Mind + Body, Aaron Dunlap [smart books to read TXT] 📗

“So… you could buy a house, you know,” she’d say.

“A big house. And a car,” I’d reply.

“Or, a small house and a medium house. Right next to each other,” after some thought.

“Or the House of Representatives. And a car,” I’d say finally.

This went on and on.

I’d told Amy pretty much everything. She’d been more interested than shocked or anxious for a loan. Through the weeks we’d gone over all the details, formulating theories about mysterious deaths and mysterious sums of money. Ideas floated around such as that my dad was not a medical researcher but a secret agent who’d been killed in action, or perhaps he was a robot assassin from the future, or he was a hologram and never really existed. All three seemed equally likely.

It was nice to be able to talk to someone. After a few weeks the dead-dad-kid stigma started to wear off at school, but the break from contact seemed to make people question why they ever talked to me in the first place. I suppose I’m just not that interesting and the few recent things that seemed to make me interesting I’d elected not to tell anybody. Except Amy.

Nothing notably weird happened for about a month. One Thursday at school I was lost in thought while walking through the halls during lunch. I find when I don’t have something particular to think about I end up thinking about everything; hallways, lockers, and people just blur through the periphery. I’m usually able to stay above the surface enough to avoid running into people or falling down a flight of stairs, but apparently not so much today. It was lunch time, so most people were either in the cafeteria or outside in the cold trying to hide the fact that they’re smoking. For this, it was surprising to find three poser Mexican gang drifters standing around one otherwise-empty hallway.

In Fredericksburg there isn’t much in the way of “gang activity,” but as in any suburb there’s plenty of poser activity. The town is close enough to Washington D.C., however, that some of the posers have friends who have friends who actually are gang members, and so after taking classes at their blue ribbon schools and dropping their books off at their five bedroom houses, they play make-believe that they’re hard-boiled gang members raised on the streets. Nothing new.

I wasn’t looking, I walked right into one of them as he was making some elaborate gesture in the middle of some I’m-sure-hilarious joke. I was walking pretty fast, and the one I hit was jarred back a foot or so and dropped the clear plastic drink container he was holding.

“Ay, watch where you’re going, son!” the one I hit said; the others turned toward me and fell into their stereotypical straight-from-the-TV behavior: slowly surrounding me and watching the first one, the one I hit, apparently their ringleader, for instructions. I opened my mouth to apologize and hopefully slide my way out of there when I noticed that whatever was spilling out of the container the first guy dropped had splashed onto my arm after the impact. It looked like orange juice, it smelled like rubbing alcohol. Oh, the sweet rebellion. I couldn’t help but laugh, which probably looked like I was laughing at them. One guy standing to my right pushed me suddenly, and chimed in, “Something funny, son?”

They all say “son” too often.

I swallowed my laugh, but couldn’t help but say, “I’d be less obvious if you poured the vodka right in a bottle of orange juice. Putting it all in a clear bottle… it’s trying too hard.”

I should have shut up.

The first guy didn’t seem to like that. “Maybe you should mind your own business, bro,” he said, looking me up and down. I guess I wasn’t his son anymore. I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud either.

I have to say, I’d never been slammed against a locker before. It’s not very awesome; the handle goes right into the small of your back.

Very quickly this had turned from a funny situation into a me-getting-pummeled situation.

Two of them were holding my arms and shoulders firmly against the locker. After making sure the hallway was clear, the ringleader swung his fist sharply into my stomach. No wind-up, no pull-back, just the punch. I heard the slap of the fist against my abdomen, then felt the dull, hallow feeling, like being scooped out with a spoon. I was pretty sure I had never actually been punched before. Don’t recommend it.

“Not laughing now,” he said after drawing his fist back.

The pain wasn’t as bad as I expected. I didn’t double over or pass out or cry like a girl. I just winced and exhaled sharply. For my own sake, maybe I should have exaggerated a bit. The ringleader seemed dissatisfied, he stepped forward and threw another quick punch, into nearly the same spot. This one hurt more. I think I may have winced.

I tried to pull away from the lockers but the, let’s call them “goons” moved their hands from my arms to my shoulders to hold me firmer.

I tried to rationalize all of this in my head. He was overreacting because his friends were there, sure, but this was a respect thing. I’d disrespected him so he had to punch me until, what? Until I was punched to death? Until someone came and broke up the fight? Until I apologized? If my options were die, wait, or apologize, I’d shirk my pride and just get it over with.

“Okay, okay,” I said, holding my hands up as far as I could, about as high as my chest, “I’m sorry.”

He looked at me for a few seconds, a stupid, empty expression on his face. With his respect returned, he should let me go, right?

“Oh, you bet you’re sorry,” he said as he threw another punch, this one into my side.

This was just illogical.

The goons laughed like idiots, then one stopped suddenly and looked to my left. A kid I didn’t recognize had come around the far corner of the hall. He stopped in his tracks for a second when he saw us and recognized it as a fight, then backed up and ran back around the corner.

The ringleader huffed, an actual huff, seeming to prepare for his grand finale before they had to disperse. I saw him draw back his fist, for once. This punch wasn’t coming for my gut, I knew. This one would be in the face.

He threw the punch. I winced preemptively as the fist drew toward me, seeming to slow mid-air until it just hung there suspended in time.

Something weird seemed to happen in my head. The world had slowed down, got mushy, and stopped entirely. Walls in my mind crumbled, and everything I thought I knew about anything changed in an instant. A thousand images and sounds suddenly splashed against my brain like buckets of paint being dumped on a canvas. Then there was a pain, a deep, throbbing pain like an ice cream headache that started at the base of my skull and radiated outward until my entire body was numb.

With my head still throbbing and my body still numb, time seemed to un-pause and that fist was again on an intercept course with my face. With a perverse clarity, and as if it were the only thing to do, I grabbed the clenched fist from the air with my left hand and spun it counter-clockwise Instantly, I found my right hand going around the back of the ringleader’s head and I pulled his face into the lockers behind me, his face hitting just above my right shoulder.

As he slumped to the ground I was peeling the hands from my arms, then putting a palm into one of the goon’s throats, my knee into the back of the other, then the whole body of the first goon into the second. They both tripped over the ringleader and toppled over each other onto the floor. It was a short burst of hands connecting with faces and necks that was over so quickly I could barely track each move as I performed them.

They were all down now. My head hurt.

My head hurt, and apparently I was a ninja.

Voices echoed behind me, distant and distorted. My head was pounding harder and louder, like ten glass bottles had been broken over my head. I felt dizzy and lost my balance. I stumbled against the opposite wall, groping it for support. Through a fog I felt a hand grab my shoulder and another grab my opposite arm.

Without pause I pivoted on my heel, freed the grip from my arm, and was preparing to push someone’s shoulder out of socket when I realizing that just below the tuft of shirt I was now grabbing was a shiny silver badge. I was holding the left arm and right shoulder of our school’s very frightened police liaison.

Everything went fuzzy for a few minutes.