Victor:
I have wished that Bull Mastrick would die almost every single day. Not that I would ever have anything to do with his death. I’m not a psychopath or some wacko with collaged pictures of him hanging in my room and a gun collection. I’m the victim.
Bull:
I fought my way through elementary school and middle school. My nose has been broken and my pinkie on my right hand has been snapped the wrong way and my lip’s been ripped open a bunch of times. But people leave me alone. I’m sort of over beating kids up.
Sort of.
Victor hates his life.
He has no friends, he gets beaten up at school, and his parents are always criticizing him. Tired of feeling miserable, Victor takes a bottle of his mother’s sleeping pills—only to wake up in the hospital.
Bull is angry,
and he takes all of his rage out on Victor. That makes him feel better, at least a little. But it doesn’t stop Bull’s grandfather from getting drunk and hitting him. So Bull tries to defend himself with a loaded gun.
When Victor and Bull
end up as roommates in the same psych ward, there’s no way to escape each other or their problems. Which means things are going to get worse—much worse—before they get better.
K. M. Walton
spent twelve years teaching and loved every minute. She has a penchant for reading Entertainment Weekly cover to cover, and she lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons. Cracked is her first novel. Visit her at kmwalton.com or follow her on Twitter at @KMWalton1.
Jacket designed by RUSSELL GORDON
Jacket photograph copyright © 2012 by DAVIES AND STARR/GETTY IMAGES
Author photograph by TODD WALTON
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2012 by K. M. Walton
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walton, K. M. (Kathleen M.)
Cracked / by K. M. Walton. — 1st Simon Pulse hardcover ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When Bull Mastrick and Victor Konig wind up in the same psychiatric ward at age sixteen, each recalls and relates in group therapy the bullying relationship they have had since kindergarten, but also facts about themselves and their families that reveal they have much in common.
ISBN 978-1-4424-2916-1
[1. Emotional problems—Fiction. 2. Family problems—Fiction. 3. Bullies—Fiction. 4. Self-esteem—Fiction. 5. Psychotherapy—Fiction. 6. High schools—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W177Cr 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011010340
ISBN 978-1-4424-2918-5 (eBook)
“Everything’s Not Lost”
Words and Music by Guy Berryman, Jon Buckland, Will Champion and Chris Martin
Copyright © 2000 by Universal Music Publishing MGB Ltd.
All Rights in the United States and Canada Administered by Universal Music-MGB Songs
International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
To my mom, Mary Anne Becker-Sheedy, this dedication is a drop in the bucket.
An ocean full of drops wouldn’t be enough to thank you for your unwavering belief in me.
Contents
Chapter 1: Victor
Chapter 2: Bull
Chapter 3: Victor
Chapter 4: Bull
Chapter 5: Victor
Chapter 6: Bull
Chapter 7: Victor
Chapter 8: Bull
Chapter 9: Victor
Chapter 10: Bull
Chapter 11: Victor
Chapter 12: Bull
Chapter 13: Victor
Chapter 14: Bull
Chapter 15: Victor
Chapter 16: Bull
Chapter 17: Victor
Chapter 18: Bull
Chapter 19: Victor
Chapter 20: Bull
Chapter 21: Victor
Chapter 22: Bull
Chapter 23: Victor
Chapter 24: Bull
Chapter 25: Victor
Chapter 26: Bull
Chapter 27: Victor
Chapter 28: Bull
Chapter 29: Victor
Chapter 30: Bull
Chapter 31: Victor
Chapter 32: Bull
Chapter 33: Victor
Chapter 34: Bull
Chapter 35: Victor
Chapter 36: Bull
Chapter 37: Victor
Chapter 38: Bull
Chapter 39: Victor
Chapter 40: Bull
Chapter 41: Victor
Chapter 42: Bull
Chapter 43: Victor
Chapter 44: Bull
Chapter 45: Victor
Chapter 46: Bull
Chapter 47: Victor
Chapter 48: Bull
Chapter 49: Victor
Chapter 50: Bull
Chapter 51: Victor
Chapter 52: Bull
Chapter 53: Victor
Chapter 54: Bull
Chapter 55: Victor
Chapter 56: Bull
Chapter 57: Victor
Chapter 58: Bull
Chapter 59: Victor
Chapter 60: Bull
Chapter 61: Victor
Chapter 62: Bull
Chapter 63: Victor
Chapter 64: Bull
Chapter 65: Victor
Chapter 66: Bull
Chapter 67: Victor
Chapter 68: Bull
Chapter 69: Victor
Chapter 70: Bull
Epilogue: Victor
Epilogue: Bull
Acknowledgments
Victor
I HAVE WISHED THAT BULL MASTRICK WOULD DIE almost every single day. Not that I would ever have anything to do with his death. I’m not a psychopath or some wacko with collaged pictures of him hanging in my room and a gun collection. I’m the victim.
Bull Mastrick has tortured me since kindergarten. I’m sixteen now, and I understand that he’s an asshole and will always be an asshole. But I wish a rare sickness would suck the life out of him or he’d crash on his stupid BMX bike and just die.
Lately, as in the past two years of high school, he’s been absent a lot. Each day that he’s not in school I secretly wait for the news that he’s died. A sudden tragic death. As in, not-ever-coming-back-to-school-again dead. Then I’d have some peace. I could stop looking over my shoulder every five seconds and possibly even digest my lunch. Bull has a pretty solid track record of being a dick, so death is my only option.
> Last year Bull pantsed me in gym. Twice. The first time was—and I can’t believe I’m even allowing myself to think this, but—the first time wasn’t that bad. It was in the locker room and only two other guys saw me in my underwear. And they’re even more untouchable than I am. They’re what everyone calls “bottom rungers.”
Fortunately, the bottom rungers just dropped their eyes and turned away.
But a few weeks later Bull put a little more thought and planning into it. He waited until we were all in the gym, all forty-five of us, and when Coach Schuster ran back to his office to grab his whistle, Bull grabbed my shorts and underwear and shouted, “Yo, look! Is it a boy or a girl?”
I’m not what anyone would categorize as dramatic, but it seriously felt like he grabbed a little of my soul. I remember standing there like a half-naked statue—not breathing or blinking—as wisps of me leaked out of my exposed man parts. I heard a snort, which unfroze me. I slowly bent down, pulled up my underwear and shorts, and walked back into the locker room.
And puked in the corner like a scolded animal.
He got suspended for it, which earned me two guaranteed Bull-free days in a row. You think that would’ve made me feel better. But each time I walked down that hallway in school or thought of the forty-five fellow ninth graders—eighteen of them girls—seeing my balls, I would gag. Then I’d run to the closest bathroom and regurgitate perfectly formed chunks of shame and disgrace.
Bull has a habit of triggering my body functions. In second grade, he made me pee my pants on the playground. He sucker punched me, and I landed face-first in a pile of tiny rocks. Bull squatted down just so he could use my head to push himself back up, squishing the rocks further into my face. He had just enough time to tell everyone I’d peed my pants before the playground monitor wandered over to see what the commotion was.
“Victor pissed his pants! Victor pissed his pants!” Bull shouted over and over again.
I laid facedown for as long as I could. I knew I’d peed my pants. I felt the warm humiliation spread through my tan shorts. And I knew that as soon as I stood up, the difference in color would be a blinking arrow, alerting the entire playground that yes, Victor Konig had just pissed his pants.
I got up on my elbows and felt my cheeks. It was as if my face sucked up those rocks like they were nutrients or something. Many were embedded and had to be popped out by the school nurse. I looked like I had zits—twenty-three red, oozing zits.
My father wanted to know what I had done to provoke “that boy”—like Bull was actually human. My mother only cared about what the adults at the school thought of her eight-year-old son pissing his pants. She said it made her look bad and that grown-ups would think she wasn’t raising me correctly.
“Only weird boys pee their pants on the playground,” she said. And then she asked me if I was weird.
She actually asked me, “Victor, are you one of those weird boys? Are you? You can’t do that to Mommy. I’ve worked very hard to get where I am in this community, to live in this lovely neighborhood and in this beautiful home. I can’t have my only child embarrassing me. Do you understand, Victor? I can’t have you be one of those weird boys.”
I remember apologizing for embarrassing her.
Bull cut in front of me in the lunch line the next day. He shoved me and said, “Out of my way, pee boy.”
I remember apologizing to him, too.
Bull
I’M KIND OF EMBARRASSED TO ADMIT THIS, BUT when I was little I thought my grandfather had an important name. I call him Pop, but he is Mr. George Mastrick. I used to think it sounded like a banker or businessman. But I’m sixteen now, and I know the only important things about my pop are his fists. They’re big and they hurt. But I’d never tell him that.
I even used to think my name, William Mastrick, made me sound like I mattered. My pop renamed me Bull when I was five—said he didn’t want me getting any crazy ideas that I was special. He said I wrecked everyone’s life when I came along, like a bull in a china shop. The name stuck.
I know I look like my pop did when he was younger. Not from any pictures or anything. We’re not the kind of family that has photo albums or memory books or any of that sentimental crap. There isn’t one photo of me till I hit kindergarten, and it’s the school’s photo anyway.
Ever since I can remember, whenever my mom has a load on, she smacks me in the side of the head and tells me how much I look like Pop.
“Dad, look, you two have the same blue eyes.” It comes out like this, though: “Dah, luh, yeww teww hah the say gree eye.”
My pop always tells her to shut up.
I never say a word.
We used to have the same brown hair, too. Whatever. I keep my hair buzzed, just so I won’t look like him. Even though he’s all gray now, we still look a lot alike, and I hate looking like him.
Pop has always hated me. At least I know where I stand. In a wacked-out way, I can appreciate that. I stay out of his way and he stays out of mine . . . unless he wants to beat the shit out of me. Then we spend some real quality time together.
I also have an uncle, Sammy, my mom’s brother, who dropped out of high school when he was sixteen to become a mechanic. Turns out he couldn’t hack that so he decided to become a professional druggie and alkie instead. He’s pretty deep in the drug scene—spent some time in juvie for dealing weed, then big-boy jail.
When he’s not locked up, he lives in a well-known drug house two blocks over from me. Which is great when you’re walking home from school and your wasted uncle comes crawling out from under a neighbor’s bush, covered in his own puke, asking you for money. Makes you really popular with the other kids. He hasn’t been around our apartment in ages, though. I overheard his drunken dad, my grandfather—
Mr. George Mastrick, Pop—on the phone with the police a few weeks ago. He’s back in jail.
Now I don’t want you to think that I live in a place where a drunk guy crawling out of a bush would be a shocking neighborhood event. I don’t live where ladies do lunch and gossip about the vomit-covered gentleman who fell asleep in Ms. Ashley’s rosebush. Hell no. I live in the dumps, a real shithole.
It’s just me, Pop, and my mom all jammed together in a two-bedroom, second-floor apartment in a crappy twin house. I shouldn’t say it’s just me, Pop, and my mom, because that would be lying. We have tons of other things living with us. A couple hundred roaches join us every night when we turn off the lights, and we have a pack of mice that live underneath our kitchen sink. When I go to grab a trash bag from that cabinet I am always grossed out by the mouse turds. There are piles and piles under there.
You’d think my mother would sweep them up. Try to keep her kid safe from the germs. One time, when I was little, she tried to serve me a piece of bread with a mouse turd on it, stuck in the butter. I started crying because I knew what it was. She smacked me in the back of my head and screamed that I better freakin’ eat it or she’d shove it down my throat.
Yeah, she shoved the whole piece into my seven-year-old mouth and held my mouth shut until I chewed and swallowed it.
She’s a real great mom.
She loves reminding me that I was never supposed to have been born. That I stole her dreams. She never really had dreams. I inherited that from her, I guess.
Her stupid big dream was to be a yoga instructor. I don’t think that’s even a real job. She said I wrecked her “core strength” and she would never get any respect as a real yoga professional with a pouch for a stomach. The doctors had to cut me out of her, so she’s got a scar, too—which means no bikinis for her either. Yeah, also my fault.
I don’t even know why she continues to throw that in my face. I swear, she acts like I put the guy’s privates inside her that night under the Ocean City boardwalk. She hasn’t been back to the beach since that summer, so who cares if she can’t wear a bikini anymore? She got fat, too. Not like enormous fat, but enough to give her an extra chin and a tire roll around her middle. After I came alon
g, she stopped exercising because she had to work to support me and my diaper/formula addiction.
She pretty much blames me for just about every bad thing in her pathetic life. Like never graduating high school. Instead she got a job behind the desk at the local Salvation Army—Salvy to those who work there.
Salvy’s a huge warehouse where rich people drop off their used shit to make themselves feel like they’re contributing to society. You know, giving back. You can get crap furniture, crap kitchen stuff, crap house stuff, crap clothing, and crap shoes. That part always makes me sick. You have to be in the complete shithouse to want to buy someone else’s used shoes. I don’t care how rich the people are who drop off their used shoes, they still sweat and have funk between their toes. But my mom doesn’t care. Every single pair of shoes she owns was worn by someone else’s feet.
When I was little, she said I wore other kid’s shoes all the time. She said I didn’t care. I always tell her it’s because I was too freakin’ little to know the difference. She says I think I’m better than her. Then she wants to know, Who do I think I am? Do I think I’m some kind of rich kid? Some kind of snot? Do I really think I’m better than her?
I always tell her no, I’ll buy my own freaking shoes because I’m just not stupid enough to put on someone else’s rotten shoes.
Then she hits me.
I usually just let her hit me. I don’t duck or cover or anything. I just let her hit me. It pisses her off so bad. When I was little, I used to cry and whimper like a baby. But I figured out fast that my pop likes to finish what my mom starts. To shut me up. And he hits a lot harder.
I know I could knock her out with one punch. I’ve imagined how it would go a million times. I’d smile. I’d lift my right arm, fist tight, then I’d connect with her stupid face. Down she’d go like a falling tree, cut at the base. But I never do it. The only thing mom taught me was to never hit girls. She said men who hit girls are weak, and I’m not weak. I’m the exact opposite. I can kick any kid’s ass, always could.
I got in my first fight at day care. I was four years old, and the other kid wouldn’t get off the swing. I didn’t even ask him, I just pushed him off, and then punched him in the gut to make sure he didn’t get back up. It worked. The swing was all mine.
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