It was getting toward evening now, around five o’clock or so. On the far side of the mall, in the gap between the Pizza Kitchen and the movie theater-beyond where the movie theater parking was-I could see the sun turning red as it reached the tops of the far hills. I took a deep breath of the cool September air. I wished I could get in my mom’s car and drive out to those hills and look out from the top of them toward the setting sun and see my future out there-see what was going to happen and what it would be like, and end all the suspense I felt inside me.
I guess it’s a good thing I couldn’t do that. If I had seen what my future was really going to be like, I would’ve gone home that night and hidden under the bed.
Anyway, I had to get back for dinner. Plus I still had my history paper to write.
So I started walking across the parking lot. I’d parked the car in back of Paulson’s, the mall supermarket. That part of the lot wasn’t the nicest place in the mall. It was where the garbage Dumpsters were. It was also where the homeless guys hung out-the crazy ones and the alcoholic ones who pawed through the Dumpsters for food. Kids hung out there sometimes too. Everyone knew there were some checkout people in Paulson’s who would sell you beer without checking your ID. So sometimes kids bought a beer in Paulson’s and drank it in the back by the Dumpsters after the police patrols had passed through.
What I mean is: that rear area wasn’t a great place to be, especially after dark. But on a busy day like today, when the parking lot was practically full, it was easier to find a space back there because the shopping moms avoided it. Anyway, I knew I’d be out of karate before dark, and I wasn’t worried. I went down the narrow lane next to Paulson’s and came around the back. I reached my car. Opened the hatch. Threw in my karate bag.
Then I stopped. Stopped with my hand on the hatch door, about to push it down.
I had lifted my eyes to scan the area, make sure nothing threatening was going on. As I was turning away, I spotted a group of kids slouching against a brick wall near the Dumpsters. There were three of them. They all had paper bags in their hands. They were lifting the paper bags to their mouths and lowering them again. I knew there were beer bottles in the bags.
One of the kids was Alex Hauser. He was glaring at me. He lifted his paper bag to his lips and lowered it again. I waved to him. He didn’t smile or wave back. He just tapped one of his friends on the shoulder. He pointed me out to him.
With that, the three kids pushed their way off the wall. They tossed their paper bags into one of the Dumpsters. They started coming my way, with Alex in the lead.
They didn’t look friendly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Alex Alex had changed a lot since our best-friend days. He almost looked like a different person now. He used to be a kind of happy, open-faced, round-faced guy, but now his face looked narrow and hungry; sullen too. His mouth was set in a permanent frown, like the mouths of those bass I caught in Lake Wyatt sometimes. His eyes seemed to flash with anger. He was wearing a watch cap and a blue tracksuit. His two friends were also in tracksuits. One, a dark-skinned guy, had a red bandana on. The other had his blond hair cut to the nub. I guessed they were from Alex’s new school. I didn’t know them, anyway. Frankly, I wasn’t looking forward to an introduction.
I shut the hatch door as Alex reached me. He stuck out his fist. I touched it with mine by way of hello. Alex smiled with one corner of his mouth. It wasn’t a friendly smile, not really. It was that nasty smile guys wear when they’re planning to start trouble but they don’t want to give you an excuse to say so.
“Hey, Charlie,” he said. “How’s it working for you?”
“Pretty good, pretty good. How you doing, Alex?”
“Excellent, excellent. Guess you’re still doing your karate, huh?” And then suddenly, he let out a loud karate shout and jumped into a sort of mock fighting position. It was meant to startle me, meant to make me jump and look stupid. Which I guess I did a little. Not much, but enough so Alex could laugh at me and the two punks with him could laugh too. “Charlie here is a black belt,” Alex said to the others.
The crew-cut guy said, “Pretty tough guy, huh,” as if he thought that was funny.
I didn’t like the feel of this at all. I hadn’t seen Alex in a long time. I could tell he’d changed a lot. But I didn’t think he’d do anything crazy like start a fight with me or anything. I mean, why would he?
Then Alex said: “Hey. I heard something funny today.”
“Oh yeah?” I said warily.
“Yeah. Really funny. You wanna hear?”
I shrugged. “Sure. What’s so funny?”
“It’s just a funny rumor I heard about you.”
“About me?”
Crew-cut Guy snickered nastily. I was beginning not to like Crew-cut Guy.
“About me?” Alex echoed. He made a face-a sort of stupid face to suggest I was acting stupid, pretending not to know something I really did know. “Yeah,” he said then in a friendly voice that was not very friendly, “about you,” and he poked me in the shoulder hard enough so it hurt. I stared at him. It really was as if he was a totally different person. Not the Alex I knew at all. “I heard a story about you that was really hilarious. That you were going out with Beth Summers.”
I felt something inside me then. It was like an icy hand had taken hold of a piece of me and twisted it. Was it possible Alex had been waiting for me out here? He probably knew when my karate lesson was. I hadn’t changed my schedule in years. Was it possible he’d brought his friends here so he could confront me about Beth? Could he have already heard about my conversation with her in the cafeteria? Sure he could. Alex still knew people in my school. They could’ve seen me with Beth and called him. Had it made him angry enough to come out here with a couple of punks to try to start a fight with me?
“Is that right?” he said. “You going out with Beth?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I might sometime, maybe. Why? You have a problem with that?”
Alex made an elaborate gesture of indifference. “No. I don’t have a problem with that. Why would I have a problem? Hey-” He gave an ugly laugh and sort of backhanded my shoulder in the same spot where he’d poked me. “Hey, I hope you get more out of her than I did. I mean, she’s kind of an uptight little stick, if you ask me.”
Now the Bible says you’re not supposed to keep anger in your heart, and I hoped I wouldn’t keep it, but it was there now, all right. In fact, so much anger flared up in me when he said that about Beth that I almost felt my fist was going to shoot up and knock Alex across the parking lot before I could stop it. But I did stop it. You can’t hit a guy for what he says, even if it stinks. So I just answered him-quietly, you know-working hard to keep my voice steady.
“Well,” I said, “I guess I didn’t ask you, did I? And now I’m going home.”
I started to move away. Crew-cut Guy reached out to grab me. The way I was feeling just then, this was not a good idea on the part of Crew-cut Guy.
“Hey, where you going…?” he said-or started to say. Because before he could finish, I took a step back away from him, turning as I did. At the same time, I put my hands up on guard. I didn’t exactly slap his hand away. I just sort of gently deflected it with the back of my hand at the same time I slipped out of his reach. Crew-cut Guy’s grabbing fingers went right past me and caught hold of nothing but empty air.
It was a good move. With that one turning step I’d maneuvered myself past all three of them. I’d gotten away from the back of the Explorer so they couldn’t corner me against it.
I lowered my hands now. I didn’t want them up in fighting position. I didn’t want to provoke Crew-cut Guy to take a swing at me because if he did, I might have to hurt him, and I didn’t want to hurt him-well, all right, I did want to hurt him, but I wasn’t going to. Anyway, I could get my hands up fast enough if I needed them.
“You guys have a good night,” I said quietly.