Читать книгу Send Pics - Lauren McLaughlin - Страница 13

The thing about DeShawn is that you never know when one of his intuitions will prove correct. As a journalist, I find this annoying. Intuition is not something you can base a story on. When you’re a reporter you need proof. DeShawn just feels things.

An example: Last year, DeShawn was convinced that this girl in our English class, Maya Geblinger, was, in his words, “right on the edge.” I had no idea what he was talking about and, at the time, I assumed it was a crush. But then Maya wound up in the girls’ room with her wrists cut, and everyone was shocked. Everyone but DeShawn, that is. He saw it coming, even blamed himself for not finding some way to help her.

She survived. It was a cry for help, or attention, or whatever. Later on, there was talk of an eating disorder. But nobody, other than DeShawn, saw it coming. He’s the most empathic person I know. But his empathy isn’t soft and amorphous, which is how I usually think of empathy. With DeShawn, it’s more like a laser-sharp probe, like something he’d have in his workshop to expose the innards of one of his robotic marvels. Right now, that probe is pointed at Suze Tilman. Personally, I don’t see what he’s seeing. To me, she’s the same beautiful, aloof girl she always was. Only now, she walks around with Tarkin Shaw instead of her frosty girlfriends.

So, what should I do? Trust DeShawn’s instincts and go investigate? If there is a story here, it goes without saying I want in on it. Tarkin Shaw would be a great scalp, what with him being an all-state wrestler and general alpha male of Jonesville High. Plus, there’s the lingering stench of his dust-up with Amber Laynes. Busting that overblown dude-bro would be sweet indeed.

Unfortunately, the mysterious Suze Tilman seems to have ditched school for the day, which means if I am going to investigate, I’ll have to start elsewhere. The obvious source would be Tarkin Shaw. But he’d probably kick my ass just for looking at him, and I’m not risking my neck unless I’m sure there’s a story here. So I set my sights on a less life-threatening source: Suze’s three friends, Nikki Petronzio, Anamika Chakrabarti, and Lydia Moreau, otherwise known as the three biggest snobs in the school. To be clear, these girls aren’t snobs in the sense of being rich, or super smart, or superior in any measurable way. They’re snobs in the sense that they hate everybody. I don’t know what’s behind that hatred. But I respect it. There’s a purity to it.

At the end of the day, I spot Nikki at her locker, bracketed, per usual, by Ani and Lydia, whose haughty presence only amplifies Nikki’s baseline unapproachability. This will not be a pleasant conversation. But nobody ever said journalism was supposed to be easy, so I pop a Tic Tac, make sure my fly is up (one must always be professional), then whip up a bit of fake nonchalance and head over.

“Hi Ni—”

“Who are you?” she says.

“I’m . . . um . . .”

Full disclosure here. Nikki Petronzio is disconcertingly sexy. I don’t know if it’s the high cheekbones, the shiny black hair, or those dark eyes that penetrate with the cold scrutiny of a contract killer, but she does something to me. I’m not saying I like her as a person. I don’t know her. Right now, she’s leveling those cold eyes at me like I am the stupidest person ever born and I realize I still haven’t produced my own name. So, I try again.

“Hi. Um . . .”

“You know what,” she says. “I don’t need to know your name. I’m good.” She turns away and speaks quietly with Ani, while Lydia gives me a quick, dismissive glance.

“I’m Marcus. I’m a reporter for the Bugle,” I finally spit out. “I mean, I’m a student here, but also a reporter. I just wanted to ask you about Suze Tilman.”

Nikki whirls around angrily, practically slicing Ani with her blade-straight hair. “What are you, her new best friend or something?”

Now this is interesting. Clearly, I’ve hit a nerve.

“I thought you were her best friend,” I say. “Did I get that wrong?”

“Trust me, you do not want to go down this road. Not today.”

But I do. Yes, I very much want to go down this road. This is the road every reporter seeks out. Conflict. Tension. Distress. I whip out my notebook and flip to a blank page. “How do you feel about Suze’s relationship with Tarkin Shaw? Are they built to last? Because word on the street is—”

“Uh-oh.” Ani says.

I track her gaze to something behind me. And there, materializing out of the ether like a bad smell, is Tarkin Shaw.

I barely have time to register the unpleasant fact that he stands nearly a head taller than me when he grabs me by the shoulders with his giant bear paws and airlifts me two lockers down. He fastens me to the locker door with a fancy wrestling move involving his thigh and my hipbone, while grunting some vaguely obscene in-group slang I’m not cool enough to understand.

It takes a moment to scrape up the courage to say: “Sorry dude, you’re not my type.”

Stupid, yes. But his junk is pressing into my leg.

In place of a reply, he grabs the hair at the scruff of my neck and uses it to smash the back of my head against the locker.

“If I get a concussion from this—” I begin, but the sentence goes nowhere because Shaw covers the lower half of my face with his giant paw.

“I don’t want you talking to Suze Tilman. And I don’t want you talking about Suze Tilman. And that goes for your little geek boyfriend, too.”

As his bulbous thumb digs into my cheek, I can feel him squeezing my jaw to the breaking point. My vision begins to narrow. I’m on the verge of passing out when suddenly everything releases. I slide down the locker gasping for air. When my vision returns, my face is throbbing and Tarkin is lying at my feet, face down.

Holy shit, I think to myself. Did I do that? Did I acquire superhuman strength in the moment before passing out and use it to knock out Tarkin Shaw?

Then I see DeShawn, legs wide, hands out in front of him, loose and ready. He’s been doing jiu jitsu for only about six months, but when he gets into something, he goes all in.

For one glorious moment, nobody moves. Not Nikki or her friends, not Tarkin Shaw, not anyone watching the scene unfold. The silence in the hallway is as sharp as needles. Sharper even than the pain in my lower jaw.

Eventually, Shaw drags himself to his knees, looks up at DeShawn, who’s still holding that ninja pose, and laughs defensively. Rising to his full terrifying height, he shakes himself off and gives DeShawn a thorough looking over. Then, massively overestimating the significance of his size advantage, Shaw reels back and tries—and I do give him credit for trying—to get in a quick sucker punch.

Poor Tarkin Shaw. How could he know that DeShawn Hill has been fighting imaginary Tarkin Shaws all his life? The real one is no match. His fist gets about six inches from DeShawn’s face when DeShawn catches it single-handed, twists it behind Tarkin’s back and brings him straight back to the floor. All-state wrestler versus jiu jitsu prodigy? Sorry, pal. No contest.

DeShawn could dislocate Shaw’s shoulder. I know this because DeShawn used to be deeply into karate and he once itemized for me all the different ways he can bring down an assailant, including the various fractures, breaks, contusions, and dislocations associated with each method. But DeShawn does not dislocate Shaw’s shoulder, break his wrist, crush his windpipe, or render him unconscious. Instead, he merely holds Shaw on the floor in an uncomfortable, embarrassing, but not injury-causing position. No way would I be that restrained. I’d have the guy begging for mercy.

“Get off me!” Shaw spits through clenched teeth. He’s completely under DeShawn’s control and furious about it.

And now, Mrs. Wentworth, alerted to the fracas, trundles over, chubby hands aflutter. She’s comically useless. She keeps reaching toward DeShawn then backing away as if he were radioactive. While Nikki, Lydia, and Ani skedaddle, a crowd of curious onlookers forms.

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on here?” Mrs. Wentworth demands.

“Sure,” I say. “I was having a conversation with Nikki Petronzio when this guy came out of nowhere and slammed me into a locker. Then—I’m not sure how else to describe this part—he started hugging me?”

“Shut up!” Tarkin barks from his prone position. He struggles against DeShawn’s grip, but to no avail. DeShawn has him thoroughly overpowered.

“I can’t say how far he would have gone if it weren’t for DeShawn coming to my aid, but he does have a reputation for sexual aggression. As we all know.”

“I will kill you!” Shaw again, still under DeShawn’s control, and mightily pissed off about it.

“Anyway, it was quite intrusive,” I continue. “And definitely unwanted.”

“Did he strike you?” she asks.

“Not exactly.”

“DeShawn,” she says. “Let go of him.”

“I just want to be sure he’s not planning to attack my friend again,” DeShawn says.

“Tarkin,” Mrs. Wentworth says. “Is this true? Did you assault Marcus?”

“No!” Shaw says. “He’s lying.”

Mrs. Wentworth glances at the gathered crowd, a mixed bag of nobodies, a few semi-somebodies, and a clutch of stoners who arrived too late to see the inciting incident. “Can anyone offer anything?”

Silence. Some shuffling of feet. A few kids snapping photos, making videos.

“So, no one saw?”

Shaw, to his credit, reads the situation perfectly. The “witnesses” in their lumpen mindlessness are adhering to the age-old tradition of sealed lips. They’re not about to snitch. Not on someone as important, and as vaguely dangerous, as Tarkin Shaw. You can almost feel Shaw’s confidence growing with each passing second.

“I’m saying this for your own good, man,” he tells DeShawn. “Get off of me.”

Mrs. Wentworth taps DeShawn on the shoulder. “Let him go.”

DeShawn looks at me, sees that I’m safe, and releases his grip. Shaw springs to his feet like a freed jack-in-the-box, aiming to give the impression that the takedown was minor, a prank gone awry, an optical illusion. He was actually in charge the whole time. He was just showing DeShawn mercy, like the tough-but-awesome guy he is. Sure, he could have busted a move on DeShawn if he wanted to. But that’s not his style.

It’s quite a performance actually. But he oversells it, chin pushed out, chest puffed up. You’d have to be an idiot not to see the pathos underneath it all, the humiliation and shame of being taken down by a major nerd. Not once, but twice.

Or you’d have to be any member of the dragnet of losers currently lolling about in the hallway. Either they’re all collectively buying Shaw’s performance—despite what they’ve just witnessed with their very own eyes—or they’re so dazzled by Shaw’s status, and their own proximity to it, that they’ve been struck mute.

“We can’t have students knocking each other down in the hallway,” Mrs. Wentworth says, making sure to include DeShawn in her sweep of condemnation.

“This was between me and Shaw,” I explain. “DeShawn was only trying to protect me.”

Under his breath Shaw says, “Pussy.”

“What was that, Tarkin?” Mrs. Wentworth, to her credit, is not dazzled by Tarkin Shaw’s status.

“Nothing,” he says. “I just think, you know, two against one is pretty lame.”

“It wasn’t a fight,” I say. “It was an attack. He jumped me from behind.”

“Did you, Tarkin?”

Shaw smirks and shrugs at the same time, a move designed to evade the truth without actually lying.

“He did,” I say. “He attacked me because I asked about Suze Tilman. Who can’t stand him, by the way, and who’s probably about to dump him.”

“You’re fucking dead!” Shaw reaches straight across Mrs. Wentworth and tries to grab me with his giant mitts.

Mrs. Wentworth, who never had more than the slimmest margin of authority over the situation, goes into full panic mode now, waving those chubby hands in front of her face. Mr. Schroeder and Mrs. Pulaski emerge from the special education room to resolve the situation. But, as it turns out, there’s no need. DeShawn is there with a smooth, dancerly switchback of arms and legs. And in a nearly perfect replay, Tarkin Shaw is, once again, facedown on the floor.

That makes three times DeShawn Hill has taken Tarkin Shaw down, in case you’re keeping score. Three times.

Three.

“You see, Mrs. Wentworth,” I say. “The guy can’t keep his hands off of me.”

THERE IS NO more violence that day. Shaw, DeShawn, and I are escorted to the waiting room of the principal’s office until Mr. Everett can speak with us personally. DeShawn is a new shade of gray I’ve never seen before: glossy, with undertones of green. I think the whole encounter has upset his equilibrium in some deep spiritual way. He may be a jiu jitsu prodigy, but he despises violence. If you can figure that one out, you’re ahead of me.

Shaw keeps whispering death threats to both of us, but neither of the two distracted secretaries behind the counter hears anything. They’re too busy collating some enormous photocopy project that is spread out on every available surface. Eventually Principal Everett emerges from behind his office door and cheerily “invites” us inside with him.

Our principal is a big talker. He believes, adorably, that there isn’t a problem in the world, or at least at Jonesville High, that can’t be solved if all parties agree to “talk it out.” His office is pockmarked with inspirational plaques (There’s no “I” in team, One’s reach should always exceed one’s grasp, etc). I sit between DeShawn and Shaw on a slouchy couch that makes it impossible to sit up straight and look receptive to discipline. Then again, it isn’t about discipline with Mr. Everett. It’s about “coming to an understanding.” This is a hopeless task. Shaw and I are in no mood to “understand” each other and DeShawn has cocooned himself behind an unfocused gaze where he can sub-vocally count backward from one-thousand by sixes.

Our reticence only frustrates Principal Everett, who threatens us all with “black marks” on our “records” if we don’t explain ourselves. My record is a moot point. I have no plans for college, at least not right away. College, in my mind, is an expensive waste of time. On this point, my mother actually agrees. She went to Harvard, which is supposedly the best one, and she said it was full of d-bags. The way forward to a career in journalism, we both agree, is to actually do journalism, which I already am. Quite possibly, my mother arrived at this position only as a matter of convenience, relating to certain financial realities stemming from the divorce. Either way, college is not in my immediate future, all of which makes my “record” irrelevant.

College is in DeShawn’s future, however. His dream is to go to MIT, where he plans to design and invent all manner of cool stuff. No way in hell am I letting Shaw’s steroidal outburst threaten any of that. A black mark of violence on a white wrestling captain’s record is probably no big deal. Boys will be boys, and all that. But a black mark of violence on a Black kid’s record is a big deal. Because that is the shitty, unjust world we live in.

Unfortunately, DeShawn refuses to defend himself or even to answer Principal Everett’s questions, so I have to take on the role of defense attorney. My strategy is simple: Tell the plain, unvarnished truth about what happened, since the truth is naturally flattering of DeShawn and makes Shaw look like the oaf he is. But then my natural verbosity gets the better of me, as it so often does. DeShawn isn’t merely blameless here. He’s a “hero” who showed “epic restraint,” whereas Tarkin is an “ubridled force of mindless—if ineffectual—violence.” DeShawn’s spectacular jiu jitsu skills are not to be taken as “a warning sign of future trouble,” but rather, as evidence of his ability to apply himself to a challenging discipline and then to use “the awesome power it confers with a sense of proportional justice.” I am eloquent AF.

Principal Everett tries repeatedly to get confirmation from DeShawn, but there’s no reaching him. He’s locked in. He’s midway through the five-hundreds and he’s not coming out until he hits zero. When he turns inward, there’s no getting him out. Shaw, for his part, does a lot of huffing, snorting, and eye-rolling, unwittingly nailing the role I’ve written for him, i.e., the donkey-brained thug. When pressed, he sticks to his fairy-tale about being attacked in a two-against-one scenario. For him, it doesn’t seem to be about dodging punishment so much as salvaging his reputation as a tough guy. I almost pity him.

Except that I don’t.

“Consider this a warning,” Mr. Everett says. “I’ll be informing your parents about what happened.”

“Good,” Shaw says, glaring at me.

“Is that supposed to be a threat?” I ask him. “What are your parents going to do, ground me?”

Shaw’s face goes hard as he stares me down. “You better watch yourself,” he says. Then he stands up and says to Principal Everett, “Are we done here? Because I’ve got someplace to be.”

I fully expect Everett to request that Tarkin sit down until he’s dismissed. But he just nods, tells us we can all leave, then starts flipping through some papers on his desk. Shaw smolders at me all the way out the door then runs off, jock-style, his hands clenched into fists.

I’m not worried about the phone call to my mother. She’ll totally see my point of view on this. She knows I’m not the type to pick fights. And DeShawn’s parents are reasonable. I doubt they’ll punish him for standing up for his best friend. If anything, his parents will blame me. DeShawn’s mom isn’t crazy about me as it is. I’m tolerated, but only because my lackadaisical attitude toward school has failed to rub off on her brilliant son.

I ride home with DeShawn and deposit him in the hole. He has a pewter fire truck to finish for an Etsy client in California and he wants to “disappear” for a while so he can realign his universe. I understand. DeShawn’s universe is a delicate structure.