“I don’t know, Annie. What if we’d been with your dad last night?”
Allan Richards came out the front door with two other boys. Richards was a tall kid with a bad complexion and an attitude to match. He tossed a green tennis ball in the air as he walked. As he passed, he glanced at Annie and Cara with a dismissive whatever look and headed toward the red Mustang. Annie didn’t pay much attention. She was trying to decide if she should be pissed at Cara or Cara’s father.
“Kind of a sunshine friendship,” she finally said.
“He’ll get over it. Give it a couple days. And we can, you know, still do the library and stuff.”
“What about Slim Lake? He was okay with that?”
“I didn’t ask him. Anyway, it would be away from town, away from your dad. Kind of out of harm’s way.”
Annie saw Uly Kingbird and Darrell Gallagher crossing the parking lot, coming from town. She’d been surprised to see Uly at school that week. She’d figured that because of the tragedy in the family, he’d be home for a while. But the Kingbirds, she remembered, were not a family that cried. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to him, but he seemed okay. Even though the temperature was easily in the high sixties, Gallagher wore his long black leather coat, a la Matrix. As they got nearer, Allan Richards pointed their way and said something to his buddies gathered around the Mustang. He started walking a course that would intercept them. A couple of the other boys trailed after him.
“Hey, Red Boy,” Richards called. He was still tossing his tennis ball.
Uly kept walking, as if he hadn’t heard.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.” Richards stepped in front of Uly and Gallagher, blocking their way. “You deaf or just stupid?”
Uly said, “I’m just going inside, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay.” Richards grinned and glanced back to see if the others around Amundsen’s Mustang were watching. “I think you should take the day off, because the truth is, I can’t stand being in the same building with you.”
He tossed the ball at Uly. It bounced off his forehead and Richards caught it. Uly tried to move past, but Richards stepped in his way.
Gallagher said, “Why don’t you just leave him alone.”
Richards turned and bounced the ball off Gallagher’s forehead in the same way he’d done it to Uly. “Why don’t you make me, freak-boy.”
Gallagher made no move against Richards, just stood silently with his hands in his long black coat.
“Go on,” Richards said to Uly. “The Red Boyz aren’t welcome here.”
“I’m not one of the Red Boyz.”
“Know what we do to Red Boyz around here? Open ’em up with buckshot, that’s what.”
He popped the ball off Uly’s forehead again. This time Uly followed it back. He tackled Richards. Together they fell backward and ricocheted off a green Taurus wagon, knocking the side mirror from its mount. They hit the pavement with Uly still in Richards’s grasp. The car alarm on the Taurus began to bleat mercilessly. Richards was taller and heavier, but Uly was all rage and he wrapped up the bigger boy in the furious hug of his arms as they wrestled. Annie leaped from the planter box and raced toward the Taurus. The Mustang crowd came, too. They formed a loose circle around the two kids writhing on the asphalt. Annie moved to intervene, but Gary Amundsen blocked her way.
“Let them finish it,” he said.
“Get out of my way, Gary.”
Annie tried to move around him, but Randy Shaw slipped next to Amundsen and stood with him shoulder to shoulder, forming a human wall.
“You heard him,” Shaw said. “It’s between them.”
Annie tried once again to maneuver around them, but Shaw reached out and shoved her roughly back. Anger flared red in her vision. She responded to his shove with one of her own, far fiercer than his had been. He hadn’t expected it. His eyes showed his surprise and he stumbled backward and fell over Uly and Richards. As he went down, he hit his head on the door handle of the Taurus. He came to rest in a heap on top of Richards, who’d finally managed to pin Uly beneath him. For a moment it was chaos on the ground as they all fought to separate.
Then Amundsen yelled, “Hey, stop it, you guys. Randy’s bleeding bad.”
Shaw seemed confused. He reached a hand to the back of his head, and when he brought it around in front so that he could see, his face went white. His palm and fingers were dripping red.
“Jesus,” he said. “Oh shit.”
Uly and Richards separated and stood up. Shaw struggled to stand and finally found his feet. He turned the back of his head toward Amundsen. “Dude, is it bad?”
“I can’t tell, Randy. There’s too much blood.”
Amundsen was right. Blood welled up bright crimson through Shaw’s blond hair and fell in huge drops onto the black asphalt. Annie’s rage vanished, replaced by a terrible fear.
“Break it up, guys! Break it up!” Mr. Bukoski, who taught math, shoved his way through the circle of boys. He was more Mack truck than man, and he was the school’s head football coach as well. “Let me see.” He took a good look at the back of Shaw’s head, his fingers sifting through blond hair and blood. “Might take a stitch or three, but you’ll be fine. Here.” He yanked a folded handkerchief from his back pocket and put it over the wounded area. “Hold that there. Come on.” With his bloody hand on the boy’s shoulder, he turned Shaw toward the school. “Kingbird, Richards, O’Connor. I want you in the office. Now. And that’s my car. Somebody’s going to pay for a new mirror.”
Annie trooped with the others behind Mr. Bukoski and Randy Shaw. When she passed Cara, who still sat on the planter box, Cara mouthed, You were awesome, girl. Annie made no reply and followed the others into the dark of the school building.
When she got the call, Lucinda was in the middle of changing Misty. She lifted the baby, whose bottom was clean but still bare, from the changing table and carried her to the phone in the hallway. Aurora Area High School, the caller ID indicated. Her thought was that Uly had forgotten something important and wanted her to bring it, a request he’d made occasionally in the past.
When the principal explained to her what the situation actually was, she assured him that her husband would be there soon. She called Will.
“It’s Uly,” she told him. “There’s been some trouble at school. A fight. A boy was hurt.”
“Uly do the hurting?” He sounded almost hopeful.
“I don’t know. Can you go? I have the baby.”
“I’ll take care of it, Luci.”
She spent the next hour and a half worrying. A call from school hadn’t been uncommon with Alejandro, but Ulysses never got into trouble. He was too quiet, something Will complained about. It was true that Uly didn’t talk much. He lived inside himself. But his father was the same way.
She’d just put Misty down for a nap when she heard the car pull into the drive and the thump of car doors slamming. She reached the kitchen just as the side door opened and the two walked in. Ulysses came first, looking sullen, as always. Behind him, Will didn’t look too upset.
“Go on to your room. I’ll let you know what I decide,” he said to his son’s back.
“Yes, sir.”
Uly skulked past his mother without looking at her.
“Are you all right?” She reached out and held him back gently with her hand. She looked into his face. “You’re not hurt?”
“I’m fine, Mom.” He didn’t pull away, but waited until she’d removed her hand, then moved on.
With an old, familiar hurting in her heart, she watched him leave her.
Will took off his jacket and hung it neatly on a hanger he kept on a peg near the back door. He never tossed his coat over the back of a chair, never left his shoes in the living room, and he never suffered this kind of laxity in others. His military training.
“He’s been suspended for the rest of the week,” he said. “I’m hungry. What do we have for lunch?”
“What happened?”
“He got into it with a couple of other boys. One of them ended up with a bloody head.”
“Bad?”
