by Jeff Gunhus
I tumbled headfirst toward the cement. I was going down hard and I knew that hitting that sidewalk was going to hurt. Bad.
But then the weirdest thing happened. Without thinking, I twisted my body in midair, reached out and found the ground with my hands, spring-boarded off the cement and landed back on my feet, staring at the stranger who had tripped me.
I mean, it was like I had turned into an Olympic gymnast or something.
The stranger looked at me curiously, only mildly impressed by my tumbling skills. I wanted to demand why he had tripped me, but one good look at him and I somehow knew better than to say anything. I felt a chill pass through my body and my skin dimpled over in goose-bumps. I felt a little dizzy and I had to fight down a sudden impulse to turn and run. Whoever this guy was, every fiber in my body was telling me that he was bad news. I should have listened to my instinct and just gotten out of there, but I couldn’t stop myself from staring at him.
The stranger was pale white, with long, colorless, almost transparent hair down to his shoulders. His face was angular, with high cheekbones and a squared chin. I thought he might be an albino, because his eyes were a blue so pale that they seemed colorless. He wore an old-fashioned duster jacket that hung down to his knees and covered black trousers and heeled, leather boots. The outfit made him look like he had stepped out of a different time.
And then there were his hands. They were too long for his body and each finger was capped with a long black fingernail. He raised one of his weird hands in my direction and pointed one of those long black fingernails at me.
“Good,” the stranger hissed, “your change has begun. It will make things more fun when we find you tomorrow.”
Then the stranger smiled and that’s when I saw them. Long, pointed canine teeth, just like the vampires have in the movies. I couldn’t believe it, but not for the reason you’re thinking. At this point, I had no reason to believe that I was looking at a real-life vampire, so I assumed the teeth were fakes…and that the guy was a total freak. It’s one thing to see people walking around town as vampires on Halloween. But when they did that in the month of September, it was just plain creepy. No wonder I had goose-bumps.
I decided that I had seen enough of Mr. Weirdo. I backed up slowly, then turned and got the heck out of there. I heard the man laugh softly as I ran away, but I didn’t stop to look back; I just ran as hard as I could to school and got myself to class.
The school day passed even slower than usual. I tried to focus but all I could think about were my new abilities. On top of that, Mr. Weirdo’s comment kept rumbling around in my head. The more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that somehow the stranger had known about what was happening to my body. Your change has begun. But how could he have known? What was my change? And if it had only just begun, what was going to happen next? Just how much was I going to change?
More importantly, since he got the part about my change right, I started to worry that there was truth to his other comment: It will make things more fun when we find you tomorrow. I had no idea what that meant, but it certainly didn’t sound good.
I decided to keep all this to myself until I could figure out what was really going on. It was pretty easy to keep it a secret for the first half of the day, but then lunchtime came around.
Usually, I sit with the same two guys at lunch. Will Akers and T-Rex Boyle. In the hierarchy of middle school popularity, I’d say my crew fell right in the middle. OK, maybe a little below the middle. We weren’t the super cool kids that everyone immediately identified as school royalty, but we weren’t part of the geek squad either.
Well, maybe T-Rex was, but we liked him anyway. He lived with his ancient grandma who insisted on making his clothes for him. Her eyesight wasn’t so good and her hands shook, so the outfits he wore sometimes looked like a berserk machine sewed them. T-Rex was chubby, almost to the point of being completely round. While that alone set him up to get picked on by some of the jerks in school, what really did him in was the way he picked his nose all the time.
It was a nervous habit for him, but he did it so much that we all wondered what he was looking for up there. Those two holes were mined so many times an hour that there just couldn’t be any nuggets left to dig out. Still, that didn’t stop him from doing it. One day, Will started calling him ‘T-Rex’. You know how a T-Rex has those itty-bitty arms? Will decided that if only he was a T-Rex, then he wouldn’t be able to reach his nose and all his problems would go away. When his grandma started calling him T-Rex too, we laughed about it for an entire afternoon and the name stuck.
T-Rex was still in line when Will and I headed off to our usual table in the corner of the lunchroom. I say usual, but Will was often in detention instead of the lunchroom. He was constantly in trouble because his mouth ran full-time and typically went twice the speed of his brain. You know how sometimes inappropriate things come into your head but a little voice stops you from blurting it out because you know it might be rude? Well, Will didn’t have that little voice. He just let it all out there.
My Aunt Sophie said Will had short-man’s disease, a diagnosis that had me worried when I first heard it. I thought she was talking about an actual illness eating away inside of him. But then I googled it and got a good laugh at it. All it meant was that short people sometimes over-compensated for their size by being really aggressive.
Will was one of the shortest, if not the shortest, kid in our grade. Heck, probably in the grade below us too. But in his mind, he was the tallest guy on campus. And he had big plans for himself. His goals knew no bounds. He didn’t want to make the football team; he wanted to be the MVP. He didn’t want to be a millionaire; he wanted to be a billionaire.
And, you know what? Listening to him talk about it, you believed him. Whatever Will lacked in height, he more than made up for in confidence. He was like a miniature pit bull, small but with a big bite.
But there was another side to Will that most people, not even the teachers, knew about. He lived at home with his dad since his mom had taken off a few years ago. And there was not a single good thing to say about Will’s dad. He mostly stayed to himself, locked up in their house as it slowly fell into disrepair, the weeds waist high in the front yard, the family car a rusting hulk in the driveway. The only way I knew Will’s dad was still around was that Will would show up for school with a fresh row of bruises up and down his arm.
That day was one of those days. Dark, nasty marks covered his upper arm and neck. I nodded to them and Will shrugged and pulled his sleeve down. “The old man’s still pretty quick when he’s angry,” he said.
“You should tell someone,” I said.
“Same old crap. I can handle it,” he said. “I just can’t wait to get out of here, you know? That’s all I want.”
“We’ll go together,” I said. “You pick the college.”
“College?” Will laughed. “Are you trying to be a good influence on me or something? Besides, of course I’m going to college. I’m just not sure you’ll be able to get into the ones I’ll get into.”
We shared a laugh. We both knew Will’s report cards seemed actually allergic to As and Bs. Oh, he was smart, maybe too smart for his own good. It was just that his intelligence wasn’t the kind that could be measured well with standardized tests. He was street smart though. And he was tough.
“Sometimes I wonder if I can wait that long, you know? Sometimes I just want to hitch a ride and just go. Anywhere but here. Anywhere at all.” Will poked at his food, lost to his thoughts. I knew that he could use a distraction.
“Want to hear something crazy?” I asked.
I described my morning of lifting weights, speed running, dunking basketballs, and meeting total weirdoes. When I was done, I waited as Will thought over everything I had told him.
“That was cool,” he said. “Can you tell me a story about a giant and a beanstalk next?”
“You don’t get it,” I said. “I’m not making this up. This all actual
ly happened.”
“You’re so full of crap,” Will said.
“No, I’m telling you the truth,” I said. “It’s kind of freaking me out.”
“OK, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re not a huge liar.”
“That’s big of you,” I said.
“What you’re describing is basically the onset of superpowers as outlined in the origin stories of countless comic book heroes. Did you get bitten by a radioactive spider recently?” Will giggled. “Maybe injected with an experimental formula by a mad scientist?”
“I shouldn’t have even told you,” I said.
My eyes wandered, as they usually did at some point during lunch, to the table where the utterly gorgeous and most divine creature in the universe sat nibbling on her lunch. Cindy Adams. Ouch, just looking at her actually caused me pain. Something deep in my gut twisted over on itself every time I saw her.
I don’t know if it was that golden blonde hair, the sparkling green eyes, her perfect white teeth that flashed every time she smiled. Or maybe it was that, on top of being beautiful, she also had the best grades, played sports so well that the coaches for the boy’s teams were always trying to recruit her, and was an all-around cool chick.
To my horror, one of her friends caught me staring and nudged Cindy. She looked up before I had a chance to look away. Totally busted. Rookie move, staring like a stalker at the hottest girl in school. Nice.
But she just smiled and gave me a little wave. BAM, it was like ten thousand volts of electricity tore through my body. It felt so good, so utterly great, that I immediately thought I would be sick.
Just then, there was a crashing sound at the far end of the lunchroom followed by a roar of laughter. I looked up and groaned. Dirk Riggle, the biggest bully in the school, had set his sights on T-Rex.
Dirk looked like he had hit puberty right after learning to walk and started working out that same day. He wore super-tight shirts just to make sure we all remembered that he had enormous arms. And he beat one of us up every now and then so we remembered he wasn’t afraid to use them.
Normally, we were able to steer clear of Dirk and his evil band of bully henchmen, but without me there to protect him, somehow T-Rex had fallen into Dirk’s mean-spirited web.
By the time I noticed something was going on, Dirk had dumped an enormous tray of what looked like mac-n-cheese, jello and maybe some mashed potatoes down the front of T-Rex’s shirt. Even from where we were sitting, we could hear Dirk’s man-like voice.
“You’re supposed to eat your lunch, fatty, not wear it,” Dirk said, playing to the crowd who laughed nervously, thankful they weren’t in T-Rex’s shoes.
“Just walk away, T-Rex,” I whispered. “Just walk away.”
But T-Rex stood there, paralyzed with fear, gobs of food dripping off the front of his shirt onto the floor. And then it happened. The worst possible thing. His hand started to slowly move toward his nose. It was like he was fighting an internal battle to stop himself, a battle he was clearly losing.
“Oh, please,” I whispered. “Don’t do it, T-Rex.”
But he did. A pointer finger right up the left nostril, digging around like he was trying to scratch his brain.
The expression on Dirk’s face couldn’t have registered more delight. Not even if he had won a million dollars. A chance to completely demoralize another human being, in front of the entire school no less, was better than five Christmases for Dirk Riggle.
“Nose-picker! Look, everyone! Fatty’s picking his nose!” Dirk nearly screamed.
Now, most of the school, at one point or another, had seen T-Rex pick his nose. It was what T-Rex did. But the combination of the food on his shirt, the nervous energy about being one look away from being Dirk’s next victim, and just how blatant a nose pick T-Rex was performing, made the lunchroom explode into a chorus of laughter and jeers.
Poor T-Rex just stood there, finger lodged in his nose, looking helplessly around at dozens of kids pointing their fingers and laughing at him. Big tears sprang to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. This took Dirk to a whole new level of ecstasy.
“Look at that, the fatty nose-picker’s crying. Are you crying, little baby? Bwaa-waawaa,” Dirk said.
I’m no hero. I’m embarrassed to say that I had walked past Dirk and his goons picking on some poor kid dozens of times before and had done nothing. But seeing T-Rex crying, frozen in place so that the torture seemed like it would never end, was just too much for me to bear.
I climbed up on my chair and was about to yell something when I heard Will’s voice come from right next to my ear, “Shut up, you big bully! How about you pick on someone your own size?”
The lunchroom went completely silent. Every head in the room turned in our direction, including T-Rex, who was so shocked that he stopped crying. Everyone wanted to see had lost their mind and called Dirk out.
Dirk wanted to know the exact same thing. “Who’s the dead man that said that?” Dirk demanded.
“Over here, loser,” Will shouted back. “Leave him alone.”
I looked around nervously, hoping that a teacher would show up as the crowd parted and Dirk marched toward us, his little band of followers right behind him, literally licking their chops at the beat-down they were about to witness. I climbed down off my chair and stood next to Will. This wasn’t going to be pretty.
Dirk reached us and stopped inches from Will’s face, staring him down, eye-to-eye. Well, Dirk basically looked straight down because he towered over him. Dirk was so worked up that he was breathing hard like he had just run a race. His face was red and he looked like he really wanted to hit something. And that something was Will’s face.
“You’re even uglier up close,” Will said.
“OK, tough guy. Enjoy your time in the hospital,” Dirk barked.
Dirk let out a yell and swung one of his massive fists . Will ducked the first one, but the second landed with a thud right in his stomach. He folded over, the air knocked out of him.
I thought that would be it. But Dirk had other ideas. He stepped up to kick Will while he was down.
I grabbed two of the lunch trays off the table nearest to me, intending to use them as shields. Unfortunately, gobs of food flew off the trays and splattered all over Dirk.
The lunchroom fell into a hush. Dirk wiped the food from his face, now even redder than before.
“I was just going to hurt your little friend here,” Dirk said. “But I’m gonna kill you.”
He leapt at me and I brushed him aside using the trays in my hands. Dirk crashed into the chairs and fell to the ground in a tangle.
For the first time, the lunchroom cheered.
Dirk’s henchmen rushed to his aid and lifted him up. He pushed them away, snarling like an animal. He charged at me.
But he had learned his lesson and stopped in front of me this time, his hands up like a boxer. He swung a right hook; I bashed a lunch tray into the punch. He jabbed with his left. Again, a deflection with the trays.
Frustrated, he unloaded a barrage of punches and kicks. I parried each one with an effortless block with my lunch tray shields. I don’t know how I was doing it, but I was doing it.
Finally, Dirk took a step back to regroup, his knuckles bloody from pounding the tray.
“I bet you’re not so tough without the trays,” Dirk said.
That was when I knew I had truly lost my mind, because the second he said that, I threw the trays on the floor and said, “I’ll take that bet.”
Now, you should know that this was the first real fight I had ever been in. Sure, I had wrestled with friends and gotten into a few pushing fights during sports and stuff, but I had never once been in a real, true-blue fight before. And that wasn’t because I was such a tough guy that people ran away from me. To tell the truth, before that day in the lunchroom, I was usually the person doing the running.
But seeing T-Rex standing there, tears running down his face, being embarrassed in front of everyone
along with seeing Will hurt, woke something in me that must have been there all along. I just didn’t know it was there until that moment.
Dirk swung at me and I raised my left arm and blocked it. Another punch and I brushed it off with my forearm. Then, almost like I was watching it happen in a movie, I saw my right fist shoot out and connect with Dirk’s nose.
Dirk staggered back, holding his face. Then blood gushed out from between his fingers. He lowered his hands and everyone could see it; his nose was bent crooked to the side. It wasn’t only broken, it was really broken.
“You broke my nose!” Dirk wailed.
I stepped up closer to him. “And if you ever pick on another kid at this school, I’ll do it again. Understand?”
For a second, it looked like Dirk might decide to keep fighting, but then he nodded, turned and walked out of the lunchroom. The other kids stood silently as he walked by, glaring at him. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when he finally cleared the cafeteria doors and left the room, the kids turned and stared at me.
They didn’t cheer. They didn’t thank me for coming to the aid of every past and future bullying victim of Dirk Riggle. They just stared. Even Cindy Adams, who I was secretly hoping would be particularly impressed with my heroics, stood with her friends, whispering quietly to them, looking at me nervously.
It was the first sense of what has now become part of my everyday life. People want help when they are in danger, but after the danger has passed, people fear you if you’re different. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just rescued them from a bully or just saved their lives by skewering a werewolf with a sword right in front of them. Fear beats appreciation. Every time.
As if on cue, two teachers walked in from the side door of the cafeteria, one of them laughing at something the other had just said. The kids, breathing a collective sigh of relief, returned to their tables and went back to eating. I looked behind me and Will was there, looking upset.
