Character, Driven Read online

  Nicky came toward me as the bulk of the crowd dissolved. “You did a great job blocking his fists with your chin. I’m glad you finally decided to back off and give him a chance to rest. I was getting tired just watching the two of you.”

  He stared straight into my eyes as he said that, and punctuated the last sentence with a small nod. Despite the joke, his face remained serious. I got the message. He would have stepped in if he felt I needed to be rescued from the risk of serious injury.

  “Thanks for letting me take a beating,” I said. “It would have been totally gay if you saved me.” I flinched as I heard myself say that. I must have had all my good sense punched out of me.

  Nicky put a hand on my shoulder. “You only get to make that joke once. And only because the way you fight was pretty close to the most stereotypical, derogatory meaning of that word. Really, it was painful to watch you flail your arms out there. You give ‘straight’ a bad name. Do I have to teach you everything?”

  “Just the manly stuff,” I said. “I definitely need guidance in that area.”

  “Not all of it,” he said, flicking his gaze in Jillian’s direction. “You seem to be on the right track.”

  “Well done, Rocky,” Butch said, coming up to us and punctuating her sentence with a punch.

  “Ouch!” I rubbed my shoulder. If I could hit like her, the fight would have lasted about five seconds.

  Robert joined us, too. “Milk shakes,” he said. “That’s what the doctor ordered.”

  “Your treat?” I asked.

  “Never,” he said.

  “Just checking,” I said. “Let us wash up first. Come on, Jimby, I have an extra shirt in my gym locker.”

  Jimby and I, Spartans through and through, went to the locker room to wash off the worst of the blood and vomit. Then I hobbled with my friends toward the diner, refighting the battle a dozen times in my mind.

  Unlike my usual brain trick of imagining disastrous outcomes for any physical activity or encounter, this time I landed a couple awesome blows. Which wasn’t all that far from reality.

  After

  I DIDN’T GO in through the front door when I got home. I wanted to delay dealing with my parents’ reactions for as long as possible. I guess I also had a vague hope that another hour or two of healing time would make me look less like someone who’d tried to head-butt a meat grinder. I slipped in the back and grabbed a pack of peas from the freezer, before going to the patio.

  The cold felt good against my cheek. I sat there, letting myself get numbed, until Jimby plopped down on the seat opposite me at the picnic table. “You’re a good friend, Cliff.”

  “Right back at you.” I was still pretty exhausted from the fight. I think I might have dozed off before Jimby came by. I didn’t really remember hearing him walk over. “I know I can count on you. And you can count on me—anytime, anywhere.”

  He flashed me a grin. “Don’t get mushy.”

  “I won’t.” I shook the bag of thawing peas. “But I think these are.”

  “Want to wrestle?” he asked. “I’ve got some new moves.”

  “I’m a little sore,” I said. “How about we just throw the baseball?”

  “Super! I’ll get my glove.” He ran off to his house.

  I looked down at his paper, which he’d been carrying since he retrieved it from the battleground. He’d showed it to me at the diner, but I couldn’t keep from reading the comments over and over. In green pen, next to the grade, his teacher had written, “Very good work. You have exhibited a great deal of creativity.”

  Hot damn. Good for him. And good for me, I guess. I’d given him a shove in the right direction. But he’d done all the work himself. I was amused to notice he’d even changed “Bovis Bunt” to “Bovis Burnt.” It looked like I wasn’t the only one who could screw around with characters’ names.

  Jimby had been mainstreamed as much as possible in school. But I knew there were teachers who worked with students like him. Kids who needed a little extra help, but weren’t really in bad shape. I wondered how hard it was to do that. I didn’t even know if it took extra years of college beside what you needed for a regular teacher’s degree. I could look that up later. Right now, it was just an idle thought. I didn’t even know whether I could get a college degree.

  When Jimby got back, I grabbed my glove from under the table and hoisted my battle-bruised body off the bench. “You really think I’d be a good teacher?”

  “You already are,” he said.

  “Thanks.” I held my arms wide out. “I’d be a pretty good flying, samurai-sword-swinging zombie hunter, too.”

  “Watch out,” he said, tossing the ball to me. “You say too much made-up stuff like that, people will think you’re stupid.”

  “Good point.”

  “But if you write a story about that,” he said, “people will see that you’re smart.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  We tossed the ball for a while. But I was too beat to play for long. So Jimby headed home, and I got back to icing my face and reliving the glory.

  There was no way I could hide the damage from my parents. When I went to the kitchen for dinner, Dad, who was sitting by himself at the table, took one look at me and said, “Lose a fight?”

  “No. Won it.”

  “So there’s a bigger loser out there? I guess anything is possible.”

  I didn’t bother answering that, since it wasn’t really a question, and I’d had enough battles with bullies for one day.

  Mom let out her usual bruise-reaction gasp when she walked into the kitchen. “You’re hurt!”

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “Were you fighting?” she asked. “You don’t get that banged up just from a fall.”

  Dilemma.

  I could tell her I was protecting Jimby. She’d appreciate that. But Dad would shower me with hatred and disdain for taking a beating to protect someone he felt was subhuman. And he would toss that hatred on top of the pile he already had for Jimby. I didn’t want that.

  “I stood up to a bully. He got in trouble. I didn’t.”

  “He couldn’t have been much of a bully, if you beat him,” Dad said.

  I ignored him. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I told Mom. “Nothing’s broken. I’m not in trouble. And I have no plans to do it again.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. Though she did tack on a reminder that, “Violence never solved anything,” before dropping the subject. Maybe she was right, but it sure felt good when I landed a punch.

  I looked at the baked chicken, broccoli, and rice on my plate. I wasn’t hungry. But if I picked at my food, Mom would think I was sick. So I forced down enough of it to keep her from rushing me to the emergency room or sending me off to bed.

  After dinner, I went online and looked up some stuff about different types of teaching. There was special ed, of course. I wasn’t sure if that’s exactly what I had in mind. There was also something called “intervention,” where you help kids who’ve fallen behind. But if I wanted to work with kids like Jimby, maybe that didn’t even require a specialty. It would be easy enough to find out more. I had plenty of teachers I could ask.

  While my mom didn’t want me to fight, and my dad didn’t think I could fight, I found out the next day in school that, as far as my classmates were concerned, there was a bit of glory in being a bully thumper.

  “Good job,” Christopher said when I walked past him. He offered me a fist bump.

  I was briefly puzzled, but as I bumped fists with Christopher, Brad said, “You’re a tough dude.”

  “Thanks.”

  I received two more fist bumps and three high fives on my way over to my friends, and a kiss on my bruised cheek from Jillian when she joined us. Throughout the morning, Jimby and I both got a lot of praise for our part in ridding the school of Clovis. As did Jillian, for coming up with the plot.

  It seemed that everybody except the administration knew the real story. Maybe they did, too. Any
one who saw me could tell I’d been in a fight. Normally, teachers are supposed to try to find out what happened if they notice a bruise, but everyone gave me a free pass.

  It wouldn’t surprise me if the principal was glad to get Clovis out of the school, and out of his office. But I couldn’t help thinking about what would happen when Clovis returned. I wasn’t afraid of a rematch, so long as it was a fair fight. That was the problem. I didn’t trust him to fight fairly. Especially now that he knew I wasn’t all that easy an opponent.

  * * *

  IN ART, I moved my easel across from Jillian. “Okay?” I asked.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  I stepped behind her, leaned my chin on her shoulder, and studied her painting. I remember how she’d sketched in, and then rubbed out, an image of a train on her first canvas. That had to have been connected with the death of her father. She’d backed off from painting it. I guess the memory was too painful. But she’d added something new that I’m sure was even more brutally painful an experience.

  I pointed at the beginning strokes of what was obviously a baby. “It’s not easy, is it?”

  She shook her head. I felt her shoulder stiffen, as if she wanted me to move away, or at least drop the subject.

  “Sorry. I’ll shut up,” I said, stepping back.

  “No. It’s okay.” She put down her brush and turned to face me. “It’s hard, but I need to do it. I have to accept the past. I guess this is my therapy.”

  “You’d started to paint some other things from the past,” I said. “Right?”

  “Yeah. Some of them were happy memories. Those were easier to do. My stepfather had gotten interested in Buddhism. At least, until he found out most practitioners were against hunting and fishing. He loved going to Lake Hartwell for bass. But Mom got him a small Buddha statue one year for Christmas. That was a happy memory.”

  “A Christmas Buddha?” I asked. I could appreciate the irony of that.

  “Yeah. He laughed about it.”

  “Sounds like he was an awesome guy.” I thought about her first painting. “Did he give you gloves?”

  Jillian smiled. “Me and Mom. Matching gloves. Three years in a row. I don’t think he enjoyed shopping.”

  “I can see why you painted them,” I said.

  “I saw a therapist for a while after Johnny died. She’s the one who got me to start painting. But I wasn’t ready for the most painful memories. I couldn’t face the train,” she said. “I didn’t have any kind of anchor. Nothing to hold on to. Mom tries to be there for me, but she’s hurting worse than I am. And her pills kind of make her sleepy a lot of the time.”

  “I’m glad art helps you,” I said.

  “Art, and someone who understands,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I just put my arms around her.

  When I went back to my canvas, with the universe and the twin suns, I stared at it for a while and thought about some of my recent wounds. Would it help to paint them? I grabbed a piece of paper and sketched a slice of strawberry pie forming out of the smoke rising from a smoldering joint. I tried to picture how it would look beneath the twin suns. It didn’t feel right. I crumpled the paper and tossed it into the trash can. I sketched a pair of concert tickets. I crumpled that sheet. I started to sketch a blue snake slithering out a window. I stopped. The pain of those experiences seemed dull and unimportant. I’d survived a fight, defeated a bully, and found a girl I could talk with. Her tragedies, which I’d learned of in one searing, condensed moment of revelation, were far harsher than the juvenile traumas I’ve now spent thousands of words recounting.

  But I couldn’t stop worrying about my next encounter with Clovis. Suspension for fighting was only a week. He’d be back. I hated the idea of looking over my shoulder for the rest of the school year. And I hated the idea that Clovis would be the mechanism Fate chose to destroy the happiness I’d just found by putting me in the hospital, or in a coma.

  As I carried my lunch across the cafeteria, I imagined Clovis tackling me while my hands were full, sending me flying across the floor.

  “You look distracted,” Butch said when I sat down. “Is all the fame going to your head?”

  “This isn’t the end of it,” I said.

  “You’re not alone,” Jillian said. “We’ve got your back.”

  Robert laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about that rematch if I were you.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Have you noticed anything missing?” Butch asked.

  “Not really.”

  She pointed across the cafeteria, to the empty table where the Thug Nuts usually sat. I realized I hadn’t seen any of them in school today. “What happened to them?”

  “They were stupid enough to make a video when they were booby-trapping the woodpile,” Butch said. “It shows them talking about how they’re going to crush Mr. Xander. The police arrested all of them last night.”

  “The police? Wait. I know the Thug Nuts are stupid. But they aren’t stupid enough to post a video where other people could see it,” I said.

  Robert grinned. “No. But they were stupid enough to post it where someone who’s smart enough could get his hands on it and anonymously pass it along to the right people.”

  “Brilliant,” I said.

  “I know,” Robert said.

  For once, Butch didn’t argue with him.

  Winding Down

  WE STILL HAD two weeks of school left, but at the same time things were winding down academically, they were heating up romantically. Wednesday was Senior Cut Day. I hadn’t made any sort of plans. Butch was against what she called “organized group anarchy.” Robert was against easily spotted acts of rebellion. I was neutral. But when I got to Calculus, Jillian said, “Meet me by the side door of the Art House, third period.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  Various parts of my body tingled at the mention of any surprise from Jillian. After I’d walked her home from school yesterday, and we were saying good-bye on her front porch, she’d surprised me with a very deep, wet kiss, which I’d eagerly reciprocated.

  When I met her at the Art House, after surviving two periods of intense fantasies, she was holding a shopping bag.

  “Here, muscles,” she said, handing it to me. “You carry it.”

  I took the bag from her. Whatever was in there was about as heavy as a half-dozen softballs. “What is it?”

  “Picnic,” she said.

  What a magic word.

  She headed up the street. When we reached the light, she turned toward the Green. I realized she didn’t really know her way around town.

  “Wait. I have a better idea,” I said. I pointed the other way, past the Crab Locker. “Have you been to the state park?”

  “Not yet. Is it nice?”

  “It’s way beyond nice. I think it’s my favorite place around here.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  As we passed the Crab Locker, Jillian stopped and read the sign in the window. “There’s a dance Saturday!” she said. “I love to dance.”

  “Then let’s go,” I said, echoing her previous words but faking my enthusiasm. Jillian is not Shelly, I reminded myself. And she’d already blown off Paul when he tried to hit on her in Government, her first day here. Not that he would be playing there. I saw it was going to be a fairly big-name band. They were pretty well known, at least in New Jersey.

  “We just have to hike up this road, and we’ll be at the overlook,” I said when we reached the entrance to the park.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jillian said.

  As we walked along the road between the fields, I heard a familiar voice.

  “Cliff! Hey, Cliff!” Christopher waved at me from the meadow by the overlook. Brad was with him.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, waving back. Then I turned to Jillian. “There’s a clearing in the woods over there. It has a fallen tree we can sit on.”

  “You don’t want t
o join your friends?”

  I thought about the last time I’d talked with them. It had led to a painful experience. But that was because I’d been unaware of what was really going on. They hadn’t intentionally hurt me. This time, I had a full understanding of the situation. And I had a girlfriend. I hefted up the bag. “Sure. Why not? But I hope you have a ton of food in here.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re probably totally wasted,” I said.

  “No kidding,” Jillian said. “I can tell that from here.”

  Maybe that’s why she could paint things in such detail—because she could see them clearly. We joined our two very popular, very stoned classmates and had a great time. We even shared our pie.

  We stayed in the park after Christopher and Brad left, and picked up where that kiss had left off. I slipped my hand beneath her shirt and placed it against her back. Flesh is magic. I wanted to touch her breasts, but I was afraid to spoil what I had by trying for too much.

  Nola’s words still haunted me. “Why do guys want to touch girls?”

  * * *

  THURSDAY, AFTER SCHOOL, Jillian and I went to a movie. While we were waiting for the ads and previews to end, I said, “You remember when you walked past me that first day, in the Art House, and I said ‘sweet-ass’?”

  “It caught my attention.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your body.”

  “No?” She awarded me with a pout. A very cute pout. “That certainly makes the memory less interesting.”

  “I mean, I could have been. But I’m not like one of those guys who are crude around girls. Or women. Or—”

  “Hush,” she said. “I was only teasing. I know what you mean.”

  We watched the movie. She put her hand on my arm during one of the scary parts. I had, of course, picked a scary movie in hopes of that. I’m not a perv or a stalker, but I’m a guy, and there’s a part of us that is always calculating a way to touch or be touched. It’s not my fault I was born with nerve endings and testosterone. When the scary part was over, she rested her hand on my leg. I’m not sure what happened on the screen after that.

  And, yes, there was a dance Saturday. And, yes, Jillian and I went. As much as I had tried to use a dance to get my hands on Shelly, I was now more concerned with not getting my hands on Jillian the wrong way—which was difficult because I wasn’t totally sure which way was wrong, in her eyes.