Worm

by wildbow

  “You guys don’t go?”

  “I take courses online,” Brian said. “My folks think it’s so I can hold a job to pay for my apartment… which is kind of true. Alec dropped out, Rachel never went, and Lisa already applied for and tested for her G.E.D. Cheated using her power, but she has it.”

  “Ah,” I said, my focus more or less dwelling on the idea that Brian had an apartment. Not the fact that Grue the successful supervillain had an apartment—Lisa had mentioned that to me—but that Brian the teenager with parents and schoolwork to focus on did. He kept changing my frame of reference for trying to figure him out.

  “Here, a gift,” he said, as he reached into his pocket and then extended his hand.

  I felt a moment of trepidation at the notion of accepting another gift. The two grand they had given me was a weight on my conscience already. Still, it would look bad if I didn’t accept. I made myself put my hand under his, and he dropped a key with a short beaded chain looped through it into my palm.

  “That’s to our place,” he told me, “And I mean that. Ours as in yours too. You’re free to come by any time, even if nobody is there. Kick back and watch TV, eat our food, track mud on our floor, yell at the others for tracking mud on the floor, whatever.”

  “Thank you,” I said, surprising myself by actually meaning it.

  “You going to come by after school, or should I meet you here again tomorrow morning?”

  I thought on it for a second. Last night, not long before I’d left, Brian and I had gotten to talking about our training. When I had mentioned my morning runs, he had suggested meeting me regularly. The idea was to keep me up to date, since I wasn’t living at the group’s hideout like Lisa, Alec and Rachel were. It had made sense, and I’d agreed. It didn’t hurt that I liked Brian the most of anyone in the group. He was easier to relate to, somehow. That wasn’t to say I didn’t like Lisa, but just being around her made me feel like I had the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

  “I’ll come by later,” I decided aloud, knowing I might chicken out if I didn’t commit somehow. Before we could get caught in another thread of conversation, I gave him a quick wave and started my run back, the key to their place clenched in my hand.

  Heading back home and preparing for school left me with a gradually increasing feeling of dread, like a weight sitting on my chest. I’d been trying not to think of Emma’s taunting and my fleeing from the school with tears on my face. I had spent an hour or two tossing and turning in bed, the event replaying over my head while the throbbing of my wrist jarred me awake every time I started to drift off. Beyond that, I had been pretty successful in avoiding thinking about it. Now that the prospect of going back was looming, though, it was impossible not to dwell on the subject as I headed home, got ready and caught the bus.

  I couldn’t help but dwell on the coming day. I still had to face the consequences of missing two afternoons. That was a biggie, especially since I had missed the due date for handing in my art project. I realized my art project had been in my bag, and the last time I had seen my bag had been when Sophia was standing on it, smirking at me.

  There was also the issue of going to Mr. Gladly’s class. That usually sucked enough, what with Madison being in that class and my having to do group work with the likes of Sparky and Greg. Knowing that I had to sit there and listen to Mr. Gladly teach when I’d seen him blatantly turn his back to me when I was being bullied… that sucked more.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d needed to psych myself up to going to school. Deceive myself into going and staying. The worst days had been back in my first year at high school, when the wounds of Emma’s betrayal were still fresh and I wasn’t yet experienced enough to anticipate the variety of things they could come up with. Back then, it had been terrifying, because I hadn’t yet known what to expect, didn’t know where, when or if they would draw the line. It had been hard, too, to go back in January. I’d spent a week in the hospital under psychiatric observation, and I’d known that everyone else had heard the story.

  I stared out the window of the bus, watching the people and the cars. On days like this, after being publicly humiliated, getting myself to the point where I was willing to walk through the door was about making deals with myself and trying to look past the school day. I told myself that I would go to Mrs. Knott’s computer class. None of the Trio would be there, it was usually pretty easygoing, and I could take the time to browse the web. From there, it was just a matter of convincing myself to walk down the hall to Mr. Gladly’s class.

  If I just made myself do that, I promised myself, I would give myself a treat. A lunch break spent reading one of the books I’d been saving, or a rare snack bought from the store after school. For the afternoon classes, I’d inevitably come up with something else to look forward to, like watching a TV show I liked or working on my costume. Or, I thought, maybe I could just look forward to hanging out with Lisa, Alec and Brian. Outside of the part where I nearly got mauled by Bitch’s dogs, it had been a nice night. Thai food, five of us lounging on two couches, watching an action movie on a huge entertainment system with surround sound. I wasn’t forgetting what they were, but I rationalized that I had no reason to feel bad about spending time with them when we were—for all intents and purposes—just a group of teenagers hanging out. Besides, it was for a good cause, if it meant they relaxed around me and maybe revealed secrets. Right?

  As I got off the bus, a pair of old notebooks in one hand, I just kept all that in mind. I could relax in Mrs. Knott’s class, and then I just had to sit through three 90 minute classes. Maybe, it occurred to me, I could try and find and talk to my art teacher over the lunch break. It would mean staying out of the trio’s way, and I could maybe work something out as far as doing another project or at least not getting a zero. My marks were okay enough that I could probably manage a passing grade with a zero on the midterm project, but still, it would help. I wanted to do more than just pass, especially with all this crap I had to put up with.

  Mrs. Knott arrived at the classroom around the same time I did, and unlocked the room to let us file in. As one of the last of fortyish students to arrive, I’d wound up at the back of the crowd. While I waited for enough space to open up at the door, I saw Sophia talking to three of the girls from the class. It looked like she had just come from her track practice. Sophia was dark skinned with black hair normally long enough to reach to the small of her back, though she currently had it in a ponytail. I couldn’t help but resent the fact that even with her being sweaty, dusty, and a notorious bitch, pretty much every guy in the school would still pick her over me.

  She said something, and all of the girls laughed. Even though I knew, rationally, that I probably wasn’t on the list of their top five things to talk about and that they likely weren’t talking about me, I felt my heart sink. I moved up towards the jam of students waiting to get into the door, to break the line of sight between myself and the girls. It didn’t quite work. As a group of students entered the room, I saw Sophia looking at me. She made an exaggerated pouting expression, drawing one fingertip in a line from the corner of her eye down her cheek like a mock tear. One of the other girls noticed and chuckled, leaned closer to Sophia as Sophia whispered something in her ear, then they both laughed. My cheeks flushed with humiliation. Sophia gave me a final smirk and turned to saunter away while the other girls filed into the classroom.

  Kicking myself even as I did it, I turned away and walked back down the hall towards the front doors of the school. I knew it would be that much harder to go back tomorrow. For one and three-quarter school years, I had been putting up with this shit. I’d been going against the current for a long time, and even though I was aware of the consequences I’d face if I kept missing school like this, it was so much easier to stop pushing so hard against the current and just step in the other direction.

  My hands jammed into my pockets, already feeling an ambivalent sort of relief, I caught the bus back to the docks.

&
nbsp; Agitation 3.2

  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bus line that ended at the old ferry put me only a fifteen or twenty minute walk away from the loft that Lisa, Alec and Bitch called home. I could be spending a fair bit of time there before I gathered enough information or earned enough trust from them to turn them in to the authorities, so the convenience was nice.

  It was a nice day, if a bit windy. The air was crisp and cool, the sky was a brilliant and cloudless blue that was reflected in the ocean, and the sand of the beach sparkled in the light of the sun. Tourists were already crowding the railings or migrating to the beach, pinning down the corners of their beach blankets under picnic baskets and shopping bags. It was too cold to go in the water but the view was spectacular. I enjoyed it for a few moments before venturing into the crowd. I walked with my hands in my pockets, as much to protect the stuff in my pockets as keeping the worst of the chill out.

  Living in Brockton Bay, you learned stuff like that. How to protect yourself, what to watch for. I knew that the Vietnamese teenagers who were leaning against the railing of the boardwalk were members of the ABB, even if they weren’t wearing their gang colors, because the only Asian kids in Brockton Bay that had that much swagger were already part of Lung’s gang. I knew the tattoo on the arm of the guy lifting boxes into the florist’s van that read ‘Erase, Extinguish, Eradicate’ meant the guy was a white supremacist because it had the letter E repeated three times.

  The man in the uniform who was talking to a shop owner wasn’t a cop or security guard, but one of the enforcers the merchants of the Boardwalk hired to keep the undesirables from making trouble. They were why the Boardwalk didn’t have beggars, addicts, or people wearing gang colors hanging around. If your presence offended or worried the tourists, they would step up to scare you off. If someone shoplifted or panhandled in the Boardwalk, they ran the risk that one or two enforcers would drag them behind one of the shops and teach them a lesson. Anything more serious than shoplifting or panhandling, well, there was always someone on duty in the floating base of the Protectorate Headquarters. Any of the store owners or employees could call the likes of Miss Militia, Armsmaster or Triumph in, given a minute. The tourism revenue the Boardwalk picked up earned a lot of goodwill from the government and government sponsored capes.

  I headed off the boardwalk and into one of the alleys leading into the Docks. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw one of the uniformed enforcers staring at me. I wondered what he was thinking. Good kids didn’t hang out in the Docks, and I doubted I looked the part of a guileless tourist.

  The abandoned factories, warehouses and garages of the Docks all blended into one another very quickly. The colors of the building exteriors weren’t different enough from one another to make buildings recognizable, and the people or piles of garbage that I had been unconsciously noting my previous visit had all shifted locations or been replaced. I found myself glad for the artistic graffiti and the row of weed-entangled power lines that I could use as landmarks. I did not want to get lost. Not here.

  As I arrived at the foot of the huge factory with the Redmond Welding sign, I found myself wondering whether I should knock or just go on up. I didn’t have to decide—the door opened just a second after I’d come. It was Brian, and he looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

  “Hey,” he said. “Lisa said you’d arrived. I thought you had school.”

  It took me a few seconds to get my mental footing. Any demonstration or mention of Lisa’s power kind of had a way of doing that to me, and that was on top of having a conversation sprung on me without a chance to prepare. “Changed my mind,” I said, lamely.

  “Huh. Well, come on up.”

  We headed upstairs. I saw Brian was wearing different clothes than what he had been wearing earlier in the morning. What he was wearing now bore a closer resemblance to his clothes from the day before—a green sleeveless t-shirt and black slacks with a lightweight fabric, like yoga pants or something.

  Alec was waiting, leaning against the back of a couch, as we entered the living room. He was wearing a t-shirt with some cartoon or video game character on it and basketball shorts. He stood straight as he noticed us.

  “Alec and I were sparring,” Brian told me, “Lisa’s on the phone in the kitchen. Rachel and her dogs are in her room. You can watch us, if you want, but no pressure. Feel free to use the TV, put on a DVD or play a video game.”

  “Don’t save over any of my files, dork,” Alec said. He’d started with the ‘dork’ thing last night. It wasn’t exactly malicious, but it grated.

  “My name is Taylor, not dork, and I wouldn’t do that,” I told him. Turning to Brian, I said, “I’ll watch, if it’s cool.”

  Brian smiled and nodded, while I moved to kneel on the couch and watch them over the back of it.

  As it turned out, it was less of a ‘sparring’ session than an attempt on Brian’s part to give a less than fully committed Alec some basic lessons on hand to hand fighting.

  It was one-sided, and not just because Alec wasn’t trying very hard. Alec was a very average fifteen year old guy in that he had little muscle worth speaking about. Brian, by contrast, was fit. He wasn’t big in the sense of a bodybuilder or someone who exercised just to pack on muscle like you saw with some of the people just out of prison. It was a little more streamlined than that. You could see the raised line of a vein running down his bicep, and the definition of his chest showed through his shirt.

  Besides the difference in raw physical power, there was also the age and height gap. Alec was two or three years younger and nearly a foot shorter. That meant Brian had more reach—and I’m not just referring to the length of his arms. When he stepped forward or backward, he moved further. He covered more ground, which put Alec on the defensive, and since Brian was stronger, that put Alec in a bad position.

  Brian stood without much of a fighting stance, hands at his sides, bouncing just a little where he stood. Twice in a row, I watched Alec swing a punch, only for Brian to lean out of the way. The second time Alec’s arm flew by, Brian leaned in and jabbed Alec in the center of his chest. It didn’t look like much of a punch, but Alec still sort of woofed out a breath and stepped back.

  “I keep telling you,” Brian said. “You’re throwing punches like you’d throw a baseball. Don’t bring your arm so far back before you punch. You’re just broadcasting what you’re about to do and it doesn’t add enough power to the hit to be worth that.”

  “What am I supposed to do, then?”

  “Look at how I’m standing. Arms up, bent, then I just extend my arm, wrist straight. Fast enough that whoever I’m hitting generally can’t step out of the way, so they’ve got to either take it or block it.”

  “But you weren’t standing like that ten seconds ago when I was punching you,” Alec complained.

  “I left an opening to see if you would take advantage of it,” Brian replied.

  “And I didn’t,” Alec noted with a sigh.

  Brian shook his head.

  “Well fuck this then,” Alec said. “If you’re going to go easy on me and still kick my ass, I don’t see the point.”

  “You should learn how to fight,” Brian said.

  “I’ll do like I have been and bring my taser,” was Alec’s response, “one poke and they’re out cold. Better than any punch.”

  “And if the taser breaks or you lose it?” Brian asked. He needn’t have bothered. Alec was already sitting himself down in front of the TV, remote in one hand and game controller in the other. Brian’s disappointment was palpable.

  “Mind giving me a few quick and dirty pointers?” I asked.

  Alec sniggered, Beavis and Butthead style.

  “Grow up, Alec,” Brian said. “If you want to quit, fine, but don’t be a dick.” He turned to me and flashed that boyish smile. Then we started.

  I knew he was going easy on me, but he was still a damn tough teacher.

  “Make two fists. No, don’t wrap your fingers
over your thumbs. You’ll do more damage to your hands than you will to the person you’re hitting, if you do that. That’s better. Now jab at me, okay?”

  I tried to emulate what he’d been describing to Alec. Arms up, bent, and extending my fist with a snap. He caught my right hand in his left.

  “Okay, now you’re going to do two things different. Step into the jab so you’ve got your body’s momentum behind the hit, on top of your arm’s power. Second, I want your left arm up as you’re jabbing with your right, and vice versa. If I see the chance, I’m going to pop you one on the shoulder or ribs, so be ready to fend me off.”

  I winced at the idea, but I played along. I jabbed, he stepped away, and he jabbed me in the shoulder. He didn’t hit as hard as he could have—I think he only hit as hard as it took to make it hurt and drive the lesson home, but I suddenly felt a stab of sympathy for Alec.

  Things continued in that vein. Brian didn’t stay on one topic for long. When I started struggling with something, he shifted gears to another area that complemented or built on what I was having problems with. When I failed for the fifth time to fend off his retaliatory jabs at my shoulders and ribs, he started talking about posture.

  “Rest your weight on the balls of your feet.”

  I tried it, then told him, “I feel like I’m going to tip over backwards if you hit me.”

  He bent down to check, and I lifted my toes two or three inches off the ground to demonstrate how I had my weight balanced on my heels.

  “No, Taylor. The balls of your feet. He raised his bare foot and pointed at the padded part between his toes and the bridge of his foot.

  “How is that a ball?” I asked, raising my own foot to point at the vaguely spherical part of the foot where the ankle met the ground, “this is the only part that looks ball-like.”

  “You guys are so lame,” Alec chimed in, without turning around. Brian swatted him in the back of the head.

  We moved on from posture, Brian’s recommendations on balancing did help, to self-defense again. From there, we changed topics to the mental side of things, both for me and my opponent.