by Thomas Melo
Even if Hal hadn’t snitched on Lilith and Mackenzie, the line the prospective customers had formed would have been noticed by someone. A crowd at school attracts a bigger crowd, which, in turn, attracts a person with authority. This is why many school fights are broken up before they really get rolling. The line of students was akin to the gathering someone would expect to see if the girls were giving away the answer key to Mr. Grouper’s Algebra 2 exam.
The school’s principal, Katrina Archiboro-Miller, “another professional woman who chose to hyphenate for the sole purpose of showing men who’s boss,” as the male faculty would mock, ran–for the first time in her then sixteen year career–over to the tennis courts to interrupt Lilith and Mackenzie’s flourishing business. They were in enough trouble as it was. There would definitely be detention, quite possibly a lengthy suspension, but certainly not expulsion. Certainly not for a little exercise in pubescent curiosity which just so happened to turn a profit…not a first offense. No, expulsion wasn’t even considered until a channel of communication was opened between Mrs. Archiboro-Miller and Lilith.
“What is going on here, girls? Why aren’t you on your buses; and why are all of these kids lined up?” the principal barked.
“We-” Mackenzie started but shut her mouth the moment Lilith’s palm darted into the air, making her look like she was being sworn into office…or a trial, which would be more apropos if you knew the young lady. Mackenzie could swear that she actually felt the warm swelling heat of a physical slap when Lilith’s hand shot up.
“We are selling kisses, Mrs. Archiboro-Miller. That is what’s going on here,” Lilith said, as collected and matter-of-factly as ever.
“You’re going to stop this nonsense right now! I want both of you in my office! Let’s go! You’re going to have to call your parents and tell them that they need to pick you up from school today because you’re going to miss your buses,” she started. “The rest of you get on your buses…now!” the principal thundered at the dissipating two lines, of which, Lilith’s was a bit longer.
“You both come with me,” the principal demanded while reaching out. Mackenzie stayed put, but Lilith took a step back.
“Don’t put one finger on me if you want to keep it,” Lilith threatened.
“Let’s go,” the principal barreled through, ignoring the threat, most likely because the fact that she was just about to put her hands on a student made her very nervous indeed.
Lilith and Mackenzie began to follow her to the main building where the main office was located as the buses were pulling out of the traffic circle in front of the school. Lilith glared at bus number sixteen as it whipped around the curve of the traffic circle and caught the eyes of the driver behind the wheel; Hal Kelly. In order to add just an extra dash of truculence to Lilith’s glare, she actually stopped walking with Mackenzie and her principal for a few seconds, and concentrated all of her venom into her scorned adolescent gaze. Hal looked back and his countenance showing small triumph quickly morphed to one of budding trepidation.
“Pick up the pace, Lilith!” her principal called back to her.
Lilith gave Hal a wink and then turned and began walking towards the main office building in Mrs. Archiboro-Miller’s tow.
* * *
Rumors quickly permeated every hallway, classroom, and faculty lounge in Newton Union Free School District (Lilith’s school prior to Mary Blevin’s) as any news has a tendency to do amongst a close-knit work environment, such as a school. The fact that the school taught adolescents, who were prone to this type of gossipy behavior in the first place, just exacerbated the situation and sent the rumor around the school with unassailable conspicuousness.
Another product of such gossip is that a less than informative game of telephone begins to form as the primary vehicle of the rumor.
“I heard Lilith took a swing at Katrina. Could you imagine? They don’t pay us enough for this bullshit, I’m telling you,” Jeremy Carter, an art teacher commiserated with a colleague as he drank from his coffee mug.
“She threatened to kill her, you know. Danny Norby told me earlier. He was there after school,” Lee-Ann told her friend in Spanish class.
“Holy shit, did you hear? Lilith told Mrs. Archibob-Miller that her husband was a miserable lay,” Rob Carrey blathered to his pal in the gym locker room.
“Whoa! That means Lilith fucked her husband!” Anthony VonTressor said, pointing out the obvious.
“No fooling you, Ant. I can see where those straight C’s come from now. And just because she said it, doesn’t mean she did it. I tell you that I’m gonna kill you all the time, but here you are, stinking up the locker room,” Rob explained.
Out of this small sample of rumors, perhaps Rob Carrey’s rumor was the most accurate; although this isn’t really saying much because the others were just preposterous. It was somewhat accurate in a twisted and six degrees of separation kind of way.
When Lilith and Mackenzie were seated in Mrs. Archiboro-Miller’s office for interrogation, Lilith did all of the talking. The principal poked and pried desperately to find out why the girls would do such a thing. Lilith was a great student. She held straight “A’s” every single semester and took to new subjects in school as if she knew them already. On a couple of occasions, she even corrected a teacher’s misstep when they were having a bad day. Academically, Lilith was sound. It was her attitude that needed a complete and thorough overhaul. So, when the question was posed to Lilith as to why a girl with such potential would do such a foolish thing, and on school grounds where they were sure to be caught (thanks to that intrusive Hal the Pederast Bus Driver) to boot, her answer was simple:
“Sex sells,” Lilith began. That was the simple part, but Lilith continued. “It sells, and it’s recession and depression proof, you dumb cunt. Take an economics class. Actually, I take that back: instead of spending your extra time up our asses, how about you use that time trying to get your husband to fuck you better so that you don’t have to jealously glom on to the attention that Mackenzie and I were getting, Katrina.”
Now, at this point, Lilith probably doesn’t come off as too likeable. Even with that in mind, the look on both Mackenzie and Katrina’s face would have been hysterical to any fly on the wall. The both of them just sat there with jaws that hung so low and with so much slack that their faces looked like the killer’s mask from the movie, SCREAM… and that’s just what Katrina Archiboro-Miller, Ruler of Men did.
She shrieked in gross astonishment and fled the office away from this miscreant, who just gave her the worst verbal beating of her entire life…and in front of someone; a subordinate even!
After Mackenzie and Lilith had the office all to themselves, Mackenzie just continued to stare at Lilith, who had finally glanced at Mackenzie and simply shook her head slowly and smirked. That look said one thing: “Who the hell did she think she was fucking with?”
Mackenzie would have to get used to her Scream-mask countenance a bit longer that day. When she got home later, her mother informed Mackenzie, after gossiping to a friend whose daughter was a classmate of Mackenzie’s, that Hal Kelly had suffered a stroke while driving his busload of children to their respective homes, and hit a telephone pole. Every one of the children were fine; nothing more than scrapes, bruises and the intermittent headache. Poor old Hal, the bus driver and pederast, didn’t quite make it.
Chapter 5
That afternoon when Jayson and Lilith were over Tyler’s house, Jayson asked Tyler to bring them out back to try out his air rifle. Tyler knew that having friends over the house when both of his parents were still at work was pushing things as it was. Taking out the air rifle when his parents weren’t home on top of that? Not Tyler. That was certainly a punishable trespass and he would be paying a major penance if he was caught disobeying his parents to this degree.
“Come on, Ty. I wanna see how well you shoot,” Lilith coaxed as she played with her long dark hair.
“Yeah, dude, and I wanna blow some hole
s in some cans,” Jayson pleaded.
“Oh, yeah right! I bet you don’t even hit ONE!” Tyler jeered, giving Jayson a playful punch on the shoulder.
“Come on. You said it yourself that your mom won’t be home from work until 4:30, and your dad even after that. Don’t be a fag,” Jayson teased.
The look on Tyler’s face said that he didn’t want any part of disobeying his parents. It wasn’t because he would hear that his parents were angry with him, which they most assuredly would be, but because they were disappointed in him. And for a boy of Tyler’s obedient and appeasing nature, hearing the latter was worse…far worse. Unfortunately, he found out the hard way that at his age the magnetism of peer-pressure was just too great a force to contest. What could he do? Nothing, he decided.
“Alright; I guess a few shots couldn’t hurt.” Aren’t these typical famous last words? So typical that it borders on the excruciating.
“Couldn’t hurt at all,” Lilith assured with a wink.
Tyler directed Jayson and Lilith to the backyard and ran up to his room to retrieve his air rifle from his closet. Superman stared at Tyler (accusingly he had thought) from the DC Comics poster which lined his closet door. Even the daring and brave Man of Steel didn’t think that Tyler was making a wise decision.
“It’s easy for you to judge, Superman, but Lilith is my Lois Lane,” Tyler expounded in a borderline diatribe, peeking over his shoulder to ensure he was alone. He was a bit embarrassed that he was speaking to a poster. It was Tyler’s version of the clichéd “Man-with-a-dilemma” scene seen in countless movies that usually involves a men’s room and a monologue into a bathroom mirror. Tyler fished the rifle out from the back of his closet, closed the closet door and left the room, but not before giving Superman one more fleeting glance over his shoulder.
Tyler made one more stop, in the garage, to pick up a clear leaf bag full of empty soda cans (Herman the Hobo’s would-be cans) to shoot before he went to the backyard and found his friends outside eagerly awaiting his return.
Herman the Hobo, as not only the immature neighborhood children would callously refer to him, but the less empathetic and sympathetic parents, was spry enough, not to get an actual job, but to go from house to house and collect empty cans and bottles from the neighborhood trash cans. He would have the consideration to retrieve the cans and bottles when they were left out by the curb, always being careful not to trespass. Tyler’s parents found this to be a symbiotic relationship in that it saved them a trip to the deposit machine at the local supermarket, where the machine would always jam or be full to capacity, and it also put some money into Herman’s pocket. So Ray and Cindy would leave the cans out by the curb for him…and hey, it was also good for the environment…triple threat!
Jayson liked to talk a big game about how “fine-looking” he thought Lilith was and what he would like to do to her, which was rather graphic for a twelve year old. Not that he would have been able to actually do such things at his age, anyway. Well, maybe he could. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, right?
It didn’t take a very perceptive person to see how uncomfortable Jayson was, spending time alone with Lilith in Tyler’s backyard. Tyler was the palpable glue that held together the trio that showed up to his house that day. Without Tyler there to take the flight-stick and direct the conversation towards a comfortable trajectory, Jayson was undoubtedly asking Lilith exciting questions pertaining to the weather or her favorite color.
Tyler had wondered what they had spoken about for the couple of minutes that he had left them to go get the rifle. He suspected that they were waiting as quietly as they were when he rejoined them.
“There he is! Oh, cool rifle!” Jayson exclaimed, sounding a little too excited and relieved, which all but confirmed Jayson’s discomfort. “Let me see it, Ty!”
Jayson grabbed the rifle out of Tyler’s hands and began to aim it every which way while he made gunshot noises with his mouth, while pretending to pull the trigger. Jayson was twelve just like Tyler, but Tyler was a much more mature twelve than Jayson was.
“Calm down, Jay, you’re gonna piss yourself. Let Tyler set up the stupid cans first, for Christ’s sake!” Lilith more than suggested.
Jayson looked down, embarrassed, and got a hold of himself while Tyler carried the bench over to the fence so he could set up the cans.
“Wow, Tyler, you’re so strong!” Lilith placated, unbeknownst to Tyler. Tyler was a very smart boy and he would have suspected that it was highly unlikely that a good looking fourteen year old, such as Lilith, would give much of a care about how effortlessly he carried the bench over to the fence. Still, the shadow of doubt that remained about such speculation caused him to hike the bench up extra high in his grasp to show “his woman” how much control over the bench he really had.
After the cans were all set up, the three friends took turns teaching Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, and Pepsi a lesson…the cans, that is. Jayson was clearly the least talented in the bunch when it came to shooting (or anything, really), but neither Lilith nor Tyler missed one shot. They were surgical with that air rifle. Showing off a little, Tyler even called one of his shots and put a bb right through the center of the “O” in “Cola.”
“Whoa! Holy shit! Nice shot, Ty!” Lilith exclaimed, smacking him on the shoulder. Jayson said nothing and just stewed in his beet-red and less talented jealousy.
Not only did Tyler love the competitive spirit that Lilith possessed, but he found a woman holding a fire-arm, albeit one less lethal than a rifle that fired actual bullets, to be very attractive…very attractive indeed. Holding the Sure-Fire air rifle, Lilith reminded him of the women from the ads that he loved in the SHOOTER’S DIGEST magazines that his father had kept in the bathroom. He had hoped that his father would keep renewing his membership to the NRA, which promised with it a free two-year subscription to SHOOTER’S DIGEST, at least until he was old enough to find another intended use for those ads with the swimsuit models donning a Colt M4 5.56 caliber assault rifle. It is a sin, I know, but find me a human who doesn’t sin and I will show you how I am able to lift a building with one finger.
The sun was starting to fall lower and lower in the sky, not unnoticed by Tyler and his friends. This also meant that the first of Tyler’s parents, his mother, would soon be home. They had been outside shooting cans for the better part of 45 minutes, and the backyard lawn near the fence looked like a scrap-metal yard where the spent up soft drink cans went to die. If inanimate objects could experience death, it had most certainly occurred in Tyler Swanson’s backyard. The cans would have remained motionless had it not been for the petering day’s gentle breeze which made the green lawn (which was a few days overdue for a cut) sway back and forth like sea-plants gliding with a fast underwater current. Between Tyler, Lilith and Jayson, (well, not really Jayson,) they must’ve obliterated better than fifty soda cans.
The three friends began to pick up the bb riddled soda cans, careful not to cut themselves on the very sharp and jagged edges which had developed where the bbs exit had been torn. When the final can had been picked up and placed back into the leaf bag, all ready for Herman the Hobo, Lilith spotted something moving along the fence.
“Hey guys; look at that,” Lilith said with a dash of intrigue.
The boys looked to where she was pointing, which was about twenty yards away at the fence on the other side of Tyler’s backyard.
“So what? It’s a squirrel,” Jayson said.
“No shit, it’s a squirrel, dummy. I know that it’s a squirrel. See if you can hit it Ty,” Lilith challenged.
“Hit it? What do you mean?” Tyler asked although he knew exactly what she had meant and his stomach had free-fallen what had felt like ten stories. Tyler wanted absolutely no part of hurting a living creature, big or small. His father had spoken fondly, on many occasions, of the days when he would start to take Tyler hunting with him and when he would shoot his first buck. He would always smile and nod at his father when he spoke fondly
of these not-so-distant future times, but the truth was that he died inside with the catch-22 that waited for him. On one hand he didn’t want to disappoint his father with whom he loved to bond. His father saw his hobby of hunting as THE apparent activity that epitomized father-son bonding and had for thousands of years, and would continue to do so long after they were both dead and buried.
