Zero Sight (2 page)

I scrambled back to my feet. There was no time to gloat. I still had fourteen very angry Splotches to deal with. I cursed myself as I stood. This hadn’t been the plan. I had wanted to buy time, not dish out more hurt. These kinds of fights didn’t give extra-points for extra ass kicking—they deducted them. I knew that the more pain I dished out, the more they would pay back in kind, but I had underestimated how serious they were. I mean, a freaking pipe to the head? Stars above, these guys wanted me in the back of an ambulance.

Once I got off the ventilator, my dad was going to kill me—we didn’t have any insurance.

I swept the circle like a cornered animal. I needed an opening, and I needed it fast. All 14 of the Splotches wanted me pulped, and they were all acting on that desire at the same time. My Sight was starting to go haywire. When lots of sources generate energy at once, it’s like listening to an orchestra tune-up. Each instrument clamors over the next, vying for attention. Focusing on a single one becomes increasingly difficult. All I could See was a brilliant collage of colors—very pretty but very useless.

I didn’t need Mr. Tzu to tell me that, if a gang of mongoloids wearing tie-dyed navy slacks starts charging, it’s time to make haste or be paste—and I certainly wasn’t too proud to run. I spent a precious second searching the crowd and selecting an opening. I picked a gap between two girls, a weak link in the rapidly collapsing circle-o-death. Hoping that my antsy legs would cooperate, I kicked off in a dead sprint for the space between them.

Leaderless, the Splotches were acting rash. Each Splotch wanted to be the first to land a blow. Most committed to full-on charges. That included the two girls I rushed at. As they realized I was charging
towards
them, their eyes popped wide with surprise. Mobs are funny. Rolling deep gives the mobites a ton of confidence. Their chances of getting hurt are incredibly small. But that type of confidence comes at a cost.

It makes them stupid.

In their haste to bash my brains in, the girls had charged too fast. They had never considering what they would do if I came charging back at them. Now they couldn’t change course to block me. I zipped right by. One of the lovelies did manage to rake my cheek with her sharpened nails. (Remind me to never ask her for a head massage.) But that was that. I was home free. I extended my stride and didn’t look back.

Things were going well. My mad sprint was adding distance, and more importantly, it was eating time. As I reached the back of Binion High, I angled toward the corner of the main building. Taking the beat-down was no longer an option. The amount of damage I’d dealt to Tyrone and Phil had escalated this fight to a whole new level. If I didn’t want to be spatulaed onto a stretcher, I needed to get to the cops before the Splotches got a hold of me. At the very least, I needed to get out in front of the school and into the police’s line-of-sight.

I smiled. I’m a fast kid, and while some of the Splotches might eventually chase me down, I doubted they could make up the distance between us before I reached the cops. The LVPD would charge me with disorderly conduct and throw me in jail for a day or two. I could plead the charge down with some community service. The charges wouldn’t even show up on my record. I nodded to myself. Two nights in jail was a fair trade for getting to stay in one piece.

My head jolted forward and relief spread over me like a warm blanket. I was going to make it…but that warm blanket was making me dizzy. The sky was far too white. My feet were lagging behind the rest of my body. My limbs weren’t moving right. It was like one of those dreams where no matter how fast you ran it wasn’t enough to get away. A funny tingle was developing at the back of my head. I felt mushy. My ears started ringing. I reached back with my hand and felt my scalp. It was wet, sticky.

“
Oh,” I blubbered. I had forgotten that my Sight was blurred. I hadn’t sensed the incoming rock. If I hadn’t been running away, it probably would have killed me.

My legs giving out, I stumbled to the corner of the building. I was right outside the chemistry lab. It was all closed up for the day. Clinging to cinder blocks, I tried to sort out my feet. They replied by turning to jelly. Shower of sparks were rushing towards my Sight. The lights were coming from too many directions. There was nowhere for me to dodge. Fear took me, and time slowed. As the first blow landed, I prayed I would have the chance to learn from my mistakes.

The Splotches knew their craft. They avoided my head. The body offers plenty of opportunities for pain, parts that don’t kill the sucker if you break them. All you need is a pointy boot and some patience. The kicks came sharp and quick. I couldn’t stand. Curling into a ball only opened up my sides. It was hard to sort out the pain, but I could certainly hear the cracks. A broken rib makes a distinct sound. I took a breath and instead of air I was greeted with a stabbing pain. The blows just kept coming. I had the time to consider what a shattered rib could do to a lung. The time to wonder what would happen if someone hit my spine. It occurred to me that I might die. The pain reached a crescendo. My mind started zeroing out. But I fought the urge to sleep. I fought it with everything I had. I was afraid. I was afraid I might not wake up. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready to go. I gritted my teeth and bore through it. And to think, this whole mess was of my own making.

+

Tyrone Nelson was the best pitcher our school ever had. He was headed for a full-ride scholarship at Stanford and a guaranteed ticket to the majors. Scouts actually came to our school to watch him play. The chicks loved him. The guys wanted to be him. He was a phenomenally talented athlete—and an absolute pile of shit.

Last year, Tyrone was halfway through his third no-hitter when a kid from Valley High took a single off him. During the kid’s second at bat, Tyrone Nelson threw a fastball at his temple. The pitch found its mark. It blinded the kid in one eye. He’d never see another fastball again. Needless to say, from that point on, batters just swung and missed. The incident earned Tyrone the nickname Beemer. An enterprising agent had gone ahead and bought him a real one in exchange for hiring his firm.

Tyrone Nelson was the undisputed king of our school—but that wasn’t enough. More than fame, more than power, Tyrone loved to control. He took over the Splotches as a hobby, purely as a way to get his rocks off. Under his leadership, the Splotches cornered our school’s soft drug market. They sold ecstasy mostly, plus some of the good ADD medicines that the nerds loved to pop before tests. Tyrone was smart. He avoided the hard stuff and never let the Splotches sell shit on school grounds. The Splotches didn’t exactly terrorize the school either. Tyrone’s violence was more targeted. He preferred to make one or two kids’ lives a living hell. Tyrone call them his ‘projects’. He would toy with a kid for a while, break them, and then move on to the next.

No one bothered to intervene. Tyrone was
the
school hero. He was something rare for Las Vegas: a success. Vegas was in the shitter. The decade long Great Slump had crushed people’s self-worth. They all desperately wanted to be around something that wasn’t rotting. They wanted to rub up against it. Maybe they hoped that some of it would come off in their hands. Most of the students, a good number of the faculty, and a majority of alumni backed Tyrone no matter what shit he pulled. They looked the other way when the Splotches dented in a dork—and to be honest, I did too. I had no interest in getting involved in any of it. That would have conflicted with the Plan.

The Plan called for calm. Throughout high school I had kept my head low. I managed to make it into my senior year with only five major fights under my belt. I think it might have been the school record. (I could see the yearbook inscription now: “Dieter Resnick, least likely to be stabbed dead in a bar fight”) The trick was to bloody up your opponents. You know, hurt them real bad. Then no one wanted to mess with you.

Ted Binion High was sorta like prison + homework. The same rules applied.

I had kept my head down for good reason. I only saw one chance to get out of this shit-hole of a town: a full-ride to a private. Nevada’s state college system collapsed my freshman year. The funding had simply dried up. Across the country money was tight, so the Great Slump was hitting Vegas especially hard. No one wanted to take a trip to Vegas when they were worrying if they had enough money to last the winter, and with the tourists went the tax base. There was barely enough revenue to fund the primary schools let alone state colleges. With state school out of the picture, an admission to a private was the only viable option for an aspiring Nevada youth. If your parents were wealthy enough to stash some cash you might be able take out a loan. But that wasn’t an option for me. My dad was heavily invested in The Bank of Ethanol, and believe-it-or-not, their interest rates are terrible. Since the only help I got from home was free lessons on how to dodge beer bottles, I needed to go for broke. A full-ride to one of the East Coast privates—that was the Plan. To do that, I had to deliver straight A’s and blow the doors off every AP test that Binion High had to offer. There were a lot of smarts gunning for the same scholarships. If I wanted to make the Plan happen, I needed to keep my head down and bust my ass. So you see, I didn’t want to be involved with Tyrone. I didn’t want to fight any of the Splotches. It’s just that I couldn’t help myself.

The kid Tyrone Nelson blinded was my friend.

His name was Victor Newmar, and we cut vegetables together.

Because my father is such a money sieve, I’ve worked since I was fourteen. Air salads and invisible hamburgers aren’t very filling, and hunger serves as excellent incentive to forage for a paycheck. That’s where the Newmars came in. Victor Newmar’s father used to deal cards with my dad. When I was about five, Mr. Newmar left the casino floor and—with some seed money he and his wife had scrounged together—opened a little restaurant in the same district as all the strip clubs. No one ever opened businesses down there, especially not 24-hour restaurants. But it was a brilliant move. It turns out that strippers and bouncers have to eat too, and being service employees themselves, they tip damn well for your efforts. The Newmar’s little joint became a huge success, and at fourteen, I became a grateful employee. Mr. Newmar had me do two hours of prep-work in the kitchen plus give Victor any tutoring he needed. In return, Mr. Newmar paid me a full-time wage.

His son, Victor, was two years younger than me. Victor’s folks realized early on that he was a bit slow, but that never stopped Victor. He tried hard and seemed immune to frustration. Teaching him inspired me to work harder myself. It made my own excuses seem petty. My own struggles, small. Growing up, the Newmars were like a surrogate family. When my old man settled in for a bender, I could always crash at Victor’s place. Before I was halfway through the door, Mrs. Newmar would be on her way up the stairs to make a bed. They never made me feel like a charity case. They never made me feel guilty for hiding out at their place. Heck, they even made me feel like they were
happy
to have my company. But the best part about the Newmars was how they never said a word about my father. When I got older, I realized why. There was never any alcohol in the Newmar household, and despite all the family gatherings the Newmars hosted, I never once heard Mr. Newmar speak of his own father.

I never asked him, but I figured Mr. Newmar knew more than most about growing up with a drunk.

I was sitting in the stands the day Tyrone hit Victor in the skull with that fastball. In the car with the Newmars as they followed the ambulance. At the hospital when Victor woke up blind in one eye.

Victor shrugged it off like it was nothing.

“
Can’t fix what’s already done, Dieter,” he had told me. “Only what’s comin’.”

Only what’s coming…

I spent that night punching a wall till my fists bled, but in the morning I bandaged up my knuckles and told myself a convenient lie. I told myself that Tyrone didn’t mean to do it, that it was an accident, a fluke pitch. It was a lie, but I had my eye on a scholarship and taking on gang members didn’t mix well with Dieter’s Grand Plan. I told myself it wasn’t my business. I told myself making a stir would amount to nothing. I told myself it was all for the better if I got the scholarship. I told myself I could give Victor a better turn if I became powerful and wealthy. What good would revenge against Tyrone be anyway? The world was a hard place. You couldn’t fix it with your fists…You needed money and power for that.

I avoided those arguments when I stood in front of a mirror.

They didn’t work so well when I looked myself in the eye.

Then one day as I was walking to class, I overheard Tyrone talking with his buddies. They were laughing about the ‘tard he puttied during the Valley High game last year. To my surprise, I realized I had stopped walking. Instead, I was standing in the middle of the hall shaking. People were bumping into me as they rushed to class. I stood there oblivious. Part of my brain screamed at me to stop glaring, screamed at me to let it go…That part got smacked down, and smacked down hard. All those weeks of cowardice boiled over. I wanted Tyrone to hurt, for him to bleed, for him to plead for mercy, and get nothing but more pain in return. I knew I was distinctly qualified to make it happen, and that excited me. It drove me wild.

Tyrone noticed my glare. It must have unnerved him, because he jolted alert. Tyrone wasn’t used to having that sort of look directed at him—it was unheard of.