Trapped with a Way Out

by Jeffery Martinez

Walter was back with his tea, but rather than reach for the first of the papers, currently waiting for him on a nearby chair, he watched the slumped over, self-pitying little boy. Taking up one of the papers, Walter sat down, "Sit up."

  Vincent straightened, and gradually, as minutes ticked, wilted back onto the table.

  Walter would have told the boy to stop looking so pathetic, if he hadn't known a comment like that would only depress Vincent further. So he only gave his nephew reminders, to straighten his back, to raise his head. But eventually, Walter tried another tactic - dropping his brother's name: "How did Vincent get you to sit up straight?" Walter did not look away from his paper immediately, but, even though he had waited for the boy to compose himself, Vincentimir's expression was still wary and embarrassed when he eventually looked up.

  Vincent shrugged, but he sat up straighter and pushed back his shoulders.

  Walter's eyes traversed the newspaper, methodical and unimpressed by any of the articles, "You should get out of the house."

  Vincent frowned at the wall, turning his ankles restlessly under the table of mismatched chairs. He felt like a mismatched nephew. "I just… want to stay here." What he really wanted to do was explain himself better, but he found that he couldn't.

  Walter, depositing his current paper on the chair to his right, took up a new paper from the chair on his left. "Then you can work on your homework," Walter turned pages so that the rustling could excuse Vincent's delayed response.

  "I can do the homework later…"

  "No."

  Vincent dropped his face into his arms on the table, and remained limp, withholding a groan.

  Walter took up his tea, "Sit up straight."

  …

  Once it was officially the afternoon, using an 'after-school' definition of 'afternoon', Vincent wandered over endless sidewalk paths, breathing deeply as he tasted the faint crispness of the approaching winter. The sun was going to set in a couple hours, but before it got dark, he wandered, guided by lonesome wants, towards the regular hangout. He listened outside the windows and the door for voices. He checked nearby streets for certain cars. Vincent found Jake's car, so he went inside.

  Whatever they had been talking about, the four teenagers angled in chairs that crowded a square table, stopped to look at Vincent. Someone got up and went into the other room. Vincent watched the teen go, feeling numb and scared. He swallowed and stared at his shoes and the carpet, slowly merging into the nearest wall. They started to ignore him, but their voices were low, difficult even for Vincent to make out. Vincent wanted to ask them where Jake was, but he'd glued himself to the wall, and couldn't make himself pull any farther away from the door.

  Eventually, Vincent heard clinking chips (actually plastic checker pieces) on the table, as the boys resorted to a game of poker. Jake lumbered into existence too suddenly for Vincent's constricted little heart, which blasted into his throat, and made him stare, wide-eyed, at the cushioned, beat up armchair directly in front of him. Vincent predicted correctly that Jake wouldn't ignore him for long. But he'd found it difficult to envision Jake sitting in that armchair, which was too far away to conduct a confidential conversation - for them to talk in whispers. Somehow, Jake sat in the chair, and Vincent lifted his head timidly, to meet his gaze.

  Jake was calm, even a bit… sorrowful – not angry, at least. But there was disappointment in his face, and Vincent couldn't stomach the sight of it. He realized anger might have been preferable, though ten times scarier. He could at least outrun an enraged Jake. But a disappointed Jake… that was a new one. No way to run from disappointment.

  Vincent realized too late that Jake was making this into some kind of public interrogation. Vincent wasn't aware of what would have happened to him if he'd been three years older; he didn't know the rules about hitting girls in their gang.

  "Are you going to try and explain yourself?"

  Vincent stared at Jake dumbly, nearly slack jawed. He looked nervously away, after noticing that the poker game had been paused. With the encroaching, somehow incriminating, silence, Jake gave the kid a second chance.

  "How's your ear?"

  Flinching, since he'd forgotten about the cup, Vincent hunched against the wall, his fingertips touching the plastic softly. He'd walked all over the place with this thing on his head. And he hadn't noticed any changes in other people on the street. Because he was used to people treating him, looking at him, as though he were damaged or dangerous.

  "It's-" Vincent swallowed with difficulty, and tried to moisten his dry mouth. "It's… okay."

  Then there was more silence. Vincent noticed the room was darkening. The sun had passed behind a building, or something…

  "We don't hit girls." Jake watched as Vincent's crumpled sense of self-worth was kicked from one anxious foot to another, as Vincent shifted his weight, rocking a little as he tried to think, tried to rein in his dread. Jake checked on the others seated at the poker table, and someone nodded to encourage him, to show he wasn't being too intimidating. "We would have kicked you out altogether," Jake didn't meet Vincent's wide eyes.

  The boy wasn't sure what Jake meant, but interpreted it to mean that his friends would have completely disowned him, all together, over this stupid girl. The thought sparked an ember in his brain, and the boys at the poker table were disturbed to see Vincent grit his teeth and grimace, stiffening his posture. He cracked individual fingers by his side, which gained Jake's attention, and gave the teen-giant cause for unease.

  Vincent bit his lip, and then propelled himself through his own reluctant questions: "So we would all stop being friends, just because of this? This- this stupid thing?"

  Jake shifted uncomfortably in the chair, "Well, 'this' is a big deal. You can't do this again."

  Vincent's voice rose, showing blatant indignation, "Like I'd want to do it again. Like I'd actually go around hitting girls on my own! It's not like this is my hobby or anything. It- it just happened!"

  Jake's frown creased, as he began to grow more serious, "We know exactly what happened."

  "Okay, so what happened?"

  Once the urge to shove the kid out the door was wrangled down successfully, Jake was able to cut back in a low tone, "You hit her because you were angry. She cut your ear, so you hit her, not once," Jake held out one finger, and then, like a switchblade, lifted a second, "but twice." He left the number hanging there, marked by his fingers. But Vincent only glared at him, showing an expression Jake wasn't used to. The level of discomfort in the room escalated as the late-afternoon sky colored; color emptied into the room, as the sun was no longer obscured.

  Vincent tapped his ear cover bitterly, although it was painfully loud for him to do so, "She almost cut off my ear."

  Jake shrugged in a way that made Vincent's teeth grate, audibly; his tone required Vincent to bite into his lip. Jake looked him dead in the eye, and asked, "So what?"

  "She's basically fifteen and I'm-"

  "So what?" Jake's interruption only fueled Vincent's temper, which Jake could clearly monitor by the boy's eyes, and how he worked his jaw.

  Vincent glared at the floor, "So that doesn't mean anything?"

  "No. Nothing."

  Hissing, because he didn't use curse words naturally, Vincent sighed out some of his aggravation. But his next breath took it all back in, and he cringed and hung his head. He began to rock agitatedly, his curved spine rolling against the wall. "So you're the type that would just let a girl kill you, because she's a girl?"

  Jake's voice evenly replied, "Yes."

  "That's stupid," Vincent hissed, and shut his eyes. He continued to rock, then suddenly pressed his back flat against the wall, the back of his head also making contact. He breathed in deeply, and held his breath.

  Jake looked to the boys at the poker table, but they were at a loss, and some showed signs of impatience (towards Vincent). Jake raised his voice momentarily, as though speaking over Vincent's internal thoughts. "Your uncle would probably agree. It's not my pl
ace to have that conversation with you, but he-"

  The giggle slammed into them, and injected their veins with liquid cement. They couldn't move, think, or react to the way Vincent smiled at them, spitefully, yet mournfully as well.

  "Jack-bean…"

  Just hearing it, as the kid wore such an expression, the nick-name crunched like gravel between Jake's teeth, but he let Vincent continue.

  "-my uncle kills women. He doesn't care that I've hit a girl who was 'three' years older than me, who attacked me and almost cut off my ear. My ear! Jake, my ear! It's a part of my body!"

  Snarling back, fed up with the brat's stubbornness, Jake's nostrils flared as his grip on the armrests tightened, "I don't care if she'd actually cut it off. It doesn't justify what you did-"

  "Those are your morals. Those are your dad's morals – and I've heard from him too. Joel was at the hospital with my uncle," Vincent's voice quieted. "…Those aren't my morals. And they aren't my family's morals," Vincent pointed at his chest. He endured the anger that mounted in Jake's darkening glare, and let his argument stand.

  Jake shouted, hitting the armrests and jabbing a finger towards Vincent, "I said, I don't care-!"

  Vincent overwhelmed the shout with sheer will-power, "I don't care! If someone is going to attack me, and hurt me, I'll hit them. My uncle's only complaint," Vincent took another verbal route as Jake's rage reddened his face, "was that I broke her nose. He said I should've hit her in the ear, because it was an 'eye for an eye' or, a re- uh… an ex-" Just as Vincent failed to find his uncle's words – since no one could argue with his uncle (in Vincent's mind) – the voice to his left, the opening door, the incredulous laugh and scoff, distracted all of them.

  'Glasses' - Sriracha's boyfriend - shook his head, looked at Vincent, shook his head again and smiled. His hands ran over his face, but could not wipe the smile away. Everything about him asked, Is this guy for real? "What I heard out there," Glasses indicated the door, where he'd been standing briefly, "Is what I heard- Were," he laughed, "were you really talking about my girlfriend?" In the silence, and as he stared into Vincent's stiff face, the teenager's voice deepened and rose, "Are you honestly justifying what you did? You BROKE her f*ing NOSE, you little a*hole-" His shoe slammed into the wall, convincing others for a moment that he had just busted a gaping hole through it. He'd made a dent, but that was all.

  Glasses turned, and, unable to keep his feet still, threw his thumb back at the door, his hands disappearing and reappearing from his jacket pockets as he asked in spurts, "Come on… Outside. …Let's go outside. I don't care if you're in middle school anymore. …Let's do it. Let's get this done – I'm… I'm not going to," he laughed, "just sit here, listen to you, and do nothing. …" He looked at Vincent with his strange smile, and then his entire expression warped with his roar, "GET OUT THERE. I'LL MAKE SURE YOU'LL NEVER HAVE THE CHANCE TO BEAT UP ANOTHER GIRL. GET OUT-"

  Vincent threw out his hands, as through freeing something he'd been restraining. "Okay, sure. I'll fight you. I know you're sixteen; four years is good enough. I'm allowed to fight you. Okay? Let's go." The shiver in Vincent's voice could have been interpreted as fear, but from the way he walked, it sure all hell seemed like the little punk wasn't the least bit phased by the disadvantages he faced in fighting a 5'5", 110 lb sixteen year old. The teens acknowledged Vincent's dumb courage half-heartedly.

  Jake and the other teens followed after Vincent and his challenger, loathe to let this fight actually take place outside their hangout. The teen who had called Glasses over, and a few other adolescent figures, emerged from another room and funneled into the alley.

  They made a very broken, non-claustrophobic ring around the two. Jake grabbed Vincent's shoulder before anything could begin, but Vincent tried to push him off. Glasses snapped his fingers, and growled, "Black – back-off. I'm sorry, but he's earned it."

  "He's in middle school. Come on." Jake looked about the circle as he held onto Vincent, seeking some immediate solution, but he found little support. At most he got a few shrugs, which said: Vincent actually needed this. Let him get his butt handed to him by the girl's boyfriend. That was some form of justice. We'll all be able to move on after this. And it's Glasses, for Christ's sake. He's a twig.

  Jake tried to tell them, No – they didn't need that sort of animosity in their group, that this was messed up – but he was distracted when Vincent stepped towards Glasses, free of Jake, and then stood in a… legitimately 'ready' position. …He wasn't just standing there, like Glasses. He had taken some sort of fighting stance, something that didn't look like it'd been invented by a twelve year old. Well, maybe he'd been watching a lot of Karate Kid, or something, lately.

  Vincent let Glasses crack his knuckles, repeat what he'd yelled inside the hangout, and then watched as the skinny teenager lunged towards him in mid-sentence. Vincent dodged the punch, turning his body as he swung his leg up, and swiftly brought the heel of his shoe into the teenager's jaw. Both stumbled awkwardly away, Vincent off balance from meeting the uncomfortably high target. Glasses stumbled because a second later he toppled to the ground, and didn't get up. In the silence that followed, Vincent counted to ten (like an official Taekwondo match) as he frowned over the inert body. Then he turned around and met the states of whoever might be looking at him, looking back even at Jake's blank dumbfounded disbelief.

  Vincent threw out his hands again, in the motion of letting something go, or encouraging something to run wild. "Okay then. Someone else want to try and beat up a twelve year old?"

  "What the hell'd you just do? Are you crazy?"

  Vincent found that Jake was approaching, with wide jet black eyes and an unnerving snarl contorting his lips. Vincent pursed his own lips, reeling things in again as his nervousness, his lack of self-confidence resurfaced. "My uncle teaches me taekwondo- a- a couple times, at least. Since I… got in a fight with those three boys-" A grunted gasp of pain and alarm shot out of Vincent as a heavy blow struck the back of his head, rattling his brain. He stumbled towards Jake, seeing only a blur which he did not process. The unseen boy who'd hit Vincent tackled him to the ground at Jake's feet. Jake backed away, watching uneasily, and he didn't react to the other teen who stepped up to Vincent's head.

  The teen holding Vincent down ground the pale face into the coarse asphalt, scratching tender skin as Vincent grit his teeth and, unable to do more, shut his eyes tight as he tried to avoid getting dirt, grime, rocks, and eventually blood, in them. Vincent's arms were folded beneath his chest, but his hands were splayed as he tried, grunting, to push up, to get out from under the larger body. The newcomer's shoes kicked at the asphalt, and a pissed off voice snarled, "You think you can beat up someone who is actually our friend? You little punk! You freakin'-"

  Vincent understood, to a sickening extent, the weight of that "actually." And then he yelled in pain as a hard heel came down on the fingers of his left hand, crushing his ring finger and pinky. As he yelled, he had to quickly shut his mouth and muffle the sound, to preserve some sense of pride, and to avoid letting his teeth scrape across the filthy street as his head was pressed harder into the asphalt by the teen on his back. The large hand was hot against his messy hair and scalp. Vincent thought he heard Jake's voice, but there were a lot of voices, so many that they were creating a smothering din. The pain, his own grunts and muffled yells, added to the confusion. The heel came down sharply again, causing Vincent to yelp and groan in frustration, a sound that was twisted by the feelings this experience of abandonment wrought.

  The teen on his back tore off Vincent's ear cover, and hit the bandages that still covered the injured ear. But with this sloppy shift in weight as the teen lifted himself to complete the blow, when the boy tried to lean onto Vincent's skinny spine again, Vincent threw his head back and narrowly missed the teen's face. As the teen tried to reclaim Vincent's head, Vincent squirmed and twisted enough to sink his teeth into the ankle of the foot crushing his fingers. His elbow smashed into the face behind him, an
d Vincent managed to struggle free. There was a pause during which the boy with the hurt face gave up, but the other teen rushed forward, infuriated, and clearly much more adept at fighting than Glasses had been. A fist was thrown at Vincent. As it missed, Vincent swung his arm down and caught the teen's arm in the crook of his own - pinning it against his ribs. Swiftly, in a movement that seemed natural to him, Vincent turned against the momentum of the teen's punch, and felt the teen's elbow pop out of place.

  Just like his uncle had said: dislocating a joint was better than breaking a "friend's" arm. Or… something like that.

  Vincent let the teen fall away, and then stood there, strangely gargoyle-like; he appeared emotionless while his feelings wrangled with the crushed and writhing innards of his psyche. The injured teen on the ground behind him was no longer a concern as Vincent kept his eyes on the boy he had elbowed in the face. The boy, and all the others, stared at Vincent. Those who were aware of Vincent's… connection, slowly digested the fact that this was, in all actuality… the Angel of Death's nephew (or Jake's cousin – either served as an intimidating explanation).

  Picking up his ear protector and briefly brushing dirt from the white elastic headband, Vincent pointed at the teens, seeming to grow smaller as his pre-puberty voice called out: "If you don't want to be friends," he stabbed his thumb into his chest painfully, "then I don't want to be friends." And he stalked off into the streets that were colored by the bloodying twilight, believing he had won his battle. In reality, he'd just freaked out and confused a bunch of teenagers, who were going to be more pissed-off than ever, now that Vincent had so 'arrogantly' hurt three of their 'actual' friends. Jake's perception of the situation sunk to a new low, and he went to his car to be alone, lighting a cigarette, holding it against his lips, not understanding what was going to happen next.

  When Vincent got home after dark, his uncle was there, so, as usual, he said hello, and then walked past his uncle to go to the couch where he planned on doing his homework. He knelt down by his backpack, which was propped up against the side of the couch. But Vincent flinched violently, wincing as this hurt his injuries, and then nervously craned his neck back to peer up at his uncle as Walter stood over him, casting him in his shadow.