"What did you say you little fuckin' pussy?" He enquired toughly, in disbelief.
I had to search through my memory banks to come up with a statement that was suitably insulting to a high school bully from the eighties. After a moment I came up with one. "I said, why don't you suck my dick asshole, if you're not too tired from fuckin' your momma all night."
His friends, as well as the group of teenagers gave a collective gasp. "You gonna let him say that shit to you Richie?" One of them asked, goading him.
"You're dead motherfucker." Richard said, advancing towards me, his fists clenched and raised in a pseudo-boxing stance.
I snorted contempt, which again almost gave him pause. He threw a haymaker right at my face, which, had it impacted, probably would have broken my nose. But it didn't. I easily sidestepped to the left, allowing his fist to whiz through thin air and spin his body around. Once he was turned away from me I stepped forward and drove my right elbow into his back, right above the kidney, as hard as I could. There was a solid thump followed by the whooshing of air being ejected from his lungs and a startled, painful cry from his lips. His hands dropped instantly down and he staggered forward two steps, holding his back.
I raised my right foot off of the ground and slowly placed it against his ass. With a hard shove of my leg, he was propelled into the chain link of the bike racks, making a musical jing as the metal was struck. He bounced off and landed on his ass on the grass, a stupid expression of surprise on his face.
While his friends gaped, unmoving at this development, the girls all erupted in fits of derisive laughter, pointing at him. As I'd planned, this infuriated him. He leapt to his feet and charged me, meaning to grab hold of me and take me to the ground, I was sure. But he hadn't learned from his first attack. He threw his weight forward and, once again, I easily stepped around him. As he passed I kicked his feet out from beneath him. He became horizontal for a brief second before crashing to the pavement, scratching up his hands and knees.
As he tried to get to his feet I hooked my foot forward, as if I was performing a kick-off in a football game, and connected directly with his face. There was an audible crunch as his nose was shattered along with several teeth. I pulled my foot back and watched as blood began to pour onto the ground from his face. He seemed quite dazed, frozen in place, so I stepped forward and kicked once more, this time connecting with his rib cage. I felt the crunch of ribs fracturing this time and Richie finally collapsed unmoving to the ground, guarding his side.
I looked at his friends, who were staring at me, mouths agape in disbelief. They could have stomped me to death in less than a minute had they wished but, as I'd figured, they didn't. I locked gazes with them, putting on the meanest expression I could call up. "You guys want some of this too?" I asked toughly.
None of them answered. They averted their eyes from me, finding objects to peruse on the ground and in the sky.
"Get the fuck out of here then." I commanded and they instantly obeyed, moving quickly down the path to the school's entrance.
I looked up to see expressions of unbelieving awe on Mike, the junior and senior girls, and several freshmen kids that had approached. The freshmen would probably had been Richard's next victims had I not taken action. They were looking at me as if I was Jesus Christ right down from the cross.
I smiled shyly. "None of you saw anything, did you?" I asked.
From the ground Richard was moaning, snorting blood out of his nose and mouth, and holding his side. They all looked at him for a moment and then back at me. A chorus of 'no's ensued.
"Good." I nodded, heading towards the school entrance once again. I looked back at Mike, who was still staring, unmoving, at Richard. "You coming?" I asked him.
"Huh?" He nearly jumped. "Oh, yeah."
We entered the school, walking through the crowded halls, hearing the slamming of locker doors and the babble of thousands of conversations.
"That was un-fucking-believable!" Mike finally said, looking at me as if I might be hot.
I shrugged. "It was nothing. Those fuckin' scrotes don't know how to fight. They just act like they do."
"Scrotes?" Mike asked, confused. "What's a scrote?"
Oops. I'd just used a term that, while a common descriptor among Spokane's paramedics, cops, and firefighters in the nineties, had not been in general usage in high schools in the eighties. A small mistake but I instinctively knew that I would have to watch what I said. What if I suddenly started talking about the Persian Gulf War, or the Internet, or something like that.
"Uh," I said, "Something I heard on HBO the other day on a cop movie. It's short for scrotums. You get it?"
"Oh yeah." Mike said, grinning as he thought it over. "Scrotes. That's pretty funny."
"I thought so." I said.
Our lockers were next to each other. I remembered that much. The lock was dangling from the handle; a standard, school issued lock. As Mike began twisting the dial on his I simply stared at mine.
"What's the matter?" Mike asked, looking at me.
I glanced at him. "I don't suppose," I said slowly. "That you know what my combination is?"
"What?" He said, confused, staring at me.
I gulped again. I could see in his face that he was starting to pick up that something was different about me.
"I uh… " I said. "I can't seem to remember my locker combination. A brain-fart I guess."
"Brain-fart?" He said, cracking up. "Goddam you're full of 'em today. Was that in the movie too?"
I realized that I'd used another anachronistic term. Christ, this shit was getting complicated. I was going to have to really watch my words. "Yeah." I nodded. "It was. A pretty funny movie."
"What was it?" He asked, pulling open his locker and removing some books.
"I forget what the name was." I answered. "Lethal Weapon, or some shit like that. So, do you know the combo for my locker, or what?"
"Yeah." He nodded. "You remember you gave it to me that time so I could put that herb in it?"
"Oh yeah." I said, remembering that Mike, who used to sell joints for two bucks apiece, would occasionally store his supply in my locker.
"Anyway, it's 34-13-23."
"Thanks." I told him, grateful. "I remember now." I began spinning the dial.
"Brain-fart's over." He chuckled. "I'll catch you later."
He was already out of sight in the passing throngs of kids before I realized that I had no idea what class I was supposed to go to. I stood there by my locker as the halls began to empty before me, trying desperately to think. What was my class schedule in the tenth grade? It was useless. Even looking at my books didn't help. Seventeen years had gone by after all. That information had long since been purged from my memory.
While I was still trying to figure it out Tracy came tooling by accompanied by her best friend Cindy Kendall. Tracy was giving me a strange look as she passed, a suspicious look. So was Cindy for that matter; a cute blonde who's image I remembered masturbating to many times during my teenaged years. I remembered seeing a flash of Cindy's white panties once when she'd been staying the night at our house with Tracy, a brief glimpse when she gotten up from the couch while dressed in her nightshirt. I remembered being obsessed with that half-second flash of those panties for months, able to masturbate to nothing else. Had that happened yet? I wondered. I didn't know.
"Tracy!" I barked as she passed. "Come here a second."
She hesitated, obviously not wanting to be seen talking to her younger brother. But finally she came over. Cindy stayed a distance away, watching us.
"What's going on with you today?" She asked, glancing around. "You were acting all weird this morning and I just heard you got in a fight with Richard Fairview. And that you kicked his ass. Is that true?"
"Yeah." I nodded, dismissing Richard Fairview. "But listen, I need… "