by D. F. Noble
Shit. I go out the back door.
I don’t want to see my mom. She’s gonna see that I’m all bloody and my clothes are fucked up. If she sees me I won't be able to run away. If I get out now, she'll just think I'm out playing and she won't get worried till dark. By then, I'll be long gone.
Behind my house are the woods. There’s a creek, too. You can walk the creek all the way to the river if you want. I go down there a lot, skip stones in the deep parts, look for arrowheads, that kind of stuff. Pretend I'm an Indian with my bow and arrow. Before my dad went overseas to the war, we built a tree house out by this old water tower. Best tree house ever. It's huge: two stories with a rope swing that will drop you right in the creek. It takes a while to walk there from the house, but you just follow the creek up and if you'll find it. We built it deep so we could just have our secret place, away from the world. I go out there whenever I can. I got trunks with comics in there, and other stuff like bows and arrows, and a machete and hatchet.
I’m going to go there, wash this blood off.
***
I wash my arms and face and neck, watch the blood mingle in the cold water. This feels better. Maybe everything will be alright. They will find Chris Red Cap. He will start to smell, get all puffy and bloated like roadkill does in the sun. A cat or a dog and the rats will get to him. I keep thinking of a pack of dogs dragging him out into the open, but more than likely, the guys that get the trash will find him.
It’ll be on the news. Is there anyone who knew it was me? Ronnie will know. He’ll figure it out. I don’t think he’ll believe it, though. And maybe, maybe he won’t be mad at me and we can go back to normal.
The sun is getting low. I think I should head back. I feel weird, like I’m far away from myself. Maybe this is what they call shock. There’s this feeling inside of me growing. It’s powerful, like an animal. I just don’t know what kind of animal, and I’m scared of it. Scared of what might happen if I let it out.
I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted to read my comic book.
I turn to go, but I hear laughter, hear people talking and crashing through the woods. Down the creek from me, a group of kids tromp down to the water. It’s a group of guys and girls smoking cigarettes. I’ve seen them in school. They’re 8th graders, nothing to be messed with. I try to sneak back into the brush before they see me, but it’s too late.
“Hey kid!”
Shit.
I stand there, not knowing what to do. One of the girls lifts up her shirt and flashes me. She’s got big ol’ tits. “Ever seen these before?” she asks, her voice echoing down the creek. Her friends laugh, and she laughs with them.
“Mandy is a big slut,” one of the other girls calls out, “you wanna put your dick in her mouth?”
I turn and step into the trees. No more for me today. I’ve had enough of people. I hear them laughing as I go. That’s fine… after tonight, I’ll be gone. Fuck this place.
***
I stand in the tree line, looking at the back of my house. I don’t know why I came back. I guess I just wanted to see Mom one last time. Her car is home. The lights are on. She’s probably making dinner right now. My brother Wes is probably in his highchair, making goofy noises and shoving crackers in his face and his hair.
I don’t think they will miss me.
I don’t know how long I stand there. I feel like a ghost, like I don’t belong here, belong anywhere. I wonder where I’ll go, if I’ll make friends. Something wet is on my face, on my lip and my cheeks. I’ve been crying and didn’t realize. My face hurts, my mouth and my cheek around my eye, it’s kind of swollen. Probably have a bruise from where Red Cap hit me.
Might as well get this over with, I’m just going to look through the window. Gonna say goodbye, even though she won’t hear me.
I’m walking forward, through the backyard. It’s so quiet right now—which is really weird for this town. The sun is creeping down behind the houses in my neighborhood. I think what it will be like to watch it set from jail. Maybe Red Cap’s friends will find out. Maybe they will come and kill me. Maybe it’s for the best.
I watch my mom through the window. I was right: Wes is in his high chair, and she's on the phone and cooking dinner. I say goodbye, but just move my lips. I turn back to the woods and look into the dark. A part of me wants to stay, but I know I can't.
Then the back door opens and Mom's looking right at me.
“There you are,” she says, handing me the phone. “Ronnie's on the phone for you.”
I stand there in a daze, just a big dumb look on my face I'm sure. I'm caught. I'm expecting her to tear into me, give me grief as usual, but instead:
“Well,” she says, “you gonna take the phone or what?”
“Sorry,” I say and take it from her. She walks back into the kitchen and I watch her go to the stove. “Hey,” I say into the phone.
“Dude!” Ronnie's voice leaps from the phone, I can hear his excitement. “You hear about Chris?”
“Chris who?”
My heart flutters.
“The guy in the alley,” Ronnie says, “the one that beat us up! They found him all screwed up, dude. He's in the hospital. I heard he got stabbed and his head got all cracked open.”
I feel my knees about to buckle. “He's alive?”
“Yeah,” Ronnie blurts, “they say he's gonna be alright, but I bet it's a while before he tries to pick on somebody!” Ronnie laughs hard and goes on, “Oh man, I'm coming over! Already talked to your mom, I'll be there in a bit! Wanna go out to the tree house?”
“Sure,” I say. “I'll be here.”
Click.
I stand there looking at the phone, thinking. This is worse, way worse. It'd be better if Chris Red Cap just died. Now he's going to come for me. He's going to kill me.
***
That night, me and Ronnie walk out to the tree house in the dark. We have flashlights to help lead the way, but we've been there so many times we probably could have walked it blindfolded. We spend the night out there, talking about Chris the Bully, Chris Red Cap.
I want to tell Ronnie what I did, how I thought I killed Chris and how bad I'm worried he was going to come back for me. I say nothing, though. If I keep quiet, maybe no one will find out. Maybe I hit Chris hard enough that he got knocked silly and didn't remember. Maybe all of this will pass.
We spend the weekend drawing and reading comics. We practice with my bow and my BB gun, and for Ronnie, we're just having fun, pretending to be Indians out in the woods. But it's not pretend for me. I'm practicing. Practicing for Chris the Bully. He's going to come for me, and he's gonna be mad, but he won't just beat me up this time. He's going to have to fight me.
***
I go back to school, and me and Ronnie act like nothing happened. We don't tell anyone about Chris. I tell Ronnie we shouldn't say anything because the cops might find out Chris beat us up and they might think we hurt him back. We keep quiet, go back to normal.
Ronnie tells me Chris will be going home soon. Tells me that he's got a plate in his head now, and he walks with a limp a little bit. Whoever hit him in the head screwed him up pretty good, Ronnie says. I think he should be a little more than messed up, he should be dead.
Ronnie says Chris talked to people in the neighborhood, said that a couple of older white guys jumped him in the alley. Ronnie says a lot of the black people are mad at white folks. Says there might be some bad times coming, and that I should be careful if I'm walking home by myself; that I should always take the bus home now.
I know that Chris is lying. He remembers who beat him, and he's just making stuff up to save his pride. The last thing a big kid wants to do is let people know a girl or a little kid got the best of them. He's going to wait till he's better, and then Chris is going to come looking for us. I'll have to be super careful.
I carry a knife with me all the time now. I never let people know I have it. I can't keep my dad's gun on me, because mom will know I have it. I had to snea
k all that stuff back into her room when she was gone, and now I wish I'd kept it. I should've just left like I planned.
***
Ronnie is missing. His mom came over to our house asking if we'd seen him. She thinks he might have run away. She's going to call the cops and put out a missing person's report. I tell her I don't know where he is, that he was supposed to come over to play and never showed up.
She's crying and it hurts me so bad; hurts to tell her that I think Ronnie is dead.
The last thing he said to me was that Chris was better. That Chris was up and walking around the neighborhood now. I don't know for sure, but I think Chris came after Ronnie. He knows Ronnie was there when I beat him, but he doesn't know who I am. Only knows what I look like…unless he made Ronnie tell him who I was. I don't know. My heart is racing, and my best and only friend is probably dead.
It's my fault. This is all my fault.
***
I want to find Chris and kill him. I don't know where I'll find him, but somehow I'll get him. I practice with my bow all the time now. Without Ronnie, there's not much to do. When my mom is gone at work, I take the gun out in the woods and shoot it, make sure I'm a good shot.
I ask my mom to put me in martial arts classes. At first she doesn't want to, but she does anyway. She tells me she knows that since Ronnie disappeared that I've been different and it would be good for me to make new friends. I don't really care about new friends. I care about being stronger, faster, meaner. I care about fighting Chris. I care about killing him.
C hapter 2
The 8th Grade
“You two,” the instructor says, pointing at me and a kid named Dean. He's not as tall as me, but he's thicker, and he's fast too. We stand and meet the instructor on the mat, sliding our mouth guards in. I talked my mom into letting me join The War Room. It's a mixed martial arts class they have downtown, and even though she cussed up a storm and told me no at first, she let me join anyway. I think it was because I talked to my dad on the phone. He's still deployed in the Middle East, and I think he was glad I was joining anything, showing interest in anything besides playing in the woods with my bow and reading my comic books. I'm sure he talked her into it.
“When I say 'fight', then the match begins, got it?” the instructor asks. He's more talking to Dean than me, because Dean is new here. Started a few weeks ago.
We both nod at him.
“Good,” he says, “try not to kill each other.” He steps back, leaving me and Dean a few feet apart. The instructor—Big Tom, they call him, because, well, he's a huge bald guy with arms like tree trunks and small beady eyes in a head that looks like it could crush through walls—grins and steps off the mat.
“Fight!”
Dean doesn't hesitate. He rushes forward with his fist reared back. He's left his body wide open, but it doesn't matter, he's too damn fast. He swings with a wide-looping monkey punch and I hear it cut the air beside me as I dodge.
I counter with a front kick to the stomach, and I feel it connect. Dean stumbles back, and Big Tom jumps between us. “Point! Jake!” Big Tom yells. “Good, good. Nice, Jake. And Dean, you're leaving yourself wide open. You're fast, but he's fast, too. Use your head, not just your muscles. Got it?”
Dean nods, but his eyes are locked on me. He's got a look on his face like he wants to eat me.
Big Tom steps off the mat again, yells, “Fight!”
Then Dean rushes forward again, exactly the same way. I have one thought before I kick him again: dumbass. But my foot finds nothing. Dean sidesteps, bats my leg away, spins on his heels and wham! Dean backhands me across the mouth, hard. My mouth guard shoots out, trailing spit, and hits a kid sitting on the edge of the mat in his nose, and I fall on my hands and knees. I taste blood. I wipe my mouth and see red trail across my forearm.
“Point!” I hear behind me. I shake my head, adjust my head gear and get back up.
Dean smiles and nods at me. I nod back and retrieve my mouth guard.
“Good, good,” Big Tom says. “Great fake out, Dean. You ready, Jake?”
“Yeah,” I say, and drop back into horse stance. Gotta be careful with Dean. He's faster, and smarter than I thought. I've gotta let him know I can throw a good punch, too. Blood for blood. Big Tom steps off the mat again. “Fight!”
I rush forward. Dean rushes forward. I'm already throwing a haymaker, just as I see Dean doing the same. Shit. I feel my fist crunch into Dean's mouth, just as his connects with my jaw. I see stars for a second, my brain rattles in my skull and there's a sense of vertigo. I grab Dean's shirt to stop myself from falling over. But I don't want to stop. Not yet.
I knee him in the balls. I hear Dean grunt, and then suddenly I'm airborne. The world spins, only for a second, before I crash into the mat hard on my hip. Dean just hip-tossed me. I look over from the ground, and I think Dean's going to stomp my head, but instead he doubles over and throws up all over my face. Oh god, it's in my mouth. Oh fuck, oh gross, oh-
I roll over and vomit. And here I am, beside Dean, both of us on our hands and knees throwing up on the mat. I didn't know hitting someone so hard in the balls could make them puke, and now I know what's it like to have someone ralph into my mouth.
Big Tom laughs and then pulls us up by our shirts. “Go get some towels,” he says and pushes us towards the bathroom. “Get yourselves cleaned up, and then come clean this shit.”
We walk to the bathroom to the sound of the other kids laughing. We share a look, and I'm almost positive Dean is going to hate me, but instead he cracks a smile at me, and I see bits of food in his teeth.
In the locker room, we wipe ourselves down. Fuckin' puke is all in my hair, down my shirt, too. I spit up blood in the sink, watch it mingle with the chunks there and clog in the drain. In the mirror, I see my lip is busted. Look over at Dean, and he's got a fat lip as well. Tit for tat, as my dad would say.
“I thought for sure you were a pussy,” Dean says two sinks down, then runs his head under the water.
I gargle, spit. “And I thought for sure you were a retard.”
Dean cocks an eyebrow at me, continues to run his hands through his hair. “Guess you're not a pussy, and I'm not a retard. Good fight back there. Cheap shot in the balls, though. I owe you one.”
I laugh. “Owe me one? You threw up in my mouth!”
He grins. “No, that was just karma. I still owe you one.”
I shrug. “Next match, then. So what grade are you in?”
“Eighth.”
“How come I never seen you at school?”
Deans rubs his finger across his teeth, says, “Just moved here. Beat the shit outta some kid trying to punk me out, got in-school suspension till the end of the semester.”
“Ah,” I say. “I heard about that. Had his head in a locker?”
“Yeah,” he answers, and we start grabbing handfuls of paper towels to clean the mats with. “Derrick-something. Tall skinny bitch.”
“I know him,” I say.
Out in the main room, Big Tom has moved the rest of the class to another mat. Two kids are locked up on the ground and Big Tom is yelling at them, 'arm bar this, triangle that.' Me and Dean get to wiping up the mess, grabbing handfuls of chunkiness. I try not to gag at the smell, and Dean's making sounds across from me. Not sure if he's doing it on purpose, or if he's about to hurl again too.
“You don't chew your food very well,” he says, and picks up half of a powdered doughnut.
***
Class is over, and all the kids pile out. Dean nods as he walks past me. “See ya around,” he says.
“See ya,” I say.
“Owe you one still.” He grins, pulls his hood over his head and walks off down the street.
Kids pile into their parents’ cars, all happy and excited, telling stories about how good they did, how much they learned. I try not to think too much. It hurts. I can't tell anyone, but part of me is jealous, part is sad. I wish my dad were here.
Big Tom locks up the War R
oom and disappears back inside, closes the blinds and I wait for my mom to pick me up outside. Big, dark clouds are gathering. I can smell rain on the air. Usually she's here waiting for me, but not today. She's probably passed out on the couch, all decked out from her pills. She started taking them a year ago, said she was in a lot of pain, but now I think she takes them just to take them. I can tell when she doesn't have them. She gets real cranky and lies on the couch moaning, and makes me take care of Wes. For a kid, a little kid, he isn't so bad. We found out he has autism, and he hardly talks; mostly likes to doodle and make weird sounds. Sometimes you can be right there yelling at him and it's like you don't even exist. I try not to think about it much. It hurts, you know? It isn't fair. Life is hard enough...
A couple months ago, I came home early from school. She didn't know I had a half-day. There was some guy there. They were in the bedroom, and Wes was crying in his play pen. I snuck down the hall and peeked under the door. I heard them. I knew what they were doing. I saw her bra just lying there on the floor. I'll never forget that.
I tried calling Dad. I wanted to tell him so bad. I picked up the phone and... just couldn't. I just left, walked out to Tree Top and practiced with my bow. One arrow after another, trying to forget that bra, imagining my mom in place of the Styrofoam cooler I was shooting. That's when I started hating her.
It starts to sprinkle, and I'm hating her even more. Fuck it…I’m just gonna walk home then. I take off down the sidewalk, looking at my reflection in the glass of storefronts as I pass. I hate myself, I hate the world, this fucking town. I think back, back to when Ronnie was around and Chris and his stupid fucking red hat. I should've run away, just took to the woods and never looked back.
