Brutal Youth: A Novel

by Anthony Breznican

  The hundreds of students were crowded into the cafeteria to await their buses, parents, or other means of evacuation. Those teachers not busy with swamp duty upstairs were escorting kids to the convent so they could call home for rides.

  Students who drove themselves to school received permission to leave immediately, but a lot still hung around, mostly so they could savor tormenting Stein. The red pens were still making the rounds, adding fake scars to people’s grinning faces.

  Davidek and Stein sat together. Stein was still lugging his heavy bag, but all Davidek’s belongings had remained upstairs.

  Carl LeRose passed by to invite Davidek to join him at the junior tables. “Come on over,” he said, whispering so Stein couldn’t hear him. “People are already pissed about you not having any guts when it comes to Hannah. You don’t need to tie yourself to this guy—”

  “I’m staying,” Davidek said. Before LeRose left, Davidek grabbed him by his tie, then gently pulled the older boy’s head to the side. There was no mark. “Come on, I wouldn’t do that…,” LeRose said, pulling back and straightening his tie.

  “Ssssssss!!!!” came the simultaneous sound from the packed cafeteria tables. Michael Crawford stood on one of the chairs, conducting the whole hissing room in unison.

  Hannah stopped and knelt beside Davidek, putting a hand on his knee. “I drove here, so I’m free to go. I can give you a ride,” she said. “Your friend, too.”

  “Buzz off,” Stein said, not looking at her.

  Davidek leaned close so only she could hear. “I don’t think I’ll be taking rides with you anymore.”

  Hannah shrugged. There was no scar on her face either, which Davidek was glad to see, although he noticed traces of red ink on her fingers when she blew him a kiss. “Have it your way, Playgirl,” she said.

  Carney, the carnival geek wannabe who’d played the firebug kid in the Spanish play, came bounding over to their lonesome table swinging a lidless pepper shaker. “I hearby sprinkle the ashes of this deformed loser’s mother to the four winds,” Carney said, his left cheek painted with a scar roughly the shape of South America. Holding the shaker aloft, Carney dumped the remnants of the pepper on top of Stein’s head. Trickles of spice poured through his hair and onto his shoulders.

  Zari came over with her yearbook camera. “Say cheese,” she said, and snapped their picture.

  Stein just sat there, oblivious, watching Mullen and Simms across the cafeteria as they watched him watch them. Although they had driven to school in Mullen’s Pea Green Love Machine and could leave at any time, they were trying to savor the havoc they’d helped create. When this was all over, they still expected to be heroes, the vanquishers of the mother-burning freshman prick. Strangely, though, they hadn’t been included in the plan to pass around all those red markers. Of course, they’d get the credit eventually. They hoped.

  * * *

  The buses were finally arriving, and Sister Antonia stood at the lunch-lady intercom calling out the routes as a great exodus of students gathered itself and began inching toward the stairs that led up from the cafeteria and out into the dumping rain and wind.

  “I’m going to stay with you until you call your dad or sister, all right?” Davidek said, but Stein was gone from his seat. His eyes were still on Mullen and Simms, who were among those closest to the doors. Stein moved after them, the heavy book bag swinging at his side. Something inside made a low sound, hollow and metallic.

  Davidek tried to follow but was mired in the crowd as Stein pushed toward the jammed exterior stairwell. Davidek cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Wait up!” But his friend was already gone.

  A hand fell on Davidek’s shoulder. “Hey, man, can I help?” asked Green.

  * * *

  Outside the school, kids scattered toward their buses with jackets and bags over their heads. The world was glossy brown and gray beneath the pale shower of the storm. Mullen slowed as he ran toward his car, fishing the keys out of his blazer as Simms hesitated at an ankle-deep puddle pooling below the Pea Green Love Machine’s passenger side.

  Stein had heard Davidek calling for him, but it was too late to stop now. His feet kicked through the fingerlake streams of water, weaving between the parked cars and crisscrossing classmates. He reached down without breaking pace and opened the zipper on his bag.

  Mullen fumbled with his car keys as Simms stood beside him. “I’ll get in on your side,” he said. Stein’s feet splashed fans of water backwards. From his bag, he drew a thick metal bar, about a foot long, threaded at either end, with a corrugated grip in the center. It was a dumbbell pipe from the weight set his father kept in the basement, bloomed with rust.

  Stein dropped his book bag, leaving a few pencils hanging out and his Biology book open to the rain.

  He would take Mullen first. The slower one, Simms, would be better to hit second, since he probably wouldn’t realize what was happening until he saw his own moldy teeth scattering across the parking lot with bits of fleshy gums still attached. By then, Mullen would already be on his knees, collapsing to the ground with the back of his skull cratered in.

  “She’s the only one I told,” Stein said softly, the rain on his lips.

  Mullen and Simms turned at the sound of Stein’s voice as his arm swung the chrome bar through the rain, slinging a streak of water in an arc as it glided toward Mullen’s surprised eyes.

  * * *

  In that instant, a dark hulk exploded through the silver curtain of rain and collided against Stein’s back, crushing the air from his lungs and flexing his spine backwards. Stein’s feet were in the air and the ground was gliding sideways beneath them. Then he was skidding along the rough, wet blacktop, tumbling side over side until he came to rest in one of the empty parking spaces. The chrome bar rolled after him.

  Stein gasped for air and stared up at the purple and black sky as the behemoth who had flattened him stepped into view.

  Smitty.

  The bruiser freshman stood over the fallen Stein, exhaling steam, hands on his hips, trying to decide what came next.

  As Davidek ran toward them, Mullen and Simms hurried into their car. “That the best you can do, pussy?” Simms shrieked toward Stein’s unmoving form as the car peeled its tires and carried them away.

  Davidek shoved Smitty’s chest, which felt like pushing a tree trunk. Smitty smiled and knocked Davidek to the ground, where he soaked up an assfull of rain.

  “I did your psycho friend a favor, you little bitch.… You oughtta be thanking me.”

  “You blindsided him, asshole,” Davidek said. “I saw it.”

  “Did you see this, too?” Smitty asked, grabbing the chrome bar off the asphalt.

  Sister Maria and the half dozen remaining teachers were hurrying out of the cafeteria, alerted to the brewing trouble by Green. They gathered around Stein, whose eyes were open to the rain, the back of his head lying in a chocolate-colored puddle.

  With no one looking, Smitty heaved the chrome bar end over end into the sky, where it vanished on the roof just beside the outstretched arms of St. Thomas Aquinas.

  Davidek glared at him. “You’re welcome,” Smitty said.

  “I thought you weren’t the do-gooder type.”

  Smitty looked to a Jeep in the corner of the parking lot, and the small figure behind the windshield, watching him. He shrugged as he walked away. “I’m not.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  All around them, students were halting their retreat to the buses, asking: What happened? Who saw it? What did we miss?

  “Anyone still here in the next five minutes goes back up to the third floor to push a mop. Now, get moving!” Sister Maria called out through the rain, and the rubberneckers hurried away to their waiting rides.

  It was a bogus threat: the school was empty—evacuated by order of the diocese’s lawyers. The main halls and classrooms were still flooding, and no students or teachers were permitted to reenter until county building inspectors could verify the structural inte
grity. Mr. Saducci had already locked the front door. St. Michael’s had gone dark. And it would stay that way for a while.

  Stein had gotten to his feet, dirty water pouring off his arms and down his face. He said nothing to anyone, and lumbered back toward the school, around the corner to the side entrance—ignoring Sister Maria’s calls to him.

  “Please go get your friend,” she said to Davidek. “I don’t have time for this today.”

  Davidek spread his arms. “You didn’t have time to notice the whole school was making fun of him either, did you?” he snapped. The nun’s face was puzzled, and Davidek raked an angry scratch down his wet cheek. “The red marks?” he said.

  Sister Maria pinched her eyes. In all the chaos, yes, she had seen the painted scars. But was she supposed to stop every single problem at every single moment of the day? “There are worse things in life than a little teasing,” she said, unaware of how close St. Mike’s had just come to something far worse.

  Davidek wandered through the storm, gathering up his friend’s abandoned schoolbag and chasing the wind-scattered papers. By the time he was finished, the last handful of students still waiting for rides were huddled with Sister Maria beneath the awnings of the gymnasium church doorways. The last of the teachers were departing in their cars.

  “Stop stalling, and please go get him,” Sister Maria called out, and Davidek walked backwards toward the school, annoyed. “My bus just left, so you know … we still need to call his parents—and mine. If you have ‘time’ for that.”

  “I’ll give you a ride back,” Sister Maria said. “Just bring him out here.”

  Davidek gave her the finger when he was out of sight around the corner of the building. He pushed open the side doorway, and an endless blackness opened before him. Rain from his hair trickled down his face as he stepped inside. “Stein!” he called out. There was no answer except his own echo, and thousands of drips from the floors above, ticking into faraway puddles like a collection of ill-timed clocks.

  Davidek left Stein’s soaking bag by the door and groped for the wall, finding a bank of light switches that his splayed palm clicked up and down. Nothing.

  There was a distant shuffling followed by a door banging closed. Davidek began walking toward it, one hand trailing the wall of lockers, peeking through the narrow window of each classroom as he went. He could see out into the parking lot through some. Only two students were left waiting for their rides, still clustered under the gymnasium-church eave with Sister Maria. He wondered if they had red scars painted on their faces.

  A faraway explosion of crashing glass wracked the silence, hammering echoes down the corridor. Davidek hurried toward the sound, past the first floor’s trophy case to the bathroom, where a million years ago, a crazed and desperate student named Colin “Clink” Vickler emerged to become the infamous Boy on the Roof.

  A shadow lurked in the light under the door.

  Davidek said, “Everybody’s gone, Stein.… Can I come in?”

  There was no answer. Davidek pried open the door.

  The opaque windows cast a dim, gray glow throughout the lime green bathroom, desaturating everything to black and white. Stein sat against the radiator in the shadow below the window with his knees up, his head down, and his arms wedged under the flaps of his blue blazer.

  The red clip-on tie drooped over one of the bathroom sinks like a tongue, and the mirror above it was webbed with cracks, with silver fragments of glass littering the floor, each one holding a tiny reflection of the two boys.

  “You smash that with your fist?” Davidek asked. Stein didn’t respond, so he stepped closer. “Could have hurt yourself.”

  Stein lifted his head and gave a faint smile, dislodging a few flecks of grit still clinging to his cheeks from the parking lot. “I did,” he said, tilting his head toward the trails of red spots beside the sink, like glistening clusters of spider eyes.

  “You okay, though?” Davidek asked. Stein nodded, squeezing himself tighter. He lowered his head again.

  “I need to tell you what happened,” Stein said, his voice dry and aching, like he’d swallowed dust.

  “I saw,” Davidek said. “Part of me wishes you had nailed those fucking guys, but maybe it’s best that you didn’t. I mean, shit, man. I think they’ll give you more than detention if you put two other students in the ground.”

  Stein’s face looked pained. “Not that,” he said, his voice low. “I need to tell you about my mom. About what happened to her.”

  Davidek sighed, and slid down against one of the bathroom stalls. “I saw the same show as everyone else. You don’t have to.”

  “No,” Stein said, and his voice was louder, stronger. “What I told Lorelei, and what she told everybody … that’s not the real truth. I wanted to tell Lorelei, but … I never told anyone what really happened. Not my sister. Not my dad—but now I want to tell you, okay? I have to.”

  Davidek leaned his head back. He actually didn’t want to hear it. But Stein kept speaking. So Davidek listened.

  “There was a fire,” Stein said. “And I set it. But it wasn’t accidental.” He looked up. His face gray and empty. An old man’s face in the dim light. “I set the fire on purpose, Davidek.”

  Stein studied his friend for a reaction, and Davidek closed his eyes so he couldn’t get one.

  “I didn’t kill my mom, though,” Stein said. “She had already done that herself.”

  Davidek swallowed and opened his eyes. Stein was still hugging himself under his blazer, like someone freezing to death. He turned his eyes toward Davidek, just dark sockets in the shadows. “That’s the secret nobody knows.… Nobody until now. Nobody until you.”

  Stein explained that his mother had attempted it a few times, but her doctors believed those were merely cries for attention. “When you slash your wrist, it makes a mess, but the veins seal up right away. They said people who really want to end things slash up their forearms instead of across. Anyway, we didn’t have any knives or razors in the house after that. That’s when my dad grew his beard.” Stein smiled faintly to himself. “And Margie’s legs got furry.”

  Stein shifted, closed his eyes. “Anyway, one day, when I was nine, I walked home from school by myself. Usually she came to get me, but sometimes she didn’t. Especially when she had problems—her bad thoughts. Let’s just say, I had a key and knew my own way home.”

  Stein’s head had lolled back against the radiator. He didn’t speak for a long time, and Davidek thought he might be asleep.

  Then Stein said, “The building we lived in was a dump. The superintendent had this big plastic jar of white powder he gave us to sprinkle behind the refrigerator and in the cabinet under the sink to kill ants and cockroaches. Boric acid—I still remember that. Written in big red letters. Anyway, I had gotten home, but didn’t see my mom. So I was looking for Oreos when I found the plastic container on the counter—empty—next to a lot of spilled water and a glass that had the powder crusted on it. Her body was on the floor by the couch. There was vomit everywhere. Her eyes were open. So was her mouth. She had on a white robe, but no clothes underneath. I covered her up with the blanket from my bed.” Stein opened his eyes, even smiled a little. “It had Transformers on it.”

  Davidek’s throat was tight. “She leave a note?”

  Stein nodded. “That was the first thing I lit on fire. I don’t remember what she wrote. There was a lot, all scribbled out.… Mostly, it just said she was sorry. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry…’ Over and over again. I tried to get her to put her arms around me, but she was cold. And she was stiff. Like a piece of the furniture. I started crying, asking her to wake up. But I was nine—not stupid.”

  Stein looked over at Davidek. “I told you that my mom used to go to all kinds of churches, remember?”

  Davidek nodded. Stein looked back at the floor. “I remember one of the church ministers, talking with my dad about my mom’s problems—after she’d been in the hospital a few times. The minister said we had to be real
ly careful because if she killed herself, she wouldn’t be allowed into heaven. Do you think that’s true?”

  Davidek didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Stein was quiet for a long time again.

  “So I set the fire,” he said finally, as if hearing that news for the first time himself. “I thought … maybe I could hide what she’d done. Hide it so good, maybe even God wouldn’t know.”

  Davidek was standing now. He couldn’t take any more. “You have to tell your dad. You have to tell people this wasn’t your fault.”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever have to explain it,” Stein said. “I laid down next to my mom after I put that airplane glue all over her and the couch and the drapes. I wanted to go with her. I wasn’t even afraid. I was more afraid of these feelings beating around inside me—this sadness and anger and confusion and craziness. It was like this … screaming inside my head. I just wanted it to stop.” There were big tears in his eyes now—but Stein wasn’t letting them fall. “Do you understand? I still want it to stop.…”

  “I do, too,” Davidek said. “But you survived for a reason.”

  Stein looked at his friend like he was missing a much larger point. “That fucking Transformers blanket saved me. When I lit the glue, it didn’t burn—it melted. Onto my face. I wasn’t afraid to die, but I was afraid to hurt. And it hurt so bad … I thought it would all be over fast, but suddenly I was screaming, and running, and smacking the flames off my skin. I’m not even sure what happened next. There was smoke everywhere. They found me passed out by the door. The neighbors hit me with it when they busted in. They never got to my mother. The flames were too much. I was glad about that. In the end, it was all just a horrible accident, caused by a very stupid, very sorry kid.”

  “Your mother was sick,” Davidek said, choosing his words cautiously. “That’s not your fault. Not hers either. You were just a boy. And you saw something no kid should. It was a mistake, that’s all.”