The New Kid (4 page)

Out in the hallway Will walked back toward the chemistry classroom. Maybe with a little luck he’d actually make it to his first class. After an altercation such as the one he’d just experienced he always felt an odd mixture of shame and exhilaration. What kind of a person was he that he could so easily see the red and unleash his violent side? He was afraid of it and didn’t like letting it out. Okay, that was a lie he was telling himself, he loved letting it out. It just felt wrong.

Rudy caught up to Will and skipped alongside him. The little guy was totally in awe of the New Kid. With a sideways glance Will got a good look at Rudy, who had the usual teen pimples and hair so ragged it looked like he was wearing a mop. Right away he could tell that Rudy was amongst the walking virgins, dorky guys who’d never have a chance in hell of scoring with a girl. But right now Rudy wasn’t thinking about girls, he was still pumped up over being rescued and he bobbed up and down as he walked like he heard some silent funk.

“Hey, you’re the New Kid, right?”

“You’re pretty quick,” said Will as he kept on walking.

“Very funny, New Kid. You got a name?

“Will.”

“I’m Rudy.”

“I heard.”

“Anyway, hey, thanks. I mean, in the long run it’s probably not gonna do much good—I’m like perpetual cannon fodder for those jerks—but thanks anyway. I do think you’re going to regret throwing yourself under the bus for me, though.”

Will stopped and looked at him. “And why is that?”

“Well, Duncan’s the über-alpha male in this school and he’s got like his own skanky army of commando drones who do whatever he says.”

“So?”

“So, my guess is that he’s going to spread the word to have your head on a stake before lunch,” said Rudy.

“I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, I scoped that out, but you don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

“Neither does he,” said Will.

Rudy smiled broadly, totally impressed. “Man, you got some big brass ones, for sure!”

“You ought to go change into some dry clothes.”

Rudy shook his head and danced around the hallway like he was the happiest kid on earth, not someone who’d just had his face toilet-trained.

“Naw, I like being wet, it reminds me of running through the sprinklers in summer.”

Will gave Rudy a sideways glance. “Rudy, you’re whack, you know that?”

Rudy smiled. “Hey, thanks, man!”

The boys’ room door slammed open and Duncan and his bullies blasted angrily out into the hallway. Duncan raised his fist and yelled at Will.

“Hey, New Kid! So you got in a lucky sucker punch. This ain’t over!”

“I never said it was,” said Will calmly.

Then he opened the door to his class and entered as Rudy watched in awe, a humongous smile spreading across his face.

“Cool. . . .” Rudy was beyond impressed. This was huge, this called for rejoicing! Someone finally had the cojones to stand up to the great Duncan Walker! He heard footsteps—which he knew had to be Duncan and his butt-faced cronies—and sprinted away from them down the hall.

 

Will breezed through his chemistry class, taking a pop quiz and purposefully missing a few of the rudimentary questions to make it look
good. Inside he was laughing; he could teach this class himself. He skated through his trigonometry and government classes as well; all the information was stuff he’d learned years ago so the biggest challenge was to appear interested and not tip the teachers off that he knew more than they did.

Will saw Natalie again in his English class, where his ears perked up as he heard the teacher, Mrs. Nevins, a thin woman awash in freckles and good cheer, call Natalie “Miss Holand.” The face, and now the name—it was all too familiar. As the smiling teacher passed out copies of
Romeo and Juliet
, Will slouched in his chair and prayed not to be called on. He didn’t want to interact with Natalie like this. It worked. Mrs. Nevins assigned some other kid the role of Romeo and Juliet to Natalie. Will watched as Natalie and the kid performed a scene “with feeling” in front of the class. Natalie went first. As the color rose steadily in her cheeks, kids snickered.

“Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale!”

Will knew the play fairly well. He wasn’t a big fan or anything but since he could speed read with about ninety-five percent comprehension he’d devoured every book he could get his hands on. He watched and listened, just like he always did; always on the sidelines, never in the social game in school. The kid mumbled his way through the passage, embarrassed.

“Um . . . It was the lark, the herald of the morn, no nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks . . . uh . . . the severing clouds in yonder east: Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.”

A few chuckles rippled through the room. Will just stared at the floor. Finally, he couldn’t help himself and looked at Natalie. She was still blushing.

When lunch time rolled around Will found himself in line at the cafeteria and immediately felt queasy. It was amazing how, at nearly every school, the lunch ladies were so freakish and hideous-looking that they were almost as scary as demons. Not a single one had turned out to be a demon yet, but he still watched carefully as they slopped the gut-busting institutional food onto those big, ugly green plastic trays. You never knew when patterns would suddenly change and if he wasn’t careful he might just get poisoned. He chose today’s special, the “rockin’ pizza combo,” then sauntered into the lunch-room and found the most appropriate table for a New Kid, the one populated by the school’s loser/misfit club, including Roto Rudy, who scooted uncomfortably close to Will and gawked up at him like he was some kind of Greek god or something.

“Where you from?” asked Rudy.

“San Diego, Corpus Christi . . . a few other places.”

“Yeah, you have that look about you.”

“What kind of look would that be?” asked Will.

“Like someone who’s been around and seen some things.”

Rudy had no idea. Will had been around all right and seen things; the kinds of things that nightmares are made of. Will took a bite of his pizza and glanced out at the parking lot. The cheerleaders from that morning, including the one who’d caught his eye (her name was Sharon Mitchell, he had learned in chemistry class), were out working on the float again.

Rudy tapped his fingers on the table top. He wanted to know more about his new hero. “You must be some kind of army brat or something, right?”

“Something like that,” said Will.

He was growing increasingly nervous because of the scene unfolding in the parking lot, where one of the super-cool unbelievably-beautiful totally-wonderful-in-every-way cheerleaders was using an ancient ball peen hammer to pound away at something on the old Ford that held the float. Will had a bad feeling, and when he had
bad feelings, most often Hell came calling. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. A group of black-clad punks who thought they were wicked were walking across the parking lot toward a gray van tricked out with skulls and crossbones on the side. He sensed that these two disparate groups would collide; he could feel it in his gut. He just didn’t know how, or whether it would be his problem when it did. Rudy tapped Will’s arm to get his attention.

“Hey, are you a gamer? Because if you are, maybe we could hit up. I’m on level 3 of
Demon Hunter
. I’ve got over a hundred kills.” Rudy beamed as if he’d won the state wrestling title or something. “In the Village of Madness I never saw the Rat Man Demon coming, I kept looking at the sewer grates and he like comes swooping down off the roof.”

His attention still drawn outside, Will spoke matter-of-factly.

“He hated the sewer, wouldn’t go anywhere near it. He hid in the rafters, mostly. That’s where I nailed his ass. Caught him totally by surprise.”

Rudy gave Will a questioning look. Will cleared his throat.

“At least that’s what I figured. Who knows? It’s just a game.”

Rudy nodded. “Hey, again, thanks for saving my butt earlier. That was really cool of you. And nobody’s hardly ever cool to me. I don’t have a lot of friends in this school. Or any other school for that matter.” Rudy snort-laughed and then hiccuped until milk shot out his nose. “Sorry, I guess I took too many dork pills this morning,” he said, blushing.

Will dropped his pizza and stood up abruptly, extricating himself from the lunch table. Whatever was going down outside was going to happen soon. Then he saw it. The old float truck’s gas tank was leaking, thanks to the ditzy cheerleader’s ball peen hammer blows.

“I talk too much, I know. I’m sorry, I’ll shut up if you want,” said Rudy.

But Will was already out the door.

In the parking lot he moved as fast as he could without running; he didn’t want to tip the freaks off. They were handsome but at the same time scummy-looking leather Goths, punks who were smoking behind their skull van. One of them was attempting to light a cigarette with a plastic lighter. The scene went slow-motion in Will’s mind as he saw the rivulet of gasoline from the old truck’s tank snaking down toward the Goth puffers. Sharon Mitchell and her cheerleader friends were still going on about decorating the float and yammering about who they thought was cute and how they were going to have their hair styled for the fall dance. They were clueless.

The Goth alpha prick now sensed Will and as he opened his mouth in a lecherous smile Will saw the beast had, in place of teeth, rusty screws. Fury rose in Will like a storm and he felt his muscles tense and his jaw tighten as the violence struggled to be released. Will’s only chance to save the girl and her friends was to get the lighter from the monster and he took two powerful steps and went airborne, slamming into the Goth smoker punk . . . who barely yielded.
This sucker’s strong!
thought Will. The punk’s jaws were snapping, preventing Will from getting a good grip on him as he scrabbled with the lighter, creating sparks. Then came a flame and as he bit into Will’s arm with his rusty screw teeth he dropped to the ground and held the flame to the rivulet of gasoline. Will managed finally to snatch the lighter away but it was too late—the gas was aflame and snaking its way toward the truck. With time-bending speed Will threw himself forward, catching up to the streaking fire, overtaking it, and knocking into Sharon Mitchell, their bodies colliding full on. Will’s powerful anger immediately evaporated. He was totally relieved to feel it depart. After all, he
was
lying on top of the head cheerleader.

“What are you doing?” shouted Sharon, “Get off of me!”

Will shoved himself off and then rolled toward the flame river, snuffing it out just a couple of feet from the float. His jacket was
soaked in gas and burst into flames and as the girls screamed he shrugged it off his body and stomped it out. Sharon and the other cheerleaders stood gaping at the crazy New Kid standing in front of them with his shirt half ripped off, chest heaving. He looked like some sort of character from a comic book. But was he good or evil? They were still too shocked to notice the Goth punks laughing as they drove off, their van backfiring. Will, though, had no time to appreciate their stares as he shoved Sharon and her pack of cheerleaders away from the old truck. Another tendril of gas was aflame and shooting toward its target.

“Go! MOVE! NOW!”

They shrieked indignantly but did as he commanded.

“GET DOWN!”

They hit the dirt and then the old truck and the float erupted in a fireball. The girls were terrified. The smoke billowed. Will turned and faced Sharon, still holding the lighter in his clenched hand.

“They were. . . .”

Will gestured to where the Goth punks had been, but his voice trailed off—of course the creeps were long gone. He wondered if the girls had even seen them in the first place. Will knew he looked like some insane petty arsonist. He wanted to explain that the scummy Goths were infected souls, servants, but he knew the girls would never believe him. No one ever did. All Sharon and the other cheerleaders saw was some lunatic kid.
Great
, thought Will,
I’ve met two cute girls today and managed to alienate them both
. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d saved the butts of kids who’d ostracized him. And it most likely wouldn’t be the last.

What Will didn’t know was that secretly Sharon had been totally electrified by her brief physical contact with him. She thought his hair was the bomb, his eyes were rock and roll, and as he walked away from the scene, she checked out his butt and gave him a 10 on her cheek scale. But of course she couldn’t let on that she felt that
way. No, she had to make sure the New Kid thought she held him in callous disregard. So those were the signals she sent out.