by Sergio Gomez
Oh shit. Twist hadn’t thought this through that far. Jarod was too close to run, so he put his hands up, ready to try to block any blow that might be coming his way.
“Gonna give you another black eye,” Jarod said, and swung at him.
Twist used both of his arms to create a shell around himself, and stepped backward, but it wasn’t enough. The punch smashed into his elbow, exploding it in pain, and he stumbled off balance.
He felt Jarod grab him with his left hand by the back of the head and then knee him in the stomach, the pain forced Twist to double over and drop to his knees.
Oliver braced himself for the next blows.
Twist’s attack had bought Jamie enough time to catch his breath, get his bearings, and get back to his feet.
He scanned the scene. For some inexplicable reason Poochie was on the ground, bleeding a shitload and screaming. When his eyes fell on Oliver curled on the ground, clutching his stomach, and Jarod standing over him, he saw nothing but red.
Jamie sprinted toward them, his fist cocked back ready to take Jarod’s head off.
Jarod was loading up a kick to hit Oliver with, but saw Jamie coming toward him from the corner of his eye. He stopped his kick and pivoted on his foot to deal with him, but before he could even set his foot back down Jamie punched him in the jaw.
He hit him so hard Jamie’s thought he might’ve broken a knuckle or two.
Jarod’s head twisted on his shoulders, blood from his nose sprinkled off into the grass, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he was out cold before his body hit the ground.
Just like that, the fight was over.
Jamie bent down to help Oliver up to his feet, brushing grass off his jeans as he got up. “You okay, Ollie?”
Twist hugged him, not so much an affectionate thing but to keep himself from falling over. He was still feeling the blow to his stomach. “Yeah…I think. Thanks, Jamie.”
He noticed the blood around Oliver’s mouth, but his brother answered the question before it came out.
“It’s his,” Twist said, wiping at it with the back of his hand and nodding toward the wailing Poochie.
“Bob has some waters in the backseat, wash off with it.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Alright, I’m going to go take care of him.” Jamie said, moving away from Twist toward Poochie. “Get back in the truck.”
Poochie was still on the ground, still rolling around.
Jamie stomped over to him and slapped him across the face twice. The slaps stirred his focus, and Poochie opened up his eyes and looked up at Jamie. There was a glimmer of hope in them at first, hope that they’d won and it was Jarod trying to get his attention in a Jarod way, or maybe even just that someone had called the ambulance to come help him. That hope slipped away and was replaced by a pang of fear when he realized it was Jamie Harper standing in front of him.
“Hey, Pooch. You didn’t have to get involved in this shit. Now look at you.” Jamie slapped him again, and Poochie quivered. “I should beat you senseless, but nah. I’ll let this one go. Just don’t fuck with me again, got it? Oh, and if you ever touch my brother again, you best move out of this state because there isn’t anything that will stop me from coming for you.”
Poochie nodded vigorously, then managed to utter, “J-Jamie, will you call an ambulance? I think I’m going to faint.”
“I’m sure Jarod will…when he wakes up,” Jamie said, and then headed back to the truck, laughing until he was in the driver’s seat.
He stuck the key in the ignition, but didn’t turn it on.
“You sure you’re okay, Twist?” he asked Oliver.
He’d done as he was told and washed the blood off his face. The water bottle he’d used was sitting on his lap, half empty.
Twist nodded, even though his stomach still ached from the blow he took there. “Yeah, he only got me good once. No big deal.”
Jamie looked out the car window, past Oliver’s head, to the two guys in the grass. Jarod’s lights were still out, though his right leg twitched every few seconds. Poochie had sat up, and was touching his wounded ear, staring down at the blood on his hands, then touching his ear again, over and over in some traumatized state.
“The welcome back committee sure is ugly in this town. Fuckin’ A,” Jamie said, turning the key in the ignition.
Chapter 16
“I can’t do it now, Lucas,” Raymond said. “Everyone on the street is still up. They’ll see me.”
The front door was open, and he was staring across the street at the Harper’s place. The chilly air brushed against his cheeks and sent a shiver down his spine. He was geared up, jacket on, carving knife in his pocket with his hand wrapped around the handle.
But in his head, this didn’t feel like the right time.
“Then when, Father?” Lucas spoke from the bay window where he’d asked his father to put him, so he could watch over the street. “It has to be soon. It has to be now. I’m slipping away, Father. I won’t be a real boy for much longer.”
Raymond continued to stare out the door. “When it’s dark. I promise, Lucas, I’ll do it when it’s dark. It’s just too risky to do it right now.”
Lucas stirred limply, with a clatter of wooden limbs. “But doing this is the only way for me truly come alive. Don’t you want me to be alive, Father?”
“Of course I do, Son. It’s just another hour or two. I promise. You can wait that long, can’t you?” Raymond pleaded. “You’ve come all this way to be a real boy you can wait just a little bit longer?”
Lucas blinked his eyes. Clack, clack. “Fine. I will try, Father. We will wait.”
Chapter 17
It wasn’t his most ideal way to meet up with Samantha again, by showing up at her work place with lumps all over his face, and bruised knuckles, but those were the cards that fate had drawn for him. And he was always about playing the cards he was dealt as best as he could, so he strolled into the arcades as if he hadn’t been fighting a few minutes ago.
He gave Twist a five to go get tokens with and play some games, and made his way toward the prize area.
Giant Pikachu plushies and other Pokémon that were supposedly prizes—but in actuality were nothing more than enticement for the children to keep coming back in hopes to one day get one of them—hung from the ceiling to separate the prize area from the main game room.
No one was at the register when Jamie showed up, and so Sam had her back to him, straightening up the plushies and boxes of toys that no one would ever claim.
“How many tokens for that Power Ranger motorcycle, pretty lady?”
She turned around lackadaisically. Then, when she saw it was him, her face beamed. “Jamie Harper! You actually came?”
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
Sam rushed around the register and gave him a big hug.
A door at the back of the prize area opened up, and Lou, a fat man with a horseshoe cut, poked his head out to see what all of the commotion was about.
“Is that Jamie Harper?” Lou said, popping out of the backroom.
Jamie tried to keep from staring. The past year had not been good to the man. He’d put on weight, and not in the good way. He glistened with sweat that rolled down his scalp as he limped to him. The impeded walking was new, too.
It made him sad to see because he’d practically grown up in the arcades, and Lou was somewhat of an uncle figure for him.
“Lou! Nice to see you,” Jamie said, remembering himself.
Lou gave him a big hug, and Jamie caught a whiff of his cheap cologne. The smell he’d always associated with the place.
“When’d you get back?” Lou asked.
“Just today.”
Lou smiled, and grabbed at Jamie’s biceps. “Army’s been putting you through some work, huh, bud?”
Jamie smiled back. “Yeah, something like that.”
Lou looked over at Sam, who was smiling bigger than he’d ever seen her smiling during her shift (and
smiling is in her job description! Lou thought) and then patted Jamie on the back. “Tell your folks I said hello. And welcome back, young man. Thanks for serving.”
Jamie shook his extended hand. It was sweaty and meaty, and he felt like going into the bathroom to wash, but he didn’t because as soon as Lou waddled himself back into the staff room, Sam threw herself onto him and gave him another hug.
“I missed you, Jamie Harper.”
Jamie hugged her back. “I missed you too, Sam.”
He still wasn’t sure he wanted to get back with her, but he had to admit it was kind of a bad thing he did to her. Just signing up for the military with no warning. They were never officially an item, but their fling had been pretty passionate up until he left Dutch County.
Add to that, that the reason Jarod had tried scrambling his brains earlier was because he and Sam had been going steady for a year before Jamie stepped in. In fact, Jamie had met Sam through him, but she liked him so much they ended up screwing at Poochie’s house one night when the three of them had been drinking. Poochie had passed out, in a corner, and so Jamie and Sam started making out.
The next thing they knew, they were upstairs in Poochie’s parents house naked under the sheets.
Sam broke it off with Jarod the next day and had told him why. After that, the friendship between Jamie and Jarod unraveled and their feud started.
Jamie didn’t care at that point. About anything, because Dutch County would be a thing of the past for him as soon as he went into the military. All of the people, the abuse from Big Bob when he was younger, the shitty teachers in high school who told him he’d amount to nothing, the rivalry with Jarod for stealing his girl, his fling with Sam. None of it would matter when he was in the Army, and now here he was a year later.
His hand slicked by Lou’s paws, Sam’s freckled face buried in his shirt, Oliver aiming the Time Crisis 2 gun with his one good eye. It was like he hadn’t missed a beat, or rather, returned a year later and the town was looping back to the same beat.
“You taking me out for milkshakes after work, or what?” Sam asked.
Jamie shook his head. “Promised my little brother a night at the arcades. Maybe tomorrow?”
“Okay,” Sam said, disappointed. “I waited a year for you to come back, guess I can wait another day.”
“Ah,” Jamie laughed. “How about I buy you a slice of pizza and we catch up over that?”
Sam ignored the question when she saw the bruises on his face. She reached out and touched one. “Did you just get these Jamie Harper? Are you already getting yourself into trouble?”
Jamie rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, yeah. Got into a little mix-up before getting here.”
“With Jarod?”
“And Poochie. Two on one,” Jamie said, then corrected himself. “Well, sort of. Ollie jumped in.”
“Fucking pussies,” Sam spat.
“You see him around much?”
“Sometimes. Gives me dirty looks, but he’s too spineless to say anything.”
Jamie nodded. “Sounds like Jarod, all right.”
They went silent for a moment. Jamie leaned against the checkout counter. He glanced over at Oliver, who still seemed entertained with Time Crisis 2. But it was only a matter of time until he’d wonder why Jamie wasn’t playing with him.
“So, how about that pizza?” Jamie asked.
“Yeah, sure, let me check with Lou first.”
Jamie nodded, and Sam headed into the staff room at the back of the prize area.
The arcade was empty, despite school being out.
There were two kids, a little older than Twist, playing air hockey. A couple on an awkward first date was playing skee-ball on the other side of the arcades. And a chubby kid with long hair and glasses who looked like he could’ve been a permanent fixture of the place was immersed in the Terminator light-gun game.
It was strange seeing it this empty, considering back in high school when he used to hang out here the lines for the fighting games would sometimes wrap around other games, causing a ruckus and confusion of who was waiting for what. Sometimes it’d even turn into shoving matches and yelling contests, but then they’d take it out on their opponents in Street Fighter or Tekken or whatever.
Those were the days, Jamie thought, staring at all of the lights on the machines and hearing the familiar bleeps and bloops coming from their speakers.
There were games he recognized, cabinets that hadn’t moved since he’d been here last, and new stuff, too. But it was Lou’s Arcade, the childhood of anyone that grew up in Dutch County. Even still, he felt like he was seeing it for the first time because he’d been away for so long.
Sam came out through the door before he could walk further down memory lane and stuck her hand out. He grabbed it. It was soft and smooth, and when he held it, it dulled some of the ache from pounding on Jarod and Poochie earlier.
“He’s cool with it since we’re so slow,” Sam said, guiding him toward the eating area.
“Sweet,” Jamie said, following behind her.
He came back to consciousness with a blurry face swimming in his vision. Someone was trying to nudge him awake.
“Yo, Jarod. Jarod, wake up.”
It sounded like the person speaking was shouting through a tin can, or maybe he was the one inside the can. Either way, the voice cleared up more with each second. His vision began to clear up too, though it kept spinning; left, right, left, right.
The tingling in his limbs began to go away and he felt the strength start to come back to them, so he sat up, pushing away whoever was shaking him.
“Jarod, get it together, man.”
“Get off me,” Jarod said, slapping off the hands that were wrapped around his shoulders.
He shook his head and got up into a crouch. His vision was back, and he was starting to remember everything. Starting with who this was in front of him. Poochie. Poochie with the side of his head bleeding profusely.
“Poochie, what the hell happened to you?” Jarod asked, jumping up to his feet.
Poochie still held onto his ripped ear, still felt the hot pain with each thump of his heart as blood pumped out of the gash, but for the moment his priorities had switched to waking Jarod. And now it was to fill him in with what happened since he obviously didn’t remember much.
“Jamie kicked our asses,” he said.
It was that simple, too. There wasn’t anything more to it than that. Jarod felt his face turn red with anger. “Fuck!”
“His little brother jumped in—bit a part of my fucking ear off.”
The Ford was only a few yards away. Jarod ran toward it and kicked it as hard as he could, leaving a baseball sized dent on the passenger door. His dad would probably yell at him for that, tell him to learn how to treat his stuff with respect, but right now he didn’t care.
He couldn’t believe he not only got his ass kicked by Jamie Harper, again, but he also didn’t get a chance to scare him with the gun—or shoot him if it came to that.
But then again, Jamie Harper was likely staying at his folk’s house considering he’d been driving Big Bob’s truck. He knew exactly where that was, and the night wasn’t over yet.
Nowhere to hide, Harper.
“Come on, Pooch. Get in the car.”
Poochie was surprised at how calm Jarod’s voice was. It was an eerie calm though, the kind that someone uses seconds before they snap into a psychological breakdown. “There’s blood all over me, I might bleed on your seat—”
“Get in the fucking car,” Jarod said, and then started around to get into the driver’s seat.
Poochie did as he was told, opening the car door with his free hand and trying not to get any blood on the upholstery. It proved to be an impossible feat, considering the blood was running down the side of his neck and the arm holding the wound was covered down to the elbow. The second he leaned back against the seat, the cloth was stained with blood.
Poochie glanced at Jarod, who turned the car on
and pulled out into the road. There was a calm in his eyes, and he didn’t seem to care one bit about his car getting dirty. Normally he would yell at Poochie if he even had mud on his shoes, but not now. His mind seemed to be elsewhere.
Poochie wasn’t sure where, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know, either.
“I’m taking you to the hospital. Call your folks. Tell them it was my fault,” Jarod said.
“Okay,” Poochie replied. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything more.
The drive to the hospital was fifteen minutes, but with the strange silence between them it felt longer for Poochie. He would look out the window, at the farms on the side of the road that connected the main neighborhoods of Dutch County with the commercial and industrial parts of the town. Then he would look back at Jarod, who kept his eyes glued to the road with a blank facial expression.
He’d turned the radio off, and they could hear every squeak and squeal of the undercarriage any time they hit a bump on the road that moved it around. Poochie had been in this car countless times, but without the metal music and the air of weirdness surrounding them, it was almost an alien experience.
Things were about to get weirder.
Jarod pulled the car up to the front of the hospital.
Poochie opened the car door and stepped out onto the pavement. He was about to turn around to thank Jarod for the ride, but Jarod spoke first.
“You were a good friend, Poochie. Take care,” he said.
Poochie was about to ask what that meant but the look on Jarod’s face threw him off. He paused. Jarod’s eyes seemed to be empty—like his friend was on autopilot.
Before he could recover, the Ford took off.
“Thanks,” Poochie said to the trail of dust the car left behind.
Then the pain in his ear pulsed, and he ran into the hospital.
Chapter 18
Sam stayed way past her working hours at Lou’s Arcade even though she was sick of the looping music on the demo screens of the games. On a normal day she would have ran out of there at the end of her shift and waited for her dad to pick her up outside, but today was no normal day. Today was the day Jamie Harper had returned—the only boy she thought she would ever be able to fall in love with.