Dear Life, You Suck (8 page)

I drop to one knee and start bashing him in the face with my ring fist. His head thuds against the cobblestones.

Spectators shriek and scatter.

Bam, mouth.

Bam, cheek.

Bam, forehead.

Bam, nose.

Bam, eye.

Each time I cock my arm for the next strike, I see the cut my ring has made. It’s strange to see up close. Each bloody slice unleashes a desire to rip open a new one. As his face blurs, reality fades, so I keep hitting. I hit and hit and hit.

I don’t know how many punches I land before I’m yanked off Pitbull, but it’s plenty because his face looks like a slab of raw roast beef in a deli case. But before I can stare too long it dawns on me that the dudes tugging at me might be Pitbull’s football pals carrying me into round two, so I flail my arms wildly to break free. My elbow strikes something solid and the hands gripping me go limp. I jump back and square off.

I realize it’s not his football buddies, because they’re all the way by the flagpole cowering. Two of them are dudes I pounded the piss out of last year, so it doesn’t surprise me that they never had any intention of jumping in to help their friend.

I turn and see Mr. Tupelo, the social studies teacher, with his hand over his nose and blood gushing through his fingers.
Uh-oh, not good
. But sorta funny. That musta been my elbow shot.
Good
. Serves the caddywhompus prick right for sticking his pompous snoot where it don’t belong. My body warms and tingles.

Golly gee, Trots McGee, reckons yee shouldn’t-ah jammed yer bulbous beak far and yon where it don’t belong, ya scrumpy smeghead. Now ponce off ’fore I squiff ya a ferther comeuppance, ya toffee-nosed twit
.

Principal LaChance’s shrill voice interrupts my miffy musings. “Cricket, I am not going to say this again. Either drop your fists right now and come with me, or I will have no choice but to call the police.”

I don’t realize I’m still holding my fists up until I hear LaChance. They don’t look attached. They look like someone else’s fists, floating in front of me like a video game. My left hand’s pristine, and my right’s a bloody mess. Heaven and Hell. Glorytown and Mischiefville.

“I’m not going to say it again, Cricket.”

I glance at LaChance. He looks like a cartoon character with his blazing orange hair and beanbag belly. I sure as hell wouldn’t mind popping him one. Hell, I’m already all bloodied up.

He reads my mind and raises his hands like I just drew a nine on his convenience store ass.
What a pussy
.

“Now, Cricket, calm down and try to think clearly, son. This has gone far enough.”

A warm, tingly fluid floods my veins. Like that feeling when blood returns to your limbs after they’ve been asleep.
Yeah, this has gone far enough, Chicken LaChance
. Still, his fear amuses me, so I take a step toward him just to freak him out.

He jumps back and almost tumbles over a bicycle rack.

I lower my hands and laugh. My cackling emboldens him, and he prances toward me.

The voices around me are loud now. A vision of Caretaker floats into my mind, and an anxious exuberance floods my chest. I look back at the swollen, purple lump I’ve just pummeled. He’s rolling around on the cobblestones like a beached walrus on hard sand.

Principal Pisshimself boldly poses beside me like a mutant Munchkin Land mayor. He points his pudgy finger at the school. I follow the cobble-brick road toward the entrance doors.

Two lady teachers are dabbing Tupelo’s nose with paper towels.

The warm something in my veins is gushing furious now, like I’m full of hot tea. My right hand’s stinging. The back’s a sticky mess, but the inside’s sparkling clean like I just washed it.

Lily Liver LaChance shoves me toward the school.

I pull my hood on.

Just before we enter, I turn for one last look at my crumpled adversary. Pitbull’s on his back with his hands crossed over his chest like a corpse in a casket.

Wynona’s on her knees beside him, but she’s not looking at him. She’s looking at me. I can’t read her face. It’s blank but strained, like she’s trying to ESP me a message.
Damn, she’s beautiful
. She was invisible until she started dating Pitbull. I liked her better when she was invisible. I liked feeling like I was the only one at school who could see her. Stupid, heart-thumping bullshit. She’s far from invisible now.

The urge to run to her bubbles inside me. I imagine myself grabbing her by the arms and pulling her in to me. All I need is a trench coat and a fedora.
“Wynona, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Here’s looking at you, kid.”
A grin slices my face.

Her expression twists from fear to anger.

My throat tightens, and my mind clogs.

Nurse Aubrey’s dangling my hand over her stainless-steel sink and dousing it with hydrogen peroxide. Her sleeves are rolled up and she’s holding my arm away from her body so she doesn’t get any blood on her marshmallow-white uniform. She looks like a nun wannabe in her refrigerator-box dress, white Frankenstein shoes, and goofy hat. You’d think a nurse would want to get blood on her uniform to show people she did something useful with her day instead of just saving schoolboys from paper cuts.

“I don’t know why you boys insist on fighting to solve your petty differences.” She dabs my cuts with a cotton ball. “When I was your age, my brothers were in the army fighting to protect this great nation of ours. They fought for a reason.”

“Which side, North or South?”

Nurse Aubrey scrunches her wrinkly puss. “Very funny, Cricket.” She dries my hand and starts bandaging my finger with so much gauze you’d think it’d been chopped off.

“Jeez Louise, a Band-Aid would be sufficient.”

“Thank you for telling me how to do my job, Cricket. With just a Band-Aid, you risk infection.”

My finger’s wrapped thicker than an Egyptian mummy, but it still stings like a son-of-a-biscuit.

My ring’s in my pocket. There’s blood on it so now there’s probably blood on my letter to Moxie. Like it battled alongside me.
Cool
. If it weren’t for my ring cutting into me, I wouldn’t have a scratch on me.

“Who was it this time, Cricket?” Nurse Aubrey asks.

“Buster Pitswaller.”

“Oh, dear Lord. You’re lucky I’m only bandaging your finger.”

“Yeah, lucky me.”

“Where’s Buster? Did he get hurt as well?”

“His face got a little banged up when he used it to cut open my finger.”

“Oh my. Are they bringing him here?”

The butterflies in my gut start flapping. “I don’t know.”

“Stay here while I get you some antiseptic and bandages to take home.” Nurse Aubrey disappears into a walk-in closet and returns with a small paper bag. “Be sure to change the dressing tonight before you go to bed and then twice a day, morning and evening, or that finger may get infected. Now go sit in Principal LaChance’s waiting room while I go see what’s happening with Buster.”

I take my usual seat in LaChance’s waiting area. The school’s hauntingly quiet. Probably on account of everyone’s in the courtyard.

I’m feeling amped and tingly, but palpitations about Pitbull’s condition are poking holes in my fuzzy inflation. Like I said before, getting into a good game of Fist Scrabble ain’t a big deal Down East. But a hospital trip crosses a line that even the animals inhabiting this missing-teeth menagerie can’t ignore. If Pitbull has to leave school grounds to get patched up, I’m toast.
Ass toast,
if you get my meaning. With a side of grape jelly. And extra
margareeeeeeeeen
.

Not that I would have done anything differently.

I need to pull it together. Stop letting these whirlpooling worries suck me inside out. It’s completely ruining my post-whup-ass fuzzies. I need to mind-munch something commensurate with my infernal combustications. Something the exact opposite of Pitbull. Something silky smooth and sweet-smelling. Something caramel creamy and rose-petal soft. Something Wynonatatious.

I wonder which side she’ll fall on. I wonder if she’ll hate me for what I did, or be impressed. I wonder if she’ll love Pitbull more or despise him for his flabby failure. If she decides to despise him, she’ll need a replacement. This could be my chance.
Yeah, my fat chance
. A beauty like her would never be drawn to a hooded, fisticuffin’, Prison-dwelling, scar-faced beast like me.

My fuzzies fizzle.

Either way, I won’t need to percolate my ruminations much longer, because here she comes. She’s marching straight at me like a prison warden delivering a nightstick enema, and I can practically hear her growls from here. Two football coaches are behind her, dragging Pitbull by the armpits.
Jesus, his face is trashed
. Nurse Aubrey looks whiter than her uniform.

Wynona’s got Pitbull’s varsity jacket draped over her arm, which is funny, like she’s his mother or something. I must be smirking, because her snarl sharpens and she bites her lower lip.

There are two kinds of lower lip bites. There’s the wide-eyed
Golly gee, you’re cute, and I sure as heckfire would like to squeeze you tight into my love melons,
and then there’s the
Holy hell, you’re an asshole, and I sure as shit would like to squeeze your nuts in a vise
. Guess which one Wynona’s wielding? Suffice it to say, I’m glad we’re not in shop class.

Wynona freezes at Nurse Aubrey’s door while the coaches drag Pitbull inside. She’s glaring at me with gonad-slicing lasers. It’s hard to take her anger seriously because she’s so adorable. Even her bubblicious hatred is inflating me with ooey-gooey lovey-doveys. Her face is smooth like beach sand after a storm.
Damn, she’s fine
. She’s wearing blue jeans that look two sizes too big on account of they’re cinched tight around her petite waist like on a scarecrow. She’s short, about five feet, but right now she’s looming like a skyscraper. Her lips are twitching, which is confounding my efforts to imagine planting a tender wet one on her. She looks like she’d bite me if I tried. That’d be okay. Any Wynona contact would be fine with me. I should ask her out before she says a word. Toss her a psychological stumper before she gets too deeply entrenched in hatred.

She appears to be contemplating her next move. She tosses Pitbull’s jacket on a chair and stomps toward me.
Oh, shit, she’s decided
. She takes one step onto the carpet in LaChance’s waiting area and stalls like she’s stuck in tar. Wynona and I are alone. I imagine drawling a classic John Wayner from
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
“You’re awful pretty when you get mad.”

I try to calm myself the way I do before a fight, but Caretaker’s strategy isn’t working as good on girly anxiety as it does on squirrelly anxiety. My brain’s whirring like a ceiling fan on max speed, trying to think of something clever to say. I wonder if she can read my mind, and that’s why she hasn’t spoken yet. Maybe she’s mad at Pitbull for picking on poor, defenseless Andrew. Maybe she came to apologize.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Wynona blasts.

Oh, well. I guess not.

She has her arms crossed over her chest, which is unfortunate because she has awesome nubbies that I wouldn’t mind canoodling a gander at since this will probably be my last day in this fine Institute of Dire Yearning. They’re perfectly sized and shaped for her petite frame. Not boyishly small or whorishly large. What I wouldn’t give to be one of her forearms right now.

“Well?” she barks.

I’m sorry, my cantankerous love muffin, but I interpreted your question as rhetorical in nature. I assumed you were simply preaching and not actually expecting a response
. That’s what I should say. But I don’t because I’m distracted by the tug-o’-war going on between her expression and her words. An opposing enemy is skulking behind her bulwark of rage. An undercover operative. A traitor. What is it? What is she squinting at that she won’t leak out in a million years?

“I asked you a question,” she says through quivering lips. “Are you proud of yourself or what?” Her eyes are intense but not angry intense.

A response pureeing in my blender bubbles out. “Yes, I am.”
Shit, who said that?
That’s not what I wanted to say. Comments like that won’t woo her. They’ll just chafe her ass into an itchier rash
.

She uncrosses her arms and plants her hands on her hips. “Oh, really? You’re proud of yourself for being a complete brute?” Her body jiggles as she speaks, which spikes my already dangerously high distraction fever. The tears she’s fighting back make her eyes look greener than usual, like acid-melting emeralds. She looks scared and uncertain. More real than I’ve ever seen her, which makes me realize I’ve been seeing her through a make-believe veil all the time I’ve been stalking her.

Wynona stomps her foot to get my attention. “Are you going to answer me or not?”

Man, she’s adorable
. She’s sulking like a cranky Little One demanding a sugary treat before dinner. Which, truth be told, is tearing me in half. She may be adorable, but she’s also being an asshole. I won’t kiss her ass just because she has a perfect one. “Sure, if you ask me a question that’s not retarded.”
Whoopsy
.

Her face explodes. Holy Moses, smell the roses, she’s plenty riled now. “Oh, so you don’t think you’re a . . . total . . . brute? You think what you did is okay? You think viciously attacking a . . . helpless . . . person . . . is okay?” There’s that tone again. Her voice is stuttery, like she’s auditioning for a role in the remake of
Network
.
“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore.”

My forehead’s sizzling a bacony mischief, and that ain’t the only pork oinking a stand-at-attention tumult. “I’m sorry—what was the question?” I consider ending my question with “Professor Pantywad,” but my cooler head prevails.

Apparently, she hasn’t been paying attention either, because my question flusters her. “What? I mean . . . which one?”