Maholtz sapped the wall and Beauregard backstepped, foot in the mixture.
Beauregard slipped. Beauregard puked.
“Hermaphradite Homo,” Lonnie said to Momo. He pushed the slapped chubniks into the lunchroom.
Vincie had just shaken free of my grasp. He ran six steps before jumping at Lonnie’s face. His chest smashed Lonnie’s nose; Lonnie’s skull struck the wall. They both hit the floor. Vincie got up first, onto his knees. He headlocked Lonnie, pulled him blindly toward the lunchroom. Lonnie crawled like a baby, but fast to save his spinal cord.
Just outside my striking-range now, Maholtz was poised to kick Vincie in the ribs.
BryGuy! I said.
He took a step back and sapped the jamb.
Vincie straightened up. Arm still locked around Blonde Lonnie’s skull, he palmstruck his mouth with his free hand. The squishy clicking noise the blow made was loud. Lonnie drooled in color.
Momo puked more. Beauregard Pate and the remaining chubnik dragged him inside of the cafeteria.
Vincie dragged Lonnie after them.
In the seconds since those kids started pointing, a crowd had developed around the doorway, drawing attention. It wouldn’t be long before robots showed up. I was currently doing nothing against the rules, but I wanted to do something against the rules. I wanted to be in possession of a deadly weapon, and I didn’t want to get it taken away.
Open my skull, I said to Maholtz.
“In front of all these peenple? I may be crazy, you stupid angshole, but—”
They’ve been waiting to see you use that thing forever, I said. I said, All you do is brandish.
Some kid in the crowd behind me said, “Brandisher.”
You’re just the mantel, I said.
“Mantel!” another kid in the crowd said.
Stuck in Act One, I said.
“Mangtel?” said Maholtz to those gathered behind me. “This guy’s a psycho.” He gave forth a giggle.
I twetched in his eye and he closed it.
Then I closed some space between us.
Now you’re winking at me, I said.
Someone said, “BryGuy.”
Someone said, “Floyd’s coming.”
I closed more space.
And then I took his weapon. I took it one-handed. I grabbed hold of the lead ball, exerted no more downward force than I would on a pen if I were to write scripture with a pen instead of a computer, and the deadly weapon was mine.
No hurrahs arose from the crowd. A couple people said “Winker” and “BryGuy,” but they sounded — even to Maholtz, I was sure — like embarrassed afterthoughts, not provocations. The rest of the crowd booed. Not so much at Maholtz as the implications of the anticlimax he and I had just provided them. To see an oppressor felled without a hint of violent struggle can’t help but tarnish the shine on your victim badge. To see Maholtz made to cower so easily had to make those who would have otherwise cheered wonder how they, for so long, could have cowered so readily before him. They were booing themselves.
As I entered the cafeteria, Blonde Lonnie limped past me into Main Hall, bleeding.
I heard Floyd command him to “Halt it, fella!” and I raced to the northern doorway. Vincie and Big Ending were ducking into the bathroom. I pulled on my hood and walked into Main Hall.
On my way to the front entrance, Ben-Wa and Leevon, playing slapslap by the lockers, paused their contest to show me victory fists. Just as I mirrored the gesture, Co-Captain Baxter whipped past me so fast I didn’t think to trip him.
Eliyahu, at his heels, shouted “Mamzer!” and long-jumped. He axe-chopped the Co-Captain’s shoulder on landing. Baxter said “Ah!” but lost little momentum.
Jerry exited his booth while, a few feet south of it, Eliyahu picked up speed going north. “Stop!” shouted Jerry.
Eliyahu didn’t stop.
Fakefight loud, I said to Leevon. Now, I said.
Locker-metal clanged. Ben-Wa shouted, “Fight!”
Jerry revolved at the sound of the word. Fighting trumped running. Ben-Wa and Leevon kept it up til he got there.
Eliyahu was safe.
As long as enough of us acted dangerous enough, most of us would be safe.
Through the glass of the front doors I saw Slokum heading away from the school.
A bright white tickle shot across my heart.
My pennygun was in my jacket, my jacket with June.
I stalked Slokum with the sap in my fist, cocked. He stopped walking at the far end of the parking lot, just past where it curved around the building. It made no sense for him to wait for his ride so far from the driveway. He was hiding something.
I ducked behind a dumpster five yards back.
He checked over both shoulders, and then his hands disappeared in front of him. His jacket’s Chief Aptakisic iron-on drew taut across his back. His neck muscles did a rolling thing.
With a running start, a well-timed leap, and the extra few inches by which the sap, when snicked, would extend from my hand, I could tag the base of his skull. Level him. Then stomp.
I got a running start.
When he revolved at the sound of my footfalls, a lit cigarette between his lips, I looked away from his eyes, saw his throat, and sprung. He stepped to the left and I hit the ground ugly. Elbow in the beauty. Windless. Choked sounds. I curled up and gripped the sap’s handle tight, trying to catch my breath, coiled to crush his ankle when he tried to kick me.
He didn’t try to kick me. He smoked.
I got my breath back.
I’ve got a weapon here, I said.
“Get up,” Bam said. “You want some help I’ll help you up.”
I popped up.
I said, Try and take my weapon.
“No one’s watching us kid so quit playing pretend with me and calm down,” he said.
I didn’t get H like I usually did when somebody’d tell me to calm down. I even calmed down a little. I told myself to keep my eyes on his throat and have contempt. His throat was a massive target, too large to miss if you could reach to swing on it, but then the chin compensated. Squarish, bristly, and nearly as wide as his neck, it looked bulletproof. He could tuck it. It was made to be tucked during fights, a shield of bone.
I heard kids heading to the buses, but couldn’t see them. The part of my field of vision not blocked by the corner of the schoolbuilding was filled with Bam.
“Swing it or pocket it kid I don’t want to take your prize, you like to smoke cigarettes?”
I should have said nothing and swung. Instead I said, Sometimes.
There was no reason to avoid looking at his face anymore. I didn’t have the snat to attack him head-on.
“Sometimes is smart,” Bam said. “All the time gets you killed.”
Why are you talking to me?
“I like you,” he said. “A lot of kids at Aptakisic are starting to like you, and if I wasn’t talking to you, I suspect you’d do something injudicious and then I’d be getting your blood all over my clothing, and what would I gain by that, I’d gain nothing, certainly not a conversation. So I’m glad, not anywhere inside, but on the surface — it makes me act glad—that you’ve decided to quit behaving injudiciously. I enjoy our conversations, Gurion, which is to say that during our conversations I find myself acting as if I am experiencing joy, you’re a rare good audience, someone who listens, and the way you handle yourself publicly is occasionally admirable. Like for instance just a few minutes ago, how you got that sap. I was there, you know. At the back of the crowd. You didn’t know that, did you, but now you know. Anyway that was elegant, how you took what you came to take, spent hardly any energy doing it. Admirable. But beyond that, and maybe more to the point, everyone likes to see the little guy win, and I don’t want to bear them the bad news about how he doesn’t, which is a warning and not a threat so lower the hackles there. Like most small toughguys, you think it’s weak, I know, to cheer for someone just because he’s smaller, and you think it’s backward to base your actions on what people are gonna cheer for, but the fact is smaller’s what they cheer for and, barring few exceptions, what they cheer for’s what I act on, so that’s why it’s a warning and not a threat, and that’s why I’m talking to you instead of wrecking you — I’m somewhat invested in your well-being. Believe.”