Brutal Youth (13 page)

Stein’s little nickname for Mullen had caught on over the past few weeks, dispelling most of the sympathy he had received as one of the main victims of The Boy on the Roof. When the insolent freshman had called him Asshole Face—without repercussion—Mullen’s fame as a survivor became a laughingstock. He knew what a bad nickname could do. People had always called Mullen’s best friend Simms “Sandmouth,” due to his ever-deteriorating, tan-colored horse teeth. They were a sorry pair, Asshole Face and Sandmouth—the lowest of the upperclassmen, which meant they had a lot to prove.

Mullen and Simms grabbed a pair of freshmen—the wannabe graffiti artist JayArr Picklin and a chubby moonfaced boy named Justin Teemo, and ordered one to sniff the other’s butt. Audra freaked when she saw this, and ordered Crawford to break it up just as a gang of raging upperclassmen joined in to shove JayArr and Teemo toward each other.

Other older kids started grabbing newbies at random and ordering them to do tricks. If they liked the freshman, it was “scratch behind your ear,” or “shake hands and speak.” If they didn’t, it was “Roll over!” on the gritty asphalt, or “Fetch!” as they hurled a stolen wallet or purse across the parking lot.

A couple of senior girls had brought cookies from the cafeteria and were making freshmen girls get on their knees and beg for them. Seven-Eighths was refusing, wrapping her arms around herself as the older girls pressed on her shoulders until she knelt. They began mashing cookies against her closed lips, and when she finally opened her mouth, one of the seniors stuffed a piece of chalk in there instead. Seven-Eighths crushed it in her teeth without knowing any better and doubled over, spitting up milky strands of saliva.

With the organizers distracted and feuding, it devolved into a free-for-all. Stein noticed the blue-eyed boy Smitty pushing an escape path through the mob, and he and Davidek followed.

Smitty was big enough to shove through, but Davidek and Stein were intercepted at the edge of the mob by a group of seniors—big guys, basketball players—Alexander Prager and Dan Strebovich, joined by their stubby friend, a fellow named Bilbo Tomch, who was the team’s honorary student manager (a glorified title for “towel boy”). He was a
Dungeons & Dragons
kind of kid, always reading sword-and-sorcery books, and he really did look like a fat little hobbit beside his two lanky and athletic friends.

Prager and Strebovich blocked Stein and Davidek’s escape while Bilbo informed them their presence was requested in the Best in Show parade. Back in the center of the crowd, a line of freshman boys were being forced to scamper around on all fours with their ties spun around backwards, being held by older students like leashes. Those who resisted were being dragged across the asphalt, grasping at their tie loops to keep from being strangled.

Prager said, “Holy shit, lookit!” and flipped Davidek’s clip-on tie into the freshman’s face. “I thought you were
a myth,
Clip-On Boy!”

Bilbo hopped around excitedly, enhancing his goblinesque appearance as Prager kept flipping the tie up into Davidek’s face, asking: “How we gonna leash you, huh? How we gonna do that to Clip-On Baby, huh? Huh?”

“I gotta go get Crawford and the others. They gotta see this,” Bilbo said, and he ran off while Strebovich and Prager kept watch over the two freshman captives.

Stein pushed in front of Davidek, shielding him, and huddled face-to-face with his friend. “Take this, and give me yours,” Stein said, popping up his shirt collar and lifting the loop of his tie over his head. He wedged it down over Davidek and snatched off the clip-on, clasping it to the throat of his own shirt. “Now fix it,” Stein said, and Davidek began to tighten and straighten Stein’s tie around his own neck.

“Hey, what are you—?” Prager shouted, and Strebovich grabbed Stein by the shoulders. “Awwright, Scarface,” Strebovich said, looking down at the clip-on. “So now
you’re
the faggot baby?”

“Nah,” Stein said. “That’s just what your pals on the basketball team nicknamed your dick.” Strebovich’s mouth dropped open as Stein’s arms blasted out and smashed the senior in the chest, knocking him back—but not far enough. Strebovich swung a clenched fist into Stein’s face, dropping him to the ground as Prager started kicking him. Davidek tried to dive on top of his friend to protect him, but now the parking lot was swarming with teachers.

Mr. Mankowski wedged himself between Davidek and Stein and the two senior boys, who had been joined by Bilbo and a phalanx of friends, all exhaling hot breath in unison, edging each other forward, not really caring that the bald-headed teacher was in their midst.

Davidek pulled up Stein, who was bleeding from the mouth and adjusting his new clip-on tie with a grotesque red smile.

Mankowski said, “That’s enough, boys,” but Strebovitch stepped up to him, looking through Mankowski instead of at him, his eyes flaring at the freshmen over the horizon of Mankowski’s fleshy scalp.

The teacher stepped backwards. The older boys started laughing at him, unafraid, and Mankowski screamed: “Don’t you dare disrespect me. Don’t you
dare
!”

That stopped the seniors—but only because Mr. Mankowski had delivered his high-pitched scolding not to them, but straight into the faces of Davidek and Stein. “You want to ruin a little innocent fun out here and bother these upperclassmen?” Mankowski said to the two stunned freshmen. “You make me sick. And now you’re coming with me.…”

As he led them away, Davidek assumed it was a ploy, that Mankowski had felt that pulse of rage from the older boys, knew he couldn’t hold them off, and cleverly figured out a way to save them all. But Mankowski’s grip didn’t ease on their collars as they got near the entrance. “You
will
respect me,” he kept saying, like a little kid running out of breath after a tantrum. “You
will
…”

The teacher still could have let them go at that point, but that would have meant admitting he had been afraid, been gutless, and it was probably not the first time the teacher had let that happen when confronted by St. Mike’s bruiser upperclassmen. Mankowski’s anger toward Davidek and Stein had to become real, so he wouldn’t have to feel ashamed. Sometimes only a lie can absolve the things a person can’t stand to see forgiven.

Bromine stood in the main doorway as Mankowski marched his two prize captives up to her. “These two started it,” Mankowski told her in a boastful voice. “
I’m
the one who caught them.”

“Nice work,” she said coolly, looking over him to where the other teachers were breaking up the larger ruckus. Bromine dismissed the boys with a flick of her wrist: “One week of in-school suspension for our two favorite troublemakers.”

Davidek and Stein were the only ones to get that punishment.

ELEVEN

Monday came. Davidek and Stein served their suspension together in the solitude of the school library, a subterranean tomb with a vaulted ceiling hung with clusters of white orbs on brass chains. They sat at opposite sides of a banquet-sized reading table, with books stacked up beside them to hide their whispers. It helped that the ancient Sister Antonia, who monitored them most of the week because she taught only four French classes, could barely hear anyway. She sat at the librarian’s desk, reading a
Newsweek,
but never turned any pages.

“Think she’s dead?” Stein asked at one point. Then Sister Antonia heaved a deep sigh.

“Maybe sleeping with her eyes open?” Davidek shrugged.

Stein smiled. “Now
that’s
something she could teach us.” He was still wearing the clip-on tie, which made Davidek feel ashamed every time he saw it. Finally, he began to unfasten the knot of the one Stein had given him. “I think you should have this back—”

Stein put a hand out like a crossing guard. “Stop right there.”

“I’m grateful, but … you know … I could have handled it,” Davidek said.

“I know. But I saw you handle it, and handle it, and
handle it
for weeks. And I know you said your mom kept forgetting, but at some point, you shouldn’t have to handle it alone. We’re friends. And a friend sometimes takes the bullet for you. Know where I learned that?”

Davidek shook his head.

“From a guy who bought Lorelei a bunch of cigarettes instead of a new tie for himself.”

Davidek hadn’t realized Stein knew about that. He wasn’t sure what to say.

Stein slid down in his chair as if the conversation were starting to bore him. “Anyway, I’ve got two or three red ties at home I could wear, but I
choose
to wear this one. Everybody wears a tie here, so the fuckers of St. Mike’s look for somebody who’s got a slightly different one, and they try to string him up by it. And why? Because it makes them feel like they belong somewhere, making another guy the outsider. They hate what’s different because they’re all so fucking alike.”

“What about Green?” Davidek asked. “Green’s
black
. That’s pretty different. They seem to like him okay.”

Stein screwed up his face. “That’s because being a bigot is out of style. Everybody wants to beat up a freshman, but nobody wants to be a fucking
racist.
Of course everybody’s going to show how wonderfully tolerant and open-minded they are by kissing up to Green. Plus, he plays their game. You saw him up there, goofing along, howling like a wolf.”

“He was having fun,” Davidek argued. “I didn’t see anyone pushing him around. He seemed to be making friends.”

“What word do you suppose his ‘pals’ will call him the nanosecond he crosses them? I’ll give you a hint—it starts with
N,
and it ain’t
nipple, Norwegian,
or
nymphomaniac.
”

“That’s really wrong,” Davidek said.

“I’m not saying it’s right,” Stein replied. “But it’ll be a way to hurt him when they want to. That’s what I’m talking about, Davidek.
Excuses.
Maybe it’s the way you talk, or the color of your skin, or the color of your underwear, or whether you’ve got a clip-on around your neck. Assholes will find a reason to fuck with you. So I’m going to wear your clip-on proudly. Let them mess with me. The way I see it, this tie is a shithead detector.”

*   *   *

The next day, the boys found themselves overloaded with books and papers—busywork from their classes to frustrate their confinement. They did the work lazily, or at least Davidek did. “You know, Stein, I never hated school before. I was never one of those kids. But I hate
this
school. I hate every minute of being here.”

Stein scratched at the long scar by his eye. “Don’t say that kind of thing,” Stein told him in a voice that was low and serious and devoid of his usual ranting bravado. “It’s unfair here, but it’s unfair everywhere. That’s life all over the place. But if I didn’t come to this school, I wouldn’t know you. And we’re best friends.”

“What are you
talking
about? You fight back more than anybody!” Davidek was loud enough to make Sister Antonia shush them from across the room.

Both boys hunched behind their stacked books. “I’m not saying not to fight back,” Stein whispered. “I’m saying when they kick you, thank God because they just gave you a license to kick their asses back, and kicking asses is fun!” He flipped through the pages of a notebook. “This is your school, Davidek. Your life, your place in the world—a bunch of blank pages. You got to fill it up with what you want. So they say, ‘Do all this homework, you’re in suspension.’ But what do I do?” He slid the notebook across the table, and Davidek looked at the pages Stein had been scribbling in all morning.

It was a collection of crude cartoons—Bromine eating a plate of turds, Bromine having sexual intercourse with a giraffe, Bromine snipping off Mankowski’s penis with a pair of scissors. “Your problem,” Stein told him, “is you don’t know how to be happy with your unhappiness.”

*   *   *

“So are you mad about the cigarettes?” It was day three of suspension, and it had taken Davidek that long to ask.

“Yeah, kind of,” Stein said. “Mad at myself, though. I should have done something like that.” This dislodged something Davidek had been trying to find a way to ask: “So what exactly is going on with you and Lorelei?”

Stein looked up at him. “I guess I’d call it fate,” he said. “It feels like something that’s
meant
to happen, like it’s all planned out ahead of time. That’s how I felt when I saw Lorelei. She’s a perfect fit—like we’re puzzle pieces. It’s, like, destiny.”

Davidek laughed. “Okay, Darth Vader,” he said, sucking in breath and making his voice deep. “‘Join me, Lorelei! It is your
dessss-tah-nee
!’”

But Stein wasn’t laughing. “Maybe that sounds silly, but … it doesn’t to me. When I’m with her, she makes me feel like the bad stuff around us isn’t so bad. The world still sucks, but it’s better with her in it. Those first days of class, she kept asking if I knew any disabled students. She wanted to help somebody. That’s someone with a good heart. It’s easy to love.”

“Love, Stein? You guys haven’t even gone out to the movies yet. Do you really think you ‘love’ this girl?”

Stein looked at him blankly. “Don’t you?”

Davidek’s leg jiggled beneath the table. “No…,” he said. “I mean she’s cool and all. But we’re just friends. I’ve got my eye on someone else. Claudia.”

Stein nodded. “Right. The pretty redhead senior.”

“Yeah, I know it’s a long shot, but—”

“A guy’s got to have ambition,” Stein said flatly. “I wish you luck. There’s nobody better than you, if she’s smart enough to figure that out.”

The boys were quiet for most of the rest of that day. Mr. Mankowski came to fill in for Sister Antonia, so they couldn’t talk as easily. Davidek kept stealing looks at the clip-on attached to Stein’s collar. In the silence of the library, he resolved that Lorelei would be Stein’s girl from now on, and that was the end of it. He would never interfere—no matter how sappy Stein got with his theories of fate, destiny, missing puzzle pieces, and true love.

It made Davidek a little sad to surrender the crush, especially before it even got started, but there was something about the sacrifice that made him feel good, made him feel right. He guessed that was what Stein had meant by being happy about your unhappiness.