the flood of repressed tears, “people think I’m a delinquent. Me! I’m the delinquent even though I stand behind my friends when they’re bullied. I’m the delinquent even when I get into the hardest classes and get good grades. I’m the malcontent, when all I aspire to these days is for people to leave me the FUCK alone!”
Rita slapped him again.
“You can keep hitting me, but you don’t have the guts to tell that piece of shit Clyde to get out. You’re a fucking coward.”
Rita tried to slap him again but Daniel stepped back out of the way. He headed for the front door.
“Don’t you walk out!” Rita ordered, in tears.
Daniel was inclined to tell her that she was not his real mother. Instead, he bit his tongue. He took a deep breath.
“You didn’t hear Katie’s voice, Mom. She’s terrified. Something really bad has happened.”
“You’re not a hero! You can’t save everyone-you can’t save the world!”
“I’m not brave enough to improve my own life. Might as well help my friends with theirs. Everyone turns to me when they need help.”
“Danny! If you walk out that door… don’t come back.”
As he shut the door, the muffled cries of a desperate, lonely woman fell upon his ears.
2
It’s a trap. That’s what Daniel kept thinking over and over. Clyde beat the crap out of Katie to lure him to that side of town. Why else would she be in that neighborhood? Clyde wouldn’t know their friendship was merely an ember of what it had once been; he had missed their last scheduled heart-to-heart chat.
Daniel stopped his bike about a block from the bar. It was a run-down block. With chipped wood siding and a sagging shingled roof, O’Leary’s fit the scene. Coors, Budweiser, and Miller Lite glowed through the dust in the windows. The sidewalk was cracked and the lots to each side of the bar were overgrown with weeds and littered with broken beer bottles.
Daniel kept one eye out for Katie and the other for Clyde. There were very few cars parked on the street. A blue Ram pickup quivered on squeaky shocks-no doubt a trapped pet getting antsy while its owner downed a mug. Daniel rode the center line of the street, far from anything that might serve as an ambush point. His instincts said to go home.
Across the street from the bar stretched a poor excuse for a baseball field, boxed in by dilapidated dwellings and fences and bordered by a hedge. Next to the entrance by the right-field foul line was a solitary pay phone. Daniel rode onto the field, which was a big sand lot with the remnants of a mound in the middle. The roughness of the dirt caused his bike to shake, and it aggravated his bruised rib. Two depressed dugouts built from cinder blocks framed the sides of the invisible diamond. Empty beer bottles littered the whole bunker and graffiti covered the walls. Bundled in the corner of one dugout was a varsity jacket, number six. As Daniel approached, a cheerleading skirt and legs emerged from the bundle.
Katie was curled in a fetal position. She lifted her head with a start. Strangely, the look in this terrified girl’s eye lifted Daniel’s spirits. He had never met anyone so glad to see him. When he sat beside her, she unfurled and threw her arms around him. He put his own arms around her.
“What happened?” Daniel asked.
“We cut school after lunch. He said he had something he wanted to show me.” The “he” she referred to was not Clyde. Daniel was relieved this wasn’t a plot to get at him through a friend. Not everything that happened revolved around him.
Daniel realized there was booze on her breath.
“He has a hangout a few blocks from here,” Katie continued. “Just an abandoned shed that Josh and his pals fixed up with old couches and some posters. We were alone. He turned the radio up, said it would give us privacy. He gave me a flask to sip and razzed me when I said no… said that was the reason he didn’t like to date little girls.”
Katie stopped and fell into a fit of tears. Daniel hugged her tighter and waited for the fit to subside.
“So you took a sip?” he asked.
“I took a gulp.”
It was tough to compete with older kids. The senior girls wore their nascent bosoms as badges of honor, stuffing themselves into form-hugging tops any chance they got. The art of not staring was mastered better by some more than others, but every male noticed, every guy bragged when he brushed a gifted girl in a crowded hallway. Katie was still a work in progress.
“Burned your throat?”
“Heck, yes. He stopped razzing me about drinking and then we started… It was nice at first-it was… it was what I wanted. But he started putting his hands in places where I didn’t… I said no, and he’d stop for a while; then try again. He got frustrated, said I was leading him on… kept calling me a little girl. My head was spinning. Somehow, he got his fingers underneath, in my… in my… and he was…” Katie succumbed to a second fit.
Through a fold in her skirt, Daniel realized Katie was missing her underwear. He felt guilty that this excited him. In the past, Katie and him changed into swimming suits separated by no more than a shrub. Somehow this was different… or he was different. He was very aware of her sex just under that layer of rayon. The situation called on him to be stronger than his hormones. He focused on the moment. “What happened?”
“I didn’t want to!” she sobbed. Anger edged into her voice. “I told him no! I told him NO more than once. I couldn’t get off the couch. He was on top of me; he was too…”
“Jesus, Katie.”
“And all of a sudden his pants were down…”
“Couldn’t you knee him? Scratch his eyes?”
“He said just touch it… to help him out… since I… since I wouldn’t… He said… I–I didn’t think… I didn’t think he…” Katie began to hyperventilate. Then she threw up, mostly the dry heaves. Daniel stroked her back. The retching soon subsided.
“HE WAS MY BOYFRIEND!” she cried in a torrent of grief.
Daniel stroked the back of her head. The gray fall sky was giving way to darkness on the horizon. There was a nip in the air and Daniel’s skin where Katie’s tears fell turned cold. His friend’s ordeal had one unexpected result; it succeeded in taking his mind off his own problems.
Daniel heard the crunch of gravel behind him. He unwrapped himself from Katie and stood, worried once more that Clyde had found them; only to be oddly relieved to be looking up at Josh Lundgren’s well-chiseled face instead. One of Josh’s cronies, Todd Harkness, stood uncomfortably behind him.
“There you are. I been looking all over for you,” Josh said.
He tried to make eye contact with her. Katie used Daniel as a shield. Each time Josh moved to get a clear view of her, Daniel shifted to keep himself between them. “This ain’t your business, Hauer. Keep out of things that don’t concern you.”
Daniel didn’t respond. The warmth of Katie’s breath on his neck, her arms on his shoulders, spurred his courage. He’d been dreaming of her arms around him for months, and odd as this situation was, it qualified. Todd looked more uncomfortable by the moment. Daniel knew him as a clean-cut, straight-B student. He played for the baseball team and hoped to get into college on an athletic scholarship. Helping Josh cover up an assault was not his style. He was only here because of Josh’s persuasiveness. Handsome, strong, funny, rich-Josh’s approval made your ho-hum existence a little more exciting.
“Hey, Todd,” Daniel greeted. Todd looked upset that Daniel knew his name.
Josh stepped down into the dugout, clinking discards as he landed. He thumbed his nose, straightened his posture, took a deep breath, and put out his chest. Josh had a good six inches and twenty-five pounds on Daniel, and it was evident he thought this would be enough make Daniel move away from the girl. Daniel almost laughed out loud at the jerk’s attempt to be intimidating.
“Hey, don’t be stupid, kid,” Todd said to Daniel. “Josh just wants to talk to her, that’s all.” Todd’s plea was halfhearted. He didn’t believe his own words and was worried the situation would escalate with him as an
