Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (14 page)

Jimmy felt
something in his heart.  If he had been forced at gunpoint to tell what it was,
he would be hard-pressed to describe the feeling.  It was as if something, some
force, had entered his body and sank into his soul.  He felt stronger.  He felt
a kind of warmth and tingling spread throughout his body from the tips of his
toes to the ends of his hair.  Suddenly, Jimmy no longer felt like whining and
pleading.  He stopped himself from being dragged and forced his feet on the
ground so he could walk.

“Fine,” Jimmy
said, “let’s do this.”

Jimmy sensed a
moment’s hesitation in Stan.  Suddenly, the hand on the back of his neck was
lighter.  Stan was expecting Jimmy to beg, plead, kick, and scream, and this
sudden change was off-putting.

Jimmy felt a smile
creep across his face.  It was as if he were just a passenger inside his own
body.  He could see everything with such clarity.  He looked up and saw
Clinton’s face.  Dale stood to Clinton’s right. 

“Hi, Clinton,”
Jimmy said, casually, calmly, in a voice that did not sound like his own. 
“How’s the hand?  Does it hurt?”

Clinton’s sneer
faltered.  He was put off by Jimmy’s demeanor, as well. 

“Yeah,” Clinton
said, “it hurts, you little punk.”

Stan gave Jimmy a
push and Jimmy stepped into the shadows behind the bleachers.  Although Jimmy
was long and lanky, not much shorter than the three jocks, they still seemed to
tower over him.  Stan took a spot to Clinton’s left, slightly farther away from
Clinton than Dale was.  Jimmy guessed that this was to stop him from running. 
Little did they know that he had no plans to go anywhere.

“So this is what’s
going to happen,” Stan said, trying to regain control of the situation. 
“Clinton gets the first hit.  And he keeps hitting until he gets tired.  Then
we each take a turn.  Then whatever’s left can go to the hospital.”

Stan’s mouth split
into a hideous sneer that could have been called a smile only in the most
disturbed mind.

“Or the morgue,”
Stan finished.

Jimmy nodded, but
said nothing.  He looked straight at Clinton.

“I don’t use this
hand much,” Clinton said, raising his left hand, “but I think you’ll still feel
this.”

Jimmy saw it all -
everything he had to do.  He knew how to move, how they would move, and what he
had to do to counteract it.  It was as if he could see invisible strings
attached to each of them.  He knew which ones they would pull to try and hurt
him, and he could see which ones he had to pull, twist and cut to make sure
they failed.

Clinton let out
something like a growl and swung with his left fist.  He put everything into
the punch.  Jimmy didn’t move.  With crystal clarity, he watched the fist,
could see the hair on the knuckles.  There was a small freckle near the second
knuckle of Clinton’s middle finger.  On the pinkie finger, there was a small
cut, perhaps a paper cut.

When the fist was
inches from Jimmy’s face, he moved to the right.  It was just a tilt of his
head, and then he pushed off with his left foot.  He could feel Clinton’s fist
brushing against his skin, but he felt no pain.  Clinton’s momentum carried him
forward and he spun around, his eyes going wide, his mouth suddenly open like a
fish’s.  Clinton lost his footing in the grass, which was still slightly wet from
the morning dew.  Dale’s eyes gaped as the full bulk of Clinton’s body crashed
into his.  Both of them went down in a heap.

Jimmy turned and
faced Stan.  It felt as if Stan and the rest of the world were moving in slow
motion.  Stan’s face showed just a hint of fear.  This was not how he had
planned it, Jimmy could tell.  They had expected to beat Jimmy to death, and
Jimmy, with one move, had taken out two of them. 

Stan recovered and
balled up both fists.  He bit his lower lip, and his upper lip peeled back from
his teeth.

Jimmy knew that
his own punch would not do a damn thing.  He had no muscle and no weight behind
it.  He had never punched anyone in his life and he’d probably end up breaking
his fingers.  So he did the only thing he could think of.  He rocked backwards
and then rocketed his head forward.

Stan was in
mid-punch, already leaning forward
.
  There was an instant when Stan’s eyes went wide as he realized
Jimmy’s head was coming straight for his face.  The arch of Jimmy’s forehead
met the bridge of Stan’s nose.  There was a crunch that could be heard across
the parking lot.  Blood exploded from Stan’s nose, and he fell as though Jimmy
had cut the tendons in his legs. 

Jimmy whirled.  He
knew that he was running on adrenaline now.  The pain was deadened by the
chemicals released by his brain, but he didn’t have much time before the full
impact of that blow made his head explode in pain.

Dale had gotten to
his feet.  Clinton was struggling to get up using just one hand.  Dale’s eyes
narrowed, but he looked frightened.  He was out of his element.

Dale swung with
his right hand.  Again, it was a powerful blow.  Jimmy moved to his right, but
the blow caught him on the shoulder.  It didn’t hurt much, but the force of it
sent him spinning.  As he spun, he stuck out his right foot.  Dale was still
off balance as Jimmy spun and connected with the jock’s knee.  Jimmy’s shoe met
Dale’s knee slightly below the kneecap.  Dale’s leg bent backwards and he let
out a scream, his right leg flying out from under him.  Jimmy danced to his
left and Dale fell into a heap on the ground, clutching his leg.

Clinton looked as
if he were going to cry.  He kept saying Stan’s name over and over, and when
Dale went down, he added Dale’s name to his litany.  Then he looked at Jimmy in
terror.  It was as if Jimmy could read Clinton’s thoughts. 
How did things go
so wrong?
some part of Clinton’s brain was saying to him.  By this point,
Jimmy should have been on the ground bleeding and crying.  Clinton, Dale, and
Stan should have been standing over him, breathless, their knuckles sore, but
laughing.

Clinton panicked. 
He swung his hand, but realized it was the hand Jimmy had stabbed the other
night an instant before Jimmy let Clinton hit him on the top of the head.  The
blow hurt his already-throbbing skull, but the top of the head is one of the
thickest areas of bone on the body.  The thick bandages on Clinton’s hand also
cushioned the blow to Jimmy’s head a bit.  The jock let out a bellow and then
began doing a strange kind of dance, clutching his hand to his chest.

There were tears
in Clinton’s eyes.

“Anything else?”
Jimmy said, looking at Stan, Dale, and Clinton.

Clinton let out a
whimper and ran, his hand still clutched to his chest.  Dale was lost in pain,
grabbing his knee and rolling back and forth, his teeth gritted together at the
sky.  Stan appeared to be unconscious.

Jimmy turned and
saw that there was a crowd of kids from the high school standing at the doors. 
All of them had wide eyes, open mouths, and shocked expressions.  Jimmy spotted
George near the front, and he walked steadily toward his friend.  The world
still seemed so bright, so clear.

“Jesus,” George
said as Jimmy approached. “How the hell did you do that?”

Jimmy stopped in
front of George and smiled.

Then he fainted
dead away into George’s arms.

The
first thing Jimmy noticed was noise.  There were a lot of people around him and
they were all talking.  There was someone shouting.  Jimmy tried to open his
eyes, but the harsh light over his head made him immediately groan, close his
eyes, and raise his hand to his forehead to give himself relief from its
brightness.  He was surprised to find that there was a bandage around his head.

“Relax,” said a
soft female voice from Jimmy’s left.  He recognized it; it was Rachel Dirkson,
the school nurse.  He was in the small infirmary on the first floor of the
school.  He was glad to see it was Rachel because, over the years, he had
befriended her in a similar way he had befriended Jesse at the town library. 
Rachel often allowed Jimmy to do things that she knew she shouldn’t allow him
to do, like take aspirin without a note from his mother.  For Rachel, one of
the few qualified nurses anywhere near Knorr, it was almost like she was daring
the school to fire her.  What would they do without her?  Jimmy hadn’t gone
very far, as he was still less than fifty yards from the classroom where he had
algebra.  He felt like he had tried to jog about six hundred miles, though. 
“You probably have concussion.”

Jimmy moaned again
and opened his eyes.  The light speared through his retinas again, but he
forced his eyelids to stay open.  Above him was the white ceiling of the
infirmary.  Rachel was standing there next to him, dressed in her
always-presentable white uniform.  Jimmy was on one of the three second-hand
emergency room-style beds that the school had picked up years ago.  The school
had a surprisingly well-stocked infirmary, although it was far from a
hospital. 

“Who’s shouting?”
Jimmy said, his voice remarkably hoarse and just barely above a whisper.

Rachel smiled and
leaned in close.  “Mr. Little, mostly.  You’ve wiped out most of the starting
line up of the football team and the baseball team, you know.”

She squeezed his
left arm and Jimmy saw a faint smile cross his face.  How many students had she
treated who had been beaten or injured in some way by Stan and his cronies? 
Jimmy could not fathom the number.

“Good work,”
Rachel whispered.  “We had to call an ambulance for all three of them.  You
broke Stan’s nose, by the way, and possibly fractured a cheekbone.   Clinton’s
hand bled all over the place again, and we found him holding it and moaning
near the exit gate out of the parking lot.  And Dale may have some serious knee
problems for a while, but I don’t think it’s anything permanent.  Still, Dale’s
father insisted that his beloved son be taken to the hospital for an MRI. 
Sounds like a lot of money spent for nothing to me, but what do I know?”

Jimmy moaned
again.  What did this mean?  Did he just delay his destruction by a few days? 
Had he scared them off or had the war just been escalated?  Would the rest of
the football team come after him?  Hell, were he and his mother about to be
sued or had the cops been called and he was about to get arrested for assault? 
At the same time he was moaning, he appreciated that Rachel felt confident
enough in Jimmy to speak to him like an adult and reveal things she would never
reveal to any other student.

“Am I in trouble?”
Jimmy asked.

Rachel frowned.
“Well, that depends on your definition of ‘trouble.’  The entire town knows
what jerks Stan, Dale, and Clinton are.  Even their own parents refused to call
the cops and file a formal complaint.  The whole school is full of people who
have been tormented by those three.  The principal says that you’ll probably
have to spend some time in detention, since we have a policy that says we do
not tolerate violence against students.  Also, I had to call your mom.  She’s
on her way.  I don’t think she’ll be too happy.”

Once again, Jimmy
groaned.  It was the only thing he could think of to do.  He was a dead man. 
He’d never be allowed out of his room until he was forty, at a bare minimum.

“What about me?”
Jimmy asked.  “How bad am I?”

Rachel sighed. 
“Well, you did a number on your head.  I think you should spend the next few
days at home.  I would suggest that maybe you visit the hospital, but that’s up
to you.  That part of the head is pretty tough, but that blow might have given
you concussion.  It’s all up to you, though.  Still, as I said, I recommend you
rest at home for a bit before coming back here.”

Jimmy nodded very
carefully, trying hard to develop a way to nod without actually moving his
head. 

“Is he awake?”
came a voice from the front of the room.

Jimmy had done a
lot of groaning in the past five minutes, he realized, but he could think of
nothing else to do but groan again.  It was Devlin Little, Stan’s father.  The
man was an even bigger jerk than his son, and that took some doing.  According
to Devlin, his son never did anything wrong, he was the perfect student and
athlete, and all Stan was guilty of was some innocent teenage pranks.  The rest
of the world was just too sensitive.

“Mr. Little,”
Rachel said, moving forward to intercept.  “You need to stay out there.  No one
is allowed back here but authorized people and patients.”

“Listen, you
little punk,” Mr. Little said with venom, pointing his finger at Jimmy.  “You
had just better watch yourself, got it?  If you’ve jeopardized my son’s chances
at a scholarship, you’re a dead man.”

“MISTER LITTLE!”
Rachel shouted; it was so loud that it hurt Jimmy’s ears.  “You just threatened
a student in my presence and within earshot of the principal.  That’s illegal.
You can either calm down and get out of here, perhaps head to the hospital and
check on your son, or you can stand there and keep yelling.  Eventually, I’ll
mace you with the can I keep in my purse and then call the police.  Then you
can spend the night in jail.  Do you understand me?”

Mr. Little stood
there, chewing on his lower lip and flashing rage from his eyes.  His face was
bright red and his breathing was intense.  He was like a bellows to Jimmy’s
ears.  His eyes twitched
from Rachel to Jimmy and then back again.  He
finally lowered his finger.