Kung Fu High School (21 page)

Unlaced my boot and slid it off to check my toe. It was definitely jammed so I clutched it between thumb and forefinger and corkscrewed it into the joint until it popped. Took me almost three minutes. The more times I hurt it, the longer it takes to get it back to working condition. Great. I'd probably get arthritis in that joint because of it. I checked my face in the mirror, washed, and got some bacitracin zinc on over the scabbing spots. Then I made sure to rinse my mouth with saltwater real well. At least the gums were trying to close the gap on the hole. That had to be good.

Just before Dad went to bed, and before I started icing my knee and hip, I had Jimmy help me move the new bedframe into Dad's room, the one Cue and I made, and removed the old one. It fell apart in our hands, which made it easier to carry out in pieces. I asked Jimmy if he was okay about moving into Cue's room and he said he was, which was great because I needed to sleep in my own bed again. The couch was messing up my back. Already I had a baseball-size knot where my neck met my shoulders. The tumor-headache was overwhelming that though.

Taking the last of Dad's bed outside and putting it with the other scrap wood, Jimmy opened his mouth.

"So what happens now?"

"We wait for everyone else to make their moves, and then we react," I said, dropping the last armful of wood onto the concrete edge of the back porch.

Jimmy just nodded, looking all kinds of serious. It was a relief that he didn't say that he wouldn't fight right then.

Needing that ice bad, I went back inside and closed the rolling patio door behind us. By the time I had a cold pack wrapped on my leg and one stuffed in the back of my waistband, I changed the subject. For some reason that look on his face made me think of the looks in the eyes of all those kids at school that made sure they were at least six feet away from him at all times. Some of them even ran when he was near.

"What's it like having people fuckin' terrified of you?"

"How do I feel about it? I don't."

Jimmy moved toward the hallway but stopped after he'd passed the couch.

"It used to worry me, in Hong Kong mostly. People would light incense and say prayers and stuff when I walked by so my 'evil spirit' wouldn't infect them or take their luck away. It was pretty crazy. I should've never gone back after that last World Championship. But what could I do? All my stuff was there." And he half laughed after he said it. That was the first time he'd laughed since Cue died. It made me feel a little better for having heard it, even if it was a kind of sad sound. Like giving up, or maybe surrendering to Fate. He disappeared into the bathroom and the door made a hollow bang against the frame behind him, not quite closing all the way.

I took the second shower of the night right after Jimmy, waded through his leftover steam to do it. I had homework to do but I didn't really feel like doing it anymore. What was the point? I just wanted to sleep in my bed. The headache was a fist just then. The tumor was a hard hand and closed fingers smashed into the disk-space between my neck and cranium. I couldn't deal with the pain anymore. I took one and a half pills of Vicodin and crashed in my own sheets, finally.

Thursday was bad. See, when I went to bed on Wednesday night, I had a lot of things in my head to discuss with Melinda. I just had no idea how to bring them up, where to lie, how to find out more than she wanted to give up. Yeah, she most likely sold us out. She definitely told Bruiser that somebody would be there like some twelve-year-old playing spy games in the front yard. And if Jimmy hadn't been there, I'd probably be done.

There was a part of me that still wanted to believe that we were on the same side as Melinda. But then I took that Vicodin and conked out, and in the morning, I took one more. A full pill, not just for my back and hip but for the tumor, for everything. That was what messed the whole day up. Messed me up anyway. One, I don't handle that stuff real well and two, fading out was definitely the worst thing I could've done when a giant hostile takeover of Kung Fu could happen at any moment.

In my gut, I didn't believe that Ridley would wait until the Friday after. He said it himself that he knew I was listening and that bastard was guaranteed to use the art of surprise. It was just his style. Shit, it wasn't like he didn't know where I lived. Anything could happen at any time, anywhere. That was his power and he exploited it. And I'd gone and taken too many painkillers and put myself in a real bad position. Stupid.

All I remember from the school day was the feeling of the hallways rushing past me like moving things, like twin subway trains passing a platform with velocity, in opposite directions. That and I was walking real slowly up the hall. Such an odd contrast, the train/walls flying past me so fast that I could feel the air on my face, while walking beyond slow in what felt like mud. It was possible that I'd been lost in the hallway all day, walking back and forth, I don't know. Somehow I made it back home, thanks to Jimmy. At least, that was the only way I could think of. I ended up in bed for a nap and didn't wake up until about ten at night when someone was banging on the front door.

"Is anyone else gonna get that?" I called out to a dark house but I got no answer. Dad was sleeping of course, but where was Jimmy?

I got up. Flicked on the light. I was still pretty much dressed so that was a relief.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Well, anyone come to transfer me would at least've been more subtle. I actually thought that as I shuffled into the hall, straightened the leftover half of the busted woodcarving, the bridge and river, the sugar-cane-white/yellow core of the wood hiding underneath the stain, and unlocked the door without asking who it was. I swung it open and walked into the kitchen. Really, I needed a glass of water. Vikes gave me cottonmouth, bad. I just assumed it was Remo. It wasn't.

"Just what in the fuck was wrong with you today?" It was Melinda.

"Here to see Jimmy?"

For some reason, alarm bells weren't going off in my head that she'd paid me a visit so late at night.

"No, I came to see you." Melinda was confrontational and she had blood on her shirt. Great. Exactly what I needed with my head and half my body feeling like it'd been dipped in glaze and left to dry. If she wanted a fight, it'd be pretty one-sided.

"I took too much Viking," I said. "Want a glass of water?"

"No."

"So," I said after a long glug from a smudged glass, "if you're not here to see Jimmy what are you here for?"

"Rico's gone."

"Well, you ought to treat your dogs better then, feed them puppy chow instead of that store-brand shit."

She pushed a palm into her fist and cracked some knuckles.

"See, I asked some real hard questions around about why you guys had to fight your way out of that cafeteria kitchen. At first, I just assumed you messed up, got unlucky, I don't know, something, but then with the way Ridley's been acting, not even looking in on the rolls yesterday, I knew something was wrong."

The silence in the house was different now that the oven was off.

"You knew the whole time, didn't you? You knew someone set you up and you just figured it was me, huh?" Melinda was pointing her finger at me. On any other day I probably would've broken it.

"Yeah, I figured it was you." No use lying to her now, although it probably wasn't the best time to cop to my meeting with Ridley, and what he'd said about her. That'd just bring up too many questions that didn't need to be answered with half a working brain. Besides, I knew she wasn't acting. Maybe it wasn't her that set us up.

She got close to my face. So close her hair brushed my droopy eyelid and made me blink her back.

"Fuck, Jen! How could you think I'd sell out like that? To Ridley? Jesus, what about Connie?"

"Who?" I asked, still not 100% awake or alert.

"Connie! My fucking sister, Jen! Or did you forget what Ridley did to her?"

Oh god. That one made me lose eye contact. I couldn't believe I'd forgotten that. Connie was Melinda's older sister and used to be an Aunt in the Wolves. She got a little too fond of Ridley's prime product. There were rumors. Like Connie sold her soul for that shit but Ridley only ever wanted her body. Like Connie was the first person he ever cut, how she gave him a taste for it, fostered him along, said she loved him, maybe she even liked it. Yeah, there were rumors, but the bottom line is still this: she took too much junk into her veins and she died. That was before Cue even went to Kung Fu. Blame it on the stress. Blame it on my jealousy of her and Jimmy. Blame it on a missing Cue. Blame it on my crazy dad. Blame it on anything. Still should've remembered. I couldn't even look at Melinda, hearing her breathing all heavy in front of me but still feeling so numb that her breath didn't register on my cheek nerves. I could smell blood though. I didn't want to know how it got in her mouth. I fully expected her to hit me.

"Good news for you, I did find out who it was, who sold you out, and you know, I had every intention of keeping it low profile, changing this person's mind, and using their information to our advantage against Ridley, but"—she opened the door and went outside, when she came back five seconds later, she was dragging a very bloody Rico onto the tiles of my hallway and closed the door on his foot—"I got a little carried away."

"Fuck! Is he did?"

"No, he's still breathing."

"Are you gonna transfer him? Here?"

"Nope." She kicked him. "We're going to clean him up and drop him on his mama's doorstep and ring the bell."

"
We?
Aw hell no!
You
need to be doing it, you started it!"

Really, I was sorry and all but she was asking for too much.

"And you're gonna help for not trusting me!"

Shit. It'd been a long time since I'd seen someone so thoroughly beaten, just picked apart. Ten times worse than what Karl did to Jimmy. I leaned in close to Rico. Even his ears were torn up. Eyes swollen to the size of small planets in orbit, the left was caved in at the browridge. His left nostril had been carved open, probably not intentionally, just with one of Melinda's rings. He was missing two teeth and he'd bitten part of his tongue off the tip. Which probably meant he hadn't expected Melinda to hit him and his mouth was open so he bit down by reflex. There was a real bad cut on his scalp. He was breathing like he had more than one broken rib: short little wheezy gasps. I didn't want to look under his shirt to see more damage.

"I wouldn't know where to start on this kid," I said.

"Call your doctor friend up then, he can help."

But there was no need, because Remo and Jimmy walked in right then. Perfect timing. I found out later that Jimmy'd gotten Remo to come over and make sure I wasn't sick and after he figured I just needed some sleep, Remo invited Jimmy to his mom's for dinner because he had to cook for her anyway. Turned out I missed out on his only decent dish,
frijoles
negros.
Damn.

"Oh, what the fuck is this? Now I gotta make house calls for randoms too? Sheyit." Remo dropped to his knees and checked Rico's pulse. "Help me get him into the bathroom!"

"Is this Rico?" Jimmy craned his neck sideways to get a better look before picking up the right leg. That's how torn up he was, the kid genuinely needed confirmation. I got his left leg. Remo had his left arm and Melinda grabbed his right.

"Yup, that's the motherfucker that sold you out to Ridley, right there. We in this together now."

Rico got put in the bathtub, mostly because it was the easiest thing to clean in the whole house. Jimmy swabbed the tile and the front step. Melinda and I helped Remo as best we could with his requests for gauze, disinfectant, soap, needles, surgical thread, benzo. Good news was we had a lot of that stuff in the house. I had to dip into Cue's old stash for some of it. Still though, it was a weird situation. A love-hate thing watching Melinda freak out about Rico's health after doing all the damage herself.

"Tomorrow," Melinda said, "after school, we're taking it to Ridley before he has a chance to take it to us. I'll be here early. Be ready."

And with that, she dragged the stitched-up Rico out the door and pushed him into the flat bed of her dad's pickup truck. I had no doubts that the kid's mother was about to get the shock of her life.

It was probably the right idea. Attacking first before they could attack us. Ridley would probably be halfway ready for us though. I mean, he'd be bound to notice that something had happened to Rico. Guess I really didn't have time to think about why Rico sold us out when he was sitting there bleeding, but the more I thought about it through my mild haze, it made sense. Jealous of Jimmy for one, and for two, maybe he thought Melinda had gone soft. I don't know. Maybe if I was in his position I would've done it too. The Wolves were going down sometime. And at the end, it was all about survival.

Jimmy wanted to talk but I told him to get some sleep instead. Remo had an early morning, so he took off without really saying good-bye. Dad must've taken his meds because he hadn't woken up through the whole thing. I was up for another hour after everyone left and Jimmy had a shower and turned in. Stretching, mostly. That, and trying to get the numbness out of me. Taking my own time in the cold of the backyard to loosen up my joints around the floating lack of feeling. Work a few combos anyway. Practice the Sand Witch and imagine Cue there to laugh at me. See him leaning up against the side of the house like he used to, always there to correct my posture, my form.

"Look here now," he would say, always sounding funny, the funny teacher. "You need to coil your leg sooner, start at the toes, then the ankle and flex all the way up your leg," and he would point with his fingers, "your calf your knee, your quad, your ass." Then he'd poke me in my splenectomy scar, habit, and we'd both laugh, habit too.

"Now," he'd say, "try it again, and when you start that leg whip, really feel it. Feel the ground through your foot as you wind up, don't start by just flexing the quad and kicking, you'll hurt yourself Keep your whole leg tight for the strike."