Mercy Rule

by Tom Leveen

  “Just want to swing by his place,” I say.

  Amy shrinks a little in her seat. “Brady’s house? Is that safe?”

  I give her a confident smirk and set my bicep on the open window, flexing. “Who’s gonna mess with this?”

  Amy swoons all fake-dramatic. She’s joking around, but I still like it.

  But when we get closer to Brady’s neighborhood, I turn off the music and roll up the windows. No one is supposed to know where Brady lives, but some people do. They don’t talk about it. Brady always says he’s just waiting for some money from his dad so he and his mom can move into another place. Maybe someplace near Coach. Everyone accepts that. They’d better. Otherwise they’ll answer to me.

  But Brady’s apartment building looks dead. Vacant. I keep driving but I ask Amy to text B. Check in. Just to be on the safe side.

  BRADY

  Wake up thinking that I’m lucky it’s warm out at least. Won’t be able to sleep out here by Halloween. Be too cold.

  Check my phone before sitting up. How much sleep did I even get? Three hours. Maybe four. It’ll do. At least no cops pushed me out. Good start.

  Roll off the picnic table. Stretch out a bit. Tight. Not too bad. It’ll ease up. Pick up my bag. Slept with it looped around my foot. Head for the park bathrooms. Somehow they’re cold even though it’s warm outside. I go in. Glare at my reflection in the warped mirror.

  “Hoo,” I grunt. Make my abs clench hard. Like concrete. “Hoo, hoo, hoo. This a man’s game.”

  Roll my head on my neck. Stay loose.

  “This a man’s game now. Hoo. Hoo.”

  That helps. Keeps my head in the game. Clean up best I can using a sink and the deodorant in my bag.

  Change clothes. I should text Donte. But I don’t. I’ll see him at school. I know he’s got a car now. Could give me a ride. But I don’t know. Can’t do it. Feels like charity. Screw charity. I’m not a pussy.

  Get done getting ready. Take a long drink from the fountain outside. Tastes like metal. But cold. Then I start hoofing it to school. Shit I’m hungry.

  First day of senior year.

  Start the clock, Mom. You hear me? Wherever you are. Start the clock. ’Cause this shit’s gonna end.

  Get a text from Amy. Asking where I am. Tell her I’m on my way. She sends a smiley back.

  VIVI

  I don’t want to be here.

  Keep your head down.

  Down.

  Don’t look up.

  They’ll see you.

  Down!

  Hold your books. Tight.

  Don’t look up.

  Dodge!

  Okay. Good. Safe.

  I pass a tall, athletic girl hugging an enormous guy. He grins as she pulls away and promenades down the hall. Three younger girls scurry toward him like ants to sugar. Each is more beautiful than the last. I want to be one of them.

  But they see me.

  “What are you looking at, bitch?” a girl says.

  Oh, no. I’m visible. The guy notes me, but his eyes flick toward the athletic girl walking down the hall. That’s where he wants to be. With her. The three girls surrounding him don’t seem to know it yet.

  All three of them bare fangs and raise quills at me.

  Head down.

  Down.

  Don’t look up.

  Just move.

  “Yeah, you better keep walking,” the girl says.

  Don’t look up.

  Two more years.

  Just two more years.

  I miss South. I miss the Dez. I wish Daddy had never been hurt. I hate this place.

  DANNY

  I can’t make this stuff up: the gym is in the center of the school building. Like a gladiatorial arena. When you walk in the main entrance, the halls go left, right, and straight ahead. To the right, the hall continues on to more classrooms. If you go left or straight, though, you’ll follow the hallway around in a big rectangle. Huge windows look down into the gymnasium, which is sunk into the ground like a strip mine. It’s like the hall on this level is one big skybox surrounding the gym.

  Unreal.

  All you have to do is walk into the school building through one of three sets of double doors and blam: you can’t not see the

  GYMNASIUM

  in the

  CENTER OF THE SCHOOL.

  Bet I can’t find the library without consulting three maps and a GPS.

  Ooo, education is broken in this country! Ooo, how do we keep up with Chinese? Ooo ooo ooo, my pussy hurts!

  Jesus. This reminds me of the time I saw the football players’ bus being escorted to the game by cops. Two motorcycle cops riding in front, clearing the way. Again, I cannot make this stuff up. Like the football players were the god damn president.

  I should take a picture of the gym and send it to the actual president and say

  HERE! THIS! THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, DUMBASS!

  But they probably throw you in jail for that.

  At first, things seem okay. Roving the hallway looking for my first class, I get some looks, but that’s nothing new. Everyone here, unsurprisingly, comes off as pretty vanilla. I pass a few degenerates, malcontents, punks, and assorted high school flotsam among the facial-hair seniors, varsity date rapists, and professional teen alcoholics. A mixed bag.

  I decide to take a picture of the gym and send it to a friend, who is at this moment probably sitting down to a visual art class at my school—the school I should be at, the school that doesn’t have a gym in the middle of the god damn building.

  Except my phone is not in my bag. I pull out of foot traffic and rummage through the entire thing. Nowhere.

  “God damn it,” I say out loud.

  As if my profanity has upset the student body, someone twice my height pushes past me and whispers, “Skinny little faggot.”

  I simply cannot make this stuff up. People still say shit like that. At least he’s bright enough to not say it loud enough for people to hear. Just me. He’s wearing a football jersey in our school colors. The back reads CULLIVER.

  I shoot back, loudly enough to be heard over the hallway’s ruckus, “Your mom called. She said to go fuck yourself, ’cause she had plans already.”

  Three seconds ago, no one would have heard me scream for help if I was on fire. They wouldn’t even have noticed the “I am on fire” part. Now, suddenly, the entire hallway is listening in—and they all shout “Ooooo!” in unison like third graders.

  Culliver stops in his tracks. I see I’ve made my first enemy of the day. Of the year. Of the next three.

  His eyes zero in on me, and I figure I’m about to get tossed through these skybox windows and down onto the court below. But a teacher in a rumpled pink button-up and blue tie steps between us and leans in front of Culliver, saying something I can’t hear. Culliver listens, still glaring at me over the teacher’s shoulder. Finally, he turns and continues down the hall.

  Interesting. Looks like I got a “Get out of ass kicking free” card. Or, had one. Maybe I just played it. The pink-shirted teacher glances at me like I irritate him. Like I’m the one who did something wrong.

  Whatever. My phone is gone, and I’m going to be late for my first class. According to my dandy new schedule, it’s Mrs. Garcia, for English.

  Who teaches Spanish, I wonder—Mrs. Smith?

  BRADY

  I want to kick that kid’s ass. Would have if Mr. Butler hadn’t stopped me. Kid’s lucky. Real lucky.

  I see Donte leaning against my locker. That helps. Me and Donte slap hands soon as I get there. We bump chests. Growl, howl, and laugh. Camp went great. Two-a-days went good this summer. Except for being so hungry. Last two-a-day was three days ago. Only have them once a week now that school’s back.

  D chews on his lip like he’s gearing up for a fight. Sticks his face in mine. “You got my lunch money, bitch?”

  “Girlfriend, you look like you already ate a whole cow!” Grind my pecs into his.

 
; We both laugh again. It echoes up and down the hall. Some people grin. They want to be a part of it. Some people walk faster. They want to get away from it. Either way’s fine with me.

  D leans against the blue lockers. “I went by to pick you up this morning.”

  Slam my locker door shut. Don’t like people going to my place. But it’s D. Can’t get too pissed. “Sorry, man. I was already up and out, you know.”

  “Cool,” D says. “You want me to pick you up tomorrow?”

  “Yeah sure, maybe at Starbucks, something.”

  “Right on.”

  We start heading for English. Warning bell rings. Everyone runs. We walk.

  “So hey, man,” Donte says. “My mom packed the biggest lunch today, like a grocery bag. It’s Chinese. You gonna eat some of that? It’s in Coach’s fridge.”

  I bite down hard. Grind my teeth. Try not to wait too long before saying, “Sure, if you’re too pussy to eat it all.”

  Donte hoots again. Punches my arm. Then we walk into English together. We have seats in the back. Like last year.

  “State?” Mr. Butler says to me as we walk past him into the classroom.

  “Hell yeah,” I say.

  He says it again to Donte. Donte also says, “Hell yeah.”

  Mr. Butler grins and says, “That’s right, that’s what I’m talking about. Welcome back.”

  Butler loves Shakespeare and the Niners. I don’t know how. Don’t care. Pretty much our whole team’s in his class. Nobody ever flunks Butler.

  None of us ever flunk Butler.

  Butler does some texting before the last bell rings. So does half the class. He doesn’t care if we text right up to the bell. We put our phones away when it goes off.

  Butler goes to the whiteboard. Writes down the word HAMLET.

  “Anybody know who wrote this play?”

  “Jesus!” my wide receiver shouts.

  “Mr. Butler!” says my fullback.

  “Shakespeare, you lumpish puttocks,” Butler says. Writes SHAKESPEARE on the board under HAMLET. “Turns out the drama department’s putting it on this semester, so that’s where we’re going to start.”

  We all groan at the same time.

  “Oh, really,” Butler says. He rolls up the sleeves on his pink button-up shirt. Getting down to business or something. “Anybody know what this play is about?”

  No one answers.

  “Who in here ever wanted to get even with someone?”

  I almost raise my hand. There’s lots of mumbling and grunting. Dudes shuffling in their chairs.

  “Like who?” he says. “Who have you wanted to get back at?”

  “The Titans!” one of our boys shouts. Others shout, too.

  “Matadors!”

  “Bulldogs!”

  Other high school rivals get called. It’s like a pep rally in here for a couple minutes. We start our hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! chant. It vibrates the windows.

  Butler lets us go for a while. It’s one reason we all like him so much. Then he raises his hands. We shut up. It’s respect.

  “Well then,” he says. “You’re going to like this one.”

  We start nodding. Lean forward in our desks. Most of them’re too small for us.

  “They any sports in it?” says one of my guys.

  We laugh at him. Give him shit. But Butler says, “Actually, yes. Hamlet uses sports to get revenge. Well, in a sense.”

  He’s got our attention. Butler claps once and points at Donte.

  “Heavy D,” he says. He’s prolly the only teacher who can get away with the name. “There’s a stack of books on the back counter. Pass them out, please.”

  D does what Butler says. We each get an old paperback of Hamlet. The cover shows a dude dressed in black, holding a skull up to his face. Like two football helmets about to clash on the opening credits of a game. Usually I watch at Donte’s. Mom sold our TV.

  I flip through the book. This might be kind of cool. Revenge. Skulls. Sports.

  Gotta love Butler’s class.

  DREA

  My full name is Andrea Stephanie Townsend. I want people to call me Drea, or Dre, because I figure it sounds sophisticated and mature, you know? I’ve been growing out my hair for a year now so that it’s long and shows off the dark red better, not like the pixie cuts I used to get all the time, so hopefully I’ll look older. I’ve decided this year I will at least get people to call me AHN-drea instead of ANN-drea. But probably they’ll just call me Andi. With an I. Everyone calls me that. No matter how often I try to change it, it keeps coming back to that I.

  A brown-haired girl reading a paperback copy of Hamlet notices me wandering around the cafeteria for ten minutes with my blue plastic tray. For no good reason that I can see, she waves me over to her table. Not many people are sitting there. It might be That table, where Those kids sit. There must be one of Those tables in every cafeteria in the world.

  But I go stand across from her, because at least she waved. She stares up at me for a second, then blinks quickly like she’s trying to stop thinking about something.

  “You need someplace to sit?” the girl says. “I remember freshman year.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Cool. Have a seat then. If you don’t mind sitting with a senior.”

  I sit down, several seats away from the rest of Those kids, who all have earbuds in.

  “What’s your name?” she asks.

  And I get to say “Drea, or Dre,” and not Andi.

  The senior says, “That’s cool. I think I’ll go with Drea. I mean, if I get to choose. I’m Kelly.”

  I sort of smile, because maybe high school is off to a pretty great start after all.

  Maybe I won’t need to cut anymore.

  Because I still do it. Sometimes every day. It’s been every day more often over the summer.

  No one knows. Not my mother and not my father. Not my friends from last year who promised we’d always be friends and we’d text and chat and talk but somehow haven’t.

  It’s a release, that’s all, a way to deal. I’d never, like, go through with anything, you know? It’s wrong to cut, and I know it. I feel guilty every time I slide a box cutter or razor or knife or paperclip across my upper and lower arms. But for that moment, the world is silent.

  These are all things running through my head when Kelly, who’s wearing a yellow T-shirt that says BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, asks why I’m wearing long sleeves and jeans when it’s so hot out.

  And I say, “To hide my scars.”

  Why’d I say it? Because I have to keep so quiet at home that I just wanted to hear myself say it, you know? I think that’s why.

  It’s as if the entire cafeteria hits an enormous mute button. I hear nothing, not a single sound, though I’m aware of life cruising along as usual around me, first-day hoots and hollers echoing through the room. This silence is spongy, airplane-landing stuffy, beginning in my nose and moving up to my brain.

  Kelly looks at me like she can’t tell if I’m joking or not.

  Then she says, in a reasonable tone, “Can I see?”

  I roll up one blue sleeve and display the scab hatching there. Hatching is an art term for drawing parallel lines close together, I just learned. It’s used for shading. I did some last period in art class. The guy at the table beside mine, who must have weighed as much as three of me, was already amazing at it.

  But his were done with pencil. Mine are done with a razor.

  Kelly takes my forearm in her hands. Her fingers are cool, her touch soft.

  “Wow,” Kelly says. “That’s intense.”

  She lets a thumb drift across one series of lines. I can’t feel it over the scabs. But I imagine it must feel like braille to her. What do the raised bumps say?

  “You won’t tell?” I ask.

  “I won’t tell,” Kelly says.

  “You don’t think it’s gross?”

  “I think it’s too bad that you feel like you need to do it. That’s all.”


  I start crying and reach for the paperclip in my pocket, but then Kelly puts an arm around me and says something like, “It’s cool, I got your back,” and I, Andrea-Andi-Drea-Dre, decide I can wait till after lunch to use the paperclip.

  Just as I get myself back together, a group of huge guys passes by our table and one of them tells his huge-guy buddies, “Hey, Mister Kelly’s back this year. How’s it going, chickdude?” He doesn’t stop to listen for an answer.

  Kelly acts like she didn’t hear them, but it’s obvious she did.

  “Why do they call you that?” I ask.

  Kelly snarls. “Because they’re Brady Culliver and Donte Walker, and that’s what they do.”

  When I blink at her, Kelly explains: “They’re football players. They’ve been using me to cover up their own gender identity issues for the past three years.” She says it like it doesn’t bother her except I can see that it does.

  Kelly’s snarl does not change as she says, “What I want to know is how the hell they get off campus and to a Pei Wei so fast. Maybe the coach has it delivered. It wouldn’t surprise me.” She crunches down on a celery stick. “Blegh, who cares? I’ll be out of this place in nine months, and in ten years they won’t have the social heft to start a Twitter account.”

  A laugh pops out of me. It’s not much more than a squeak, but I decide to count it as a laugh, anyway.

  “On the other hand,” Kelly says, glancing at me sidelong as if to see if she can make me laugh again, “where will I be ten years from now, Drea? One of the five most influential businesswomen in the world! Yeah, no.”

  She called me Drea like it was my real name. I smile.

  Kelly sighs and moves on to a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. “I mean, senior year is freaking me out. What’s out there for me? I’m not good at anything. I’ve failed at band, I’ve hurt myself and others in just about every sport, my grades are all Ds and Cs. I haven’t so much as Googled the word ‘college.’ Mom needs help with the twins. And my sister. And maybe even my brother even though he’s in sixth grade this year …”

  “I’m making you nervous,” I say, interrupting. It’s why she’s talking so much.

  Kelly shuts her mouth. I almost can hear her teeth clack together. Then she smiles. “It’s that obvious?”