Read Kung Fu High School Online
Authors: Ryan Gattis
Kung Fu High School
Ryan Gattis
Table of Contents
THE PROMISE A.K.A THE PROLOGUE
WHY EVERYONE KNEW WHO JIMMY WAS
CONSEQUENCES A.K.A. THE EPILOGUE
Illustrations by Brandon Gattis
A Harvest Original
Harcourt, Inc.
Orlando Austin New York
San Diego Toronto London
Copyright © 2005 by Ryan Gattis
Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Brandon Gattis
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be
mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,
6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Hodder and Stoughton
A division of Hodder Headline
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gattis, Ryan.
Kung Fu High School/Ryan Gattis.â1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
"A Harvest Original."
Summary: Life at hellish "Kung Fu" High School is narrated by Jen B.
who, along with her brother, Cue, belongs to one of two gangs still
standing against the puppet principal and the tyrant drug kingpin.
[1. Drug trafficâFiction. 2. MurderâFiction. 3. GangsâFiction. 4. Martial
artsâFiction. 5. High schoolsâFiction. 6. SchoolsâFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G22737Kun 2005
[Fic]âdc22 2005004240
ISBN-13: 978-0156-03036-6 ISBN-10: 0-15-603036-5
Text set in Aries Roman
Display type set in Jen Hand, created by Laura Angela Reynoso
Designed by Kaelin Chappell Broaddus
Printed in the United States of America
First U.S. edition 2005
A C E G I K J H F D B
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations,
and events are the products of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.
This novel is very respectfully dedicated
to the memories of:(Bruce Lee)
and
Robert Cormier
THE STUDENT BODY
I dreamt of so many good things happening for me here.
Now, there is nothing. Everything is finished, gone.
âCheng Chao-an,
Tang Shan da Xiong/Fists of Fury
Bunting nodded. Continued to stare into space. Not
wanting to look at Janza now or anybody or anything.
Staring into the future, next year, beyond. Him, Bunting,
in command of the entire school. Stooges at his beck
and call. An army at his disposal. No rules except for
those he made up. The boss. More than that. Like a
dictator, for crissake.
Beautiful.
âRobert Cormier,
Beyond the Chocolate War
THE PROMISE A.K.A THE PROLOGUE'Tis gone!
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.âWilliam Shakespeare,
Hamlet,
Act I, Scene i
You got the stopwatch? Good. Reset it. We'll time this. No, no, don't push that start button yet. Just wait. Now the way I hear it, it all began when Thug #1 punched Jimmy as he was walking on the road that went through the woods that Jimmy was known to walk every day after school. Well, not exactly punched Jimmy but tried, came up hard behind him and threw an awkward, crooked-wristed fist in his general direction. Completely sloppy techniqueâokayânow push the button.
Jimmy ducked, turned, and twisted while pivoting on his standing leg and delivered a forearm throat chop to Thug #1, incapacitating the ever-living shit out of the guy and hurtling his body backward onto the concrete.
Stop the clock. What's it say?
"Not even one full second. Well, almost a second."
Start it again.
Thug #2 comes out from behind a tree and has a shovel over his head like he's going to tomahawk Jimmy with the edge of it. Bad idea. Thug #2 obviously hasn't seen a single kung fu movie in his whole damn life because he still has a surprised look on his face when Jimmy straight leg kicks him in the gut, which makes Thug #2 catapult forward, doubling over, but while Thug #2 is trying to bring the shovel down on Jimmy and regain his breath, Jimmy leg sweeps him with so much force that he goes up into the air backward. Now, Jimmyâget thisâcomes up out of the leg sweep, stands up and extends his right leg backward into an "L" at the knee and actually clips the guy at the base of the neck with a kick that knocks him out and then, Jimmy doesn't stop there, he actually catches this guy by the back of the neck with the bottom of his foot. Completely cushions him, because, you know, the guy was out like a light, if he let him drop, his skull would've just gone smush.
"I can't even picture that. What do you mean?"
I mean he caught him with his foot. He held up the weight of a full-grown man with his leg extended backwards in that "L" shape. Like the guy's head was an inflated ball.
"I still can't see it."
Dammit, give me that pen. That napkin too. Okay, here:
THE NAPKIN
See? On partial extension, knee at a ninety-degree angle pointing backward while standing on one leg, Jimmy knocked the guy out with an aimed kick to the base of the skull, then he CAUGHT Thug #2 by the back of the neck with the sole of his foot. Then he grabbed the shovel with his left hand and just stayed in that position. STAYED!
"What?! No fucking way. That's not even possible. Physics and shit. Man, Jet Li couldn't do that WITH wires."
Serious. Jimmy just did it for show. To scare everyone watching. Now stop that clock. Time?
"Counting Thug #2's running toward Jimmy and not our little argument, that would be 4 seconds totalâ4.3 to be precise."
Start it again and keep it running this time.
Because Thug #3 comes running at Jimmy and before he even gets close, he gets smashed in the shins with the shovel head. See, Jimmy pushed passed-out Thug #2 back up to standing real quick, took one giant step and swung the shovel so that it cracked #3's shins, then turned back around and caught #2 AGAIN but with his instep this time just as #2 was falling back over and before his head even hit the ground. Meanwhile, Thug #4 takes a flying leap at Jimmy, as he is supposedly busy trying to keep #2's skull from cracking but still manages to find time to block Thug #4's kick with the shaft of the shovel and then swat him out of the air like a lobbed baseball. BANG. After all that, Jimmy just lays #2 down on the ground gently like his body was some balloon attached to a soccer-ball head.
"I'm still not seeing it."
Ayight, just flip that napkin over. Here:
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE NAPKIN
Got it now?
"I mean, yeah, I got it. I just don't believe it. There is no way that would ever, ever happen."
You don't know Jimmy.
"Yeah, guess I don't. So, what happened after that?"
Jimmy walks to the nearest pay phone and calls an ambulance. The ambulance shows up with the cops and he gets booked for assault and all kinds of other things. Anyway, his mom bails him out of jail that night with the last of his fighting prize money and extracts a sacred promise from Jimmy. She looks deep into his eyes and makes him swear on the soul of his father that he will never fight again.