders.

  Randy released his grip and stepped away, suspicious of the flickers dancing in Keane’s hands.

  Keane stumbled backward, coughing and inhaling greedily, grateful to be able to breathe again. He wiped the water from his eyes and turned to his oppressors. He could see them clearly now. Very clearly, indeed. His brows furrowed with concentration. He reasserted his aim.

  Randy took an even bigger step back. His fellow Bullies followed his lead, growing nervous as Keane’s intense focus amplified the glow in his open palms.

  The energy fizzed. It buzzed. And when it spewed an upsurge, the Bullies flinched, knees bent and arms flung out in what looked like a vigilant version of the Hokey Cokey. Their gazes hurriedly shot between Keane’s face and his hands as if they were expecting a bomb to go off.

  A loud pop rang out, like a single gunshot. The Bullies flinched, covering their ears with their hands and then frantically began to check each other for injuries, none of them entirely sure what had just happened.

  But Keane knew. His powers, on the verge of smiting the Bullies, had decided to desert him instead. And, very soon, the Bullies would know too, since the glow had vanished as well.

  He desperately shook his hands in an attempt to revive the powers that had so abruptly vanished. He pleaded with them. Not now! Not when these… these thieves ar
e so close… not when they’re in my sights… Then he negotiated with them. Forget the pile of smoking cinders… I’ll settle for a few scars… A couple of burn marks? Okay, just one single burn mark… a light singeing, at least?

  It was no use. Keane gave up his power-revival efforts which had already been growing progressively less resolute. His arms fell limply to his sides, his head hung, and his heart sank as he was forced to accept that his powers had failed him yet again and Brok had been right all along.

  Pete was the first to catch on to the fact that the sparks weren’t returning anytime soon. He started to laugh, partially with relief, but mostly with menace and mischief. Randy and Don soon joined in, straightening up as their confidence returned.

  Johnny looked at his colleagues and, though he didn’t really get why, started to laugh as well. Whether he ever really understood what was going on around him, no one really knew.

  “That was awesome, Freak Show,” said Randy, wiping away tears.

  Keane hated it when they called him that. The practice had started in the third grade, the first time Keane’s hands had lit up in their presence. Now ‘Freak Show’ was just what they called him. And he still hated it every single time they did. He hated it very much indeed.

  “Seriously,” continued Randy, “when has your fake science lab crap ever worked on us?”

  “Yeah, go back to the freak show, Freak Show!” said Johnny, striving to be a part of the fun.

  But he had only managed to silence everyone, however inadvertently. The boys watched with a mix of pity and amusement as the blissfully oblivious lug cackled on.

  Again, Randy was the first to lose interest. He turned to Keane and menacingly pushed up his sleeves. “Now, where were we?” he asked, with an evil grin. “Oh, yeah…”

  Knowing exactly what that meant, Keane tried to duck, but he was too slow to react. Randy’s swinging fist rammed into his left cheek with a sickening crunch and sent him slamming backwards into the lockers.

  The sharp pain made him want to just rip Randy’s head off. And in his fit of fury, he decided to do just that. If his powers weren’t going to help him, so be it. He’d get Randy without them, and he didn’t much care if he did end up getting all his bones broken in the process. It would be worth it as long as he managed to inflict some damage first.

  He balled his hands into fists, mustered up all his strength, and, with a deep breath, went in screaming.

  Randy’s left hand caught Keane’s fist as if it were nothing more than a wayward fly ball. His right hand began hammering away at Keane’s now exposed ribs.

  When Keane finally wrenched himself free, he went crashing into the lockers and stayed there, winded from the pounding his torso had just taken.

  He opened his eyes just in time to see Randy’s open hand coming for his throat now and scrambled to evade it. But he only ended up stumbling and falling flat on his face.

  When he raised his head off the ground to look up, he was startled to see that a crowd had quietly gathered around him and Randy.

  The handful of students, who Keane assumed must have free period now, were stood in a semi-circle around the fighting duo. What’s more, Pete, Don and Johnny were spectating with the crowd, seemingly having decided that just Randy by himself was more than enough to take care of Freak Show.

  The students, triggered by Keane noticing them, started to cheer, calling out names of wrestling moves that Randy should try next, and, of course, taking photos on their phones.

  Great, thought Keane, that’s what this day needed. My misery and humiliation being shared with the entire world!

  As he stood up, though, he sighed, finding it hard to blame them. A fight like this was a truly rare event. Not even an A-Lister would have persevered to this extent against Randy, especially not after having just assaulted his chin with an elbow.

  Before he knew it, Keane was being chased by a sophomore girl who absolutely insisted that he pose in her selfie. He scuttled around in an effort to dodge her, but was lessoned in the perseverance of selfie lovers. He was so busy with his escape attempts that he completely missed Randy’s knuckles rapidly closing in on the middle of his face.

  His nose was smashed deep into his head, spattering the unsuspecting spectators with his nasal blood. Students yelled profanities and backed away.

  But it was Selfie Girl who had borne the brunt of it. She stood frozen with shock, staring at her phone as it dripped a steady stream of red. And when she finally mustered up the courage to look down at her own blood-covered state, it sent her running down the hallway toward the girl’s room crying copiously while screaming her lungs out.

  Keane saw none of this, though. His world had vanished into pain and darkness. His shaking legs, unable to support his weight anymore, caved in. He fell to the floor.

  “What is going on?”

  The shrill, grating voice belonged to Mrs. Applebottom, better known to the students of John Atkins High as ‘Grouchina’, so named for her demeanor and her relentless quest to set new world records for detention slip distribution.

  Keane could hear students scatter in every direction as Grouchina approached, the frantic sound of heels tapping against tiled floor growing ominously louder by the second.

  He tried to open his eyes, but could see little through all the tears and blood. So blurry was his vision that he could have sworn he saw one panicking student actually shut himself inside a locker.

  His every instinct urged him to run away, but his ribs and his face throbbed with pain so excruciating that he doubted whether he could even stand up straight. Rubbing his eyes, he managed to locate the four Bully-shaped silhouettes and saw them merge nonchalantly into the fleeing crowd.

  He couldn’t believe it. They were going to get away with it! Again!

  As they escaped, he strained to inspect their hands through his hazy vision. He squinted hard. But he saw nothing. He desperately patted the floor around him, but felt only the thick, wet puddles his own blood had formed.

  The newspaper cutting was gone.

  By the time Mrs. Applebottom got to Keane, he was the only student left, sitting in a pool of red, defeated.

  He tried to pinch his nostrils shut to stem the seemingly endless flow, but the tactic didn’t seem to be working, as more blood just kept gushing out in haphazard spurts.

  “Keane? Keane Davies?” yelled Grouchina. “Detention for you, young man!”

  Mrs. Applebottom’s hair had a tint of light mauve to it, and her horn-rimmed glasses were plum-colored too. She usually wore tailored suits, each a different shade of violet, with matching mid-length skirts that made her look like a sandwich wrap that had been opened at the wrong end. The shade she sported today was just a touch on the darker side.

  As she pulled the detention slip booklet out of her large jacket pockets, Keane felt a sneeze coming on. He pinched his nose hard, then harder still, and then with both hands, but the sneeze was having none of it. Before he knew it, a bout of fresh blood erupted from his nose and drenched the heeled, lavender shoes before him.

  Grouchina stared at her shoes and remained worryingly quiet while her whole body started to shake with rage. Then, like a pressure cooker that had gone past its tipping point, she erupted.

  “Detention, Mr. Davies! Detention for the whole week!”

  Keane started to protest but, with his vision improving, he could now see exactly how badly he’d ruined Grouchina’s shoes. So he shut up, deciding that anything he said at this point would only make things worse.

  He found himself wishing that he was in the Wall Gap with Brok. Or better yet, dead. That’s when Brok appeared behind Mrs. Applebottom, as if out of thin air.

  Keane wondered whether the boy had completely lost hold of his senses. He fervently signaled Brok to run away, to retreat to the safety of the Wall Gap, but the boy ignored all of this and tugged at Mrs. Applebottom’s jacket.

  “It wasn’t his fault, Mrs. A.”

  Grouchina jumped a foot into the a
ir with a sharp yelp, holding her chest as if she were having an attack. “What the—? Mr. Jacobs? Where the devil did you come from?”

  Brok dismissed the enquiry with a wave of his hand. “Long story. Won’t bore you with it.”

  Keane opened his mouth with half a mind to scold the boy and to ask him what exactly was wrong with him. But he fell silent when he saw the guilt-ridden devastation on Brok’s face. He understood. Had the situation been reversed, he, too, would have come back for his best friend.

  Brok crouched beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. He was looking to make amends for his cowardice and his abandonment. Keane nodded empathetically; orphans, by definition, understood a thing or two about being abandoned, and Brok was no exception.

  “There shall be no hooliganry at this school,” Mrs. Applebottom was yelling, already half way through writing out a second slip for Brok. “I simply shan’t tolerate it.”

  She ripped out the slips and thrust them at the boys. “Detention for the both of you,” she said, wagging a finger. “And you two are to report to the Principal’s office immediately!”

  As Brok helped him up, Keane nodded his acknowledge­ment and acceptance of Grouchina’s instructions. There was no point in arguing. Not unless they wanted their sentences extended.

  But Grouchina continued to look him up and down in a curious manner which Keane couldn’t quite place.

  He half expected her to demand that he fetch a mop and a bucket from the janitor and immediately start cleaning up the mess he’d made. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

  So, when he finally figured out that it was pity that she was exhibiting, needless to say, he was shocked.

  And even that was nothing compared to the words she uttered next, which nearly sent him into a coma.

  “Perhaps after a quick visit to the nurse’s office first…”