Brutal Youth: A Novel

by Anthony Breznican

  “I only have nickels and dimes so far. Maybe four dollars’ worth,” Green said.

  “This ought to be enough to get me some kind of regular tie,” Davidek said. “This was a great idea, Green. I mean it. Thanks.”

  Green continued to probe under the shrubs. “It might be better than you know,” he said. Davidek asked what he meant, and Green answered cryptically: “I tried to set something in motion when I left before. Let’s see if it works.” The two freshmen resumed their hunt, and had accumulated another two dollars between them when a sound of hollering and mad laughter drew their eyes up the side of the schoolhouse to the mouth of the industrial fan three stories up. Seconds later, a rumbling pitched into a piercing whine, and a cannon blast of coins exploded from the exhaust grate.

  The widening column of metal disks spinning and flipping through space created a small galaxy of twinkling light across the dark morning clouds. Davidek and Green covered their heads as the coins showered around them.

  Green was laughing to himself. He looked at Davidek. “I call heads!” he said.

  Both boys swooped down to gather up the fallen fortune. “What was that?” Davidek asked. “There’s, like, twenty bucks in coins here, at least!”

  Green couldn’t hide his pride. “The truth is … I got the idea to come out here from our friend—Mr. Smitty. Turns out he isn’t just trying to curry favor with those Fanboys when he rats out all the kids who have spare change in their pockets. I saw him coming out here afterwards to gather up the money.”

  The boys were using their forearms to sweep together big piles of coins on the sidewalk. “Smitty had most of the money he gathered just sitting in two Ziploc bags in his locker,” Green said. “So, before we came out here, I just went over and told Morti and his buddies to go have a look-see.”

  “You are an evil genius, Hector Greenwill,” Davidek said. “But this is a lot of cash. Why wouldn’t the Fanboys just keep those big bags of coins for themselves?”

  Green sat up, thinking about it. “I guess because they’re morons.”

  Davidek said that sounded about right. “You think Smitty will find out it was us?”

  “I’m not sure what to make out of that guy,” Green said. “But remember that big speech of his? The one about how people do bad stuff to get what they want, but people only do good stuff out of selfishness, too? Well, maybe he was wrong. Maybe sometimes, people just do … stuff. Because they don’t know what else to do. Or out of pure craziness. Or who-knows-why.”

  The two freshmen hustled up the stairs, the change-filled pockets of their pants and blazers jangling like Christmas sleighs. “He was right about one thing,” Davidek said, putting an arm over his friend’s shoulder as they went inside. “Don’t get on the bad side of a do-gooder like you.”

  * * *

  In English class, Mr. McClerk was droning on about some Edgar Allan Poe story about a guy who keeps killing a black cat, but Davidek wasn’t paying any attention. He was planning not to spend one more day with the stupid clip-on around his neck.

  He had a study hall in the last period of the day and figured he could sneak away to hit the Kaufmann’s department store down the street and still make it back in time for the bus. But he’d need another student to tell Mrs. Tunns, the study hall monitor, that he wasn’t feeling well and had gone to the secretary’s office to lie down. It would have to be somebody trustworthy, so Mrs. Tunns wouldn’t feel obliged to check—that ruled out Stein, and maybe even Green.

  “Lorelei…,” Davidek whispered to the table in front of his. Her head was hung over her open book, hair drooping down around her face. “Lorelei … hey…” She wasn’t responding, so he strained forward and swatted her shoulder, then dropped back into his seat.

  She surprised him, and everyone else in the room, with a startled cry of pain. Mr. McClerk turned around at the chalkboard to ask if she was okay. Lorelei winced, but said she was fine. The other kids sitting around Davidek glared at him: What the hell did you do? He wondered the same.

  “Lorelei…,” he whispered, leaning forward across the table again. “Lorelei, I’m sorry. What was…?” She pulled her hair forward to block him from view, and Davidek noticed a deep bruise of brown and purple creeping up her neck from the shoulder beneath her blue sweater. “Lorelei … what…”

  She turned her face, looking at him through her hair. She wanted him to stop asking. “My mom caught me,” she said. “Taking her cigarettes.”

  * * *

  At lunch, Davidek thought Lorelei was avoiding him because he’d seen the bruises, but Lorelei just couldn’t be bothered to sit down. She spent the lunch break going from table to table in dangerous territory, begging for help in the upperclassman sections. It was humiliating. It was terrifying. But she was desperate, and saw no other way.

  Four very disinterested seniors listened to her plea: “… just a couple packs, and if you get me more, I can pay you back—eventually.”

  One of the guys shook his head, like a doctor diagnosing a terminal patient. “If you weren’t a freshman … but I don’t buy cigarettes for little kids.”

  Lorelei moved on to the next table, some middleclassmen, juniors and sophomores, a few of them girls. She hoped they would be sympathetic. “Hi,” she said, forcing a perky expression into her sagging eyes. “I, uh, wondered if you could…” She explained about the Grough sisters. “You sophomores know what it’s like, right? You put up with this last year.…”

  One guy leered at her, spreading his knees. “So, how are you willing to pay me?” He jiggled his hips at her, and all his friends laughed. Even the girls.

  Lorelei hurried away from them, running only a few steps before smacking into Davidek.

  “Hey, everybody, it’s Clip-On to the rescue!” said the Hip Jiggler, and everybody laughed again. The guy was on a roll.

  “You’re making this harder for me,” Lorelei said. “What do you want?”

  “I actually … need your help. To tell Mrs. Tunns I’m sick so I can skip out at study hall…” But Lorelei wasn’t listening to him. He watched her walk away, wandering through the cafeteria, visiting more tables, asking for more help, all to the amusement of their fellow Archangels.

  Just before the afternoon class bell rang, she stood before a table full of senior girls, who watched silently as she launched into her speech, about the Groughs, about the cigarettes, about her undying gratitude to anyone who could help her.

  When she finished, the apparent leader of the group—a perfect girl named Audra Banes, who was petite, curvy, gorgeous, and the epitome of all the grace and beauty St. Mike’s had to offer—looked wordlessly to her friends at the table.

  Lorelei blew air up at her bangs. She held out her hand. “I should have introduced myself first.… My name is Lorelei,” she said. “Please, I’m not a bad person.…”

  “I know who you are,” said Audra, adjusting the black-rimmed glasses she wore to give herself that aura of nerdy-girl chic. “You’re the one my boyfriend chose as Miss St. Mike’s.”

  * * *

  At the start of final period, Davidek hid in the bathroom, waiting for the halls to clear so he could sneak away. Green would have to cover for him with Mrs. Tunns. He hoped it worked.

  When Davidek stepped out into the empty corridor, the weight of his book bag felt more solid, as if gravity had suddenly increased. His bag’s back pocket sagged with loose change.

  “What are you doing?” a voice said from behind him. Davidek was fabricating a lie as he turned, but it wasn’t a teacher or the principal who had caught him. It was the red-haired girl from the third floor, the one who had once touched his cheek and called him “adorable.”

  “I’m skipping class,” he told her.

  She smiled. “Me, too. Calculus.”

  Joy bloomed in Davidek’s heart. He fidgeted with the clip-on tie, drawing attention to it by trying to obscure it. “Actually, I could use your help. I need to get to a store.”

  The redhead seemed amused.
“Skipping class to go … shopping?” she asked. “Must be something important.”

  Davidek hefted his book bag, feeling the money in it tinkling in small avalanches as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It is,” he promised.

  * * *

  Lorelei walked out the side entrance at the end of the day and found the Groughs in their usual spot behind the bushes. “You get what we want?” asked Mary, but before Lorelei could answer, Audra Banes, the student council president, lead singer in the choir, head cheerleader, and all-around senior St. Mike’s power player, stepped into the shade of the smoking bushes, her perfect hair flouncing with each fearsome step.

  “What is it exactly that you wanted?” she asked as the Groughs recoiled, but there was nowhere for them to go. Around the other bushes, a coterie of Audra’s senior girl-squad stepped forward: Allissa Hardawicky, Sandra Burk, Amy Hispioli. The Groughs were surrounded, speechless—and frightened.

  “From this point on, you don’t talk to the freshmen, you don’t look at the freshmen, and you don’t let your stinking, fat-ass carcasses bother this freshman in particular,” Audra said, throwing her arm around Lorelei’s shoulder and squeezing her close, which stung around the younger girl’s hidden bruise, but felt good all the same.

  The Grough sisters backed away, like vampires confronted with garlic and crucifixes. Audra jabbed her index finger in Mary’s plump belly. “St. Michael’s hazing tradition is about having fun and bonding with the new students—not threatening them, and not forcing them to acquire addictive and illegal products. Do you understand me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mary mumbled over her shoulder. The three burly girls scuttled away, and Audra’s girlfriends followed, chanting a singsong cry of “Sasquatch! Sasquatch!”

  Lorelei thanked Audra, again and again, until the older girl told her to stop it. She winked at Lorelei and said: “We Miss St. Mike’s winners need to stick together, don’t we?”

  * * *

  Davidek found Lorelei in the parking lot, where she was waiting for her dad to pick her up. He had leaped out of a Jeep driven by a red-haired older girl and ran over to Lorelei, smiling crazily, his short brown hair standing up in little spikes. His clip-on tie hung crooked on his open collar. He opened a plastic shopping bag. Inside was a brand-new carton of Alpaca cigarettes.

  Lorelei stared at it. She didn’t move.

  “It’s for you,” he said, and held it out to her, shaking the carton like she was a shy pet he wanted to do a trick.

  Lorelei put her hands on the box, stepping forward, her face close to his. He could smell her lip gloss, the fruit-flavored shampoo of her hair. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Because you needed it.”

  “Do you know how expensive this is?” she asked.

  Davidek laughed, a little out of breath, “I do now.”

  She demanded to know how he paid for it, and how he got a store to sell it to him.

  “Let’s say I found the money. And a guardian angel. Claudia—that red-haired girl, back in the Jeep. She’s eighteen! She has a locker up near mine on the third floor and she’s really cool and I told her and asked if she would buy them for me.” He was talking too fast, excited by it all.

  Lorelei stared at the cigarette carton silently. “So let’s give it to them,” Davidek said, pulling Lorelei toward the hidden spot behind the yew shrubs. She let him take her.

  When they found the space empty, she explained to Davidek what had happened. He looked disappointed, but a little hopeful, too. “The seniors actually helped you?” he said.

  “Sounds like one of them helped you, too,” Lorelei answered, and Davidek sort of nodded.

  “I guess so, yeah.” Maybe things weren’t so bad after all.

  Lorelei put her hands around his, holding the cigarette carton between them. “So what do we do with these now?” she asked. Their eyes locked, and both knew what the other was thinking. Davidek’s hands fumbled at the box, peeling back the plastic cover and lifting open the flaps. He took out a pack and opened it, drawing out one cigarette. The clerk at the convenience store had thrown matches into the bag with the purchase. Davidek struck one.

  “Everything they tell you about cigarettes is a lie,” Davidek said, watching the white smoke drift out of Lorelei’s lips. “They say it doesn’t feel good. But this feels great. And they say you don’t look cool smoking, but you look very cool, Lorelei. Beautiful, actually…”

  Her eyes glittered at him. He was surprised by his own boldness. She passed the cigarette back to him and he drew in. When it was almost finished, Lorelei said, “But there’s a third thing they tell you about cigarettes, and it’s absolutely true.…” She dropped their shared smoke on the ground, snubbing it under her penny loafer. “This stuff will kill you dead.”

  She dropped the rest of the cartoon back into the plastic bag, twisting it shut, then pushed her palms together to crush the carton. “I just saved your life,” she said. “At least … thirty years from now.”

  Neither of them knew what to say next. She reached up and brushed his cheek, their faces leaning close—hers serene, his stunned. Their lips were just a few inches apart, and drawing closer. “Thank you,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  There was a blast of a horn, and Davidek looked between the shrubs to see his school bus pulling out of the parking lot and into the street. A bunch of kids were hanging out the windows, calling his name. “That you?” Lorelei asked.

  Davidek’s head swiveled back and forth between her and the bus. He still had time to catch it, but … but … “Better go,” Lorelei said.

  Davidek waved as he ran off to the yellow school bus, which stopped at the corner, waiting for a red light. “Thanks for saving my life,” he said.

  Lorelei watched him go. He looked different to her somehow. “Same to you,” she said.

  TEN

  “There’s going to be trouble today,” the pudgy sophomore told them. “You should be a smart guy, not a tough guy. Stay out of sight. Don’t give anybody an excuse.”

  His name was Carl LeRose. (“You know … Carl LeRose?” he had said, introducing himself to Davidek at Stein’s locker, and looking hurt when that hadn’t seemed to mean much to the two freshman boys.) He was only a year older, but had the aura of an unhealthy middle-aged man—thickset, with a slump to his shoulders and a paunch that bulged taut against the bottom of his white shirt, raising his blue-and-red striped tie away from his belt. A watch that might have cost a few months’ salary for most people in the Valley dangled around his wrist. His blue blazer was a little too small for him.

  “Are you threatening us?” Stein asked, and LeRose sputtered, “No, no … why would I … Don’t you … don’t you guys know me?”

  The freshmen looked at each other. They had seen LeRose around, here and there, always on the periphery of things, too low to matter much, too hungry for attention to keep to himself. This was the first he’d ever spoken to them, though.

  LeRose blinked at the two boys. “Mom and Dad said you would know me.”

  Stein shrugged. “I guess Mom and Dad overestimated their little boy’s popularity.”

  LeRose shook his chunky face in frustration, then bent in half, aiming the top of his head at them and digging thick fingers through his heavily moussed hair until he exposed a bare split of bright white scar, roughly an inch long, shaped like a jagged half moon. Stein began snapping his fingers excitedly, his eyes wide. “Holy shit! Davidek, it’s the kid from the parking lot! This is the kid who got his brains knocked out!”

  LeRose turned his face sideways. “Were you there?” he asked, and Stein immediately mellowed.

  “Yeah, I was there. Sort of.”

  “Stein doesn’t like to kiss and tell,” Davidek said, expecting a laugh from his friend, but it made Stein shoot him a serious look.

  LeRose’s face lit up. “Kiss and tell? Are you—are you the one who planted one on Bromine? I heard that rumor, but … was that for real?”

 
Stein shook his head and said, “No, that wasn’t … That didn’t happen.” One trick to getting away with something, Stein explained to Davidek later, was to know that bragging equals confessing.

  LeRose’s face sank in disappointment. He looked to Davidek to see what was true and what wasn’t. Davidek followed Stein’s lead. “Nah, urban legend, man. Sorry.” He stuck his hand out and the sophomore shook it. “Nice to meet you,” Davidek said. “I guess the first time, we didn’t really meet meet.”

  LeRose nodded gravely. “I’d have come around and introduced myself sooner, but Dad said I should wait a couple weeks to talk to you.”

  “Your dad tells you who you can talk to?” Stein asked, his face wrinkled.

  “No,” LeRose shot back. “He wants me to help you out, but … it doesn’t look so good for a sophomore to buddy-up right away to a freshman, you know?” LeRose lowered his voice and leaned close. “So keep quiet about what I tell you guys, all right?” he said, reluctantly including Stein in the confidentiality. “The seniors are planning this thing.… I don’t know how it’ll go down, but it’s getting tense around here. A lot of people are getting in trouble, getting yelled at and stuff. Stupid things, you know? Holding hands with their girlfriends gets them detention. You believe that?”

  “Criminal,” Stein said.

  “Everything we do is under a goddamned microscope these days. So, okay—all those little shoves in the hall and shit? It’s going to get a lot worse. Just lie low. Word to the wise.”

  “How bad does all this initiation stuff get over the year?” Davidek asked him.

  LeRose rolled his hunched shoulders back and forth. “It can get ugly, I won’t lie—but you live. I can be your eyes and ears, okay? Just don’t tell anyone where you hear stuff from.”

  With that, LeRose started to slip off, but Davidek reached out and took his sleeve. “Can I ask you something else … about that day? The kid on the roof?” Stein rolled his eyes.

  LeRose said, “Yeah?”

  “Whatever happened to that guy?”