After a moment, Velveeta called my name. I held my breath again. He frowned, looking around, then froze, staring down the path. His jaw clenched, and in the late-afternoon light, Colby Morris appeared. Velveeta took a few steps back. Colby smiled, stepping closer. Ten yards separated them.
“So you decided to stop being a pussy and settle this, huh?” Colby said.
Velveeta stared.
Colby took the note out. “Going to make me eat it, huh?”
Velveeta stepped back again. “I don't know what…”
“Come on, pussy boy.” Colby crumpled up the note, then threw it to the ground between them. “Make me eat it.”
Velveeta was about to say something when I stepped out of my spot. Both stared. Then Colby laughed. “Looks like your little protector girl showed up. God, man, you are the biggest…”
“Does it make you feel good?”
Colby stopped. “What?”
“Does it make you feel good to hurt him?”
He narrowed his eyes, then grinned. “Just a bit of fun, freako. That's all.”
“You put him in the hospital, Colby. Did it feel good?”
“About as good as it's going to feel to do it again.”
“You do it because you know nobody will do anything, huh? Wow, what a tough guy,” I said.
He smirked. “Yeah, that's about it. He doesn't belong here, and neither do you.” He gestured around himself. “And everybody around here knows it.” He looked at Vel. “You know it, too, don't you? You're like the scum at the bottom of the human shit barrel, man.”
I cut in. “They know you were in the bathroom, Colby. They know you did it.”
He sneered. “Yeah, so? But guess what? Even your little paper trail didn't do squat, did it?”
“So you can just walk into the bathroom, almost kill Velveeta, and walk away without anything happening. Awe some power, Colby,” I said.
He shrugged, full of contempt. “Shit, freako, you saw me do it, and I'm standing here, right? And desert rat here didn't say a word about it, huh?” He looked at Vel. “You got my message loud and clear, didn't you?”
I frowned. “What message?”
He laughed. “What? You didn't tell her?” He looked at me. “We had a little discussion before you came into the bathroom. About you. ‘Course I was kicking his fucking head in at the time, but he heard me.”
I stared.
He chuckled. “Good old Velveeta cheese head here knows how to keep his mouth shut when it comes to girls he likes.”
“What did you say?”
He shrugged. “I told him me and the guys would have some fun with you if he decided to have a conversation with anybody.” He looked at my chest. “Sorta wish he had, you know? Not like anything would have happened to me if he had spilled his guts.” He looked at Vel. “By the way. You owe me a new pair of shoes. They got stained when I was busting your face open.”
Velveeta swallowed, shaking his head. “Wha…”
My heart raced. “So now what? You're going to kill him?”
“Naw. I am going to break his balls, though. Literally. I'm going to kick them so far up his ass he'll be a chick from now on. And that's just for messing with my car.”
I swallowed. “No, you're not.”
He stepped forward. “Oh yeah, I am. And you're not going to say a word about it just like your little friend here, because if you do, I'll make you wish you were dead.”
“Detective Worthy is after you.”
“Detective Worthy is a washed-up hack. He tried, and he'll keep trying, but one call from my dad to the DA made it clear. Ain't gonna happen.”
I took a breath, calming myself. I forced a smile, shoving the fear away. The most dangerous thing about Colby Morris was that he really believed he could do anything. “No, it is going to happen. And your scholarship is going to go away. UCLA, right? I looked up breach of contract.”
He faltered. “What?”
“If you are charged and convicted of a crime, your contract is breached. No scholarship. Not to UCLA, and not to anywhere.”
He smiled, wicked and sharp. “Won't happen. Even if you did talk, it'd be my word against yours, and the DA likes me. Fact is, he played ball for Benders High.”
I smiled. “He'd have to charge you if you confessed, though.”
“Yeah, and there's about no chance in hell that would happen.” He stepped forward, toward Velveeta. “Time to make me eat the note, rat boy.”
“He didn't write it. I did.”
Colby stopped.
“That's right. I wrote it. And I brought Velveeta here.”
I could almost see the wheels turning in his head.
“You're an idiot, Colby,” I said. “You just confessed.”
He furrowed his brow.
“Theo,” I called. Theo stepped out of the foliage, holding the video camera I'd taken from Dad's study earlier. He continued filming. I looked at Colby. “You're done, Colby.”
Rage lit his face. Now the dangerous part. The part where timing was everything. He clenched his teeth. “Give me the tape.”
Theo backed up, bracing himself. He kept the camera rolling. “Colby, she beat you. Just give it up for once, huh?” he said, backing up another step as Colby tensed. “Don't do it, man. It will only make things worse.”
“I swear to God if you don't….,” Colby started, then lunged at Theo. He was fast. Theo wasn't, and Colby's fist crushed into his face. The camera flew from his hands, and before Theo hit the ground, another stiff roundhouse rocked the side of his head. I jumped forward, and as Colby went for the camera and Theo crumpled to the ground, I kicked. Hard. From behind, my foot caught him square in the crotch, and the air exploded from his lungs.
Colby bellowed in pain, falling to his knees in an instant, his chest heaving, guttural moans filling the clearing. Then he spun, quick as a viper, and hooked his arm behind my knees, taking me to the ground with a bone-jarring crash. Then he was on me, swinging wildly, hitting my face, pummeling my ribs. I'd never been hit so hard, and terrific pain exploded through my entire body as he let loose. He wouldn't stop, I knew. Nothing could stop him.
Blood poured from my nose and mouth and the clearing faded as the flurry continued, darkness closing in around me, my vision failing. I knew only seconds had passed, but eternity stretched itself out, and as the pain lessened, my body numb, I knew I'd be unconscious in another moment. He'd gone crazy, and this wouldn't be a beating. No. It would be a murder.
Then he was off me.
I opened my eyes to the sting of blood, and Velveeta was on him, enraged and frenzied as their bodies tangled. Punches landed and elbows gouged as they rolled on the ground, a wiry whirlwind and an adrenaline-consumed punching machine creating a sickening and ugly movie of just how fucked up the world can be.
I screamed no in my head a thousand times, my lips frozen and body paralyzed as violence rained down in the clearing like a nightmare storm. A storm I'd unleashed and a storm, I saw, that Colby Morris was drowning in. Tears sprang to my eyes as Velveeta wrapped his fingers around Colby's throat, his hands bone white as he squeezed.
I finally did scream as Colby's face turned a shade of deep purple and his body went slack, and Velveeta looked over, his eyes dark and primal as he sat atop Colby. I shook my head. “No, Vel. Not this way. Please. Stop,” I croaked.
Nothing registered in his eyes.
Then a bull in a white button-up Sears work shirt charged into the clearing, crashing into both of them, thick arms yanking Velveeta from Colby.
“ENOUGH!” Detective Worthy bellowed, his chest heaving, his face contorted in anger as he drew his sidearm. Colby lay still, staring at Worthy as he gasped for air. Velveeta gazed at the gun like it was a foreign object.
Seconds passed. Theo moved. I dragged myself over to him.
Colby stared.
My face hurt as I looked at him. “You're done.”
Chapter Thirty-two
I opened the door to a woman we
aring tan cargo pants, a heavy cotton white button-up Levi's shirt, and boots. She'd lost a good ten or fifteen pounds, and I put it down to the South American jungle taking its toll. I looked her up and down, stunned. “What are you doing here?”
Her surprise was as great as mine as she looked at my eye, which was still black from Colby's fist. “Oh my God, Poe, what happened to you?”
“I got in a fight. What are you doing not in South America?”
Her eyes, always intense, met mine. No smile, but not a frown. Hard, but not mad, and a question in them. “I rode eighty miles in the back of a feed truck and caught the first flight I could after we talked. Is your father home?”
My heart stopped even as my breath fluttered. A herd of cockroaches stampeded in my stomach. “Yes.”
She stood there for another moment, then leaned forward and hugged me. “Am I going to stand here all afternoon, or are you going to invite me in?”
Dad's voice came from behind. “Poe, who's at the …”
Silence. I stepped aside.
They stood feet apart. I was a baby the last time they'd seen each other. Neither spoke; both stared. I got the feeling the last fifteen years sped by in a matter of seconds. Then she smiled, nodding. “Hello, David.” He stepped forward. “Hello, Nancy.” I gaped. “What are you doing here, Mom?” She looked at me, and something I'd never seen in her eyes shined like tiny diamonds floating in blue pools. Sadness. She glanced at Dad, then back to me. “I thought it would be a good time to begin repairing what should have been repaired a long time ago.”
Dad stood there at the door, a man alone for so long he scrubbed grout lines with a toothbrush; then he stepped aside. “Please, come in.”
Epilogue
“My name is Poe Holly, and I'm new here.” I stood on the stage of the school's acoustically perfect auditorium. My black eye had faded. Behind me, the choir stood in their gowns, and in front of me, hundreds of people waited patiently. Theo waved from his seat. He'd rented a tuxedo in honor of me. What a dork.
I saw Anna Conrad's father in the third row, her mother sitting next to him as she scowled at me. Anna sat next to her, grinning like a prom queen fool, and I couldn't help but smile. Ever since she'd quit choir, her home had been an endless and blissful hell. Endless because her mother was unrelenting, and blissful because Anna wouldn't change her mind. We'd actually become friends, and for being a real-life Barbie, she wasn't that bad.
It had been two weeks since my mother showed up at the front door, and as I scanned the crowd and found her and my dad, I gave them a small wave. They were weird. Parents are weird. After that first tense and almost alter universe experience with my mom and dad sitting at the dinner table together, they'd let me know she was staying for a week or so to “sort things out.” My dad explained that even apart, we were a family, and a family had to get to know each other to function.
No, they aren't together, and no, I don't think they ever will be, and yes, I will always have my fingers crossed that they will love each other again, but over the last little while, I'd seen changes in both of them. Maybe new changes, but seeing them live in the same house and cook the same dinners and sit at the same table to eat, I thought that maybe those changes were old, like when they'd been together before I came along.
I thought they were good for each other, but just like medicine, sometimes the worst-tasting crap is the best for you.
For every wicked outburst my mother was prone to (especially concerning how late I could stay out with Theo, my grades, the new tattoo I wanted), my dad was the placid lake of reason and diplomacy. It was like salt and pepper, I suppose. When they mixed, they mellowed each other out. My dad was much less of a lamp with her support, and the fire in her eyes was less apt to burn you to a crisp with his. She was leaving tomorrow, and I was going to actually miss her. She'd stayed an extra few days to see this, and I guess it proved something to me.
I cleared my throat, glancing to the side and catching Mrs. Baird's eye. She was cool, really, and I was learning that her choir wasn't traditional at all, which I liked because that made her brave.
My dad had pressed for a PTA meeting about the rules for tryouts, and as the debate began between us and the choir committee and the PTA, Mrs. Baird stood up, furnished a copy of tryout rules she'd written up, and told everybody that if they didn't accept them, she'd resign. End of story. She'd led five of the seven choir ensembles to state championships in the last eight years, and nobody wanted to see that go away.
I scanned the crowd, thinking of everything that had happened. Colby Morris was charged and convicted in juvenile court on four counts of assault: two for Velveeta, one for me, and one for Theo, but he didn't go to juvie. His father pulled strings and he was put on probation, but the college scouts disappeared after he tested positive during the court-mandated drug test. He'd been popping OxyContin for a year, and he was sitting in a detox center somewhere in Sacramento until he regained his sanity.
And then there was Velveeta. He's gone, back to the desert and on his own. He didn't say goodbye. I don't think he likes goodbyes. But he did leave me a note. This is what it said:
I'll miss him, just like I miss my buds back home. This place can be brutal, but I'm staying. I've started something here, and I intend to finish it without ruining my life in doing so. Dad scrapped his book and decided to write a new one. This one is about bullying, but it's not for students. It's for the adults and schools that let it happen. In a moment of harsh honesty, he said that Velveeta might be lost, but maybe there was another kid out there who wasn't quite as lost.
So there it is, messy and untidy just like my life, and now I'm going to do what comes next. I'm going to sing, my mom is going back to South America, my dad is going to burrow himself in his study to write, and this world is going to keep going around like a wobbly wheel with a bent axle.
Oh yeah, and when I'm done singing, my dad is going to stand up, clap his hands until they're red, and say, “That's my daughter up there.” And I'm going to like it.
Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank my wife, Kimberly, and my family, but not our dogs. They bug me.
Gratitude goes to my agent, George Nicholson, of Sterling Lord Literistic, for yet again defying the odds. To my editor, Joan Slattery, and Allison Wortche, assistant editor, thank you for your attention and outstanding guidance.
There is a place where a river runs through it. I will be there.
—Anon.
Michael Harmon is the author of The Last Exit to Normal, which School Library Journal hailed as “an excellent read” in a starred review, and Skate, praised as a “remarkable first novel” by Kirkus Reviews and selected as an ALA Quick Pick. He was born in Los Angeles and now lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he enjoys woodworking, reading, fishing, backpacking, poker, steak, and really loud music.
To learn more about Michael Harmon and his books, please visit www.booksbyharmon.com.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by Michael Harmon
All rights reserved.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harmon, Michael B.
Brutal / Michael Harmon. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Forced to leave Los Angeles for life in a quiet California wine town
with a father she has never known, rebellious sixteen-year-old Poe Holly rails
against a high school system that allows elite students special privileges and
tolerates bullying of those who are different.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89164-9
[1. High schools—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Social isolation—Fiction
.
4. Bullies—Fiction. 5. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 6. Mothers and
daughters—Fiction. 7. Singers—Fiction. 8. Moving, Household—Fiction.
9. California—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H22723Bru2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008004718
v3.0
Brutal Page 17
