Promise Me

Randy Wolf was surrounded by about six guys. Some were huge. The quarterback and his offensive line, Myron figured.

“This butt-face bothering you, Pharm?”

The one who said that was huge. He grinned at Myron. The guy had spiky blond hair, but what you first noticed, what you couldn’t help but notice, was that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Here they were at a party. There were girls and punch and music and dancing and even parents. And this guy wasn’t wearing a shirt.

Randy didn’t say anything.

Shirtless had barbed-wire tattoos around his bloated biceps. Myron frowned. The tattoos couldn’t have been more wannabe without the word wannabe actually being stenciled in. The guy was slabs and slabs of beef. His chest was so smooth it looked like someone had taken a sander to it. He rippled. His forehead was sloped. His eyes were red, indicating that at least some of the beer had found its way to the underaged. He wore calf-length pants that might have been capris, though Myron didn’t know if guys wore those or not.

“What are you looking at, Butt-face?”

Myron said, “Absolutely — and I mean this sincerely — absolutely nothing.”

There were several gasps from the crowd. One of them said, “Oh man, is this old dude gonna get a beating or what!”

Another said, “Bring it on, Crush!”

Shirtless aka Crush made his best tough-guy face. “Pharm ain’t talking to you, you got me, Butt-face?”

That got a laugh from his friends.

“Butt-face,” Myron repeated. “It’s even funnier the third time you say it.” He took a step toward the kid. Crush didn’t budge. “This isn’t your business.”

“I’m making it my business.”

Myron waited. Then he said, “Don’t you mean, ‘I’m making it my business, Butt-face’?”

There was another gasp. One of the other guys said, “Oh, mister, run and hide. Nobody wises off to Crush like that.”

Myron looked at Randy. “We need to talk now. Before this gets out of hand.”

Crush smiled, flexed his pecs, stepped forward. “It’s already out of hand.”

Myron didn’t want to take out a kid, not with the parents around. It would cause too many problems.

“I don’t want trouble,” Myron said.

“You already got it, Butt-face.”

Some of the guys oooed at that one. Crush folded his massive arms across his chest. A stupid move. Myron needed to get this out of the way fast, before the parents started noticing. But Crush’s friends were watching. Crush was the resident tough guy. He couldn’t afford to back down.

Arms folded across the chest. How macho. How dumb.

Myron made the move. When you need to take out somebody with a minimum of fuss or mess, this technique was one of the most effective. Myron’s hand started at his side. The natural resting spot. That was the key. You don’t cock the wrist. You don’t pull the arm back. You don’t wind up or make a fist. The smallest distance between two points is a straight line. That’s what you remember. Using his natural hand speed and the element of surprise, Myron shot the hand in that straight line, from the resting point near his hip to Crush’s throat.

He didn’t hit him hard. Myron used the knife edge below the pinky and found the neck’s sweet spot. Few points on the human body are more vulnerable. If you hit someone in the throat, it hurts. It makes them gasp and cough and freeze. But you have to know what you’re doing. You hit it too hard, you could do some serious damage. Myron’s hand darted in and struck cobra-like.

Crush’s eyes bulged. A choking sound got locked in his throat. With almost casual ease, Myron swept out Crush’s legs with his instep. Crush went down. Myron did not wait. He grabbed Randy by the scruff of the neck and started dragging him away. If any kid so much as moved, Myron froze them with a stare-down, all the while hustling Randy into the neighbor’s backyard.

Randy said, “Ow, let me go!”

Screw that. Randy was eighteen, an adult, right? No reason to go soft on him because he was a kid. He took him behind the garage two houses down. When Myron released him, Randy rubbed the back of his neck.

“What the hell is your problem, man?”

“Aimee is in trouble, Randy.”

“She ran away. Everyone said so. People talked to her online tonight.”

“Why did you two break up?”

“What?”

“I said—”

“I heard you.” Randy thought about it, then shrugged. “We outgrew each other, that’s all. We’re both going to college. It was time to move on.”

“Last week you went to the prom together.”

“Yeah, so? We’d been planning for it all year. The tux, the dress, we rented a stretch Hummer with a bunch of friends. The whole group of us. We didn’t want to ruin everyone’s time. So we went together.”

“Why did you two break up, Randy?”

“I just told you.”

“Did Aimee find out you were dealing drugs?”

Randy smiled then. He was a handsome kid and he had a damn good smile. “You make it sound like I’m hanging in Harlem hooking kids on heroin.”

“I’d get into a moral debate with you, Randy, but I’m a little pressed for time.”

“Of course Aimee knew about it. She even partook on more than one occasion. No big deal. I was only providing for a few friends.”

“One of those friends Katie Rochester?”

He shrugged. “She asked a few times. I helped her out.”

“So again, Randy: Why did you and Aimee break up?”

He shrugged again and his tone quieted just enough. “You’d have to ask Aimee.”

“She broke up with you?”

“Aimee changed.”

“Changed how?”

“Why don’t you ask her old man?”

That made Myron pull up. “Erik?” He frowned. “What does he have to do with it?”

He didn’t reply.

“Randy?”

“Aimee found out her father was screwing around.” He shrugged. “It made her change.”

“Change how?”

“I don’t know. It’s like she wanted to do anything to piss him off. Her dad liked me. So all of a sudden”— another shrug—“she didn’t.”

Myron thought about it. He remembered what Erik had said last night, on the end of that cul-de-sac. It added up.

“I cared about her, man,” Randy went on. “You have no idea how much. I tried to win her back, but it just backfired in my face. I’m over her now. Aimee’s not a part of my life anymore.”

Myron could hear the crowd gather. He reached to grab Randy again by the neck, drag him farther away, but Randy pulled back. “I’m fine!” Randy yelled out to his approaching friends. “We’re just talking here.”

Randy turned back to Myron. His eyes were suddenly clear. “Go ahead. What else do you want to know?”

“Your father called Aimee a slut.”

“Right.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“Aimee started seeing somebody else?”

Randy nodded.

“Was it Drew Van Dyne?”