Sitting in front of my dad’s desk and telling him the truth about what I’d been doing for the last couple of weeks will probably win the award for “Worst Half Hour of My Life.” Really, it made me wish I was back out on the road with Jeff and his crew using me for a punching bag. It wasn’t that he yelled and screamed or anything like that. In fact, he didn’t say a word. He sat quietly and let me tell the whole story without a single interruption. He didn’t even
look
angry. He just sort of nodded every now and then as if he understood exactly what I was talking about. Which somehow made the whole experience even worse.
Finally, I got through it. It was a relief to stop talking. I sat there in the visitor’s chair while my dad sat in the high-backed leather swivel chair. I looked at my dad and my dad looked at me and I wished God would just hit me with a lightning bolt and get the whole ordeal over with.
After a while my dad took off his glasses and massaged his eyes with his fingers. For the first time I noticed that he wasn’t really looking too good. I knew he was worrying about his sick friend, Mr. Boling, and I guess he wasn’t sleeping very well. His face looked kind of gray and old with dark rings under the eyes. Adding to his troubles made me feel about as small as it’s possible to be without disappearing.
“I don’t suppose . . . ,” he said slowly. “I don’t suppose you could have found some other way of dealing with Jeff—some other way besides punching him in the face, I mean.”
I shook my head. This was the one thing I was sure of. After all, I knew when I swung on Jeff that I was going to be the one who got beaten up in the end. I wouldn’t have done it if there had been any choice at all. “He was gonna hurt her, Dad,” I said. “I could see it. He’d already slapped her for no reason, and he was gonna keep hurting her until he
really
hurt her. I could see it in his eyes.”
Dad nodded. “Okay. I figured that. I figured by the time you got to that point you had no choice. But of course,
before
that happened, you had a lot of choices, didn’t you?”
I sighed. “I know.” I had to pause there for a minute. I’m sixteen. Too old to cry. But I sure felt like it. “I have no excuse. I pulled a dragnet.”
“A dragnet?”
“Dumb de dumb dumb.”
He gave a pale smile. “Ah.”
“I was gonna talk to you about it,” I said. “Remember? When I bumped into you out in the hall that time? But you’ve been so worried about Mr. Boling, I just didn’t want to give you any more trouble than you already had.”
“Oh, well, thanks a lot,” he said drily. “That worked out well.”
“Right. Sorry.” I was about to tell him the whole story about how I’d come into his study, how I’d seen the statue of the archangel Michael on his shelf and read the Latin inscription and so on. But somehow it didn’t seem important just then. It seemed beside the point.
“All right.” My dad put his glasses back on. He leaned toward me, his elbows on the desk. “You did the wrong thing hanging around with Jeff and his crew. They have nothing to offer you. You know that now, right?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. I know it.”
“So you ended up in a bad situation—which could’ve been a lot worse.”
“Yeah.”
“So”—he gestured at me, grimy and bloody as I was—“it looks like you got your punishment already. And it sounds like you learned what you needed to learn.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So all in all, I’m inclined to go easy on you. But you better hear me, son. If anything else comes of this, like Jeff comes looking for revenge or something or even threatens you—or anything at all—and you don’t tell me about it right away, that’s it, I’m going Old Testament on you, you hear what I’m saying?”
I swallowed. “Yes, sir.” Dad had gone Old Testament only a couple of times I could remember, but it was not pretty business.
“But for now . . . ,” he said.
Dad couldn’t let me off scot-free because it would’ve driven my mom up the wall, but he did go pretty easy, all things considered. Grounded a couple of weekend evenings. Some heavy lifting, cleaning up the garage. Like the beating itself, it could’ve been a lot worse.
When Dad was done with me, I took a shower. Then I went to my room. I chatted with Joe online and told him what happened.
ME: I got beat up.
JOE: Yeah, I know. I saw the video.
ME: The video???
JOE: From Ed P’s phone. He posted it on Facebook with the whole story.
ME: O no. The whole school will know about it by tomorrow.
JOE: By tonight. Now.
ME: Great.
JOE: Well, look at it this way: you may have been beaten up but at least you know it was your own stupid fault.
ME: Yeah. That makes me feel a lot better.
After a while I couldn’t type anymore. I updated my Facebook status to “beaten up.” Then, groaning, I lay down on the bed.
My mind was racing. I kept thinking over all the things that had happened over the last couple of weeks. How Harry Mac had tripped me during my run, how I’d played chicken with the freight train, how I’d joined Jeff and his little crew in the barn. As I was thinking about it, I looked over and saw the Buster that Jeff had given me lying on my bedside table. I’d left it there when I’d emptied my pockets before taking a shower. I picked it up. Held it in front of me. My mind kept racing over the things that had happened.
I remembered Jennifer telling me,
“I’m looking for the devil
.
”
What did she mean by that—or was it just one of those crazy things she was always saying?
I remembered Jeff telling me,
“Mark’s pushed me just as far as I’m gonna go
.
”
What was that about? What could a guy like Mark have to do with a guy like Jeff?
But before I could give it any real thought, there was a knock on my door.
Uh-oh
, I thought. I was afraid it might be my mom, coming to blow up at me some more.
I set the Buster down on the table again. Then the door opened. It wasn’t my mom. It was my brother, John.
John is the brains of the family. He’s tall and thin like my dad. He kind of looks like my dad too. Same long face, same serious expression—only he still has his hair. He’s one of those big brothers you have, you know, where when you go through school, all the teachers say, “Oh, you’re John Hopkins’s brother. We expect great things from you.” Not a pleasant experience, especially if you’re not as smart as he is, which I’m not, or as good an athlete, which I’m also not.
John leaned in the doorway. “How you feeling?” he said.
“Like three guys beat me up. How are you?”
“Oh, you know. Working out which college I’m going to. Did Dad come down pretty hard on you?”
“Not too bad. He figured I’d already got what was coming to me.”
“Yeah. Well, you did. That’s for sure.”
“I know it. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Well, listen, watch your back from now on, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
John straightened off the doorway. He was so tall, the top of his head nearly grazed the top of the frame. “Well, think about it, you know. Winger will never let this rest. You’re a marked man now.”
I didn’t answer. I just looked at him. I hadn’t thought about that.
“You mean, you think this isn’t over?” I asked softly.
“No chance,” my brother said. “Believe me. This is just the beginning.”
Then he moved away, closing the door behind him.
Just the beginning
, I thought.
I didn’t know how right he was.
If you thought I looked bad lying almost dead by the side of the road, well, you should’ve seen me the morning after. You ever see a piece of fruit—an orange, say, or a peach—that’s gone rotten? You know, maybe it fell behind the sofa and nobody noticed it, and now you move the sofa and there it is and it’s been lying there for weeks and it’s all purple and yellow and discolored and saggy and swollen in some places and dented in others? Well, that’s what my face looked like—and the rest of me didn’t look much better.
The pain was worse than before too. Whatever had ached and stung when I went to sleep was now a throbbing torture. Plus I practically creaked like an old door when I tried to move. I would’ve liked to stay home for the day and recuperate, but there was no chance of that. If I even suggested to my mom I might need a day off, the whole hysteria of the night before would have started over again. Easier just to gut it out.
Riding my bike to school was no picnic. Every time the pedals went around, the pain shot up through my legs. Every breath I took hurt my chest. My backpack hurt my back and shoulders. Basically, everything I did hurt something somewhere.
I traveled mostly on the backroads, down quiet lanes with small houses on small squares of lawn. No one was around except a few delivery guys. That’s the way I wanted it. I didn’t want to have to answer any questions—not if I could avoid it.
But worse than the pain and embarrassment was the thought of what was going to happen next.
“You’re a marked man now. This is just the beginning
.
”
My brother’s words repeated themselves over and over in my mind. I knew he was right. Jeff Winger was my enemy forever now, and he was not a good enemy to have. He was tough and mean and relentless, and he’d never forget. I could just imagine what it was going to be like at school. Always on the lookout for him. Always waiting for what was going to happen next. And then when something
did
happen, it wouldn’t just be between me and Jeff anymore. Because I remembered what my dad had said too.
“If anything else comes of this, like Jeff comes looking for revenge or something or even threatens you—or anything at all—and you don’t tell me about it right away .
. .
”
In other words, if Jeff started to terrorize me and I kept it to myself and tried to handle it without bringing in Dad, I’d have Dad after me too, which was worse. I think this is what they mean by being “caught between a rock and a hard place.”
The entrance to the high school came into sight down the road. There’s just a fence with a gate leading into a big parking lot. Then on the far side of the lot, there’s your usual two-story, brick-and-glass high school building.
Painful as it was, I took a deep breath.
Do right. Fear nothing
, I told myself.
I watched the school get closer and closer. I felt my stomach twisting with fear and suspense. I was pretty sure this was going to be a majorly bad day.
I put my bike in one of the bike racks on one side of the parking lot. I flinched as I straightened my backpack on my bruised shoulders. I took another deep and painful breath, ready to approach the school.
Here we go
, I thought.
I walked through the parking lot toward the front of the school. There’s a walkway there. The walkway leads from the parking lot over the front lawn, then divides in two and circles around a tall flagpole. The school bus stops at the curb at the head of the path and kids get out and start walking up. Some kids are dropped off there by their parents. The seniors park in the lot and come up the walk as well. And other kids walk straight in from the road or bike in and lock up their bikes in the racks and come to the walkway from the side like I did. In the end, though, everyone ends up on that front walk, the whole school crowd. It becomes like a big river of kids flowing toward the school—dividing in two to flow around the flagpole—then coming together again for the final stretch to the front door.
So I reached the end of the lot and started heading to the walkway to join the big river of kids. As I stepped over the curb, someone—I never saw who was first—started clapping. I didn’t really notice it right away. You know, everyone was talking and laughing and there was all this general noise around and the clapping sort of blended in with that. But then another kid started clapping too. Then another. Then more. And after a while, I did hear it. You couldn’t help but hear it. I looked toward the sound.
A group of seniors was standing at the head of the path, right next to me. There were about six or seven of them. They had stopped walking into school and were just standing there, clapping, as if they were standing on the sidelines of a football game or something, cheering on the team. But they weren’t looking at a football game. They were looking at me. I checked. I glanced over my shoulder because I thought there might be someone behind me. But no, it was me, all right. They were clapping for me.