Chapter 2

Again, I didn't see her for three days.

Sort of.

By that, I mean that whenever I saw her, she threw me a blinding smile, but did not come over to me, or talk to me, or walk home with me. It was maddening. The love of my life had, after all, kissed me and told me that, not only was I her boyfriend, she didn't want to fight me off! Instead, she just made sure she didn't have to fight me off, by staying away from me.

It took me almost a week, but I began to suspect she was just telling everybody I was her boyfriend, so she wouldn't have to deal with guys asking her out. It made it okay for her to turn down dates and still not be seen as a loser by the other girls. She didn't really mean it when she said I was her boyfriend, but because we were friends, she knew I'd go along with it. It kind of pissed me off.

But that turned out to be important because it made me kind of tense and full of something close to anger, but not quite anger. And it was because of all that whatever-it-was inside of me that when I saw that Mark Lawson was going to bump me with his shoulder in the hallway, I made it look like I was letting him, but then bumped him back harder.

Mark Lawson was one of Jerry's friends. He was a popular guy and all that, and like all of them, he liked to throw his weight around, sometimes literally. Like I said, there had been more than one time that Jerry or somebody else had knocked the books out of my hands, or pushed me against the lockers, or whatever. It usually wasn't anything that actually hurt me. Not physically. But emotionally I had scars all over.

And when I saw that Mark was going to hit me with his shoulder like he "hadn't seen me" and that his intent was probably to knock me down and then laugh about it, all that whatever-it-was Mia had created in me said "No fucking way, pal," and, looking him straight in the eye, I slammed into him and knocked him down.

Now I admit he wasn't ready for it, which is really the only reason he went down. And he was surprised - astonished, actually - which is probably why he wasn't able to soften his fall. And he bounced off of Mikey Sorenson, who was overweight in the extreme, which is probably what made him twist so he landed the way he did.

There was that moment of silence where people drew back silently, because they knew what had just happened. One of the lions had pounced, and some poor zebra's underbelly was exposed. The lion wouldn't actually feed. That wasn't how it worked in school. That happened later, when the lion was an adult, but not in school. All the lion did when it was young was prove it was the king of the jungle. Or one of the kings, anyway. And the rest of the denizens of the jungle shrank back when that happened, because they didn't want the lion noticing them. Instead, they watched as he licked his chops at that exposed underbelly, while his prey squirmed on the ground.

Or floor, in this case. And Mark was squirming as, in the quiet of the hallway, I snarled "Watch where you're going!" It felt really good. That was the first time I tasted the narcotic that is violence, in which the perpetrator of the violence comes out on top. I tasted what it was like to be the lion, instead of the zebra.

And I liked that taste.

Then Mark started screaming.

That's because when he bounced off of Mikey, he landed on the tip of his elbow. And his elbow tried to compete with the tile floor of the hallway as to which was harder. The tile won and Mark's elbow got sort of crushed. That's the word we all heard later, anyway. He had to have an operation. They put pins in, and his arm was in a series of casts for the rest of the year. Presto. Just like that, we were short a running back, and I was infamous for having caused it.

Not that anybody ratted me out. I'm quite sure everybody in that hallway knew exactly what had happened. Some of them were watching as it all went down. There I was, walking along like I always did, just another nobody in the hallway, and the lion pounced, except I pounced first. Those people knew I had done it on purpose. And all of them knew why I had done it. Everybody in the hallway, including the two friends he had with him (who carried him to the nurses office), knew that I had decked Mark Lawson because he was a bully, and I had finally snapped.

And because they knew that, when the inevitable questions were asked, all the adults got was that "They bumped into each other and Mark fell down."

Of course it helped that I was just as much a nobody to the teachers and staff, as I was to the kids. Nobody could believe that something dark had been born in me that day, and that I suddenly no longer counted myself among the prey.

But of course you only get that kind of benefit of the doubt once. When you bully somebody else, everybody begins to understand there has been a change in the balance of nature, so to speak.

It didn't happen right away, or even quickly. Again, there was a tipping point. And it happened with a girl named Bernadette. Bernadette had Down's Syndrome, but she was in regular classes. She was one of those kids who is always smiling and likes to hug people a little too much, if you know what I mean. But the bullies called her "Slant eyes" and "Dumb bell" and "Retard" whenever there weren't any teachers around. And the next time I saw that happen, that whatever-it-was inside me reared up and I walked over to the three guys who were taunting her. These guys weren't the popular guy type of bully. They consisted of Terry and Duke Black, brothers, and their friend Justin Clayborne. All three lived on the other side of the tracks, literally, over on one of the streets that had tree names. Things were run down over there and it was sometimes called "the bad part of town". That was pretty stupid, really, because the whole town only had forty thousand inhabitants, and pretty much every side of town was within walking distance of the others, if you had a good pair of shoes.

Anyway, these guys were picking on Bernadette so I walked over and stepped between her and them. They were in a sort of half circle around her. I actually pushed Terry and Justin back, even with Duke, who was in the middle, forming a line.

"Knock that shit off, you guys," I said. "And don't bother Bernadette again all year."

I know, I know. It sounds lame to me too, now that I think about it. I mean I didn't even suggest what would happen if they didn't. And, in the old days, they'd have turned their attention on me, while Bernadette scurried away and everybody else pulled back in one of those silent moments, watching.

Oh. I forgot one thing, and you need to know it. While Mark was in the hospital, Jerry visited him and told him not to feel bad ... and why. It was supposed to be a secret between the two of them, but you know how that goes. Mark told his girlfriend, to mitigate the fact that a dweeb had put him in the hospital. She told her girlfriends and so on. Once Jerry's silence was broken, so was the secret. He didn't plan it that way, but that's how it always works. I don't know the exact trail of knowledge, but within a couple of days people were asking me if it was true.

So now the guy facing Terry, Justin and Duke was not only the guy who had put Mark Lawson in the hospital, but he was also the guy who had beat the shit out of Jerry Harper.

If they'd have taken the time to think about it, they could have rushed me and made me eat my own underwear.

But they didn't have time to think about it, and they caved instead, snarling like hyenas who are chased away from the kill by the lion.

It fed my lust for power, and after that I never looked back.

The funny thing is that, on the student body side of things, when it became clear I was going to be a bully myself, I got a lot of support. It was silent support, but everybody knew that I had just decided enough was enough and I was standing up to the real bullies. I say real bullies because all those people who supported me knew I would never bully them. They were already prey. They had been prey all year. Until I came along. From that point on, whenever I saw somebody getting bullied, I didn't look the other way. I stood up to the bully, on behalf of the victim. And my reputation grew until there was remarkably little for anybody to fear. Except for the bullies, of course.

I make it sound like it was easy. It was not. I did have to learn how to fight.

I wanted to go to Taekwondo classes. That's what a lot of parents do with their kids. They put them in Taekwondo so they can learn how to protect themselves in a harsh world. And they do learn that. The problem, though, is that all the Taekwondo instructors tell them not to fight when it's just a bully. They teach them to walk away. And, believe it or not, that actually works most of the time. For the Taekwondo kids, I mean. There is something about them - a kind of confidence - that when they turn their eyes away from the bully and start to leave, causes the bully to let them go. It's very strange. It never happened to me, because Taekwondo kids never turn into bullies, so I never came up against one of them. But I saw that. And that's why I wanted to go to the classes. I thought I'd learn how to beat somebody up and not even get out of breath in the process. I'd have been sorely disappointed, had I gone to those classes, but I didn't know that then.

And the fact is, I knew we were too poor for that, plus my father thought Taekwondo was sissy for some reason. He never thought his own son was a sissy, which I was for many, many years. His response the first time the school called and said I was suspended for fighting was to look me over when I got home. When he saw that my face was unmarked, he said "That's my boy " and smiled. My mother wrung her hands, but my dad was proud of me. That's because he was probably a dork when he was in school too. Most people are.

Anyway, back to fighting. You'll never in a million years guess who taught me to fight.

Louis L'Amour.

That's right. I read his books, which were about guys like me, who were at the bottom of the food chain, and who got picked on and abused, and then rose up to say "No more!" and beat the crap out of some bully. They always got beat up too, in his books, but they won. And the way they won was to never give up and fight with no rules. There are people who might want to argue with me on that "no rules" part, but that's how I saw it. Mr. L'Amour is actually a highly principled man, who would probably disagree with me himself, but the way I read it, the good guy (which I always thought of myself as) did whatever it took to end up on top, in a bout of fisticuffs.

Now to protect his good name, I'll let Louis off the hook by saying that what "he taught me" was all theory. The first time I actually got in a knock down, drag out fight, there was no "fisticuffs" per se. There were a couple of blows swung in the very beginning, but then we were in a clinch, on the ground, rolling around like girls, trying to hit each other, but failing miserably because when you're on the ground you can't really swing very well.

So when one of my fingers accidentally gouged my opponent in the eye, while he was screaming and trying to get away from that, I bit him. All that was just instinct. The only thing I did in that fight that was planned was to bring my knee up into his groin and then stand up while he vomited and writhed on the ground. I was lucky that time, because that fight happened out of school, and out of the public eye. I was also lucky because he had three friends with him. I think they were a little horrified when, as he lay there with one hand over his eye and the other hand cupping his balls, all curled up and puking all over himself, I got up and then kicked him half a dozen times. I was a little crazy. I admit it. But the look on their faces informed me that the craziness and obscene violence of what they'd just seen was what made them back off from me. If all three had jumped me, I'd have ended up just like their friend. But they didn't, because they recognized a rabid dog when they saw one.

I know I'm using all these animal analogies. Sorry about that. But the human world is supposed to be all calm and peaceful. The animal kingdom is not. And us bullies live in the animal kingdom. But I promise to lay off the lions and dogs and so on.

And that's enough about how I came to be a bully anyway. I just wanted you to understand I wasn't the usual average bully. I was more of the Bruce Willis kind of bully.

That's how I thought of myself anyway.

I know I said I was finished with the "how I became a bully" stuff, but I do have to say one more thing about that. Remember how Mia kissed me? Well, we continued to have this weird, strange, unsettling kind of relationship for quite a while after that. She tried to act like nothing had happened. But the truth of it was that I had seen her breasts, and she had kissed me. Not to mention the saving-her-from-a-fate-worse-than-death thing.

So she was weirded out about what to do about me.

And the same was true of me. I had been there for all those things too, after all.

Then there was the problem that Mia didn't like bullies.

And I became one.

But I was a different kind of bully, which was confusing to her, I think.

And to me. It was, after all, a huge change in my own life.

So there were weeks when I didn't see Mia, because she was avoiding me. And I sort of suspected that she was avoiding me. And yet, when we did see each other, she had that dazzling smile and I got hugs - quick ones, but still hugs - and she talked to me and asked me what I was doing and all that stuff, just like everything was completely normal.

It was frustrating for me, because I didn't understand what was happening.

And that was what I think created that little extra malevolence in me that ended up giving me the reputation of being merciless.

And the reputation of being merciless caused her to pull away from me a little more.

Except that Mia Falcon had decided, completely unknown to me (and I think even to herself, at that point) that Bobby Cassidy was the boy she was going to give her virginity to.

I said that Mia avoided me sometimes. That's true. But she also sought me out sometimes. It's kind of like somebody who is bipolar, and has episodes of manic behavior and depressed behavior. They can't really control it. And she'd keep away from me for a while (depressive behavior) and then seek me out and laugh and have fun like nothing had changed between us (manic behavior.) It was very confusing for me, but I really loved her manic episodes.

She wasn't bipolar, by the way. I just can't use animal analogies any more. I promised, remember?

Anyway, there was another pivotal point in our lives during the summer just before our junior year. Mia had gone to visit her grandparents, who lived on a farm somewhere, and she stayed for a month. She was old enough by then that Grandma let her do big girl things in the kitchen and sewing room and whatever. More importantly, she was old enough by then that Grandpa had her help him with a bunch of chores around the farm. She helped him fix the tractor and patch the roof on one of the sheds, and bale hay. Her grandparents had been there since before she was born, and there was this old dump out in a gully on the farm. The high point of her stay was that she got to take his .22 rifle down there and target practice at old cans and a refrigerator and stuff like that.

So when she came back, there was all this stuff she was excited about telling me about. She was in a manic stage.

Meanwhile, I had been at home, bored to tears, because I couldn't find a part time job. And the bully business drops off when school isn't in session. I didn't go looking for trouble, or anything. I just didn't shy away from it when I found it. But there hadn't really been any and I had been reduced to doing the same things I had always done. I went out into the woods and wandered around, daydreaming.

I did finally build a tree house that summer, and looking back on it, I'd say with some confidence that the fact Mia was gone was why I did that. When Mia was at home, I spent a lot of time thinking about her. She was right next door. She might be in her bedroom, changing clothes. She might even be naked. Or she might be in the shower. Naked, of course. Or maybe she was getting her pajamas on, which meant she had to get naked to do that. Or maybe she didn't even put on pajamas, and just went to bed naked!

I'm sure you get the picture. I read somewhere that the average adolescent boy thinks about sex seventy times an hour, or something like that. I was very average.

But when she was gone, I didn't know what to imagine, sort of, and working on the tree house gave me something to think about other than Mia's soft, white breasts, and those interesting looking dark tips, which were made to be sucked, and that round bottom I had so often seen climbing a tree above me. You can't imagine how often I looked at the crotch of her pants and tried to imagine what her pussy looked like.

Damn! I still do it!

Anyway, part of the challenge of building this tree house was that I didn't have any money, so I had to find the materials wherever I could. I didn't actually set out to steal anything, but I wasn't too concerned about ownership in a given situation. Like with the stacks of pallets out back of the dairy. Those stacks grew and shrank, depending on whether they received a truck, or sent one out, but there were a dozen pallets out there that were weathered and had broken slats in them and stuff like that. So yes, I filched some of those. Nails were harder, but if you hang around building sites, you'll find them on the ground. Or in a cardboard box by a pile of lumber, where somebody forgot to put them away at the end of the day.