Why the heck hadn’t I used any of those on Blaise?
That was an easy one. Because I was busy getting my butt kicked. I’d never been in a fight before, and even though I’d known it was coming ever since third period, Blaise had caught me off guard. The instructors on YouTube were always saying that you couldn’t prepare for an ambush, but I’d always sort of figured I would do better in a real fight than I had.
While I watched the rest of the movie, I got the stick bundle from behind the couch and started scrubbing it up and down my shins. The first time I’d done that over the summer, it made my shins bleed. But the skin there was definitely toughening up. Or at least I was killing all the nerve endings. And the bone had gotten a lot knobbier underneath, like it was growing stronger.
I was about to shove the bundle back behind the couch and get ready for bed when I heard glass breaking out in the kitchen.
Fight in the Kitchen
MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS that Gramps had gotten up and fallen in the kitchen while I wasn’t paying attention, but even the lightest step in the trailer is loud enough to hear in another room. Besides, if he’d gotten up, he would’ve asked me if I’d got my lessons done before I started “all that silly hiyah stuff.”
I knew that it couldn’t be him, but I still dropped the sticks and ran into the kitchen anyway, expecting to see the old man on the floor surrounded by the shards of a broken drinking glass. I had nightmares about that sometimes, that he’d slip and get hurt while I was at school and couldn’t help him.
When I rounded the corner into the kitchen, though, Gramps wasn’t there. A skinny guy with one of those shop flashlights in his mouth was pawing through our drawers like he expected to find something besides silverware and old mouse crap. He kept rolling his shoulders like he was trying to get something off them and blinking all crazy.
I swallowed, my heart racing. A freaking meth head. In our junky double-wide, trying to steal our stupid Walmart forks.
“Hey!” I’d wanted it to sound like I was yelling at the guy, defending the place, but my voice cracked.
The tweaker froze. Slow, slower than anything, he turned his face toward me. His flashlight shined in my eyes.
I slapped at the light switch, and the overhead bulbs flooded the kitchen.
“I’ll call the cops.” I was trying to sound confident, but my voice was too shaky to pull it off. “I will.”
He blinked his bloodshot eyes and looked from me to the broken window.
Then he grabbed the paring knife out of the drawer.
I stuck my hands up. They were shaking.
“The emergency money’s in that matchbox on the fridge,” I said, pointing. “Take it.”
I felt like a total wuss, giving up like that. I should’ve thrown a chair at the tweaker and run after my phone in the living room, but if I wasn’t fast enough, this guy could legit stab me. Who would take care of Gramps if I got killed trying to keep some meth head from stealing a couple twenties and some change?
The guy looked at the fridge, pupils bouncing around so bad I don’t know how he saw anything. I think he was going to take the money and go. It really looked like he was.
Until—
“Grady?”
My stomach dropped through the bottom of my feet when I heard Gramps shuffling down the hallway.
“You talking to somebody?” Gramps stopped suddenly. “Oh.”
The tweaker’s jerky pupils shot over my shoulder toward the back bedroom, and his teeth bared in a snarl.
“Listen, you just get the hell out of here!” Gramps yelled it like he was half his age and ready to knock this guy into next Tuesday. “Get gone!”
The tweaker’s eyes got real wide, then he broke into a run. Zero to sixty, in a dead sprint for Gramps. I jumped on the guy. I didn’t decide to. Just, when I saw him running at my grandpa with the knife, I was suddenly whaling on him, grabbing at his shirt with one hand and throwing punches with the other. Somehow we got tangled up with one of the chairs and hit the floor. We must’ve ripped a bunch of the mail off the table, too, because I felt envelopes sticking to me. I couldn’t get the knife away from him, and my fingers got all cut up, but I finally locked my hands around his wrist and held on for all I was worth. Not that easy, considering my hands were slick with blood.
While I wrestled with the guy, he started making these wheezing and whimpering noises. His struggles were getting weaker. You always hear about how strong druggies can be, but I think he was wearing down.
“Hold on, Grady. I’m calling 911. Hold on.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the tweaker to look back at Gramps, but he sounded scared. Oh God, what if all this craziness gave him a heart attack? What if we got this tweaker out of here and my grandpa still died? I had to stop this guy now, so I could make sure Gramps was all right.
I slammed my forehead into the tweaker’s nose. He dropped back on the crackling linoleum, and finally, finally, I twisted the knife out of his hand. I threw it back toward Gramps’s feet. The tweaker stopped moving, but I didn’t let go.
Then Gramps was dragging me away from the guy, and tears were dripping out of his blue eyes. They felt hot when they hit my face.
“A-are you ok-k-kay?” My teeth were chattering. And I was freezing. Maybe that was the adrenaline wearing off?
“Grady?” Gramps smoothed a warm,
