Off Limits

by Glen Robins

  The two girls giggled and shot knowing glances at each other. “You’re a pretty brave little dude, going after someone twice your size like that,” said the driver.

  Collin knotted his eyebrows, even more confused now.

  “We saw the whole thing,” said the passenger. “We were going to go to get some coffee with our friends but decided to go back and get the car. You guys needed to get out of there fast.”

  “Yeah,” said the girl driving. “Rick is such a jerk. Who knows what else he and his little gang would’ve done?”

  The rest of the ride home was filled with questions and comments that Collin had no response to. “Why do some guys have to be like that?” “What would you have done if those other boys didn’t stop you?” “Are you going to tell the principal?”

  After the girls dropped Darrell, Rob, and Collin off at their respective houses, Collin went around the side of the house and down the driveway to the pool house in the back yard, hoping to avoid his mother until he could clean up properly. He used the sink and the mirror in the tiny bathroom to wash away the blood from his face, as well as his shirt. Nothing he could do about the swelling. Once he was pleased enough with his appearance, he snuck back up the driveway to the front door. Wasting no time, he bounded up the semi-circular hardwood staircase as stealthily as he could, took a sharp left at the top and tiptoed across the open second floor walkway to his room.

  As Collin unbuttoned his semi-wet shirt, he looked at himself in the full-length closet door mirror. What he saw depressed him. Not only was he short and skinny, he was downright scrawny. Every single one of his ribs showed through his skin and his arms resembled twigs sticking out from a sapling’s trunk. He looked like a little boy, especially compared to Rick Magliano. People were right, he was crazy to bull-rush a big kid like that. Surveying his physique, he made a decision to start bulking up so he’d be ready for the next round.

  Collin pulled on a fresh shirt and took another look in the mirror before two knocks came at his door. Sarah Cook pushed the door open and entered. She looked Collin over from head to toe. She held a bag of ice in one hand. “New shirt, I see. Did you get blood on the other one?”

  She always knew everything about everything. How did he think he could sneak this one past her?

  “Yes, Collin,” she continued. “I just hung up the phone with Mrs. Greely. Darrell told her the whole story and she called to express her thanks, as well as her concern. Are you alright?”

  Sarah Cook handed her youngest child the ice pack and motioned for him to put it on his nose.

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “What happened out there, Collin?”

  “I thought you said Mrs. Greely told you all about it.”

  “She told me Darrell’s side of the story. Now I want to hear yours.”

  “It was nothing, really. Just a bully being a bully, you know.”

  “And you stopped him?”

  “No,” said Collin, looking away. “I got there too late. He had already pushed Darrell to the ground and said some really mean things to him.”

  “Oh, so you wanted to teach him a lesson?”

  “I don’t know. I just got angry and went after him. I didn’t think about it at all.”

  Sarah gazed at Collin, a mix of pride, concern, and righteous indignation flashing in her eyes. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, feeling awkward and puny. She stepped toward him and wrapped him up in her arms. “I’m proud of you for trying to help your friend. It’s an admirable thing to defend those who are being picked on.” After a long embrace, Sarah released her young son and turned toward the door. She paused there, wiping a tear from her eye. “Now, you’d better put that ice on that nose,” she said as she exited.

  As soon as his mom left the room, Collin dropped to the floor and started doing push-ups. He collapsed after seventeen, but the image of the pretty girl with the steel-blue eyes who had come to help him played in his head. Conjuring up his courage and stamina, fourteen-year-old Collin Cook vowed he would get bigger and stronger. With the desire to impress the beautiful, nameless stranger, he willed himself to do eight more push-ups before he stopped and iced his throbbing nose.

  Chapter Two

  Freshman Year, Week 3—Emily

  Edison High School

  Huntington Beach, California

  Huntington Beach, California, could not have been more different than her hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. To Emily Burns everything felt strange, yet exciting. This was her chance to make new friends and become someone better. But she missed the familiarity of Charlestown, the upscale Boston neighborhood where she had lived since she was four.

  California schools were different, too. Open, two-story affairs built a generation ago instead of Boston’s staunch, fully enclosed brick fortresses built a century ago. She enjoyed walking in the fresh air between classes and feeling the sun on her skin and the ocean breeze in her hair.

  The kids were different, too, but the social systems were pretty similar. There were always the groups and the cliques. There was the “popular” group, then there was everyone else, divided into subcategories like the nerds, the musicians, the drama kids, the goths, the freaks, the do-gooders, and, inevitably, the outcasts. Before the school year began, Emily determined not to let herself get sucked into any group until she had assessed the social landscape. Then, she would make her decision based on which new friends would help her become a better version of herself, rather than accepted or popular based on what she wore or how she talked. She wanted more than that and this move across the country offered her a chance at a new beginning.

  Based on her natural beauty, the popular girls at school seemed to want to befriend her. But she knew what they were up to. It had something to do with keeping friends close and enemies closer, she suspected. Having fallen into the popularity trap in middle school, Emily was determined not to succumb to the pressure of trying to fit in with that type again. She didn’t like who she was when she hung out with those girls.

  It had been a struggle to convince her parents to allow her to attend public school instead of another one of their pre-selected private schools, stock full of the latest tools, posers, wannabes, preps, snobs, high-minded over-reachers, and dim-witted airheads. Rich kids were a pain to deal with and she wanted to try surrounding herself with normal people who weren’t so proud of themselves for having parents that were either extremely wealthy or pretended to be.

  Now that she had been transplanted to the West Coast, Emily was finding it to be an even more difficult struggle than she expected to remain politely aloof—amiable yet detached—while she searched out the right kind of friends in this new and confusing environment.

  Deep in her heart, she knew her parents were that same type of people that infested the private schools. Their primary focus was on their social status and enhancing their image. She saw how shallow and petty they had become, especially her mother, in their pursuit of recognition and praise.

  Emily wanted a rich life, but not necessarily a rich person’s life. To her, that meant doing meaningful work and associating with good-hearted people who wanted to make the world a better place. Another important part of a rich life in her mind was to build something that was missing for her: a loving family. Eventually, she wanted to marry someone she truly loved, not necessarily one who possessed the potential for upward mobility. She wanted a husband she could admire and children that she actually spent time with. That was what she really wanted, and she knew her high school years would be formative in terms of preparing herself to reach these high ideals.

  She had learned these lessons about the formative years through her mother’s pep talks. For such a social fiend and status-conscious wine lover, her mom could, on occasion, slip in some deep philosophical gems. Emily was quite certain that she had applied her mother’s advice much differently than her mother had intended, but there were these nuggets of wisdom, nonetheless. Deep in her mother’s brown eyes lay pools o
f sadness, yearning, and hidden despair. Too bad her mother was so out of touch with her own soul and incapable of showing her true nobility. The nightly doses of wine, which seemed to have grown larger since the move, may have contributed to that.

  Midway through her third week in her new school, Emily witnessed something truly special, something that gave her lonely heart a boost and restored her faith in the goodness of humanity. It changed her perspective and shaped the rest of her high school experience. She felt grateful to have seen what she saw.

  It happened on a day when she’d nearly given up hope of ever fitting in with these California kids. It happened on a day when she determined to watch a certain classmate who, she had noticed, always hung out with a handicapped boy. Following him from a distance after school let out, she wanted to see if he was for real or just putting on a show.

  She soon learned that he was indeed unique.

  Emily watched a boy who had yet to mature physically act like a man in the face of impossible odds. He was short and skinny and had an adorable innocence about him. The boy seemed to embody the modern-day spirit of the young David ready to take on the giant Goliath. When his disabled friend got knocked to the ground and this boy charged the bully who did it, something inside her clicked. No, it leapt or sparked or ignited. A flood of emotions overwhelmed her, and she instantly admired the courage and pluck this outmatched scrapper had displayed. He was the type of person she wanted to be around and wanted to be like.

  She had finally found someone she instantly admired and knew she wanted to be his friend.

  Rushing to his aid, Emily dropped her books and dug through her purse for the packet of tissues she always kept handy. She wanted to help this boy and let him know how his courage and his action had inspired her. She was eager to dissuade him after the near disaster of his first attempt to teach the big kid a lesson. Trying to convey her admiration and concern, she hoped to first distract him from his intent to go at it again and second to find out more about him. She thought she might even walk home with him. Anything just to be near him.

  Her heart sank when he was whisked away by a pair of friendly senior girls in a silver car before she had even learned his name. She watched helplessly as he and his two friends piled into the back seat amid the after-altercation commotion. With horns blaring, she watched the car pull away from the curb. As it did, she saw the boy’s face peering at her out the back window and her heart skipped a beat.

  Perhaps a little thunderstruck, Emily stood there watching him leave. Two girls she recognized from her Math class stepped into the void next to her. The taller, blonder one said, “That’s Collin Cook. Known him since fourth grade.”

  The shorter blond chimed in. “He’s always like that, especially about Darrell. No one talks bad about Darrell when Collin’s around, even though he’s a pretty strange kid.”

  “Yeah,” said the first girl. “Darrell’s your typical dork. No life. All he does is study and ace tests and make the rest of us look dumb.”

  “But Collin’s cool. Everyone likes him. But you don’t want to cross the line with him, or you’ll get what you just saw.”

  “Yeah, full action hero mode.” The second girl giggled. “But it’s adorable, isn’t it?”

  The two girls helped Emily pick up her books, then said their good-byes. “See you tomorrow in Algebra,” said the taller one.

  The shorter one smiled. “That was nice of you to help him like that. See you around.”

  Emily felt a connection for the first time since the move. Not to just one person, but three. She crossed Magnolia Street and walked alone through the parking lot of the community center, careful to ensure that no one was following her. Lost in thought and jumbled feelings, Emily walked to the designated spot in the park near the tennis courts where her driver would pick her up each day.

  Emily thought about that brave boy all the way home. Margarite, the woman her mother had hired to be her maid/chauffer/au pair, questioned her about what was wrong and what had happened. She replayed the whole scene for her on the car ride home, then thought about it all afternoon while she tried to study, in the evening as she ate dinner in front of the TV with Margarite, and at night as she attempted to fall asleep. No matter how hard she tried to push away thoughts of Collin Cook, his boyish face and that fiery look in his eyes came back to the forefront. She knew she had to meet him again and learn more about him.

  Much to her chagrin, Emily’s parents found out about the incident at school. She knew Margarite wouldn’t have betrayed her. Besides, they had been together all afternoon and evening. She knew for a fact she hadn’t brought it up when they called. She was right there listening. It must have been the principal or someone from the school. The news shocked and horrified her parents, especially her mother, and brought new intensity to their argument for private school. It became the topic of conversation that night after the incident when her parents arrived home after eleven o’clock, bedazzled in their finest evening attire and high-brow jewelry, no doubt having attended some event for whatever local high society club they were trying to break into.

  Both had been drinking, as they always did at these affairs, which only served to heighten their vanity and argumentativeness. It surprised her, though, that despite their heads being in the clouds and their minds firmly fixed on climbing Orange County’s social ladder, her parents took the time to talk about the fight, “the ugly scene,” as they put it. Never did they express concern over her well-being or ask if she knew any of the kids involved. Instead, they seemed preoccupied with the potential for splash over onto their pristine images.

  “No daughter of mine is going to cavort with such ruffians,” said her mother in a slurred huff. “You don’t want to be associated with that type.”

  “You’d be much safer in a private school where the families are vetted, and the population is generally of a higher caliber.” Her father spoke with the air of authority and aristocracy that felt like it belonged more in seventeenth century England than in modern-day California.

  “But these kids … we don’t know anything about them or their backgrounds,” Emily’s mother argued with a garbled tone. “We don’t know what they’re capable of.”

  “That’s right. You don’t know them. You don’t know anything about anyone else,” Emily said under her breath. Her mother either didn’t notice or felt the conversation was over. She was on her way out of Emily’s bedroom when Emily added, “If you remember, Mother, Stacy Allred and Jennifer Miller, two of your friends’ daughters, had that all-out brawl at Worcester, your hand-picked academy where ‘only the finest students are admitted.’” Emily changed her voice to try to sound regal and used her fingers to make air quotes as she said it. She won the argument, and the “ugly incident” was never again mentioned.

  Katherine Burns stormed out of her bedroom, slamming Emily’s door as she left.

  In tears, Emily began plotting a way to engineer a chance meeting with Collin Cook.

  Chapter Three

  Freshman Year, Week 3—Emily

  Edison High School

  Huntington Beach, California

  During lunch the next day, Emily searched for Darrell Greely. He was never hard to spot, lumbering as he did. She followed him to a table on the perimeter of the amphitheater. This, she figured would be better than asking the other freshman girls about Collin. That sort of thing brought its own kind of attention and scrutiny and she was careful to avoid both.

  Just as she thought, Darrell was welcomed to the table by Collin and two other friends, one of which she saw at the fight. He was the other boy who jumped into the back of that silver Mazda.

  Emily paused, fiddling with the straps of her backpack as she watched the boys talk and laugh and punch each other. Sucking in a deep breath, she marched toward the table where Darrell, Collin, and their other two friends sat, eating their lunches. As Emily approached, from Darrell’s back, a throng of bustling freshman girls rushed past her to Collin’s table. Many
of them she recognized. They were part of the “popular” group, the very girls Emily wanted to avoid. They cooed and they giggled and they fussed over Collin, asking him if he was all right and spewing forth glowing praises for his bravery. The other boy who had jumped in the car got his fair share of female adoration as well but remained unfazed. The buzzing swarm paid Darrell no attention and never bothered to ask if he was all right. From the look on his face, he seemed used to it. Collin only grinned and nodded. He said very little.

  While the girls acknowledged the fourth boy, a studious-looking blonde with glasses and piercing blue eyes, he just smiled and nodded at them. He seemed to participate in the conversation, but only on the periphery. The look of amusement on his face led Emily to believe that girls swarming around his friends was nothing new.

  Just as Emily was turning to leave, Collin peered through the throng and made eye contact with her. Though his nose was swollen, and dark circles shadowed his eyes, his face brightened as recognition set in.

  Collin sprang to his feet, ignoring the incessant tittering of the band of excited females that encircled him. He politely excused himself and began making his way around the table. Emily froze. All the girls stopped their chatter and glared at Emily, who stood several paces behind Darrell as Collin made a beeline toward her. Looking around to see if there was someone else he was focused on, her confidence faltered, the opening line she had practiced evaporated.

  “Hey,” said Collin, digging his hands in his pockets as he drew near. “Um, I didn’t get a chance to say ‘thanks’ for the tissues yesterday.”

  “Yeah, no problem.” Emily looked at her feet and pulled in a breath. “I just wanted to tell you that I thought it was really brave what you did yesterday.”