He walked past his friends, back to the free nozzle. He turned on the water.
An ice-cold spray shot out.
Someone had turned the nozzle all the way to the left.
D’ Angelo and his buddies were there, and they laughed. Will backed out of the water, gasping, shivering now. He leaned in with one hand and twisted the nozzle the other way.
And he waited, looking straight ahead. Can’t look at them, Will thought. That would be like a signal. Okay, I’m expecting it. Come on. Do whatever the hell you’re going to do.
The water turned to luke and then hot. Will twisted the knob a bit and stepped in.
Real fast, he thought. Just get wet and —
The water was warm, soothing after — what, a dozen laps?
It dribbled over his head, covering his ears, his mouth. Muffling the noise of so many showers. The other kids talking.
When he felt something.
On his back. Then right on his ass.
A slightly
warmer
stream.
He jerked his head out of the spray. The noise, the voices were there, surrounding him.
He turned quickly, a sick feeling growing in his stomach.
What the fu —
He turned. There was D’ Angelo. A stupid grin on his face. Laughing. Like a mechanical clown. Heh-heh-heh. Grinning, looking at his buddies.
Will looked down.
D’Angelo’s prick was shooting a stream of piss right at him. -
“Shit!” Will yelled. He backed away.
And now D’Angelo couldn’t stand it, couldn’t fucking stand the comedy of it. He doubled up, convulsed with how funny it all was.
Will jerked backward and banged against the metal soap dish — always empty — driving the thin metal into his back.
D’Angelo just stood there, laughing, grinning.
Everyone was watching.
Everyone.
And the only sounds were D’Angelo laughing and all that water hitting the tiles, swirling into pools, then rushing down the drain.
And it didn’t matter anymore.
It didn’t matter that D’Angelo was built like a human tank, all blubber and muscle, with a neck like a telephone pole. All Will felt was everyone watching him, and the horrible laughing.
What the fuck do I have to lose? Will thought crazily.
What the fuck —
He leaped at D’Angelo. He grabbed at that bull neck. It was so thick that Will’s two hands couldn’t even close around it, but he grabbed it as hard as he could and squeezed.
And then — a moment of inspiration — he brought his knee up.
Right into D’ Angelo’s groin.
And all the while Will screamed at him.
“You fucking bastard, you lousy, shit-eating —”
He saw D’Angelo’s eyes bulge with the sudden, completely unexpected pain.
But then, after that terrible burst of adrenaline, he saw D’ Angelo’s face change.
Here was a guy who every weekend smashed into the big black monsters from Power Memorial. He’d had half a dozen guys fall on him. Regularly. And then he’d stand up, good as new. No problem. He had his face smashed, his legs crushed, his head banged like a punching bag.
D’Angelo sure the hell isn’t scared of me, Will knew.
And — while everyone started whistling, calling, screaming for the wonderful show to continue —
D’Angelo moved, quickly, smoothly, with an animal strength that absolutely terrified Will.
* * *
3
Will felt Tim watching from the sidelines. Everyone was watching. Sure, everyone liked to see a fight, even one as obviously mismatched as this was.
For a second he could see the absurdity of it all. All these naked guys standing in the shower, their wieners hanging out, watching a gorilla who enjoyed his work.
The metal soap dish cut into Will’s back. He felt the steel edge break his skin. He groaned. But then D’Angelo’s meaty hand covered his mouth, ending the sound.
Such a giant hand, hard and fleshy.
Then Will felt the edge of D’ Angelo’s palm slip up toward his nose.
I won’t be able to breathe, he thought. I won’t be able to breathe and no one will know.
They’ll just think that I’m struggling to get away from the Big D.
That’s what everyone called him.
The Big D.
And when Will and his friends sat in the luncheonette, they joked about Big D and how it stood for “big dope.”
Will felt a quick punch to his side. Fast and hard, and suddenly his eyes filled with red fireworks.
I’m going to throw up, he thought.
His eyes were fixed on D’Angelo’s. And D’Angelo’s eyes were dumb, animal eyes .
.
. with just a hint of amusement.
This was fun.
They reminded Will of his dog’s eyes. Kind of dull. Empty.
And what do my eyes look like? Wide, terrified?
Is that giving the monkey an extra kick?
Another rap, and Will felt the wind knocked out of him.
Will kicked at D’ Angelo’s legs, scraping at his hairy shins with slippery wet feet, trying to get his arms up. But D’ Angelo had both arms pinned with a forearm block that pressed Will’s ass right against the shower wall.
Everyone was quiet, and Will realized that something real serious was going on here.
This was more than just a joke, more than a nasty prank.
This was about settling differences.
The differences between the jocks and the other kids who didn’t give two shits about heroics on the home field.
This was fucking primitive.
And the sick thing — the
really
sick thing, Will realized — was that if D’ Angelo removed his pan-sized palm from Will’s mouth, he knew what he’d do.
I’d beg.
I’d do anything to get the killer monkey off my back.
D’ Angelo’s hand had slipped toward Will’s nostrils. Up. Over. Closing them.
D’ Angelo didn’t mean to do it .
.
. did he?
And Will kicked.
It was like being underwater.
I can’t breathe, he thought.
I can’t fucking breathe
. I’m gonna die.
And then there were more punches, just to hasten the process, and more, until —
A voice.
Henkel.
Barking out one word, just one word, at first.
“Hey!”
Please, Will thought. Move your ex-Marine ass over here.
Please.
“Hey, D. D! Hey, let him go. What the hell are you doing?”
Then Henkel, shorter than D’Angelo by a foot, was right there, grabbing at D’ Angelo’s leaden arms, pulling on D’Angelo’s elephant-like torso. Tugging at him, yelling loud now for other kids to, Jesus, come and help him.
And then some of D’Angelo’s friends trudged forward — Will saw their faces, smirking, perhaps sad that it was all ending.
D’Angelo’s hand popped off Will’s mouth.
Will sucked in the air.
“Now, what the hell’s going on here?” Henkel shouted, looking at the two of them. “What are you two doing?”
Right, thought Will as he doubled over, chugging the air.
As if I’d start anything with that human tank. But Henkel had his favorites.
Of which I’m certainly not one.
“What was it, Dunnigan? What were you two doing here?”
What an idiot, thought Will. What is this guy using for brains?
D’Angelo backed up only a few steps.
He still wore that same grin. As if he were thinking it wouldn’t take much for him to lift up Henkel, move him aside, and come back to play with Will.
“This animal —” Will said.
Realizing — only then — that it wasn’t just the shower water running off his cheeks.
I’m crying. Goddammit, I’m crying in front of everyone.
That was the worst, the absolute lowest.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Henkel said, turning to him, waving a meat-bone index finger that showed he descended from the same evolutionary offshoot as D’Angelo.
There were humans, and there were these geeks.
“None of that,” Henkel scolded. “Watch your language!”
Then Will saw an incredible thing.
Henkel turned back to D’Angelo and actually put an arm around his shoulders. Patted his oxlike back. “Go get dressed,” he said. Then, as if the physical education teacher realized that he had a crowd of kids watching, he said;
“The two a yers are going to detention today.”
Yers
? What kind of word is that? wondered Will.
D’Angelo stopped. “But, Coach, what about practice?”
Henkel raised a hand. Such a fair and impartial man. “Detention first,” he said, looking at Will and the other kids, and then he turned back to D’Angelo. “And then practice. Now, everybody clear out of here before you miss lunch.”
And Will stood there a moment.
Marveling.
The whole thing had taken only minutes. But it seemed as if he’d been in this hell, this shower, for a lifetime.
He turned to walk out, to leave with his friends, to the corner of the locker room where they had their lockers.
But they weren’t there.
They had left already. Quickly.
Leaving Will behind.
He saw them at lunch. His friends, but he quickly looked away.
He swore he saw Whalen lean forward and say something to the others that made grins bloom on their faces.
They were all there. Tim. Narrio. The Kiffer.
But if they’re my friends, Will thought, angry at being left to fend for himself, maybe I’m better off hanging alone.
So he took his tray of pureed mystery meat on toast points and a big slab of what was dubbed “Boston cream pie,” and went off to the side, where the freshmen — looking absolutely juvenile — sat.
For now he didn’t want to talk with anybody.
It was before the last period when Tim came up to Will just as he slammed his locker. Tim pushed back his glasses and stood next to Will.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
Will nodded.
Great. Wonderful. Nothing like getting pissed on by the star fullback who then tries to kill you.
Will nodded and then turned to go to their last class, Latin 4. Cicero was wrapping up Caesar’s last campaign. Gripping stuff.
.
. especially in the original.
Tim grabbed his arm to stop him. Will shrugged it off.
“Hey, wait a second,” Tim said. “Christ, Will, don’t go getting all bent out of shape. You had a fight.” Tim leaned close to Will, had to actually stretch up to say something in Will’s ear.
“He’s a fucking Gamma-minus,” Tim said, referring to Aldous Huxley’s alphabetical classification of humanity from
Brave New World
. Will and his friends were sure that they were the Alphas — the smart ones who’d someday buy and sell D’Angelo and his goony friends.
Will smiled, despite his anger.
Tim could do that. He could always make Will laugh.
But then he forced an angry mask back onto his face. “We’re gonna be late,” Will said.
The hall was empty, except for Father Ed, the youngest teacher in the school. He played guitar. Took them to the soup kitchens of the Catholic Worker.
A real Red, Tim pronounced. But Will thought that the priest was okay.
“Are you mad at us?” Tim asked. “Are you mad ‘cause we didn’t help?”
Will stopped. “Some help would have been nice.”
Tim let his arms fly out, gesturing dramatically. He was the school’s best debater, a state champion. He knew how to take the podium and use it.
“Sure, and can you see me up against that monster? He could fucking pick me up and bounce me against the ceiling. Besides, Narrio had already gone for Henkel to get help —”
“He did?”
“Sure he did.”
But Will remembered being left there afterward .
.
. being left all alone. They had abandoned him to his shame, he thought. His friends didn’t want anything to do with him.
Nada
.
Or maybe I’m reading that wrong, Will thought. Maybe they were just hurrying to their class and —
And he thought of Ted Whalen, his hair slicked down by the shower. Making a joke that Will was sure was about him.
Maybe I’m just paranoid, Will thought.