Rivals

by David Wellington

“What?” Brent’s concentration faltered.

  “Just do it. I want you to.”

  Brent shook his head. “I don’t understand. You want me to hit you?”

  “You think you’re the first person to ever hit me? I can take a punch like a man. That’s what my dad says. It’s important, taking a punch like a man. You don’t cry. You don’t whine about how it wasn’t fair. The bigger the guy, the stronger the guy who hits you, that just makes you tougher ‘cause you took it like a man. So go ahead. Whatever you got, I’ll take it.”

  “Your dad… hits you?” Brent asked, horrified.

  “Just when I deserve it. I’m not telling you my life story.”

  Was it possible? Brent had been to an assembly on bullying his freshman year. The teachers had claimed that bullies were people looking for control over their own lives. That they hurt other people because they were being hurt themselves. And Brent wasn’t so naïve as to think there weren’t dads out there who hit their kids. Grandma hit Maggie sometimes, didn’t she?

  “Get up,” he said.

  Perkins looked confused. “You’re not going to hit me?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Just get up.”

  Chapter 15.

  Maggie stormed into the house and slammed the door. Grandma was waiting for her, probably with another list of rules, but she went straight to her room and slammed the door there, too. As she had been warned Grandma had removed the speakers from her computer desk. There were bare wires hanging over the edge of the desk—instead of unplugging them properly, Grandma must have cut them with a pair of scissors. Maggie howled in rage and tore open her desk drawer looking for her headphones.

  If she didn’t get some music soon, something to channel her rage, she was going to explode. It was that simple.

  There was a knock on her door. Maggie ignored it. She found her headphones and shoved them into her ears, hard enough to hurt. Sat down at her desk and booted up her computer. She had twenty-three emails waiting and new friend requests on Facebook but she didn’t want to talk to anybody—she needed to be alone, more than she ever had before in her life.

  Grandma knocked on the door again. Louder this time.

  Maggie found the track she was looking for, an old cut of thrash metal, and dragged the volume slider all the way up. The music surged into her head, driving everything else out, filling her up with darkness, somebody else’s darkness, anybody’s darkness but her own.

  It was good. It was pure. It didn’t hurt anybody.

  And then as soon as it had begun it stopped. Maggie whirled around in her chair and found Grandma staring at her through those huge glasses. She held the ear phones in her hands and as Maggie watched she pulled them apart until the plastic insulation split and the wire inside tore.

  “I thought I made myself clear,” Grandma said. “No music.”

  “You can’t do this to me right now,” Maggie said. She would try to be reasonable. She would try to talk Grandma through this one. She promised herself that much. It was going to be hard.

  “You may not understand why I do the things I do,” Grandma said, and Maggie could see the old woman was about to launch into a whole speech. Probably about how she knew what was best for Maggie, and that was all she wanted. How all the horrible effed-up things she did were really just gestures of love.

  I hate you. I hate you, you miserable old dried-up piece of—

  “I’d like your help,” Grandma said, and Maggie realized she’d missed the whole speech. A tight ball of heat and fury was turning and turning inside her brain and it had blacked out the whole thing. “Brent still has a chance at a normal life. But if you and I are going to be enemies, then—”

  “There’s a radio in the car,” Maggie said, and jumped up from her chair. She ran to the kitchen and the rack where they kept the car keys. They were missing, of course. Maggie spun around and saw Grandma tottering toward her. She had the car keys in her right hand. On her left hand, she’d already turned her engagement ring around so the diamond was on the inside.

  “You can’t do this,” Maggie said. She had promised she would try to work this out calmly and rationally. The problem was she wasn’t calm or rational inside. It was really, really hard to fake it on her face. “I have just had the worst day of my life and I need to listen to some music. I have a right to that!”

  “There’s a difference between a right and a privilege. Your generation always has had trouble knowing where the line is.”

  “Please give me the car keys.” Maggie lowered her head and stared at the floor. If she had to look at Grandma’s prune face one more second—“I need the car, right now. I need the car, and I’m going to have those keys in a second. One way or another.”

  “Is that a threat, little girl?” Grandma asked. She was so close, suddenly. Well within arm’s reach. Maggie tried to grab the keys out of her hand.

  Instead Grandma’s open palm smacked her on the face.

  “Ow!” Maggie shrieked. She reached one hand up to her cheek and felt the heat there. Grandma had finally hit her with the diamond, just like she’d always threatened to do.

  Heat and light filled up her brain.

  I could kill you. It would be so easy.

  Instead she grabbed the car keys. Grandma’s hand was in the way. Maggie squeezed until the keys came loose, and then she ran for the door.

  Chapter 16.

  It was kind of tricky holding on to Perkins the bully. He squirmed a lot and he knew how to throw his center of gravity around, so that Brent had to keep grabbing his arms or his legs to get him back under control. Brent managed somehow to get him up the hill to where Lucy was sitting with her binoculars.

  “Get him away from me!” she squeaked as they came closer.

  Brent dropped Perkins heavily on the grass and then sat down on him. That seemed to do the trick—as much as Perkins tried to heave and buck to get free, it was easy for Brent to keep him from getting away.

  “You didn’t beat him up,” Lucy said, once she’d gotten over her fright. “Because you see I was thinking that you should beat him up, so that he won’t beat up any other kids, because—”

  “Yeah. I got it.” Brent stared at the cars in the parking lot. This didn’t make sense. It should be easier. Cleaner. “Except it wouldn’t work. Do you know why Perkins bullies freshmen? Tell her, Perkins.”

  The bully grunted and heaved but couldn’t get his knees under him. “Because it feels good,” he said. “Because I’m bigger than they are.”

  Brent rolled his eyes. “No. It’s not that. It’s because his dad beats him up. That makes him angry but he can’t fight back against his dad—apparently the guy was a football player in college and he’s huge. So that’s what Matt learned at home. That if you’re bigger than somebody else, it’s okay to beat them up and take their stuff.”

  “That’s messed up,” Lucy said.

  “Yeah. But it raises an interesting question. Which is what I should do with him. See, if I beat him up—that just proves he’s right. That just because somebody is bigger, or, in my case, stronger, then they can do whatever they want.”

  “But it’s different! You’d be helping people! Do you know how many kids want to see him get hurt? Do you know how much misery he’s caused? You’d be getting revenge for a whole generation of underclassmen!”

  “Does that make it okay? Should I beat up everybody those kids want me to beat up?” Brent shrugged. This was getting so complicated. “Who decides when it’s okay to beat somebody up? Me? You? I don’t think I have the right to make that decision. And even if I do beat him up, then what? Do I have a responsibility to beat up his dad?”

  Perkins growled under Brent. “You could. You could take him!”

  “That seems kind of… messed up,” Lucy agreed. “Beating up somebody’s dad.”

  “Even if they are a bad person.” Brent rubbed at his eyes. “I don’t know, Luce. I keep thinking about my dad. I keep thinking he wouldn’t want me to do this. It wouldn’t
make him proud. And I owe him, a lot.”

  Lucy frowned. “What are you going to do?”

  Brent stood up. Perkins took the opportunity to jump to his feet and try to dash away. Brent stopped him by grabbing his shoulder before he could escape. “Listen,” Brent said, “I’m not going to hit you. But if I hear that you’re hassling any more kids, then—”

  “Then you’ll beat me up?”

  Brent shook his head. “No. But I’ll stop you. Just like I stopped you today. I’ll be watching you from now on and if you try anything, I’ll stop you. That’s all. You’ve seen I can do it.”

  “You can’t watch me all the time,” Perkins said.

  Brent let him go. He ran around the side of the school and disappeared.

  “I need to get home,” Brent said. “I need to talk to my sister about this. Maybe she has some ideas about what we’re supposed to do with these powers. She’s smarter than me, maybe she’s already figured this out.”

  Lucy walked with him. Normally he took the bus home but it had already left without him. It was a good half hour walk back to his house, and part of it was along the highway where there wasn’t any sidewalk, just a narrow little path worn down in the grass. Cars honked at them as they rocketed past and twice he had to pick Lucy up and get her out of the way of a driver who was too close to the curb. With her legs in braces she couldn’t jump away as fast as he could. After the second time he just slung her across his back and carried her piggyback. She didn’t seem to mind and her weight didn’t bother him at all.

  As they walked they tried to think of ways Brent could actually help people with his powers that didn’t get morally complicated. “What if you saw somebody stealing somebody’s wallet on the street. It would be okay to hit them, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

  “I guess,” Brent told her, “but when was the last time you actually saw that happen? You hear about crime all the time but it tends to happen in dark alleys and really late at night.”

  “You could rescue people who get lost in the desert,” she tried. One of her hands was absently rubbing his chest. It felt good so he didn’t tell her to stop.

  “Sure. If I could find them.” He thought about it for a second. “I could spend the rest of my life patrolling the desert, looking for people in trouble. But that would get pretty boring. I mean, how often does somebody actually get lost out there? Once or twice a year? I kind of wanted to go to college instead.”

  “I guess you could carry little old ladies across the street. Or carry their groceries for them.” Lucy laughed. “They’d probably like that.” She leaned her head on his shoulder and he wondered if she was getting tired.

  “I don’t seem to get tired,” he said, because he had suddenly realized this fact. “I suppose I could go to the power plant and turn a big crank on one of their turbines and generate electricity all day. That would use less oil and it would be good for the environment.”

  Lucy chuckled. “I could bring you sandwiches every day. And maybe read to you while you turned your crank, so you didn’t get bored.”

  Brent grinned. That was hardly how he’d seen his life going. But it was a cute thought.

  “Here we are,” he said, when they finally got to his house. He climbed up the steps to the porch and stopped before the door. “Um,” he said, “maybe you should get down now.”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, and slid down off his back. “It was just so comfortable up there.”

  “I’ll give you a ride anytime,” Brent said, searching in his backpack for his key. “You want to come in, maybe have a snack or something before you head home?”

  She didn’t get to answer him, though. Before she could open her mouth to reply they both heard Grandma screaming for help.

  Chapter 17.

  The music was the only thing that could save Maggie. It was like a prism, taking all of her anger and her doubts, her fears and frustrations—

  your friends aren’t answering your texts

  they won’t let you play the game you love

  you hurt grandma

  you killed dad

  —gathering them up and bringing them together, like different colors combining to form a single ray of pure white, narrowing down all the chaos and bewilderment into one stream of energy she could release by screaming along with the lyrics. It didn’t matter much what kind of music it might be, punk, metal, industrial, techno, as long as it was fast and loud and dark, storm winds driving through her, sweeping away everything that didn’t make sense.

  The car radio was loud enough. The local college station played enough metal to keep her sane. She drove through town, barely paying attention to the road, singing at the top of her voice and pounding on the steering wheel to the beat.

  When she arrived at her destination she stopped the car but she just sat there for a long time, howling out her aggro, until another set of speed metal was done. When the station broke for commercials she threw her head back against the headrest and pushed her fingers through her hair.

  When she reached for the ignition key she saw she’d battered the steering wheel all out of shape. She was surprised she hadn’t accidentally released the airbag. Whatever. She could just bend it back to normal again later. She grabbed the keys and pushed herself out of the car, up the walk to Mandy’s door. She rang the bell and stood there drumming one foot on the porch, craning her head around to watch everything that moved on the street.

  Eventually, finally, Mandy opened the door and looked out. Mandy Hunt was the closest thing Maggie had to a BFF. Both of them would have gagged to hear that term applied to them but they had a real connection. A bond. They’d been together since way back, back when they still thought it was cute their names were so similar.

  “You’d better come in,” Mandy said, and pulled Maggie inside. The house was big and airy and sterile, full of tasteful ornamentation and white paint and austere leather furniture. The house was spotlessly clean and it looked like no one had ever lived there. Mandy’s parents had some money, enough that even Jill Hennessey treated Mandy with a certain level of respect.

  Without a word Mandy lead her upstairs, into the bedroom Maggie had slept in many times back when they were both young enough for sleepovers. The wallpaper still had a pattern of Palominos galloping past desert mesas but in recent years Mandy and her friends had taken turns cutting out pictures of celebrities from magazines and pasting them on the horses as if they were riding them while showing off their engagement rings, their trophy spouses, their fashion accessory babies.

  “Why are you wearing that?” Mandy asked, after she’d closed and locked the door. “Did you just come from practice?”

  Maggie looked down at herself. She was still wearing her field hockey uniform. She’d been so upset about being kicked off the team that she hadn’t thought to change. “They won’t let me play,” she said. “God! What a stupid thing to get upset about, right? But it just totally triggered me.”

  “You’re one of their best players,” Mandy said. “How is that fair? Remember last year, you were like, what, runner up for MVP? And the coach said—”

  “We were supposed to have lunch,” Maggie said. “We made a plan.”

  “Yeah,” Mandy said, reaching for the pearl necklace she wore. She held it out away from her throat and twisted it nervously. “I guess we did. Well, there’s a funny story about that—”

  “Tell me your story later. After you have time to make one up,” Maggie said, diving onto Mandy’s bed. “I didn’t come here to make you feel bad. I came here because there’s nobody else in the world who can help me right now. I’m in trouble, M. I’ve got the police after me. Maybe the FBI.”

  “I see,” Mandy said.

  “I’m not crazy. You know what’s been going on with me. What happened to me out in the desert. You think the government doesn’t want to know more? You think they’re not looking right now to find out how Brent and I survived when my dad died? They would put me in a lab if they could. And I may just
have given them the excuse they needed. I can’t go home again. Do you—do you have a top I could borrow, or something? I can’t even go back to get my clothes.”

  “Of course,” Mandy said, because that was something she could handle. She went to her dresser and started pulling out tank tops and sweaters. Maggie stared at the clothes as they piled up on the bed, wondering how she could possibly say what she was going to say next.

  “A while back,” she began, “you said you wanted to kill yourself. You even showed me all the pills you had saved up.”

  Mandy stopped with her back to Maggie. Stopped as if she’d forgotten how to move. “They were just—aspirin. They wouldn’t have even given me a headache. And you know I got into therapy after that. You’re the only one who knows that, except for my family.”

  “Yes. And I don’t want to open up old wounds. Really.”

  Mandy’s shoulders lifted and then fell again. Was she crying? “I assume you have some reason to bring it up, though.”

  “Yeah. This one’s nice,” she said, holding up a black halter top with a wide teal stripe running down the middle. “It matches my skirt, too.” It was an attempt to get Mandy to turn around, to look at her, but it didn’t work. “Back then. When you told me. Do you remember what I said?”

  “Yes. ‘Don’t do it yet. If you absolutely have to, come find me. We’ll run away to Europe together instead.’ Just like that.”

  “I would have done it, too. I would have taken you anywhere, rather than see you destroy yourself. Now I’m asking—”

  Mandy turned around then and Maggie saw there were definitely tears in her eyes. She didn’t look angry, though, or sorry. She looked terrified. “When was the last time we hung out?” she asked.

  “What?”

  Mandy ran the back of her hand across her nose. “When was the last time we went to a party together? When was the last time we sat down and watched a DVD? Or talked about boys? Or went shopping at the mall? When was the last time you asked me how I was doing? When, Maggie?”