The New Kid (8 page)

Mookie didn’t die, but he broke both his legs and suffered compression ruptures in two disks in his lower back, an injury that confined him to a wheelchair for an indefinite period of time. Instead of funneling his anger, bitterness, and hatred toward Duncan, Mookie turned it all back on himself, channeling it inward. It was his fault, the voice told him, and the only path toward redemption was through servitude. He must serve
him
. And Mookie made up his mind that he would. He would shave the hair from his body. He’d always been into tattooing and now he threw himself into the art with a vengeance. His numb legs weren’t useless, they were a canvas and he would spend his days alone in his basement as the Michelangelo of tattoo artists, emblazoning himself with the perfect pagan symbols to prove his worthiness. He would be a soldier in the New Army, the Army of Rage, loyal only to the Dark One.

J
ust as she had last year as a sophomore, Sharon Mitchell led the cheers at the lunchtime pep rally to help drum up support for this year’s gridiron campaign. The Harrisburg Mustangs had been perennial conference doormats but all that had changed last year. They started out 0-3 but had a miraculous turnaround, finishing 9-3 and tying for the conference title. This year they were 7-0 and were steamrolling opponents in a punishing fashion. Will sat in the bleachers not far from Natalie. Rudy was right by his side.

“She’s looking at you, man,” said Rudy, elbowing Will and indicating Sharon.

“She’s looking at everybody,” said Will.

“Hey, get a clue, she’s definitely checking you out. Gawd, I can’t believe how lucky you are! You know what I’d give to have her look at me just one lousy time?”

“You’re telling me you’ve been going to school with her for years and she’s never ever looked at you?”

“No, she did look once,” said Rudy.

“Well, there you go.”

“I don’t think it counts. She only looked at me because I was throwing up on one of her friends.”

“Thanks for sharing,” said Will.

“Man, she is just nailing you with her eyes, dude!” quipped Rudy.

Sharon Mitchell
was
staring at Will as she did her routine. She had stunningly beautiful eyes but Will didn’t need the distraction. Instead of staring back at Sharon, Will scanned the entire gym. All the kids looked healthy and vibrant, the gym brimming with excitement and color. The hardwood floors gleamed and the glass back-boards shined. Everything was squeaky clean. It was like an advertisement for chewing gum or some soda drink; this was the ideal, this was Americana at its best. How could there be anything evil in the midst of these wholesome young teens? In situations like this sometimes Will had to pinch himself to break the spell. He knew that even when things looked wonderful and pristine on the surface, underneath there would be pain and suffering, young minds full of malice. As he scanned the gym he was looking for
them
but he saw only regular normal teenagers and a smattering of adults. The creatures he sought knew full well how to hide in plain sight, though, and strike when you least expected it. He had a feeling there was at least one of
them
in the gym. But who was it? He kept looking at the eyes, always the eyes.

“Stand up, it’s time to shout, come on fans, yell it out! Say it proud, Go Mustangs, Go Mustangs, Go Mustangs!”

Sharon and her cohorts were in fine form, working the crowd up, getting everyone into the spirit, though truth be told, most of the boys in the stands were not thinking about the upcoming football season but praying for some miracle wardrobe malfunction. Natalie’s eyes ping-ponged back and forth between Sharon and Will, noticing how Sharon was openly locked in on Will as she bounced and shook her green and gold pom-poms in a syncopated rhythm. Then Sharon leapt forward and as she shook her hips she did a solo yell.

“Salt makes you thirsty, pepper makes you sneeze, but when it comes to football we make you buckle at the knees! Go Mustangs!”

She high-kicked her way closer to Will and then tossed off her pom-poms, backed up, and with a running start executed a magnificent handspring front flip, landing breathless and flushed right in front of Will. The spectacular gymnastics move brought the most ardent fans in the “Pony Power section” to their feet, screeching. But Duncan wasn’t cheering. His eyes were dark and he stared at Will and Sharon as though they were terrorists. If looks could kill.

Moments later in the hallway Will walked along with Rudy.

“I hear Coach Kellog’s looking for a new running back. What about you? Can you run?” asked Rudy as he joked around and handed off an apple into Will’s stomach like a football. Will just kept walking.

“Well then, maybe you can throw. Hit me, I’m going long!”

Will smiled and waited a few beats, took a bite of the apple, then tossed it down the hall.

Rudy made a juggling, overly dramatic catch. “He scores!”

“Trust me, the jerk’s
not
going to score.”

Will heard the familiar voice and turned around to see Duncan right in his face. His breath smelled acrid and his eyes were bloodshot.

“Keep your creepy eyes off my girlfriend,” he snarled.

Will didn’t want to deal with this right now, but he was also sick of guys like Duncan. Every school had way too many of them and they needed to be put in their place. He knew he should keep his mouth shut but somehow he just couldn’t. He figured Duncan couldn’t be one of
them
because that would just be too easy. Still,
He
often went for the cruelest alpha males, luring them with power and glory, so anything was possible.

Will baited Duncan even before he knew he was doing it. “Your girlfriend was in the gym? Gee, somebody must have left the barn door open.”

Rudy howled like that was the funniest thing said in the history of mankind and even Duncan’s acolytes couldn’t help but burp out some muffled chuckles.

“I’m
talking
about Sharon Mitchell, the head cheerleader. The most beautiful and bootylicious girl in the whole school, dipwad. I saw you gawking at her. Knock it off, she’s mine.”

“Funny, I didn’t see your name tag on her,” said Will.

Duncan’s fuse had been lit a long time ago—probably at birth, thought Will—and this set him off. He grabbed Will by the collar and slammed him into a locker, hard. Will closed his eyes and breathed, thinking of the surface of a pond, the skin of the water so calm it was like glass. The trick worked and he remained relaxed and unfazed. Duncan’s nostrils flared like a stallion and he yelled in Will’s face.

“She’s wearing my pin! We’re going steady!”

“Not anymore.”

Sharon’s voice rang out soft and sweet. Rudy thought it sounded like liquid candy and he let out a low whistle as Sharon removed Duncan’s two-year football pin and handed it to him. Farther down the hallway Natalie was watching Sharon put on her little show for Will’s benefit. Natalie told herself she didn’t care and stalked off, but only got ten feet before turning back around and taking it all in. The truth was she did care, and she watched in horror as Sharon continued with the public dump.

“Sorry to do this now, Dunky, in front of all these people. Wait a minute, no, I’m not, because this definitely makes it officially official.”

Smiling politely and then tossing a come-on look at Will, Sharon walked off with the other cheerleaders laughing and trailing behind her, leaving Duncan floundering in a pool of humiliation. If he was angry before, he was seriously, dementedly, borderline-brain-exploding furious now and he sucker-punched Will, who was momentarily dazed, stunned just enough so that when Todd and another of Duncan’s
muscular bootlickers shoulder-jammed him against the lockers it took him at least two seconds to react with a couple moves of his own, spinning and kicking. The melee was on and Rudy jumped up and down.

“Kick their butts, Will!”

Will had had it with these punks and was just about to go into time-bending mode when a stentorian voice rang through the hallway: “That’s enough!”

It was Coach Kellog, a towering bulky man who you could tell was once in fantastic shape but had hoovered way too many Whoppers since and had gone mostly to flab, straining his Sansabelt slacks. Still, on the football field and in the hallways he was the law, and the skirmish subsided as swiftly as it had begun.

“So, you like to hit, huh?” he asked Will.

“Not especially. But if somebody hits me, I hit back.”

Will noticed the coach wore a Patek Philippe Calatrava watch that ran around twenty grand. He made it a point to be able to spot expensive jewelry because sometimes it tipped him off. Demons were often too proud and too stupid to hide the fact that they were suckers for expensive jewelry. But then, so were a lot of so-called normal people.

Coach Kellog’s eyes narrowed. He grabbed Will’s arm by the bicep and was pleasantly surprised at how strong the kid was.

“Nice attitude. Let’s see you bring it to the field after school. You got a problem with that, Duncan?”

The coach turned to Duncan and his boys. Duncan hung his head.

“No, Coach,” he said, and then stomped off.

“Well then, it’s all settled, we’ll see you after school, New Kid.”

Will watched Coach Kellog cut a swath as he swaggered down the hallway.

Rudy sidled up next to Will and grinned. “Looks like somebody’s trying out for the team after all.”

Then he went into his goofy primate dance and in a singsong voice talked about the one girl in school that he’d thought about every single day ever since third grade.

“Sharon Mitchell. Oh, man, I can’t stand it!
Sharon Mitchell!
”

 

The rest of the school day passed without incident and as he trudged toward the football field after the final bell rang Will wished he’d never antagonized Duncan. He should have just backed down and hidden behind a cloak of bogus cowardice, something he’d done many times before in order to get the job done. But not this time, this time he’d put himself out there in the thick of it and he wondered if he’d made a mistake. But then he answered his own question. Of course he was doing the right thing. Just how
bad
were these bad boys? He had to find out. It wasn’t the first time finding out the truth would mean enduring some pain.

Rudy, who was making it a habit of being ubiquitous, appeared beside Will crunching a bag of chips. “’Sup?”

“Not much. I’m just going out to get my head pounded by a bunch of pubescent gorillas.”

“You don’t know how lucky you are, having a chance to make the team.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” said Will.

Rudy shook his head back and forth in disagreement. “Spoken like someone who’s never had a problem being on a team, or being popular, or being a chick magnet. Me, I’m the opposite. I’ve never been on a team in my life. I’m an only kid, I don’t even have brothers or sisters.”

“I’m an only child, too,” said Will.

That made Rudy feel a little better, but he still ached over the fact that no matter how hard he tried, he just never quite felt like he
belonged
anywhere.

They reached the field and Will watched as Duncan and the other football players jogged onto the new turf and began stretching.
Will returned his attention to Rudy. He wasn’t sure exactly why, but he wanted little Rudy to be happy.

“Every school I’ve been to has tons of clubs you can join if you want to. How about the chess club or something?”

“You figure just because I look like a pencil-necked geek I’m a brainiac nerd, right? Well, I suck at chess. I’m also no good in science, I hate math, and I’m totally hopeless at every sport known to man, even darts.”

“You must be good at something,” said Will.

“Well, I’m pretty darned good at making Sharon Mitchell look like she wants to toss her cookies every time she lays eyes on me.” Rudy sighed. “The stone cold truth is I’m pretty much terrible at everything except eating, sleeping, and wishing I was someone else.”

“That’s a sucky way to think.”

“How would you think if you’d never been any good at anything? I tried Cub Scouts but I couldn’t even earn the penmanship badge. Believe me, I’ve thought about this a lot and I finally came to a conclusion.”

Will glanced out at the field and saw Coach Kellog motioning for him to join them. “I gotta go. What’s your conclusion?” he asked Rudy.

“That I’m a one-hundred-percent certified, official-with-a-capital ‘L’ Loser!”

Will couldn’t help but offer Rudy a smile and a pat on the shoulder. “You’re not a loser, you’re my friend. And you’ll find your place. Everyone does sooner or later.”

Rudy stood in shock. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had referred to him as a “friend,” and now he was friends with the coolest guy in school! He danced around in a circle and watched as Will jogged over to Coach Kellog, who pointed to the locker room.

A few minutes later Will was suited up in pads and cleats and on the field thinking,
Okay, guys, go ahead and lay down the gauntlet
. The other players all looked at him and their eyes said they wanted to
punish him, make him pay for thinking he could just walk onto their turf and take over. They did wind sprints and Will not only kept up with the group but pulled ahead, just a little, stopping himself before the extent of his abilities became obvious. Then came the jumping jacks, the squats, the pushups, all in the hot sun, all with full pads on, under the watchful eyes of Coach Kellog, who paced back and forth flipping a football and had his gaze locked in on Will as though he was expecting something. Will wasn’t even particularly winded or anything but he had to play the part and he pretended to struggle. He knew he could wax these suckers anytime he wanted but that would be stupid. He wouldn’t find out anything that way. He had to bide his time.

“Okay gimme two more sets of twenties!” yelled Kellog as the players groaned and did more wind sprints to the twenty-yard line and back. Coach cocked his arm and tried to blindside Will with the football but Will instinctively spun quick as a cat and caught it.