by Dahlia Adler
“You’re gonna pay me back a thousand dollars? In a month?” Shai confirms.
“Hell, you said this is instead of interest, right? So, yeah, no big deal,” Tony says with a confidence he wishes he felt. He wants to think the White Knights would come to his rescue if push came to shove. He wants to be sure Bas would. But truly, he doesn’t know; he only knows that guys like him succeed and guys like Shai fail, and that’s going to have to be enough for now.
Shai shrugs, makes an addendum to the contract, and then hands Tony the pen. “Give me another day to get the money. Tomorrow, you officially become a thousandaire.”
Tony scrawls his signature on the appropriate line and then hands the pen to Bas to sign as a witness.
“Man, you seriously sure you wanna do this?” Bas asks, his hand hovering just over the paper.
“What’s the big deal?” Persia twirls a strand of dark hair around her finger, her gum cracking in the silent tension of the otherwise empty classroom. “He said he’ll pay it back.”
“How?” Bas asks. “How could you possibly pay back a thousand bucks in a month?”
“That’s my problem, not yours,” Tony says coolly. “Now sign the damn thing. Sorbello’s waiting for us in the gym.”
Bas sighs, but he does as Tony asks, his chicken scratch seeming weirdly out of place on such an official-looking document. “This is ridiculous, but okay. Let’s go.”
The boys amble out of the room without so much as a backward glance.
* * *
It feels like hours until the door finally closes behind them with a definitive click, but when it does, Persia picks up the pen, signs her name to the second witness line, and leaves.
* * *
Shai cannot believe it worked. He has utterly loathed that tattoo since he first spotted it on the home security tape that caught Tony and his Neanderthal friends defacing his car, arms bared by ribbed white tank tops.
It’s the tattoo that’s kept him in hiding, the knowledge that he walks the halls with a boy who holds enough hate in his heart to permanently scar himself with it.
It feels so fitting that it should be the beginning of the end of Tony’s reign of terror.
* * *
A thousand bucks goes fast. Bas insists that Tony keep all but what he owes him, and they compromise on splitting what’s left. Persia gets her nice, respectable dates at parentally approved movies, restaurants, and the Santa Monica pier. Tony fixes his car, drops some cash on White Knights dues. His new ink starts to itch as the deadline nears, the beginnings of a reddening infection from constantly forgetting to clean and moisturize it, but the Knights blame it on a Jewish curse and Tony is only too happy to agree.
Still, no one offers a solution—not a way to call off the curse nor a loan to tide him over.
They do offer to visit Shai at home again, do damage to more than his car, but Tony knows that means pipe bombs, and it’s a little hard to keep those quiet. Considering word of the loan has already spread around VHS, it’s not worth the speed with which he’ll become the number one suspect.
The skin festers, and one way or another, he will make the Jew pay for it.
He’ll have to, because the deadline is looming, his wallet is empty, and he is out of options.
* * *
Bas is the only one of their friends showing any concern for Tony, but then, it’s partly because of Bas that he’s in this situation in the first place. “Do you really think he’s gonna carve into your arm? Your dad would be all over him.”
“Yeah, and my dad would also tear me a new one for signing a contract with a shady Jew in the first place,” Tony spits back. “I knew it was a mistake to try to deal with one of them. You can’t trust ’em.”
Bas murmurs in silent agreement, biting his tongue so he won’t point out that the only one to violate trust in this agreement was Tony. He’s Bas’s friend, even if he makes some stupid choices. Shai’s just some dork with deep pockets. “We should just tell him to get off your dick because it’s not gonna happen,” Bas suggests. “Come on.”
“Hard pass,” says Tony. His infected tattoo seems to blaze at the mere suggestion. “I’m not letting him curse me again.”
“Dude, the curse is not real. Jews are cheap and sneaky, not magical.”
“Not worth the risk.” Tony digs his nails into his forearms, just barely avoiding the blistering red skin above.
It’s maybe the most ridiculous thing Bas has ever seen, and as much as he wants to stay out of Tony’s drama, this is just too much. “Okaaaay,” he says slowly. “Guess I’ll have to take care of this. You’re welcome, loser.”
He half expects Tony to catch up by the time he’s halfway down the hall, but there’s nothing other than the sound of his own sneakers squeaking on the floor.
* * *
It’s Shai’s bad luck that he stopped at a water fountain on the way to Mx. Tubal’s office, that he took thirty seconds longer to get to the safety of the library. There’s no chance Sebastian would’ve found him in there; Bas would probably burst into flames if he walked into a room with more than three books inside. But despite the relative calm that’d come into his life since Tony had stopped harassing him every day, choosing avoidance rather than looking his debtor in the eye, Shai knew it was bad news as soon as he saw Bas’s hulking form lumbering in his direction.
“My bank is closed,” he says to Bas, hoping that cuts matters off there. “It was a onetime loan. Unless you’re here to repay it on Tony’s behalf?”
“Man, why are you even bothering? You know Tony can’t pay you back. Who cares? You’ve probably got a billion dollars more where that came from.”
“I don’t, actually. Tony came begging—begging—for money he needed for a friend. This whole money-borrowing thing was supposed to be some sort of honorable mission. And he’s the one who’s always bragging about his car and his clothes, so honestly, isn’t it a little embarrassing that he can’t pay me back?” Shai shrugs as if it’s truly the most pitiful thing he’s ever heard. “I wouldn’t have thought he’d want the entire school knowing he’s completely broke, but what do I know?”
It’s accurate and brutal, and Shai knows it, knows from the way Bas winces that he’s hit his mark with his framing. “Christ, you really are a dick. Tony wasn’t kidding about Jews being shady, heartless pricks,” Bas mutters under his breath. “All that and you still want to carve him up. What are you even gonna do with that tat? You know you can’t just stick it on yourself, right?”
And just like that, Shai, who had never raised his voice within the walls of Venice High, who’s made himself so small that he can disappear into the confines of a librarian’s office and be entirely forgotten, who’s been riding the bus to school for weeks because he can’t bring himself to take his hatefully defaced car to the shop, whose wrist still aches when it rains because of the time Tony thought it would be hilarious to trip him down the stairs, whose brain still echoes with a thousand hurtful nicknames … cracks.
“You think,” he spits in a voice cold as steel, “that I want that hateful shit anywhere near me, let alone touching my body? You think he hasn’t already carved me up into a thousand little pieces? You think he hasn’t bled me dry? Broken me? Made me look and feel pathetic with whatever means he has? You think it’s nothing that he uses my faith against me, my religion, my trauma? You think you’re all better than me because what—I have a difficult name? A bump in my nose? That’s what makes it okay to push me and trip me and humiliate me and steal from me, even now, even when you sign your names to dotted lines as proof of your honor?”
“They’re just jokes, man.” Bas’s voice has never been so quiet.
“Well, fuck you, and fuck your jokes.” Shai’s dark eyes flash fire, and it gratifies him to see Bas recoil as if all his and Tony’s suspicions have been confirmed that he’s the devil himself. “I may not have your muscles and I may not have your ego, but as long as you’re rifling through your Jewish stereotypes, here’
s one that’s true for me: my entire family is full of lawyers, all as sick of this anti-Semitic bullshit as I am and all prepared to help make sure that contract is executed to the fullest if Tony doesn’t pay up in three days, as promised. You might want to let him know.”
And then Shai steps around him like he’s nothing more than an inconvenient ant in the path of an elephant’s paw and lets himself into the library, where Mx. Tubal awaits with the shadow of a smile on their lips and ears full of earbuds that play nothing at all.
* * *
Deadline day comes and goes. The money doesn’t. A practical plan doesn’t. But a court summons does. Begrudgingly, Tony asks Persia to read and translate it, and Tony feels himself turning fifty shades of purple as she does.
“It’s definitely binding,” she says, handing the papers back with all the authority of a police chief’s daughter. “You’re out a lot more if you don’t show.”
“You can’t possibly think I should let this kid carve me up like a Thanksgiving turkey!”
“Hey, don’t yell at her,” snaps Bas, but Persia puts a restraining hand on his arm, her sharp, red nails leaving the slightest indentations.
“Of course I don’t,” Persia says with a calm that borders on irritating. “The contract is absurd. But it’s legal, and it’s signed, and right now the best thing you can do is just show up and deal with it in person.”
“So you’d go to court,” Tony confirms.
“Well, first I’d confront him. See if there’s another way. Court fees are a bitch.” The sympathy in her voice sounds real, at least.
Bas looks at her in surprise, probably hearing his precious angel swearing for the first time. But Tony nods, strokes the chin he’s neglected shaving for days. There has to be another way, and he will find it.
* * *
Shai glances at his watch then back at the front doors of the school. There’s a chance Tony would exit another way, but Shai has eyes on his car, and anyway, he’s confident Tony’s the one who’ll come looking for him, once he thinks out the publicity and expense of a lawsuit.
It takes another three minutes, but then, there he is, summons in hand. “I can’t go to court. This can’t be on my record. You know I can’t afford the fees.”
“That is extremely not my problem,” Shai says coolly. “You want to avoid court? We can take care of this at my house with my excellent plastic surgeon cousin. We both know you don’t have the money, so those are your options.”
“Fine. Your house,” Tony bites out. “And I’m gonna need to see your surgeon cousin’s credentials.”
“Of course.”
“And no one else comes. I don’t want an audience for this shit.”
“Well,” says Shai, his hand patting his messenger bag, “the witnesses to the original contract have to be there. But that’s it.”
Tony sets his jaw. “Witnesses? You mean Bas?”
“And Persia. I did need a second witness, after all.”
“I didn’t see her sign the contract.” Tony’s teeth are grinding now.
“There’s a lot you don’t see, apparently.” Shai pulls out his phone. “I’m texting my cousin to meet us at my house in half an hour. Considering you’ve already been in my driveway, I assume you know the way?”
He doesn’t wait for a response before walking off to his own car, leaving Tony visibly nauseated in his wake.
* * *
“You don’t have to do this, man. Don’t do this.” Bas’s mantra is practically background noise at this point, and the words take turns targeting both Tony and Shai. But neither one is listening; both of their eyes are fixed on Shai’s cousin Raphael, who’s laying out a terrifying, sharp, and gleaming array of instruments. Now it isn’t only Tony’s tattoo that’s itching; the feeling of his skin trying to burn itself from his bones is traveling to every limb. Sweat beads at his brow, and suddenly he has to pee worse than ever before in his life.
His eyes dart between the scalpel and Shai’s face, which shows no sign of fear or remorse. It hits Tony then that this is really going to happen, that he’s really going to be sliced open, that his very skin is going to be torn from his body, that there will be no last-minute rescue. His father isn’t going to charge in and stop this, and the Knights aren’t going to be his saviors. He has to get out of here, has to get out, has to get out—
Before he can move a muscle, a brown leather strap closes around his wrist, holding him fast. “What the—” Another joins it a moment later, circling his forearm. He hadn’t even seen these guys walk up, tall and lean and so much stronger than they look.
“You said no one else!”
“Don’t worry,” Shai says calmly. “They’re leaving.” He says something to them in Hebrew, and one ruffles Shai’s hair, nearly knocking his kippah to the ground, and walks off.
“I don’t want to do this.” The edges of fear lace Tony’s voice, and he hates himself for it. He tries to jerk his arm out of the strap, but it’s stuck tight. His left hand is useless at the complicated buckles. He’s well and truly trapped.
Raphael walks over and pushes up the sleeve of Tony’s shirt, his reaction to the ink a grimace that he quickly hides under a critical eye. “I was going to start with anesthesia, but maybe we should just go right in.”
“What! No! Fuck no!” Tony yanks harder at the straps, digging in with his left hand, praying for something to click under his increasingly useless fingers. “You’re a surgeon! Don’t you have to do no harm or some shit?”
“You’re not exactly a traditional patient.” Raphael has the same calm demeanor as his cousin, which is something Tony’s come to realize he has sorely misread as weakness. “Besides, I’m doing you a favor.”
“Like hell you are! Bas, help me!”
“You let him go, and I’ll sue you too, Sebastian,” Shai says coldly.
“You can’t do that.” The wavering in Bas’s voice suggests he isn’t completely sure about that, though, and neither is Tony.
“Pretty sure I can. You signed the contract. You’re a witness that he owes me this. And before you get high and mighty about it, why didn’t you just use your own money to take out Persia? I mean, it’s kind of your fault he’s in this position in the first place, isn’t it?”
“I’d have had money if he hadn’t ‘borrowed’ it from me for a concert ticket he couldn’t afford,” Bas snaps. “You’re not the only one he screwed over.”
Tony slumps where he stands, strapped to the table. So much for help. Sure enough, Bas rejoins Persia, who’s been sitting stone still on the padded bench on the side of the room in Shai’s enormous basement this entire time, every bit as cold and unmoved as the treacherous, devilish cousins about to massacre his flesh.
He takes one last look at the black ink upon his skin, the four numbers that mean nothing to some and everything to others, and both hates it and believes it with every fiber of his being. The fourteen words: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The eighty-eight, each one standing for an H, code for “Heil Hitler.” Part of him doesn’t know what he was thinking getting his body inscribed that way, and part of him feels more hate than ever, anger and rage at being bested and tortured. This tattoo was supposed to be proof of his supremacy, and he will leave here with a wound that will scar into proof he is no white king, not even a knight.
Then he closes his eyes, squeezes them shut against the tears that threaten to fall, and says, “Go.”
The scalpel is cold against his skin, and even before it takes its first cut, any bravery Tony felt slips away. His deep breaths devolve into panicked gulps, and the tears come freely. “Please don’t please don’t please don’t please don’t please please please please.” The room smells like sweat and fear and pee, and he cannot do this, cannot do this, will not survive it, will not—
“Stop.”
The sound of a girl’s voice is so unexpected in the stillness of the room that Tony wonders for a brief moment if he’s s
lipped into a hallucination. He’d completely forgotten Persia was there, having assumed no salvation would come from her corner, especially after finding out she’d signed the contract without his knowledge.
“What is it, Persia?” Shai asks, his voice matching the scalpel in its sharpness.
“The contract you had me sign—it says you get his tattoo. But if you cut him open, you’ll be getting more than that, won’t you? Think how much blood you’ll be spilling. Pretty sure that’ll qualify you for assault even if taking his tattoo doesn’t.” She turns to Raphael. “And that probably wouldn’t be conducive to keeping your license, would it?”
Raphael locks eyes with Shai, dark brown piercing dark brown, and for the world’s longest minute there is nothing in the air but stink and silence. “It would not.” He puts the scalpel down. “Sorry, cuz. You’re on your own for this tattoo removal, though I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Tony can hardly believe what he’s hearing. His face is so full of snot and tears that he actually isn’t sure he is hearing correctly, at least until Shai walks over and takes hold of one of the straps.
“You asshole,” Tony blubbers, because he wants to be triumphant in this moment but is still shaking. “You tried, but you’ll never—”
“I’ll never what?” Shai spits back. “I’ll never make you piss your pants in fear the same way I almost did when I came home to those swastikas? I’ll never make you cower, afraid you’re about to feel a world of pain, the way you’ve done to me a million times for no reason other than that I wear a kippah? I’ll never make you beg and plead the way you’ve had me do from inside my locker over and over again? I’ll never make you feel completely friendless and alone? I’ll never make you wish for death because you know it’ll be a lot more pleasant than whatever you’re about to endure?”
