Dark Dragons (3 page)

“Junk
food,” Jonathan murmured with cool finality.  Then he staggered over to
Vanessa.  The shackles came off under his brute strength.  Vanessa
fell into his embrace and her eyes stared deeply into his.  “Oh Jonathan .
. . I love you.”

“I
love you too,” he said softly.

Their
faces came closer.  Vanessa closed her eyes and parted her lips. 
Jonathan could feel the

Weatherbee’s gnarled hand——quick and rather snake-like for a
senior citizen——appeared above Darren’s notebook and tore the paper out with a
deafening SHHHRRIIIIP!  Chuckles rose from the classroom, and Darren’s
face grew hot.

“We were having a quiz, Mr. Seymour, but it looks as if
you’ve found something else more important,” she murmured, striving for
theatrical menace.  “You know if I catch anyone writing anything other
than lecture, I read it to the class.”

“Yeah!” someone shouted.  The rest of the class
followed suit.

“I was just doing some of my English assignment,” he lied as
quietly as possible so the others couldn’t hear him.  “I won’t do it
again.”

“I know you won’t.”

“Read it!” someone shouted.

At that, Weatherbee raised one eyebrow, apparently a
non-verbal agreement for such a request.  She gave Darren’s paper a quick
snap for effect and began to scan the paper’s contents.  “Oh, it’s a
story, class.”

Giggles.  High-fives.

Darren sat there stewing in his sweat, thinking violent
thoughts of Weatherbee and the rest of this hole called a school.  Not
only were his peers being jerks, but even the teachers were stooping to
incredible lows. 
I can’t believe she’s going to do this.  What
balls.  Please God, bring down the lightning and zap this bitch to Mars.

The Almighty did not bring down His wrath but saved Darren
from wholesale humiliation anyway in the form of Mr. Chambers, the physics
teacher, who poked his head into the classroom and rapped on the doorway. 
“Sorry to interrupt, Agnes,” he said sheepishly, “but could I talk to you for a
moment?”

Weatherbee looked down at Darren and frowned.  “Yes,
Bob.”

The pleasure of making an example appeared to be
delayed.  In that moment of carelessness, she dropped Darren’s paper on his
desk, and he quickly snatched it up, stuffing it into his pocket.  He kept
his head down but knew everyone was watching.

Weatherbee left the room and closed the door behind her.

In the next row, Marcus Lutze said, “Read it to us, Seymour,
you worthless shit.”  Then he chuckled to his friends sitting nearby who
had to attest their loyalty with their own giggles lest they cramped his style.

Darren kept his mouth shut, his stomach in knots.

Marcus Lutze was such a goddamn high school cliche: typical
California,
beach
-blond school punk on his way to an Ivy League college
back east, care of wealthy parents.  He sat one chair back in the next row
from Darren and had the coincidental pleasure of having Darren in two other
classes.  His Corvette convertible and amazing linebacker talents——before
he got kicked off the team anyhow——naturally granted him the Big Shot On Campus
Award.

Marcus had those powers typical of the Chief School Jock,
that being the authority to determine a person’s caste in the Hindu hierarchy of
the high school order.  Was he a Brahmin priest or an untouchable?  A
fellow sports jock or a geek ripe for the Physics Club?  The “cool
students,” simple disciples of the Jim Jones School of Mob Manipulation, always
let Marcus Lutze make up their minds.  The jock always delighted his
friends by teasing the merry hell out of Darren, since timid looks were grounds
for cruelty at Verdugo Valley High.  Marcus had beat the crap out of him
twice in the past.

“Read it!” Marcus shouted.

Make it three.

“Bite me,” Darren murmured with sudden defiance.  He
looked behind him and saw Marcus stand up, all two hundred and twenty pounds of
him. 
Someone stop this goon before he reaches into my throat and tears
my lungs out.
  He wished Weatherbee would come back into the
room.  He looked down into his notebook, as if ignoring Marcus would make
the prick realize he was being rash and decide it wasn’t worth——

Nope.

A steel fist seized him by the back collar and yanked him
out of the chair.  The next thing Darren realized, he was on his back five
feet away, books and papers scattering, desk toppling.  People around them
stood up to move away, chairs and desks skidding across the floor.

Darren felt disgraced, angry he couldn’t defend himself,
near-sympathetic to the psycho emo kids on the news who shot up their
schools.  He wanted to crawl into a bubble and seal himself off from the
world.  The fact girls stood around watching made everything worst. 
Darren felt relieved Vanessa Vasquez was in another class.

He got to his feet and tried to move away, but Marcus
punched him so hard in the stomach that Darren thought his balls had
exploded.  The lights went out of him, and his knees struck the floor.

“Stop!” Weatherbee shouted from the door.  “Stop, right
now!”

Darren couldn’t breathe, his lungs full of rocks.  He
could hear blood pounding in his head and somehow got to his feet to show he
wasn’t down.  Finally, he got his lungs to inhale.

“What on Lord’s creation is this?” Weatherbee growled.

Great
, Darren thought. 
Showing up like the
cavalry at the last goddamn moment
.

“Pick up your books and papers,” Weatherbee said with a
sudden self-righteous poise.  “We’re taking a walk, boys.”

A chorus of “Whoa’s” and “Oooo’s” rose from the classroom.

*

Charles Barstowe sat behind his desk with the best poker
face Darren had ever seen.  No facial movement flinched across his
face.  Only his eyes moved, and Darren was sure that Barstowe hadn’t even
blinked since Darren entered his office a minute ago.  Barstowe put on a
good act, but Darren called his bluff.  He knew a phony “skunk eye” when
he saw it.

Barstowe’s dark brows were always curved down sharply at the
ends to almost touch the eyes, his bottom lip scarred from a knife that a kid
high on meth had given him a few years ago.  Rumor said he liked to go
down to the gym and babble with Coach Kenney just so he had an excuse to leer
at the girls who played volleyball in their tight shorts.  But so
what?  So did every other guy in school including Darren.

The lecture began.  “Pot.  Crack. 
Shrooms.  LSD.  This slacker,
You-Tube
Generation X-Y-Z you
belong to is going to the dogs, m’boy.  You have to take some custody,
some responsibility before us Baby Boomers end up in Florida or the Sunshine
Home, playing putt-putt golf or checkers.  You’ll have to take care of us
someday.  You’ll be CEO’s of large corporations, doctors, and——god
forbid——politicians.”  He went on jawing, flogging Darren with more
attempts at discipline.

Darren just sat there, occasionally nodding his head and
saying “Uh-huh” and “Yeah” during various points of the conversation.  He
knew Barstowe hadn’t really talked to Marcus who had been asked to see the
principal first.

Darren had no trouble talking to adults.  Most, if not
all kids his age found it impossible to talk to authority figures like parents
or teachers.  Darren, however, found them easier to talk to than his peers
because he knew they had an intelligent answer to his questions, a reasonable
comment to his own remarks.  Maybe Darren was just different from his
peers because he liked adults.  Except the one sitting in front of him and
the witch back in his chemistry class.

“. . . you see?” Barstowe continued.  “It isn’t all
that bad.  You just have to apply yourself.  Just like the Latinos
down in Boyle Heights planting gardens instead of bangin’ all over town with
the MC gangs.”

It was time for Darren to enter the conversation.  “Do
you even know what the fuck you’re talking about?”  Brazen insurrection
had finally reared its head after ten months.

Barstowe’s mouth hung open and his eyes wandered as he
searched the far wall.  Then he apparently remembered Darren’s inquiry had
included a swear word and had to take immediate action.  “Well . . . I . .
. will not hear that kind of language in my office or in my school.  You
understand?”

“Did you even talk to Marcus, or did you guys just sit
around and talk football?”

“No, Mr. Seymour, we didn’t talk football.  I told him
the same thing I told you.”

“What?  You gotta be kidding?”

“Look, this——”

“No, wait a second.  You gave him the same lecture I’m
getting?  You didn’t give him one of your yellow slips?”

“Yes, I gave him a yellow slip.”

“So am I going to get detention, too, even though he started
the fight?”

“The way you’re going now, yes.”

“He’s the one who started the fight in the first
place.  Weatherbee left the room, and that’s when Marcus started hassling
me.  He threw the first——”

“Marcus is just unhappy with himself.  Anyone who
teases another is just dejected inside.  He got kicked off the football team,
you know, so he’s probably jealous of his older brother Todd, the All-Star
quarterback.  His parents probably give Todd more attention than he gets,
which is why Marcus likes to tease others.  He’s really a good——”

“Bullshit,” Darren spat.

Barstowe pointed his finger at him.  “There it is
again.  If I hear one more ounce of profanity come out of your mouth, I’m
going to give you detention for three days.”

“‘Marcus is just unhappy with himself,’” Darren said,
mocking Barstowe’s remarks. “‘Just like those gangbanging Latinos down in East
L.A., but, boy, haven’t they improved.’  You know, an excuse like not
getting along with your parents is pretty lame.  I don’t get along with my
mom all the time, but you don’t see me giving the nerds in the Computer Club
any shit.”

“There it is,” Barstowe said, withdrawing a pad of yellow
detention slips from his drawer.

“Why don’t you just admit this whole school, including the
faculty, kisses his ass because he intercepted the ball in the state final that
clenched the win last semester?  Who cares if he got kicked off the team
and suspended from school because he date-raped some girl, right?”

“That turned out to be a lie.  The girl changed her
story, so we exonerated Mar——”

“Yeah, because Marcus’s mommy and daddy threw a few thousand
dollars at her parents.”  Darren watched Barstowe’s pen scurry across his
pad.  “Detention, huh?  Why don’t you access my grade list on your
computer and see what a bad boy I’ve been lately.  Four A’s and three
B-Plus’s.  That was last quarter when I made the honor roll.  Aren’t
you proud of me?”

“Here you go, Mr. Seymour.”  Barstowe handed him his
dreaded yellow slip.

Darren crumpled it and tossed it over his shoulder.  “I
get three days of detention for offending you with curses you’ve probably heard
in the movies, and Marcus gets——what?—— one, two days washing dishes in the
cafeteria?”

“Mr. Seymour, you’ve got quite a smart-mouth on you.”

“Yeah, my dad taught me.  He said to use it whenever
the world wasn’t listening to you.”

“I remember your mother told me your dad was killed by a
drunk driver in Michigan.”

Ah, there it is.  Angst.  Pathos.  Thank
you, dear principal.
  Why Barstowe had suddenly pulled this stinky goo
of fresh manure out of his bag and spread it across his desk, Darren couldn’t
be sure. 
Here now, let’s both take in a big whiff of this shit and see
what germinates
.   He wanted to grab the spiked baseball bat that
Barstowe kept on the wall behind him with
DON’T
FEAR THE REAPER
scored into it and trash the principal’s office and
stupid golf trophies.

“Would you like to talk about your father’s passing?”
Barstowe said, now with the mellow voice of a consoling priest.

“No, I don’t want to talk about my father’s passing.”

A knock came to the door and Barstowe’s blond secretary
poked her head in.  The man’s  self-righteous attitude immediately
changed to some child-like response, sexual in nature.  “Yes, Cheryl,” he
said.  “What can I do to . . . uh . . . do for you?”

“Mr. Peter Nelson from the board is here,” she said with a
blatant bounce-me-off-the-bedboard smile.  “He says it’s urgent.”

“Well, tell him I’ll be there in an itty bitty second.”

Cheryl giggled convulsively and left.

Darren was going to be sick.  It wasn’t hard to see
that
Mrs
. Barstowe was getting the short end.

“I’ll be back in a minute, Seymour,” Barstowe said, rising
from his chair.

After Barstowe left his office, Darren got up, walked around
the desk and entered Marcus’s name into the computer.  When he did, he
noticed Barstowe’s desk drawer ajar and spotted an opened box of condoms next
to the stapler.  Darren smirked and looked at the computer again. 
Marcus’s grades and suspension charges scrolled up on the screen.

Three C’s, a C-minus, and a fat D heavy enough to crush the
air from the lungs of a dipshit trying to spell “C-A-T.”  As Darren
searched the suspension charges, his mouth fell open in disgust.  Marcus
had received only a one-day suspension, just as he figured.

“What are you doing?” Barstowe demanded from the doorway.

Darren looked up, not at all surprised or guilty that he’d
been caught, and gave Barstowe a vicious retort.  “You only gave him one
day for turning my stomach into mush!  So you’re going to screw me like
you screw the cheerleaders behind your wife’s back?  I can see the box of
rubbers in your drawer you left carelessly open.  A box of prophos? 
In a high school principal’s office?”  Darren made sure his voice carried
out to the lobby where Jessy Nelson, top school gossiper, was stapling a
SQUASH OUT DRUGS
poster to the bulletin board. 
He smelled a week of detention coming on, but he was ready to quit this school
and ignore his mom’s inevitable pleas to go back.