Brutal Youth: A Novel

by Anthony Breznican

  * * *

  Hannah hurried back to her Jeep. She wanted to talk with Davidek, but not around the others, and she guessed it would take him a while to catch up. Hopefully, not long. She couldn’t afford to linger—not with her protection gone.

  At the edge of the crowd stood Mr. Zimmer, his thin head rising high above the others, looking like some separate species. They hadn’t spoken since he had fled the prom weeks earlier. He never bothered to explain himself to her, but Hannah had chosen to forgive him anyway. She wasn’t angry anymore. Not about anything at all.

  As she walked by, Mr. Zimmer said, “You did the right thing.”

  Hannah looked back at Davidek, who was holding the empty pages and being mobbed with congratulations. “Yeah,” she said. “Even if that kid never did show up at the prom, like he promised.” She shrugged. “Nothing to take pictures of anyway.”

  Zimmer said, “I’m sorry, Hannah.… But you and I…” She let him struggle with his words. All the teacher came up with was: “Maybe your freshman can take our picture at graduation next week. I’d like one of you in those commencement robes, to remember you by.”

  “Okay. Graduation, then, Mr. Zimmer,” she said. “I’ll see you when it’s time to say good-bye to this place.” Then Hannah hugged him, not knowing that moment would be their actual good-bye.

  * * *

  Davidek caught up to her as she was opening the door to her Jeep. She saw him running across the field—alone, thankfully. Before he could ask it, she tried to answer the obvious question: “I made up the story of the notebook with all the secrets. I made it up a long time ago.”

  Davidek was still catching his breath. His face was furious. She said, “You want to know why, don’t you?”

  Davidek said, “Fuck you…”

  Hannah frowned. “Why don’t you try ‘Thanks’? The notebook story protected me for two years. It made people afraid. And that made me safe. I brought you in because I wanted to pass that protection to you. You’re the hero, Peter. To all those people, you killed the monster. All by yourself.”

  Davidek wasn’t impressed. “I didn’t want this.…” He shook the empty stack of pages at her, and Hannah said, “Then tell ’em it was all a trick. Tell ’em you didn’t stand up to me and really wanted to read out all the worst, dirty little things about them. That’ll cure all the backslapping you were just getting.”

  “Why’d you lie about it to me?” he demanded. “Why couldn’t you trust me?”

  Hannah put a hand on her hip. “Are you really going to stand there and say you wouldn’t have warned them? That you wouldn’t have told them months ago it was all a trick? Back when you were getting Zimmer and Bromine to threaten me? Where would I have been then, Playgirl, if I told you the truth? Helpless. Defenseless.”

  Davidek got right up in her face. “Goddamnit, Hannah, this was supposed to … to make it right! What about all the stories you said you knew?”

  “Do you think I’m the invisible-fucking-man?” Hannah said. “I told you—I’ve heard rumors, sure. And some might have been true—but nobody tells me anything. What everyone imagined I knew was the trick that protected me. The best revenge you can get is making people see the worst parts of themselves.”

  Hannah reached into the pocket of her shorts and withdrew the disposable camera. She stuck it in his free hand. “Here, you can have this back, too.”

  Davidek squeezed it until his knuckles were white; then he thrust it out at her. “And should I thank you for that, too, the day under the bridge? Did you have to humiliate me like that?”

  Hannah was quiet. She didn’t want to keep fighting with him. She wanted to leave. “I needed you to stop resisting. I needed you to stop taking their side, telling teachers, helping undermine me. Let’s face it—the main reason you warned me about the plan to ambush me at my house today was that camera. You were afraid they’d get it. Or that I’d print up the pictures—”

  Davidek’s jaw clenched. “I warned you because I wanted what you wanted.”

  Hannah said, “I just wanted to be left alone.”

  Davidek’s raging eyes almost pitied her. “You wanted to hurt them.”

  “I used to,” Hannah said, and brushed her small, soft hand on his cheek. He closed his eyes and let it cradle his jaw, savoring the warmth, trying to remember the feel of it because he knew it wouldn’t last. “What I really wanted was to save the kid who asked me to be his senior—the one who thought I was too nice to be the Hannah Kraut everybody talked about. Can’t you see the good in this? Please?” she asked. “I did this to protect you. To make you the good guy. From now on, everybody owes you.”

  She forced a wry smile that she didn’t really feel. “As for our incident under the bridge … Don’t tell me that wasn’t a little bit fun.”

  Davidek put his arms around her and squeezed her close. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”

  Then she watched him growing small against the plain of green grass as he walked away. “I’m sorry for you, Playgirl,” she said, too soft for him to hear. “You always hold on to the worst of things—and you lose everything else.”

  * * *

  Davidek was mobbed by people shoving and hanging on him good-naturedly. “That was brave, man,” said John Hannidy. “United we stand!” They were all around him now, his enemies—presenting him with the gift of friendship.

  There was a cheer as Hannah’s Jeep disappeared down the road. Someone asked Davidek what he planned to do with the notebook—the question came from Mary Grough, and it had the vague tenor of a threat. All eyes were on the binder he clutched to his chest.

  He walked to the fire pit, and with a gasp of ash, the binder dropped in and Davidek watched the blaze consume a second helping of useless pages. He reached into his pocket and dropped the disposable camera into the flames after it. The heat turned the plastic into smoldering bubbles, releasing tiny purple ghosts of smoke into the air. Then it was gone, too.

  Behind him, Audra stood on the stage, assuring everyone that there was more to come. The crowd was voicing supreme dissatisfaction with the so-called talent show this time around. Everyone had waited all year for this? Faces sagged, legs shifted, eyes searched for somewhere better to be. The juniors huddled around the fire nudged the long branches that hung out into the grass, pushing them closer into the sparking oblivion. They pledged that next year, when they were in charge, they wouldn’t wuss out like this class. A couple of singsongy numbers? Some guys in dresses? Lame and a half.

  Even Davidek’s apparent rebuke of Hannah was something of a disappointment. The crowd had wanted blood to be spilled—even if it had been their own. And they still wanted it.

  A group of seniors bickered as the dead-time passed onstage, becoming frantic. What could be done to salvage their reputations as hellraisers?

  “Please be patient … some technical difficulties here!… We’ve got fun stuff still to come!” Audra squawked over the speakers as a small mob of students began congregating behind the stage, trying to cook up a plan.

  Carl LeRose swept by Davidek with a group of other giddy upperclassmen, bound for the food pavilion. “You showed that bitch, buddy boy,” LeRose said, sweat running down his face. “Now, grab some of those cookies and come with me!” LeRose tossed half a box of Eat’n Park Smiley Cookies into Davidek’s hands and scooped up a cardboard flat of cake. One boy was loading a paper plate with a pyramid of hot dogs spackled with sauerkraut, and another was gathering up an armload of roasted corn on the cob.

  “Grab some stuff and get back behind the stage!” yelled Alex Prager, hefting a huge bowl of macaroni salad. Audra was back at the microphone, telling the onlookers to wait just a little longer. “We have the grand finale coming right up!”

  With his free hand, LeRose dragged Davidek around the corner to the back of the stage, where the freshman accidentally kicked an open guitar case. A little plastic bag of guitar picks hopped out.

  The long table by the backstage curtain, once loaded wit
h lame costumes, now sagged with the weight of cakes, Jell-O desserts, a mountain of cookies, and assorted tubs of barbecued chicken, congealed hamburger patties, pasta dishes, and three partially eaten fruit pies stacked in a gooey column. Mortinelli broke through, waddling bowlegged as he hefted half a watermelon onto the smorgasbord, tumbling some brownies off the table edge. LeRose added his flat of cake and Davidek’s box of Smiley Cookies to the heap, and Hannidy threw on a slab of molten ice cream cake.

  “What the hell is going on?” Davidek asked as a group of seniors lined up around the overflowing food table, trying to figure a way to lift it up the back stairs and onto the stage.

  A chant was starting: Feed your face.… Feed your face.…

  Now they were pushing the victim backstage, too.

  It was Green.

  The heavyset boy stood cradling his guitar, and his cheeks wobbled as he shook his head back and forth, saying, “No, guys, no…,” to the giggling seniors around him who jabbered menacing instructions as they shoved him forward.

  Green begged his old friend, “Bilbo, come on…,” but that portly little senior just stood off to the side helplessly, studying the grass at his feet. Strebovich and Prager, the freshman’s fellow stairwell dwellers and bandmates, couldn’t look at Green either.

  Green told whoever would listen: “No … No … Bilbo said I could play,” and then Mortinelli jerked the guitar out of his hands.

  Some girl said, “We don’t want you to sing some shitty song.” It was Missy Dahnzer, a fellow freshman. Little Mortinelli waved the guitar at the sky. “That’s right, big boy! If you’re gonna sing, you’re gonna sing for your goddamned supper.”

  The chant was spreading around the front of the stage: Feed your face.… Feed your face.…

  “Here’s the deal,” Michael Crawford barked at Green. “We’re going to put you onstage, and you’ve got five minutes to eat all this stuff. Whatever you don’t eat—”

  The faces of the conspiring seniors blossomed into sick grins.

  “—whatever you don’t eat, or at least try to smash into your face and mouth, gets poured into your guitar. Got it? So … bon appétit!”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Green began naming the boys around him, as if it would bring back the friends he thought he knew. “Bilbo … Alex, come on … Streb. Streb, man. Please, guys. Please … Don’t, don’t do this.…” But none of those guys could look at him. No one was stepping in front of this for everybody’s favorite freshman.

  The other upperclassmen were all smiles as they played a game of keepaway with Green’s guitar. Green chased after it haplessly, telling anyone who would listen, “We had an agreement, guys.… I was practicing.… You said I could just sing some songs!…”

  The “feed your face” chant had revitalized the waning excitement of the crowd in front of the stage. Even Davidek’s father was curious to see the big finale, standing off in the distance by the swing sets, drinking beer and chanting along with other old-timers in their St. Mike’s alumni shirts.

  Behind the stage, Green’s face kept shaking no, no, no. Smitty and Simms were pulling him closer to the steps behind the curtain. Davidek watched, but his face displayed no passion one way or the other. His eyes met with Green’s. Then Davidek began to walk away.

  “Aren’t ya gonna watch?” demanded Mortinelli, but Davidek just brushed past him, leaving behind the rest of the backstage crowd.

  “FEED YOUR FACE!… FEED YOUR FACE!”

  Davidek made his way over to the pavilion, where blubber-necked junior Raymond Lee was standing around the smoky fire ring. He asked Davidek, “What’s he saying? The black kid?” Davidek shrugged. Lee rubbed the heel of his shoe along one of the thick branches sticking out of the blaze, stirring the embers.

  Davidek smiled at the junior, inching closer to him. He looked polite as he invaded the stocky boy’s personal space, and Raymond Lee staggered back annoyed, his pelican neck wiggling. Davidek put a hand on the boy’s barrel chest and pushed him back farther, then nodded polite thanks as he bent down and took hold of the cool, leafy end of the maple branch. It was about the length and thickness of a well-muscled arm. Davidek drew it out of the fire with a sandy rattle of coals.

  He hefted it in one hand, tracing a line of smoke through the air as he walked. The shoots of flame at its crackling end dropped burning specks with each step, and the people behind the stage hurried out of its way as he marched through them.

  He passed Green and nodded at him, then swung the burning branch at Smitty, who released his grip on Green and sprang away, swatting the smoky air as he felt the heat of the embers pass his face. Simms didn’t see Davidek until it was too late, and the torch singed the hair on his arm as Davidek stabbed it at him, sending him howling as he let go of Green’s other arm and stumbled backwards.

  Prager, Strebovich, and Michael Crawford were lined up around the table of food, ready to lift it up the stairs and through the backstage curtain, when Crawford saw Davidek and said, “What’s—?” But that was all he got out.

  Davidek hoisted the branch high above his head. Sparks flickered through the air against the white sky. Then in an arc of blue smoke, the scorching branch cut the air and collided with the table full of food.

  The stack of pies detonated. Davidek raised the branch again and could hear the thick, sugary innards of cherry sauce gasping against the cinders, dripping off the end of the branch like cooking blood.

  The three guys around the table rushed him, but Davidek held them back with a casual swing of the flaming staff. He slashed it at the table again, sideways this time, and the watermelon splashed open like a point-blank rifle shot to a skull. Cool flecks of juicy red fruit dripped down the back of the black curtain.

  Davidek raised the branch again, like a tough guy trying to ring the bell in the strength game at a carnival. Each time it collided with the table, it left a new line of smoke trailing over his head, and there were now rows of them gliding away toward the river. The table exploded with sprays of cookies and blackened flecks of wood, all shooting upward in great fountains of sparks and crumbs. Burning ash bit into the Tupperware of the macaroni salad, raising little tendrils of toxic smoke. Pads of cold cuts absorbed the smacks with flat thumps, but the ceramic platters beneath the lunchmeat slabs split in two, then three, then disintegrated. Davidek swung sideways again, like a major league slugger, showering some of the backstage onlookers with pulverized bits of hamburger. A fragmented dish of rigatoni barfed its contents onto the grass. He whacked now at the bare center of the table, feeling it crack, feeling it give.… It coughed splinters into the air, and he hammered it three more times in rapid succession. On the fourth hit, the particleboard cracked in two and the table’s folding legs wobbled as it fell in on itself. The one remaining cake, which had bounced up and down repeatedly without being struck, slid down now and squished itself in the table’s cracked center. Davidek stabbed it like a buttercream heart, extinguishing the last remnants of his bludgeoning torch.

  His lungs heaved as he stood at the center of the spray-radius of ruined food, wiping a thick drip of blueberry filling from one eyebrow. A splotch of marinara sauce seeped into the shoulder of his shirt.

  Raising the smoldering, icing-coated branch, Davidek spun around at the gawping faces, many of them flecked with specks of food. Mullen and Simms were in the back of the group, fearing he would begin clobbering them next. They might have been right.

  Green was standing free, but his eyes were just as fearful as before. Audra leaned down from the curtain in the back of the stage. “What the fuck happened?” she asked, her voice rising an octave with each word.

  No one made a move toward Davidek, which surprised him. The people out front were still chanting: “FEED YOUR FACE!… FEED YOUR FACE!…” waiting for something to come onto the stage and make them laugh.

  Davidek extended the branch toward Audra, like Babe Ruth pointing to where he planned to hit his next home run. “Tell everybody the show’s over.”<
br />
  Edging around the back of the stage, looking at him with a kind of curious outrage, was Ms. Bromine—a figure in a cobalt blue jacket and skirt, wearing picnic-inappropriate block-heeled shoes and folding her arms in front of her broad chest. Everyone backstage found somewhere else to be as she moved in on Davidek. Green stood still by his side, but Davidek was looking only at the guidance counselor.

  Bromine slowed as she neared him, extending one pointed finger. “Drop … the weapon!” she declared.

  Davidek looked at the branch in his hands, as if it had just materialized there. Then he smiled as he sized up Ms. Bromine’s head and thought of the satisfying squish of the watermelon he’d just clobbered. Then he dropped the club to the ground.

  Bromine rushed forward and seized him by the arm, her nails biting into the flesh. She shoved him backwards to the ground and kicked the branch aside. Then she walked back around the corner of the stage and waved for the team of Parish Monitors to get to work back there. She wanted someone else to document the boy’s violent behavior this time.

  The Monitors swarmed through the dispersing backstage crowd, pens and paper in hand, but all there was to see was a lot of wasted food heaped around a busted table. They stood around silently, not sure what to do about it.

  Bromine turned toward Davidek, but he was gone. She spotted him near the tree line, not running, but not taking his time either. She stomped off after him as Audra Banes picked up the microphone on the stage and announced that she was wrong. What they had promised was not going to happen.

  The sturdy chant of “Feed your face!” dissolved into disappointed moans.

  * * *

  Davidek passed through rays of sunlight shafting through the trees, realizing he had no idea where this path through the woods would take him. There was a scenic lookout ahead—a clearing with a ring of rectangular stones for benches and a small wooden deck jutting over the cliff. Over the side were steep ridges, carpeted with sweet-smelling brush and fallen trees being slowly digested by moss. Beyond that was a chest-cooling drop into space, ending at the still, flat surface of the Allegheny River’s chocolate surface, twinkling silently.