“You’re okay,” a voice said.
David looked up. Lucy stood before him. The breeze was coming from her. Her dress was clean and luminescent, the color of moonlight. She laughed, but he couldn’t hear it. Her smile crinkled the skin under her eyes. David loved that. He wanted to know what she was laughing at.
“I’m back in your room,” Lucy said. “I’m waiting for you… naked.”
She smiled again. David felt blood drip out of his mouth as a goofy grin spread across his face.
A sprinting linebacker in a scuffed football helmet ran right through Lucy. She burst into a thousand shreds like confetti. David felt his chest collapse. The pain dug through him. His world went red again. The sled scraped. He heard the linebacker grunt then walk away.
He’d never see Lucy again. He knew that now. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about living anymore. It was that he couldn’t care. He had no fight left in his body, and he was in Sam’s world now. The game was over. Sam won.
“That’s enough,” Sam said.
David rocked his head right, his eyelid heavy. Sam was sitting on a folding chair, getting his hair redyed yellow by a Pretty One. He was watching David. He pushed the girl away as she dried his hair. David heard another Varsity come running from the other side of the gym, feet clomping on the hard floor. Sam stood, still wearing the towel around his neck from the dye job.
“I said enough!”
The clomping slowed to a stop, and the line of would-be tacklers dispersed. Sam dragged his folding chair out in front of David. David breathed through the discomfort. Sam casually sat down in front of him. He stared at David and considered him as if he was a piece in a museum.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” Sam asked.
“What?” David replied.
“Back on the quad. When all your Scraps were trying to tear me apart, you stopped them. Why’d you do that?”
“Why?” David said. “I don’t know, I felt bad for you.”
“You felt bad?” Sam asked.
Sam scrunched his face up. He was flabbergasted.
“What would it have proved?” David asked.
“Proved? It wouldn’t have proved anything. It would have gotten rid of me. You had to know I wouldn’t stop, that I’d keep coming for you.”
“I’d already won,” David said. “It seemed… too cruel.” Sam scoffed. “That’s a loser’s attitude if I’ve ever heard one.
Guess you’re regretting that one now, huh?” Sam smiled then looked upset when David didn’t react.
“What do you want from me, Sam?”
“I don’t want anything from you. Look around. I have it all.” Pain flared through David’s head. His patience for whatever little game this was had come to an end.
“You sent the whole school after me. For what? What did I do to you? I hit you once for stealing my girlfriend,” David said, raising his voice. It hurt his chest to talk so loud.
“Oh, that,” Sam said. He stood up. “I sent the whole school after you just to keep them occupied. They all want to kill me for my food. But now, instead, they’re killing each other to get to you. They’re hungry. They’ll do anything. They’ll kill their best friends. All I have to do is dangle some food in front of their noses. I don’t even have to give them any. I stiffed those Nerds who brought you in,” he went on. “Later tonight I’m putting a bounty out on them. And then I’ll put a bounty on the ones who bring them in, on and on, and by the end of the week, the whole school will be so weak and hungry that even if they all banded together they wouldn’t have the strength to knock on my door.”
Sam laughed. The noise of it expanded in David’s ears like high-pitched thunder. He felt his eardrums tear open. He screamed, “GET AWAY FROM ME!” but he couldn’t hear it over the wretched sound drilling into the back of his eyes. He cried. He screamed. The noise stopped dead, but the pain still thudded in his head.
He opened his eye. Sam stared at him, perplexed.
“What are you, nuts?”
He thought about not telling Sam the truth, but what did it matter now?
“I’m dying.”
Sam plopped back down in his chair. He stared at David.
“I mean… how long do you have left?”
“Not long.”
Sam’s posture, his tone of voice, confused David. He almost seemed concerned. David wondered if somewhere deep down in his crooked mind there was a nugget of compassion, a speck of humanity remaining that David could appeal to.
“Sam. I know a way out. Let me go, and I’ll show you. We could escape together. This could all be over.” Sam studied David’s face, considering the offer.
“I don’t think I want to escape,” Sam said. “I like it here.” Shoes clapped hard against the gym floor. Hilary stumbled over to Sam. Her eyes were lazy slits. She carried a squeeze bottle full of juice, and there was a wet stain all down the front of her dress. Sam turned to face her, and his lip curled in disgust.
“You’re drunk,” Sam said.
“Yup,” Hilary slurred.
“What are you doing up here? Go back to the pool.”
“Hi, David,” Hilary said. “I miss you real bad.” She lost her balance, and Sam had to catch her to keep her from falling.
“Get off of me,” she said, her words falling clumsily out of her mouth. “I don’t want to be with you, I want to be with David.”
“What did you say to me?” Sam said, so loud that it echoed through the gym.
Hilary hung off Sam but peered into David’s eye.
“I’m sorry, David,” she said slowly, trying not to slur. “Sam was a mistake. I never should have broken up with you.” Sam threw Hilary to the ground. She landed face-first.
When she rolled over, one of her teeth, her right cuspid, was gone. Hilary fumbled her hand to her bloody mouth.
“You broke my tooth,” she said.
“Why the fuck would you want to be with him?” Sam screamed. “Look at him. He’s dying, he’s got nothing. I’ve got it all!”
“You don’t have shit,” she said. “Everyone hates you. Your own gang wants you dead. You haven’t got one friend in the whole school.”
“Shut up!”
“When do you think one of your guys is gonna take you out?
Tomorrow? Today?” Hilary said.
Sam paced back and forth, yanking on his own hair. He whipped back around and thrust his finger at her.
“Is this a suicide attempt? Is that what this is?” Sam asked.
“You want me to kill you?”
She smiled at him. Blood and saliva wet her lips. “I don’t want to date a loser anymore, that’s what I want.” Sam picked up the metal folding chair. He stomped over to Hilary and swung the chair up over his head.
The school’s PA system squawked to life.
“This is Will Thorpe. Are you listening, McKinley?” Sam halted his swing; the chair stayed frozen in the air.
“This is a message for that big pussy, Sam Howard, who’s so scared to leave the gym, he has to send his girlfriend to attack people while they’re asleep. That’s the guy I want to see in the quad in fifteen minutes. If you want to see a real fight, everybody should come on down. But don’t blame me if the big pussy doesn’t show.”
Sam threw the chair into the bleachers and howled.
