“Sure,” said Eliyahu. “And probably from me.”
I said, So imagine she hears you’re getting pushed around.
“I should worry Bathsheba will think I’m a coward? Don’t manipulate me.”
That’s not what I’m saying at all, I said. If Bathsheba hears that you get pushed around, it’ll cause her pain. Protect her from that, I said. There’s June. Would you like to meet her?
“When can I talk to you?” Vincie said to me.
I’d forgotten he was there.
Just let me talk to June first, I said to Vincie.
“Oh God,” he said.
Oh God what? I said.
Before he could answer, we were saying hello. I kissed June’s cheek and she pinched my neck. “This is Starla,” she said to us, chinning air at the clown-pantsed girl. Then to Starla: “You know Vincie Portite. Do you know Vincie? Anyway — this is Vincie. And that’s Gurion, and I don’t know who you are.”
“I am Eliyahu of Brooklyn,” Eliyahu said.
Vincie’s face was all red.
To Starla I said: I hear you don’t think I’m dark enough.
June punched me in the shoulder.
“Gurion’s dark as fuck,” Vincie told Starla. “And bracelets for causes are not punkrock.” He pointed at a yellow plastic bracelet on her left wrist. It looked like one of those Cancer Foundation bracelets that said LIVESTRONG.
Starla made the noise “Tch,” and turned the bracelet so we could see it said LIVESTOCK.
“That’s subtle,” said Vincie. “And your name is really fucken pretty, too. I’ve been wanting to tell you that since kindergarten.”
“Is that why you’re always staring at me at lunch?” said Starla.
“Yeah,” said Vincie. “That’s the reason. Cat’s outta the bag now.”
Wait, I said. Since kindergarten?
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Just like I said. Cat’s outta the bag.”
“What cat?” June said.
“Don’t worry about the cat,” Vincie said. “The cat’s no concern of yours.”
“Gurion,” June said.
Vincie’s cat, Vincie’s bag, I said.
“Anyway,” Vincie said to Starla, “that’s a pretty fucken name you’ve got, that’s all I’m saying.”
“It’s the name of a song,” said Starla.
“I know,” said Vincie.
“Liar.”
“When you can’t decide what’s on your mind, it’s clear. I’m here. Starla dear. Please take me home.”
“You know it!” said Starla.
“Yeah, and it’s fucken hammy, don’t you think?”
“Vincie,” June said.
“What?” said Vincie. “Starla knows the lyrics are hammy. It’s got nothing to do with her. It’s her fucked-up grunger parents I’m laughing at. Who names their daughter after a Smashing Pumpkins song, right Starla?”
“I know!” said Starla.
“It’s still a pretty name, though. And a pretty song, too, if you don’t pay attention to the words too close.”
“Weird, right?” said Starla.
“Not that weird,” said Vincie. “My favorite kind of pretty’s always mixed in with a little fucked-up. You got a bike, right?”
“Yeah,” Starla said.
“You should ride your bike to my house around midnight and we’ll go to the railroad tracks and smash some bottles. I got all these bottles in the recycling in my garage.”
“Why don’t we just meet at the tracks?” said Starla.
“I can’t carry all those bottles by myself,” Vincie said.
“What if we just skipped the bottles?” said Starla.
“How the fuck are we gonna skip bottles if we don’t have any bottles?”
“What? No. Wait… Not skip them like throw them, skip them like forget about them.”
“Why the fuck would we go to the tracks if we didn’t want to break some bottles?”
“I–I don’t—”
“If we’re not gonna break anything, we might as well just hang out in my room.”
“What about your parents, though?”
“After midnight? Why do you think I got so many bottles? We could smash bottles on them and they wouldn’t wake up.”
“Okay,” said Starla. She was breathless.
“Okay?” Vincie said. “What’s wrong with you?” Vincie said. “I was exaggerating. I’m not gonna let you hit my mom with a fucken bottle.”
I kicked Vincie’s shoe and when he tried to kick mine back, June stomped his foot away. Eliyahu was chewing the insides of his cheeks.
“No, I — your room,” Starla was saying. “We could just hang out in your room.”
“Sure,” said Vincie, “if you say so. Whatever. But there’s not much to do in my room, so if it’s boring, then tomorrow night I’m smashing bottles, with or without you.”
Vincie wrote his address down while June and I agreed to ditch detention, and Eliyahu, eyes burning, told me, “Don’t help.”
Help what? I said.
He’d already gotten past me.
“I’ve attained verklemptness!” he answered as he ran.
A familiar cracking noise resounded and I spun.
BryGuy Maholtz was doing wallnd tricks. He and Blonde Lonnie had Big Ending backed up inside the south doorway of the cafeteria, and Brooklyn and the Co-Captain were rushing toward them from opposite directions.
I dropped my bag and gave June my jacket.
“Steal these and meet me in the field,” I told her.
Vincie showed teeth, said, “Maholtz or Lonnie?”
Maholtz, I said.
Big Ending, in the doorway, bit lips and twitched. Every time Maholtz sapped a flake of wall off, Blonde Lonnie said, “What! Play that, you hermaphrodites!” Vincie muttered curses. I muttered commands: Walk slow, be stealth, we’ll get there any second. As soon as he noticed Eliyahu was rushing him, Co-Captain Baxter used basketball skills. First he went from topspeed to floor-squeaking deadstop in just two steps. Then he tried to pivot. He should have faked left.
Eliyahu caught his backpack by the loop with one hand and rabbit-punched him twice with the other. Squinching his neck up, the Co-Captain yelped, spun them in circles til he wiggled from his straps, and then from the thin boy whose hat he had stomped, this thin pale boy who he’d thrown in the mud, the Co-Captain, pop-eyed and whinnying, sprinted — just tucked in and bolted the long way down Main Hall, stunned and cowering, swift and southerly. The freed-up inertia of the captured backpack sent Eliyahu a couple yards north. When he regained his balance, he got a running start, hoisted the bag, deployed it like a natural. The bag’s arc ended at Baxter’s knee-backs. He didn’t fall, but his stride got limped. Eliyahu chased him into C-Hall.
Vincie, in the meantime, kept trying to run at the scuffle in the doorway, but running would bring on the robots too soon — Brooklyn’d just spent the day’s luck for the stealthless — so I held Vincie’s elbow and kept our pace steady. I wanted that sap.
Out of nowhere I placed like an overgrown halo: the last four words of Roth’s “Conversion of the Jews.”
That chubnik had excellent taste in big endings. What was his name? I didn’t know his name.
Blonde Lonnie knocked him hard into Isadore Momo and slugged him in the gut. Then Blonde Lonnie slugged Momo in the gut.
Beauregard Pate and the other two chubniks threw shoulder-blocks while Momo hugged himself and puked. Lonnie sidestepped the blocks and slapped the chubniks. Beauregard flooded. It looked like Sumo dog-paddling. His swearfinger caught inside of Lonnie’s shirt. The shirt popped a button.
Kids in the hall started pointing at the doorway.
Other kids looked.
Maholtz kicked Beuregard square in the ass, which turned him around.
The first chubnik puked on Momo’s puke.