6
Bullies
HUNTING GROUNDS: Favors areas where prey is contained, seeks moments of chaos to pounce.
VOICE: The song of the bully is frequently monosyllabic.
SPECIES TRAJECTORY: Skirting that thin line between future mall cops and future car salesmen with problematic home lives.
In the space of a morning—five minutes, really—life in Austin had gone from a drag to absolutely untenable. To quote the great Martin Luther King Jr. at some unrecorded point in his life probably: “Eff this. Eff absolutely everything; I want to go home now.”
It had started with Anderson High’s east end staircase getting repainted a brand-spanking-new layer of burnt orange, the sort of superficial change parents loved to see but that was a hassle for anyone who actually used the staircase every day. Because of this unnecessary spruce up, the waves of students were forced to navigate the fifteen-foot-wide space in a single file to avoid the wet paint. The whole thing was a tedious bottleneck process that managed to leave stray shoe prints across the shiny new steps and, in return, orange-painted footprints in nearly every hallway of Anderson High. Every day, more and more students grumbled about their ruined sneakers and orange-stained toes. (Incidentally, there were a lot of sandal wearers in the student body.)
“Can’t you move any faster?” sighed the exasperated guy right behind Norris. They were all so tightly packed that Norris could smell the cinnamon of his gum.
“Yes, we’re all choosing to be here because we could really use a hug right now,” Norris muttered.
He was already in a crabby mood, having just come out of a brutal chemistry quiz, courtesy of Goade’s sadistic streak. By his estimation, it would be another fifteen minutes before he made it to his locker in this body traffic, which meant he would probably be late to his next class.
Norris had just pushed his way another couple of steps when he heard the rumbling of what sounded like an incoming Zamboni, one floor above. Crap. The only people that seemed to revel in this mess were, of course, the walking bags of Frankenstein’s spare parts that made up the football team.
“Hut! Hut! Hut! If you can’t keep up, you’re going to get stuffed! Hut! Hut! Hut!”
Norris immediately recognized Hairy Armpits’s distinctive half whistle.
They found the whole thing endlessly entertaining and had taken to barreling down the paint-free pathway in football formation, chanting “Hut! Hut! Hut!” as they pushed smaller lifeforms forward, forcing them to either throw themselves down the remaining stairs or jump out of the way and right into the wet paint.
“You guys are such assholes!” a girl shrieked a few steps behind Norris, signaling that his own shoving was imminent. Up until now, he’d managed to stay on the edges of their pile-on, but apparently his time had finally come. He clutched his chemistry book and braced himself as he was violently pushed into the wall, receiving a mouthful of hair from the kid directly in front of him.
“Don’t mind them, folks,” Norris’s mouth suddenly said way too loudly. “They’re just foraging for berries and shelter. Fire’s going to be a real game changer.”
An audible series of chuckles erupted around Norris. Just a few steps below him, the herd came to a stop.
“Yo, what did you say, Canada?” Hairy Armpits asked, turning back to lock eyes on Norris while the nearby chatter dwindled down to an attentive audience.
“Um . . . fire,” Norris repeated in a Neanderthal drawl. He could have stopped there. Really, if he had any control over that stupid mouth hole of his, he would have.
“It cooks meat, provides warmth,” his mouth continued like it tended to do whenever it was put on notice. “It also did wonders for personal hygiene with the whole boiling water thing, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
A predictable “oooooh” was heard somewhere behind them. In Norris’s defense, it had really been a brutal quiz, and nothing could sour his mood faster than the thought of a C looming over his transcript.
The following five seconds happened both instantly and in slow motion:
Hairy Armpits blinked twice, sniffed once, and smirked.
The boy to Norris’s left instinctively stepped out of the way.
Norris felt a hand grab his T-shirt collar like it was a Kleenex, immediately followed by a firm shove backward.
Ow.
He was sent tumbling back, and in the process, his foot slipped on the paint that he could only hope had already dried for the day.
He lost his balance fully, slamming his elbow against the sharp edge of the step against which he fell.
He felt his head, neck, T-shirt, lower back, and backside wipe through a thick layer of the paint that, nope, was most definitely not dried yet.
Ow again.
Hairy Armpits turned back and resumed his hut-hut-hutting as if the entire interaction had only been the most minor of inconveniences. There was less laughter than Norris expected; just a sea of pitying glances as an acidic embarrassment immediately began to flood his stomach. Most students had sidestepped him and gone on their way. The worst were those who hung back to offer him a hand, faces dripping with pity.
Eff this. Eff absolutely everything; I want to go home now.
“Are you all right?” a concerned girl asked.
She was looking at Norris like he was a wounded puppy, which really wasn’t helping.
“I’m fine, really,” he managed, blinking furiously at the hand/pity claw extended to him. There absolutely wasn’t the prickle of tears behind Norris’s eyes. While his mouth sometimes slipped beyond his control, he could at least control his tear ducts.
“It’s just some paint,” he concluded before making his way down the stairs and to his locker as quickly as he could.
It occurred to Norris at that moment that Hairy Armpits probably would never give this moment a second thought, whereas, for Norris, it was already congealing into something rock-hard in his chest. It would definitely be one of those repressed high school wounds that only decades of living on a yacht made of nachos would someday come close to healing.
As Norris began the long walk to his sub-basement locker, he could feel the eyes on the back of his head and all over his back, noticing the paint streaks, chuckling at the dumbass who had either slipped or been pushed. It was in his hair too, Norris realized. He would probably need a close-cropped haircut to get rid of it all, since black hair was basically a sponge.
It was the Austin airport all over again; dozens of eyes trying to decipher him. He hated this school, this city, this state, his dad for being all-around shitty, his mom for being selfish and well-adjusted and probably laughing her ass off with her unending slew of new friends at her work at this very moment. The suckiness of living in Texas, of attending this giant shopping mall of a school along with its special sun-freckled breed of assholes: it was all there for him to hate as a visible streak of orange paint drying at the back of his head. The countdown in his mind was advancing at molasses pace. Spring break might as well be a decade from now. Norris realized that for the first time ever, there wasn’t a drop of sweat on him; his blood was running cold.
He quickly threw his backpack into his locker and began to rummage for a spare T-shirt before remembering that today was laundry day—meaning that the handful of spares he always had in the back were all currently moist and wrinkled in his hamper back home. Fantastic; the one time he needed one most. He slammed the locker door as loudly as he could, only to come face-to-face with Liam Hooper, who stood there watching him with that vacant stare.
“Dude!” Norris snapped. “You have got to stop doing that!”
He really was in no mood today. Liam watched him for a moment before quietly extending a single sheet of paper to Norris. He immediately recognized his slanted chicken scratch of hastily written chemistry notes; the orange-shaped footprint in its center was new.
“Thanks,” Norris grumbled taking the paper. “Sorry for snapping. Rough morning.”
“I saw,” Liam noted with a frown. “Your shirt is stained.”
“I’m aware, thank you. Anything else?”
“Your hair. Your hair is also stained.”
“Dude, are you messing with me or something?”
Liam’s face broke into the slow smile of a goddamn sloth.
“Maybe a little,” he finally said. “Patrick isn’t a bad guy. Before last year, he was skinnier than me. I think he’s just a little . . . sensitive about his new physicality.”
“Who?” Norris frowned.
“Patrick Lamarra. The, um, guy who just tossed you down a flight of stairs like last night’s lasagna after a glass of hot milk.”
“Oh . . . I call him Hairy Armpits.”
Liam raised both eyebrows, still smiling. “And you really can’t imagine why he might want to kick your ass just a little bit?”
Okay, fair point, but Norris certainly wasn’t about to concede it.
“Want to hang out later?” Liam continued.
“Like, with you?” Norris asked. This again? He’d given Liam the brush-off once before, and in his experience people didn’t come back for second helpings.
“Is that a crazy suggestion for some reason?”
“No. . . . Yes?” Norris said, awkwardly flailing a hand in the air. “I’ve just been pretty good at making . . . lasting first impressions on people so far in this country.”
“Yeah, that’s an understatement.”
“Dude!” Norris snapped.
“What?” Liam asked.
“Well . . . nothing. It just felt like an interjection was needed there,” Norris grumbled. “For my ego.”
Liam chuckled, leaning against the lockers to watch the hall like a monk studying a waterfall.
“You might be kind of a dick,” he said. “But I’m sure we all seem like dicks to you too.”
He threw a look at a passing row of students who snickered at Norris’s burnt orange’d backside.
“Everyone’s a dick by someone else’s standards.”
Norris closed his locker and turned to Liam. Just who was this weird teen monk?
“Anyway, we should be friends,” Liam concluded. “I think that ship might have already sailed for you and Patrick.”
“Jesus, you must really want to learn how to ice skate,” Norris said flatly.
“It’s not just the hockey,” Liam sighed, shifting his schoolbag from shoulder to shoulder. “You’re not making this easy, man.”
“I don’t know what this is, man.”
“It’s just, well . . . I’ve been watching you a little and, I kind of get it,” Liam said, making what amounted to an uncomfortable amount of eye contact. “Being so lonely all you can think to do with yourself is walk around to kill the clock.”
Something twinged in Norris’s chest; a needle prick somewhere between his heart and his lung. This was not a conversation he was entirely equipped for.
“But that’s not a good way to live,” Liam added. “Trust me.”
“That’s a weird thing to say,” Norris said, clearing his throat. “You’re being weird and intense, weirdly intense, and for all you know I could just be aiming for twenty thousand steps a day on my pedometer app, so you’re also being presumptuous about my state of mind or what have you.”
“My bad then.” Liam chuckled again without malice. “So what do you say? Want to take a break from that pedometer app lifestyle and hang sometime?”
Let the record show, Norris Kaplan said yes.