Becoming Who We Are: Chapter Nine
The final chapter. Trigger alert: Violence and suicide themes.
Copyright 2021 to the author
**
"What do you mean, no?" Jeff asked, his eyes narrowing.
"I mean exactly that: No," the girl replied, hugging her books to her chest as she met his eye. "I won't go out with you."
"Whatever," Jeff said, turning away. "Would have done your popularity a world of good, though," he added over his shoulder.
The girl laughed.
"Haven't you heard? Your stock's been going down for weeks. You'll be lucky to get a date to the prom, you loser."
Jeff stalked away, pretending he had not heard her last words. His cheeks blazed. Bitch! She was just saying that. It wasn't true.
Fuming at this rejection -- girls did not say no to Jeff Rohrbach and get away with it -- he marched into Coach Spencer's classroom, just missed knocking over a desk in the first row, and slammed down onto his seat. The teacher gave him a quelling look as he counted out the test papers, and Jeff put his fury out of his mind. He'd deal with his rage later. Right now, he had a test to take, and he had to do well if he expected to get into Penn State on his academic merits alone. By the time the bell sounded, his face had lost most of its fierceness.
"Class, put all papers, books and backpacks under your desks," Mr. Spencer said, grabbing a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. "It's time for the exam. Remember, we're on fourth lunch today because of this final, so do not get up at the second lunch bell."
Twenty-three students obeyed as the coach stood at the head of the first row, poised to pass out papers. As the final students shoved their possessions into the racks below their chairs, the teacher thrust six tests at Bill Abrams, the first student in the first row. The students rushed to pass the tests to the people behind them, intent on squeezing every possible second out of the class period.
As his classmates swiftly scribbled solutions on the scrap paper included with the exam, Luke stared numbly at the questions. While he recognized the equations and symbols, his brain refused to comprehend what they meant. He closed his eyes for several seconds, but the paper did not turn into another, easier exam. Fighting a surge of anxiety, Luke carefully examined each question. Not one sparked any response from his brain.
He wiped his brow and shuffled his feet. The teacher looked up from the sports magazine he was reading, but saw no students sneaking peeks at others' papers. His glance rested briefly on Luke. Why wasn't the kid writing anything? Coach had always heard Oriental kids were supposed to perform brilliantly in math, but this kid had shown no signs of doing so. He certainly looked panicked right now.
Shrugging, the teacher returned to his magazine, flipping to an article on college football standouts. A photograph of an Asian face startled him. Geez, the kid weighed more than two hundred pounds: he looked like a tank. Coach Spencer had had no idea Oriental kids could grow that big. Involuntarily, he glanced at Luke again, noticing with a tinge of concern that the kid still had not picked up his pencil. Around him, the other kids wrote and sighed and frowned and gazed at the ceiling for guidance. Luke remained perfectly still. Frowning, the coach glanced back at the magazine.
The boy kept his head bowed as the numbness spread through his body. When the teacher gave the five-minute warning, Luke grasped the pencil and wrote on his scrap paper an apology to his teacher and a request to take the final again.
The coach intercepted him in the locker room after gym. He thrust Luke's note at the boy's nose.
"What's this?" he barked. "Why didn't you do the exam?"
"I don't know," Luke said, apparently to the floor. "I just couldn't concentrate."
The coach regarded the boy with a mix of concern and exasperation.
"That's not much of an excuse," he said. "If that's all you have to say for yourself, I'm going to have to fail you."
Luke started, looking up into the man's eyes. He thought briefly about telling him of his problem with Jeff, but rejected that idea. The coach liked his star player; he did not like Luke.
"Then I guess you'll have to fail me," Luke said, hunching into his shoulders.
While the coach was many things, including brusque, hardheaded, chauvinistic, and inflexible, he was not a fool and he was not completely unfair. He rubbed his chin as he studied the pale boy.
"No," he said. "Not yet. I'll give you one day to tell me what's going on. Then I'll decide what I'm going to do."
Luke stared up at him but said nothing.
"So it's all up to you, kid. I'll expect to see you during lunch tomorrow."
The coach turned around and walked away. Luke tramped up the stairs to his locker, collected his things and slowly made his way out of the building. He had a lot to think about, but his mind seemed unwilling to focus on anything but the failed test. No matter what happened, his mother would be furious.
Jeff had largely left him alone in the last few weeks, although his deputies still collected Luke's lunch money each day. As Luke trudged down the sidewalk, his thoughts on his mother's likely reaction to this latest failure, he forgot to remain alert. He never even saw Jeff before he collared Luke and dragged him into the bushes next to the large church south of the park.
The older boy wasted no time slamming his fist into Luke's belly, causing the air to whoosh from Luke's lungs as he fell. Jeff leapt on top of him, smashing his nose with one hard blow. Luke gasped and struggled, breathing in blood and coughing, but the stronger boy seemed possessed by some new and frightening rage. Jeff muttered as his fists flew, but Luke could not make out the words. He did his best to protect himself from the pummeling, but too many punches connected.
As Jeff methodically mauled Luke, he saw first the mocking face of the girl who had rejected him that morning. Her face melted into that of his old girlfriend, which morphed into his mother's. He barely heard Luke's cries he punished them all.
About a block away, Officer Andy MacCaffrey shivered as he walked. His driver's license put his age at twenty-three, but people who did not know him usually figured the man for a gangly sixteen year old. Assigned to the south end, he had the option of wearing civilian clothes, which he had chosen to do today. Most of the time, people mistook the out-of-uniform officer for a student, which suited him fine. He heard more interesting tidbits that way.
As he paused at the south end of the park, his radio discreetly crackled with a report of a fight at the church. He opened his coat and acknowledged the call, then broke into a run. Rounding the corner, he witnessed a burly young man plant a powerful punch in the face of a smaller kid. He sprinted to the struggling pair, grasped Jeff's collar and pulled him up, shouting that he was a police officer. Jeff closed his fist as he whirled to face his new opponent and slammed it into the officer's bulletproof vest.
"Ow!" he shrieked.
The officer grabbed Jeff's hand and neatly twisted it behind his back even as he kicked the kid's feet out from under him. He shoved the blond to the ground, planted one knee on his back and reached for his handcuffs.
"You are under arrest," he chanted. "You have the right to remain silent..."
Seeing this, Jack Curtis trotted out of the church and went straight to the boy on the ground. Dear Lord in heaven, this was the second bleeding child he had helped in the last month. Kids really had gone crazy these days. Despite the protests from his knees, he knelt stiffly beside the panting child and peered at his face.
"You all right?"
Luke ran his tongue around his mouth to check on his teeth, wiped his face with one hand, then regarded the resulting blood on his glove with dismay.
"I guess not," he rasped.
"That was some beating you were getting," Jack Curtis said. "I'm the one who called the cops."
"Thanks," Luke said.
"You know him?" Jack asked, nodding toward Jeff's slumping figure.
"Uh, no," Luke said.
