“It looks like a dog dumped on your face,” Smudge said.
“So now I know what it feels like to be you.”
“You scared?”
“No.”
“I’m not going,” Smudge said.
“What? You have to. We need everyone we can get.”
“You’re crazy if you think you got a fighting chance in that drop. It’s suicide, man. I’m not dying for your brother.”
“Yeah, but-”
“What about your girl? You gonna let her die too?”
“I’m not going to let her fight,” Will said.
“Dude, there’s gonna be, like, a hundred Varsity out there.
It’s a joke. If you go out there with them, you’re gonna die.
You’re all gonna die.”
David faced his tiny gang in front of the locked doors. The food drop would be starting soon. Blackened faces looked back at him. The paint couldn’t cover their fear.
“We’re gonna make it,” David said.
It was a lie. This food drop was a fixed fight. Sam had trapped them in the basement without food for days. He wanted them tired and hungry. He wanted to break their spirits, so they’d be easy to take down. David had no choice but to play Sam’s game.
David heard the shuffle of footsteps down the stairs outside the double doors. He turned to face them, slapping on a mean face. The handles moved, and the doors were pulled open from the outside. Trash scraped against the floor. The Varsity doormen remained hidden in the shadows. His fellow Scraps crowded close behind him, and David took the first step up the stairs.
They all wore at least five layers of ruined clothes they’d found in the dump for extra padding. Some had even poked holes in linoleum floor tiles and tied them to their bodies for added protection. Each of them carried a weapon, if not two: pipes, shivs, lengths of chain. The twins each carried a pair of scissors, broken apart, one blade in each hand. Belinda hefted a book bag full of bricks. The slashes of black paint marring their faces were dry and cracked now. They stank like hell.
David’s stomach felt like it was turning inside out.
“Keep walkin’, Scraps,” a Varsity said from the darkness.
They ascended the stairs and reached the first floor. Two Varsity guys, in full pads with lacrosse sticks, stood on either side of entrance. They were Rhodes Dixon and George Diaz.
There was a time when David had laughed hard with these guys about stupid stuff, farts and nicknames for ugly girls.
Today, they were laughing at him.
“Ooo, check it out, Rhodes, look at their faces.”
“I can’t, Diaz,” Rhodes said with a mocking shiver. “I’m too scared.”
Both guys cracked up. David ignored them and waved everyone forward.
“You’re gonna die, Thorpe,” Rhodes called out like a song after him.
The hallway ahead was long. Nelson hyperventilated behind him. Belinda mumbled calming words into Nelson’s funnel. David looked at Lucy. She forced a smile, but it ended up being nothing but a flat line. David checked on the rest of the group.
There were only eight of them.
David’s fear nearly sank him. Including him, that made nine against a hundred. He hated the deserters for jumping ship, but he couldn’t blame them.
“They’re not coming,” Will said beside him.“Smudge and Dorothy and some of the other ones… they never left the basement.”
David scanned past Will. A Varsity in a football helmet with a tinted visor stepped into the hall from a classroom. David glanced to the other side of the hall where another one stood, holding a position beside the opposite row of lockers. It was the same all the way down the corridor. Bulky figures stepped out from classroom doorways and from locker rows.
They barked and hissed and spit as David and the gang walked past. David’s gang huddled closer together. Each Varsity they passed joined the growing pack, led by Rhodes and George, that followed at their heels.
David stepped through the wide open doors to the quad.
Every gang was represented: the redheaded Sluts in their spikes and chrome; the Nerds in their khakis; the Freaks in black with their blue hair; the Pretty Ones in their pristine whites. The Band Geeks wore their ragged regalia and set up their instruments in one corner to score the bloody affair.
Some were there to fight. Most were there for the show.
Conversation burst through the crowd when they saw David. What had they come to see? A bloodbath? He wanted to run. Like a coward. He wanted to hide in the trash like Smudge and Dorothy. David strode forward instead, making sure his strides were long and confident. The crowd hushed.
Hundreds and hundreds of eyes were on him, riveted by his presence. What did they think? That he was an idiot for even showing up? That he knew something they didn’t? David fixated on a broken window on the far wall so that no one’s gaze could throw him. Behind David, the sound of Nelson’s breathing changed to the sound of Nelson throwing up. Some Skaters laughed. David kept walking.
He saw a small clearing along the perimeter where no gangs stood. He led his crew to it. They stood close together in that spot, their backs to the wall. As David faced the quad, he realized that their spot being vacant was no coincidence. Varsity was assembled directly across the quad from them.
Varsity’s front line was bashing helmets and thudding each other in the chest. There were so many of them. David couldn’t see Sam. Every other gang looked from Varsity to David and
back again, ready for something to pop off.
“Look at the fat one!” a voice declared from the Varsity crowd.
Laughs.
“No fair! Elephants aren’t allowed to fight at the drop!” Varsity laughed louder.
People in other gangs covered their mouths, embarrassed for them but still laughing. Sam’s voice cut through the crowd’s rabble.
“I heard there was a new gang!”
Sam lazily swung a length of steel chain in his hand.
“I could have sworn I heard that. I’m looking, but I don’t see one,” he said.
Varsity laughed right on cue. Some of the crowd did too.
“All I see is nine Scraps with a death wish.” The thup-thup-thup of helicopter blades floated in from far away. It was almost time. Varsity readied themselves for attack. David’s only thought was that he could make them chase him. Sam only wanted him. If David ran out of the quad and into the school, maybe he could lose them, maybe he couldn’t, but Will and Lucy and the others would be spared.
David scanned the Varsity line, focusing on their best run-ners. He knew Keith Anderson was definitely faster than him. And Wesley James was at least equal his speed, probably faster with David’s lack of sleep and nourishment.
Sam signaled Anthony Smith and the other linebackers.
They hustled to each exit and stood guard. Shit. Sam had anticipated his plan. David wasn’t getting off the quad now.
There was no way out of this. He was going to die here.
A new sound drowned out the distant sound of the helicopter. It was the rhythmic crack of Varsity’s baseball bats on a brick wall. They’d be cracking David’s head next.
David turned back to his gang of eight. They didn’t deserve to die because of him.
“This is not your fight,” David said. As he looked from face to face, his words became more urgent. He didn’t want any argument. “Stay against the wall. Then, split up. When other gangs are leaving, get lost in their numbers and sneak out.
Run and hide. This whole thing was a mistake-” A heavy hand slapped down on David’s shoulder. He almost
