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“GIMME MORE FOOOOOOOOD!” she bellowed.
 

She’d licked every tray clean.
 
Her blonde hair hung in her face in clotted clumps of mashed potatoes, spaghetti sauce, ice cream, gravy and something that resembled apple sauce.
 

The backside of her pants was splitting.
 
I made her leap up on her feet and when she did, the button on her pants sprang free and flew across the room, hitting one guy in the eye.
 
He squealed in pain, which caught the attention of the cafeteria militia, who had been over in the corner of the room paying no attention to any of this.
 
Now, they had no choice.
 
Now, Amy was standing triumphantly and grotesquely on the table.

And then, seeing more food across from her, she leaped to the next table, cracking down so hard on top of it that the trays popped up in the air.
 
She looked down at the feast in front of her and her mouth spread into an unnaturally wide smile.
 
Saliva spooled from the corners of her mouth and her eyes got larger.

“Amy Rogers, you get down from that table!”
 

It was Mrs. Prix, the militia’s chief commando, and she was coming straight at Amy, who ignored her.
 

“GIMME THAT STALE TARTLET!” Amy said to one of the girls rearing away from her.
 
“GIMME THAT PIECE OF CRAP PIZZA!
 
GIMME THAT SHIT SOY BURGER WITH THE GUMMY MUSTARD ON IT!
 
GIMME THAT HOT DOG THAT’S BEEN BOILING IN THE SAME WATER FOR THREE WEEKS!
 
GIMME ALL OF IT BECAUSE AMY’S COME TO EEEEEAAAATTTT!”

She bounced down on her knees and as she chowed her way forward, you could see bits of food rising above her head as if it was confetti.
 
Mrs. Prix tried to grab her, but Amy shoved out an arm and hit Prix square in the chest.
 
She spun back to the next table, where the back of her head dipped into the glop on someone else’s tray.

“I need enforcement!” she called.

But Amy was growing larger.
 
She was filling up like a water balloon.
 
Her clothes started to tear in earnest.
 
I looked over at Alex and Jennifer, saw their repulsion, and then I looked over at the crowd.
 
I saw several phones held high in the air as people taped the spectacle.
 
I saw people texting, likely Tweeting.
 
And I saw genuine concern—and unabashed glee.
 
If Ginny Gibson was a Web celeb for her saucy spanking video, Amy’s meat-fueled rampage was going to trump it tenfold.

And then Amy stopped.
 

She rolled back on her feet and clutched her belly.
 
The militia was on her and trying to pull her down, but they stopped when they heard the roiling inside Amy’s gut.
 

By my count, she’d eaten forty-seven lunches and desserts, and all of it was catching up with her.
 
She swatted at her forehead with the back of her hand and scraped off the layer of food that clung there.
 
She broke out into a sweat.
 
Her mouth was open and working, taking in deep breaths and expelling all of the boiling rottenness that was inside of her.
 
She looked down at one of the sloppy joe’s on someone’s tray and stuffed it grandly in her mouth.
 

Amy chewed and chewed, but when she swallowed, that’s all it took.

I looked at Alex and Jennifer and willed them to get out of the room.
 
I looked for Hastings, Joe Whitehill, Rob Maxwell and Alan Stewart, and made them come closer.
 
I looked at Amy as she pushed herself to her feet and let out one mother of a belch.
 
Her hands went back to her belly and I lowered her voice so that it sounded as if she was so full, the food had covered vocal chords.
 
“I don’t feel good,” she said thickly.
 
“I think I ate too much.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Amy,” Mrs. Prix said.
 
“Just get down here.
 
What’s the matter with you?
 
You’re acting like an animal.”

Amy looked at her and smiled her smeary smile.
 
She looked drunk on the food she’d eaten.
 
She smelled of grease and looked as if she’d been on the losing end of an epic food fight.
 
She burped again, but this time a little food came up with it and dribbled down her chin.
 
She stared dumbly down at it and then her cheeks wheezed out.
 
She looked at those on either side of her with glossy eyes that suggested she didn’t understand what was happening.
 

And then Amy blew.

Ropes of puke expelled from her in a funneled rush that was so powerful, it was as if a hydrant was going off.
 
She hit Prix square in the face, which brought the old broad down.
 
She turned her head and covered those close to her, causing a melee of disgust as people tried to rush out of the room while Amy blanketed it with every ounce of food she’d gorged upon.
 

But the floor was slick with Amy’s undigested gruel.
 
People fell and slipped and skidded in their escape.
 
They fell down and rolled in it. In an effort to push themselves up, they had no choice but to put their hands in it, but when they did, they only slipped and fell back in it again.
 
I turned Amy’s head so she was facing Hastings, Whitehill, Stewart and Maxwell, and watched them all get hosed down by the unfathomable grossness that was still blowing out of Amy’s mouth.

When it was over, I looked at the girl partly responsible for murdering my parents and decided that this wasn’t enough.
 
This wasn’t even close.
 
From this day forward, her prison would be her own body.
 
She’d gain ten pounds each week for the rest of her life, however long that might be.
 

Doctors wouldn’t know what to do with her.
 
She’d go on micro-diets but still the pounds would pile on, making her body morph and bloat.
 
She’d have her stomach stapled and she’d rupture those staples.
 
Eventually, she’d be bed-ridden.
 
Soon, she’d be on Jerry Springer, her fat ass hauled out of her house by a tottering, front-loading tractor.
 
Diapers wouldn’t fit her.
 
She’d sit in her own waste and complain about how stinging the pain was.
 

And then?

Then I didn’t care what happened to her.

chapter twenty-seven

Later that night, I sat at my computer and wrote down the four names left on my list:
 
Joe Whitehill, Alan Stewart, Rob Maxwell and Mike Hastings.
 

I looked at the screen and considered all of them, their strengths, their weaknesses, what they had coming to them.
 
I wanted this over by Saturday, when Jennifer and Alex came over for pizza and a movie, but in order to do be done by then, I needed to get organized and focused now.

Saturday was only two days away.

What I knew is that I no longer could wait for a situation to arise before I acted upon it.
 
I needed to be smarter than that.
 
I needed to be proactive and have a plan for the remaining four, implement it and move on.
 
So far, I’d been lucky in those situations that allowed me to be spontaneous.

But luck doesn’t last.

I looked at Whitehill’s name and dipped back into the memory of that night when my parents died.
 
I remembered looking out my bedroom window and seeing him with a can in his hand.
 
The can had a handle on it.
 
Obviously, he was the one who poured the gasoline around the trailer, which was exactly something he’d do.
 

Above all, Joe Whitehill was known as one of the worst bad asses in school, even more so than Hastings and Tyler.
 
You just didn’t touch him.
 
If you did, if you even looked at him the wrong way, he’d beat your ass.
 
And so, because of his reputation, his popularity was born out of fear.
 
People smiled and laughed their toleration at him.
 
Even the teachers were nervous around him because they likely sensed what I sensed—he was a sociopath.
 
There was something wrong with him and it was medical.

He was worse than every bully I knew put together.
 
Like me, he came from nothing, but unlike me, he long ago had used his rage against his situation to his benefit.
 
He didn’t take anyone’s shit.
 
Period.
 
And if you gave him any, be prepared to go down for it.

What was worse is that Joe, like me, wasn’t good looking in a conventional sense.
 
He was short, stocky, had the face of a boxer, the neglected teeth of someone who also had known poverty.
 
He looked like trouble because he was trouble.
 
What he also had was an undeniable presence that heightened his otherwise off-putting, street-tough looks.
 
He was divisive.
 
Some girls flocked to him, other girls stayed away from him.
 
He was only seventeen, but already he had knocked up two girls, each of whom had abortions, probably because when they told their parents who the father was, that was the end of that.

As for Rob Maxwell, who I also grew up with, he was a known instigator.
 
He drew people into fights.
 
He thrived on crippling those weaker than him.
 
I remember one time, years ago in middle school, when it was raining and we had to wait inside the pit before we could go to our homerooms.
 
Maxwell was sitting with the rest of the jocks, who came in and surrounded me in a circle when I was already seated there alone.

In spite of the fact that our gym teacher, Mr. Sewell, was literally ten feet away from us, his back to the pit’s door, Maxwell got the guys together and urged them to spit on me.

He was vocal about it, so vocal that Sewell must have heard it.
 
And they followed suit, hocking up whatever was inside them and letting me have it while Sewell did nothing to stop it.
 
I took it in the face, in the hair, on my clothes—everywhere.
 
I shouted at them to stop, I looked up at Sewell and asked him to make them stop, but he behaved as if he didn’t hear me.
 
I wasn’t one of his jocks.
 
I sucked at sports.
 
I was the person he wanted nothing to do with.
 
And so, as far as everyone was concerned, I deserved what I got.

I thought about Mr. Sewell for a moment and thought that he should pay for that.
 
Later, but I’d get him.

Alan Stewart was the odd member in the group.
 
I still didn’t understand why he showed up that night because he wasn’t known to be a full-on bully like the rest of them.
 
He was no angel by any means—we’d had our moments over the years, usually with him hurling some sort of insult my way—but he still wasn’t as cruel as the rest of them.
 
And yet, he joined Hastings, Gibson, Tyler and Maxwell in striking a match and setting flame to the gas Whitehill poured while the rest of them made certain they weren’t being watched.

And what about Hastings?
 
Our confrontation in the woods happened before he joined the group and still he chose to be part of the effort to murder me and my family.
 
Was he so paralyzed by his fear of me that the only way he saw out was to get rid of me?
 
It made sense.
 
But he was going to regret it.

 
But how?
 
I agreed with creepy Jim that no one should die—it’s not who I was—although I’m pretty sure that’s the path on which I set Amy Rogers given the sheer amount of weight she was going to gain.
 

I thought about her for a moment and realized that I went too far.
 
I felt strongly that everyone involved should be imprisoned somehow, but not necessarily in the literal sense.
 
Amy could become enormously fat, but that didn’t mean I had to kill her.
 
Weighing, say, four hundred pounds for the rest of her life without ever finding love and losing all her friends would lead to a long, unhappy life that would feel like she’d been imprisoned.
 
That’s what she deserved for helping to kill my parents, not death.

I was preparing to tap into the amulet and change my strategy for her when a knock came at the front door.
 
I looked at the time, saw that it was past eight, and then looked through the door to see who was there.

But nobody was there.

I got up from my desk and went into the living room, where I turned around and scanned the area outside the apartment complex.
 
Nothing was out of the ordinary, but the knock came again, aggressively this time, in spite of the fact that no one was outside the door.

Was somebody throwing something against the door?
 
Rocks?

I could feel the amulet heating up against my chest, which it never did on its own.
 
It worried me.

I went to the door and put my hand on the handle.
 
I listened, but all I could hear was my pounding heart and nothing else.
 
I looked through the door and still saw nothing.
 
And then, just beyond the door, I heard what sounded like a “whoosh!”
 
The lights flickered inside the apartment and then they went out, leaving the room to find itself in the waning light of dusk.

I wasn’t sure what has happening.
 
I stepped away from the door and prepared to transport myself to someplace safe if anything happened when I opened it.
 
I pressed my back against the wall that led from the living room to the kitchen.
 
And then I noticed beneath the door a flickering, orange light that could be only one thing.
 

Somehow, somebody had set fire to my apartment.
 

With a wave of my hand, I opened the door, ready to put out the flames.
 
But when I did, no one could have prepared me for what was waiting outside.

It was my parents.

They were on fire.

And they were walking into my apartment and coming straight toward me.