“Dayum,” said the bully who had tripped the girl. He was huge, hulking, and fingering his football letter-jacket to emphasize his jockness, even though it had probably been bought by his mommy. “Hey, Zack, man, lookit this: the Goths are multiplying now.”
Zack, the other jerk blocking the door like a muscle-bound gargoyle, sniggered like his friend was a regular cut-up. It never failed to amaze me what kinds of kindergarten humor amused these types. I’m pretty sure most of them were deprived of oxygen at a critical point in their development.
I stood there and glared at the first bully, the one I had mentally tagged “the Hulk”. “You wanna tell your buddy to move before I do some multiplication on his face?”
Yeah, it shocked me, too. It just popped out of my big fat mouth, and I felt a strange commingling of pride, arrogance and sweating, heart-rending fear. It was kind of like swatting a wasps’ nest with a stick just to see if you can outrun the wasps. Except I wasn’t running.
“You little fuck!” the Hulk growled. “I’d like to see you fucking try it!”
Pro tip: Bullies use a lot of unnecessary swear words just to show you how big and tough they are, and often enough they shout them, like you’re completely deaf. We eyed each other for a cold, brief moment like gunslingers in a spaghetti western waiting for the other one to go for his six-shooter. But when his little show of testosterone garnered no reaction from me, he lunged forward and grabbed at the front of my jacket.
So I did what any normal punk would do. I punched him square in the nose.
3
So much for staying invisible, I thought.
The Vice Principal of Thomas Jefferson High, a frighteningly overweight, middle-aged woman with a face that could have stopped a fleet of trucks, glared at me accusingly, and I looked blankly back at her with a Who, me? I’m innocent look on my face. This was my first time IDS (In Deep Shit), so it was a new experience for me. I didn’t know what to expect.
I glanced around the front office, at the cheery potted plants, the motivational posters that obviously came from some other universe where everything was butterflies and unicorns, and the VP that was seriously creeping me out. I wasn’t sure what was more useless, trying not to concentrate on the constellation of moles on her face or trying not to squirm around on the ultra-hard plastic Chair of Doom. Every school has one, and all of them are hard and cold for the hard, cold criminal sitting in them, waiting for sentencing to be passed.
“Mr. Takahashi,” said the VP (making my name sound like a disease recently discovered to have the viral capacity to wipe out small continents), ”we do have counselors here at TJ High to address the troubles of our at-risk students, and we feel that you might benefit from…”
I tuned out her buttery-soft voice, which was completely at odds with her appearance; she wasn’t fooling anyone. She was wearing a dark, tight pea-green suit that positively screamed I am the warden of this teen penitentiary and I will whip you with chains like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS! Unfortunately, she looked nothing like the actress who played Ilsa (who is totally hot—not that I would know anything about that). She did keep rubbing at the mondo-nasty mole growing on her upper lip. I thought the woman must weigh a metric ton, a lot of it pure muscle. I imagined her flinging metal protractors ninja-style at troublesome kids from down the hallway.
“Mr. Takahashi…?”
My attention snapped away from the nameplate on the desk that read Ms. Cinnamon, VP—I was willing to bet she was made of anything but sugar and spice—and I centered it instead on her face, which reminded me of Boris Karloff, just not that attractive. “Yeah,” I said, trying desperately to backtrack and figure out what she was saying. “Yes, Ms. Cinnamon.”
There was a derisive glint in the woman’s yellow eyes as she pawed around her desk drawers for a class schedule and the rule book. I was another wounded refugee from the West Coast, here to clutter the halls and infest her school with my own particular brand of bohemian San Francisco mayhem. She rather haphazardly marked my classes for me, gave me a padlock to a locker, then handed me a student rules handbook and a brochure with a happy, smiling rainbow on it that read Managing Your Anger the Right Way!
Was she for real?
“We’re going to forego calling your father this time, Mr. Takahashi, but only because this is your first day with us,” Ilsa the She Wolf said as if she were doing me a huge favor. “However, should Troy decide to submit a complaint, we may need to re-address this issue in the future.”
I didn’t think that was going to be a problem. After I punched Troy (a.k.a., the Hulk) in the face, he staggered around in a circle with tears in his eyes, using both hands to cover the nose-leak I’d given him. He’d looked shocked and hurt; it was probably the first time anyone had ever hit him, including his parents. I had waited, fists clenched and upraised, for him to retaliate, but he and his brainless lackey suddenly turned tail and raced down the steps of the school like the hounds of hell were at their heels, Troy leaking blood the whole way. If I knew bullies, and I thought I did, Troy wouldn’t be making a big issue out of this, especially since half the school had witnessed him crying like a dorky five-year-old girl who’d skinned her knee.
“Are you listening to me, Mr. Takahashi?”
“Absolutely, Ms. Ilsa.” Oops.
Ms. Cinnamon looked like she wanted to slap the yellow off of me. In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the best way to introduce myself to a new school. She narrowed her wolfish eyes and said, “You are dismissed…for now. But I will be watching, Mr. Takahashi, you can be sure of that.”
“Thank you, Ms. Cinnamon!” I grabbed my backpack and scrambled my way out of that office. I was so relieved I was out of there that I wasn’t watching where I was going and nearly collided with a girl standing just outside the office door.
“Hi,” she said, stepping back to give me room. Her voice was soft, breathy, and like the rest of her, it froze me solid in my tracks.
I stared with surprise at the pale, dark-haired Gothic girl I had rescued from Troy’s evil machinations and gave her a quick once-over. She definitely had some Japanese in her, I saw that at once. She stood there in her glittering black clothes and geisha whiteface, watching me shyly from behind the short stack of books in her arms. The air between us became electric, no lie. I had a moment when I felt I knew her from somewhere, as if we were connected in some way. It was a weird feeling.
Then I shook my head to clear it, and the moment passed. “Um…hi.” I glanced back at the closed office door. “You’re not…um, next, are you?”
I’m not my articulate best standing before ultra-hot chicks.
She narrowed her exquisitely painted eyes and tilted her head so her purple-streaked pigtails were crooked. She looked as if she, too, had experienced that sudden strangeness. “No…I cut homeroom. I just wanted to see you, to thank you for before. That was really great of you to do,” she said, blinking in a totally seductive way. “Taking care of Troy, I mean.”
“No problem,” I said, trying to sound casual about it, like I did this everyday. Kevin Takahashi: Savior of Gothic Girls Everywhere.
We instinctively moved away from the danger of the front office and down the empty hallway. Slowly the familiar school smells of chalk dust, books and industrial cleaner closed in around us—it wasn’t great stuff but anything was better than the stinky potpourri smell of the VP’s office. The girl narrowed her eyes with concern. “Did you get in deep with the Cinnamonster?” she asked.
I tried to answer but there was something that felt like a walnut stuck in my throat. I mean, the Gothic girl was beyond beautiful—glamorous, surreal, like a teen actress on the WB. It took me two whole tries before I was able to get the words out. “Nah,” I finally answered, trying to play it off like nothing and proud of the fact that I wasn’t stuttering like a moron. “I’m cool. But…the Cinnamonster? I mean, is she for real? I just kept staring, and…” Real slick, I thought and decided to shut up before I made a total fool of myse
lf.
Her black eyes blinked up at me, and her lips, painted a moist, glittering sapphire, turned up at the corners like she found me amusing. I felt my ears burning and I wanted to die—or, at least, melt through the floor and out of sight. “Yep, that’s our Cinnamonster, and believe it or not, she’s for real. The council is still out on what planet she’s from, though. Most of us think Uranus.”
I laughed at that.
“I’m Aimi Mura,” she said as she stopped to face me. “That’s Aimi with two I’s.”
It took me a moment to catch on—I wasn’t used to girls who looked like Aimi talking to me. I wanted to look around the empty school halls to see if she was addressing some other dude. I mean, I’d gone out on a handful of dates, of course, but they were always “study dates” at the local library with fat, desperate chicks that I had nothing in common with. “Kevin,” I finally muttered, “with one.” I was starting to think my truncated responses were making me sound mentally-deficient, so I added “Takahashi,” like my fantabulous, non-American, utterly un-apple pie, impossible-to-spell surname should impress her.
Evidently, it did. “Kevin Takahashi-san,” she said like she was tasting my name. She dipped her head in a little formal bow and said something in Japanese I didn’t understand at all.
I shook my head in confusion; I’d never had much interest in my dad’s native language. So Aimi leaned in close to whisper to me, which was totally worth not knowing Japanese, because I got a whiff of her dark chocolatey-cherry perfume. “I said…Troy is going to be majorly pissed with you tomorrow.”
“No problem,” I repeated. “I can handle him.” Worried? Who, me?
“You’re very brave, Kevin,” said Aimi, shifting her books around in her arms. The lace of her dress made hissing noises as it rubbed together, which was kind of distracting.
“Not really. I mean…um…thanks.”
“And really kawaii…that means cute.” She kept staring at me in a totally absorbed way. Finally, completely embarrassed by her scrutiny, I looked around at the posters and activity boards with paper fall leaves stapled to them like they were the most amazing things I had ever seen. Bullies? No problem. But pretty girls were impossible for me to look in the eye.
I was literally saved by the bell—a nasally, impatient noise that made us both jump in the moments before the doors of all the homeroom classrooms opened up, dumping their load of students into the hallway of the school. My brain and body rebelled. Was I really clamming up in the face of a gorgeous girl who wanted to talk to me? Was I really this lame?
Evidently so. It should have been awesome. Every guy’s dream to have a fantastic girl like Aimi talking to him. Instead, it made me feel sad and anxious in a way I had never felt with any of the fat, desperate chicks.
“Kevin,” she said, and I finally looked at her. “Dōmo arigatō. That means thank you. For everything.”
“Okay.”
I saw her little clique of Goths zeroing in on her through the sea of students. And as they moved to surround her like a small, impenetrable army, she added, “Maybe I’ll see you around?”
“Sure.”
Of course not. I had no idea why she was still talking to me when it was obvious I was a complete loser. Still smiling, she waved to me in the moments before she was swept away by her friends.
I didn’t wave back. Instead, I turned and hurried down the hall in some random direction. I felt Aimi’s eyes on my back the whole way, but I didn’t look back. She was just being polite. Nice to the new kid who had helped her out.
I almost hoped it was true. Because I was much too afraid to imagine otherwise.
4
After Troy, the Cinnamonster and then making a fool of myself in front of Aimi Mura, I expected the rest of my morning to go downhill fast. But Algebra II went easily enough. The room was big, the desks rawboned with age, the environment familiar. Best of all, the students were busy with a pop quiz when I finally found it.
The teacher, Mr. Russo, was a young guy who couldn’t be more than a year out of college but had somehow managed to go all grey. He shook my hand, gave me a textbook, then sent me to an empty desk in the back corner of the room. My hero.
For the next half-hour I kept my head down and listened to the busy scratch of pencils on paper. Aimi wasn’t here, and neither were any of her Goth friends. I wondered if I would see her later today. I wondered if we shared any classes. I paged idly through the textbook, which looked about as challenging as a first-grade reader. At least I’d be able to ace the tests without having to study or even pay much attention in class.
Unfortunately, Algebra II had given me false hope in the Remaining Invisible department, because when I got to Biology, Mrs. Rodriguez pointed me out to everyone in class and asked me how I liked New York, like I had a choice being here. Even worse, it turned out the class was studying Introduction to Kaijuology. I knew right then and there that Mrs. Rodriguez and I would never be friends.
In Latin, a tall, chunky Hispanic girl with wild red hair sat next to me, then followed a few tentative steps behind me in the halls before speaking up. “You’re Kyle, right?” she said. Unlike most of the girls with their designer teen wardrobes, she was dressed tomboyishly in distressed jeans and an element vest over a button-down shirt. I had no idea if she was trying to hide her extra weight or if that was just her style—and not much interest in finding out right at the moment.
“Kevin,” I said, sticking my hands deep in my pockets as I ambled along. I was trying to ignore the fact that a couple of girls were standing at their lockers, laughing about me behind their Trapper folders.
“I heard you gave Troy a broken nose, his first,” she said. She sounded pleased. I noticed she walked with a lot of confidence for a big girl. “No one’s ever stood up to him before.”
“Really?” I said, trying not to sound too crabby and failing miserably. “And I thought this school was full of wannabe gangstas.”
She gave me a challenging look, like it would take a lot more than a scowling Kevin Takahashi and a few insults to chase her off. “Don’t believe all the ghetto movies. We don’t boost cars or knock over convenient stores—at least, most of us don’t. My name’s Michelle.” She smiled, broadly. She had clean but crooked teeth, and her nails were rimmed with work grease. She so wasn’t Aimi—was almost the antithesis of Aimi in every way, All-American, imperfect, girl-next-door, whatever you wanted to call it. Then I wondered why I was comparing the two of them like that and felt a little ashamed. It wasn’t like Aimi was ever likely to talk to me again after I ran away from her.
I had Michelle in English too, and as we made our way to the cafeteria at lunch she took great pains to warn me about the free school lunch, the horror of which would haunt me forevermore. I had to give her points; she wasn’t at all deterred by my sulking or silence. She went on about her friends and what teachers she hated and her dad who ran a custom body shop in the Heights. She said she helped him out on the weekends. A girl who liked cars. Who woulda thunk it?
We sat near the windows and she introduced me to her “little” brother, Terry, who despite being a freshman was allowed to sit at the sophomore table—mostly, I think, because anyone who challenged Michelle was likely to get smacked. Michelle told me not to mind Terry, since the doctors had dropped him on his head as a baby.
Terry was absolutely huge, bespectacled, and actually had the guts to wear a Star Trek TOS tunic to school and a belt that contained just about every Radio Shack device you could imagine, which made me want to run screaming from the school. I had hoped to avoid the whole geek squad entirely, but it seemed they were determined to suck me in no matter what I did. I thought about changing tables, but every one in the cafeteria was occupied by a clique that I was not a part of.
With a mental sigh (which is harder to do than it sounds) I turned my attention on the bench against the back wall, just under the bell, where a bunch of guys and girls in black were slowly amassing like a long row of human-size cr
ows in fluffy black lace. I assumed this was the outlaw bench, the place where the weird and unwanted perched. Like the Chair of Doom, there’s one in every school.
I spotted Aimi immediately. Besides her were the other Goths, three boys and one girl. Two of the guys were African-American—twins, I think—with coordinating tuxedoes and Baron Samedi makeup. The other one was white and dressed in a black priest’s cassock with a froth of lace at his throat and cuffs. Somehow, he managed to stand out even more than the twins, partly because he was one of the few all-white guys at school, mostly because he wore his bone-white hair down to his shoulders and his face powdered as pale as a corpse. I think he was looking for an elegant, almost effeminate Gothic look, but he had the naturally muscled body of a track-and-field guy and looked like he could put another guy his size through a brick wall, especially if they made fun of his fancy outfit. His attention was riveted on Aimi, hanging on every word she said. Ugh.
Aimi didn’t seem to notice, though, engaged as she was in a lively debate with the other Goth girl—an Indian girl with fiery red Raggedy Anne dreads and a frilly black dress. I stared longer than was appropriate. Aimi was explaining something to Raggedy Anne on a sheet of music paper. None of them seemed to be eating. All of them wore more powder and makeup than an ‘80’s hair metal band. With the exception of the white-haired dude, I wondered how they managed to survive in this school.
Michelle noticed my looking. “Don’t even bother with them,” she said with authority. “They’re weird.” She bit savagely into her Snickers bar. “You hang with them, you’ll look like them. Like Snowman.”
“Snowman was sooo pissed this morning he almost punched out the Cinnamonster when she caught him smoking in the bathroom!” Terry informed us. He grinned hugely as he jiggled his fat in his seat and worked a travel screwdriver into some poor little device laid out in pieces in front of him. I think it had once been a PDA.
Raiju: A Kaiju Hunter Novel (The Kaiju Hunter) Page 2