Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.
The bell rang. School had ended for the day. Another day of torture completed, and another afternoon to go and hang with my friends. I had heard over the day's announcements that teacher Daniel Bledbaum had died of a home accident. It was a terrible tragedy, he was a terrific teacher, and he will be missed. Or at least that's what they said.
I went to my locker to get my jacket. It was a long black leather trench coat that I found in the closet one day. It wasn't an Abercrombie & Fitch deal, but I liked it so I started wearing it, end of story. With my jacket on and my backpack in my locker, I was ready to go. I closed the locker door.
Aaah! Sophia!
Sophia was standing behind my locker door. It was like she just appeared out of nowhere. It scared the hell out of me.
"Hi," she said sweetly.
"Hi, we don't have any Algebra class today."
"I know, isn't it cool? They cancelled it until they can find another teacher. I can't believe it worked. All the teachers were acting so distraught. I had to stop myself from laughing."
I didn't feel much like laughing. Something about this was bothering me.
"Sophia, don't you think that... we're, like... doing something wrong."
"Something wrong? Don't you think that Bledbaum deserved to die?"
"Well, yeah, maybe, he deserved... no, wait a minute." This doesn't make any sense. I wouldn't have minded seeing him dead, but now that he is and I know I'm responsible... "He really didn't do anything wrong. He was just a bad teacher."
"Yeah, but he opposed us," she reached up and straightened my jacket collar. "Caleb, you're part of us now. You're one of the Chosen. Forget about all that moral bullshit. It's past us. We're better than that."
"What makes us so great that we're beyond morals? I mean, how do we know what we're doing is right?"
"Don't ask questions. It's just something you have to believe to know."
God, she looked so fine. Especially when she was right up close to me like this.
"Don't you ever feel guilty?" I was starting to crumble under her allure.
"I don't think Jo can feel anything except anger. And Quentin just cares about his own little world. I don't think about it at all," she paused, "These guys are assholes - they should get much worse than what we're giving them. We're doing the world a favor by wiping them off the face of the Earth. We all don't have a problem with that because we all believe that."
I nodded reluctantly. I guess I believed, because I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe so I could be with her.
"Yeah, I guess s-"
OOOOOOFFF. Someone pushed me from behind, I crashed into Sophia and we both went down to the floor.
"Get the fuck out of my way!"
I turned over. There was this tall, built kid angrily turning the combo to his locker where we were formally standing.
"You fucker," Sophia said. She tried to get up, but the stinging pain of being thrown across the hall hadn't faded yet.
"Shut up, bitch," he replied.
Wrong move.
"Hey, asswipe," I said as I stood. "You're gonna apologize for that or I'll beat you like a bad stepchild."
He stopped fiddling with his combo and turned to me, surprised and pissed off.
"What'd you say, fool?"
I didn't respond. It was time to let my fists talk for me.
"Caleb..." Sophia weakly protested.
He reared back with a clenched fist, "Fuck you, runt."
I jabbed him quick to the stomach, then again with a right to the face. He countered with a hook to my face. Oooof, it felt like I went to sleep for a fraction of a second then woke up. We locked like deer with horns entwined, punching each other's backs. He shoved me and swung again, but missed. I almost lost my balance, but recovered. Now I could feel blood running down my face, but it didn't hurt that much. He charged toward me with arms outstretched. He tried to hook me, and I narrowly ducked, but he hit with the following punch to the side of my stomach. Some wind was knocked out of me, but not enough to stop me. He kicked me in the knee.
BOOM. Oh, shit, that was the pressure point. Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. Holy crap, that was fucking hurting. I went down to one knee and gasped in pain. He got ready to kick me in the head by raising his leg.
Without warning, he fell forward. Instinctively, I raised my elbow and rammed it with all my strength into his groin. I think I almost heard cracking as I made the connection.
After two seconds he was down for the count. Writhing in agony in a fetal position on the floor groaning, like a squalling baby.
"That'll teach ya," I said.
He crawled away on hands and knees into an adjacent hallway, hiding from our taunting eyes.
I looked up, and saw Sophia proudly standing where he was. She had full-on shoulder-slammed him forward into me.
"You did that?" I said, still on my knee, breathing hard.
"Yeah," she held onto me and hoisted me up. I winced slightly. "Come on," she said. "I'll drive you to my house and get you cleaned up."
I certainly wasn't going to complain, I wasn't in any position to complain. My face was covered in blood and I could barely walk. Sophia was my crutch as I hobbled out to the school parking lot.
I'd never really seen her car before. The first thing I noticed was that it smelled like a mixture of smoke and hand lotion. It was sleek, contoured, but the dashboard had a wood finish, giving a nostalgic quality to it. I figured her parents must have been rich or something.
"This is a nice car," I said.
"It's my dad's company car. I'm surprised he trusts me with it. I've almost crashed it twice."
"Really," I laughed. We pulled out of the parking lot.
"Cars and I don't get along. If there weren't so many damn idiots out there who don't know how to drive I wouldn't have so much trouble. My philosophy on the road is 'cop didn't see it, I didn't do it'. Right?"
"Of course," I said with humor in my tone. We sat in silence for a while as we continued down the road to her house. I'm not much for talking in the car. There's something very tranquil about driving, something about the vibration of the car or the passing scenery. I just stare blankly out the window and let my mind wander.
She pulled up to her driveway, the sun was just touching the horizon by this time, casting a bright orange light on the Earth. I opened the door and limped out. Sophia walked over to my side and helped me into her house. It was extremely luxurious, I was sure her folks were rich now. She helped me into the living room and sat me down on the plushy sofa.
"I'll get you a washcloth, I'll be right back."
She left the room, probably to the bathroom.
I took a look around her house. In front of me was a fantastic entertainment center: stereo, 24-inch TV, satellite dish, CD player/tape deck - a multimedia heaven. I looked into the adjacent dining room, it was sectioned off by an ornately decorated archway. It had a diamond chandelier and places already set for twelve with folded napkins and three kinds of silver forks.
So, if she had all this, why would Sophia be hanging out with rejects like me, Jo, and Quentin? Probably the old 'parents not there so rebel to get their attention' syndrome.
I saw a gray blanket folded on one armrest of the couch. I picked it up and immediately noticed its silk softness and furry texture. I whipped it out and covered myself up to my neck. Yeah, I probably looked pretty gay, but by god, I was comfy.
"Oh, you look cute," Sophia remarked with a smile from the doorway, holding a washcloth and an ice pack. I just smiled back at her. "Here you go." She handed the items to me.
I scrubbed the blood off my face, which had dried by now. I slipped the ice pack under the blanket and put it on my knee, sucking wind through my teeth as the chill made contact with my swelling joint.
"Feeling better?"
"Yeah."
She sat down next to me on the couch and propped her arm up on the backrest.
"You know, that guy could have killed you."
"He hurt you, I didn't much like that," I said simply. "When I saw you struggling to get up that just... set me off."
I noticed a fly began buzzing around Sophia's head.
"I just don't understand why you did it."
"Just... no real reason, I guess." I couldn't tell her why. I couldn't tell her that I liked her, that I cared about her, that I would rather have myself killed than see her hurt.
"That look on his face was great though," she laughed.
"Yeah, that was worth getting smashed in the knee cap," I added.
"Did you know who he was?"
"No, did you?"
"No, just wondering. Doesn't matter anyway, those empty-headed jocks have only one muscle to think with, and it isn't their brain." She began swatting at the fly, "Goddammit, this fly has been in my house for two days and I can't kill it," she said angrily swiping the air.
"Do you have any hairspray?" I asked.
"What? Yeah..."
"Can you get some," I said, trying to keep an eye on the fly.
She got up and rushed back with a spray can. I took it, shook it up, and held it ready. My eyes flickered back and forth with the fly's movements, never missing a flutter. With a sudden spritz, the fly went down like a rock, defeated.
"Wow," Sophia laughed.
I spun the can in my hand and thrust it down into my jacket pocket, playing like a wild west gunslinger. "Fastest Revlon in the west."
Sophia laughed heartfully and sat back down. "How did you get so good at sharpshooting?"
"I just practiced at home a lot, with water pistols and stuff... when I was little. I've been alone a lot in my life, so I've had plenty of time on my hands. My mom was always working. My dad left when I was two. No brothers or sisters. So I've had to learn a lot of things about the world the hard way."
"My dad's rich," she said, gesturing to the entertainment center, "He's an investment banker or something, but he's never around, not when I need him."
Bingo. Did I call that one or what. "Are you an only child?"
"I have a brother. Two and a half years older than me, going to college in the midwest, but we haven't heard from him a lot since he's been there. He got a lot of the attention in the family because my dad said 'he was the only one that had a future'."
"He has more future than me, probably. I have no idea what I'm going to do when I get out of high school. My grades aren't high. I don't do any sports or after-school stuff. I don't do artsy stuff or play an instrument or anything. I pretty much just hang out in my house all day. It's weird when you think about stuff like that. It feels like you're running and running, and you don't realize there's a cliff right in front of you and you're going to walk right off it." Under my blanket I flipped over the ice pack. A jolt of cold shocked me, but it died down. "People like us are never going to become important members of society, just fodder for the rest of the world to stand on. Especially people like Jo."
"Oh, Jo. Jo's going to have a hell of a time in the real world, providing he isn't put in jail first."
"Has Jo always been like that, like at the carnival?"
"Yeah, ever since I've known him. He's always been an angry little son-of-a-bitch. Quentin and him have been friends since kindergarten. Saw them in my classes a lot, Jo always dominated everybody and Quentin always followed him around like a puppy. Then I started dating Jo in eighth grade."
"Wow?" Now I'm surprised. "You dated him?"
"Mm-hm, weirdest thing, never expected it, he just up and asked me out one day. We just went out a couple of times before I broke it off, but we stayed friends. He showed me the church and we started hanging out there after school. Never did much, though."
"And then you found the ritual."
"Yep, we started that. You took all that ritual stuff pretty well."
"It was just a little overwhelming at first, but Quentin explained it pretty well. There is one thing I still don't get - what's this about being one of the Chosen?"
"That's just what it said in the book. It said 'Only those with the souls of the Chosen ones will be able to perform these rituals'. The Chosen are 'the elite servants of the dark god, the esteemed generals who were to stand by him and inherit the Earth under the Hall of Epiphany, released from the confines of mortal flesh and given the powers of bloodlust'. It's not really significant. I guess we just thought the term was cool so we started using it to describe our little group." Sophia rested her head on my shoulder. "Come on, just forget about it. This is the last thing I want to talk about right now."
"All right, let's watch some TV."
"The remote's on that table over there," she pointed to the coffee table at the end of the sofa. I stretched out as far as I could, using my fingers to pull it into my hand so as not to disturb her head. It was a universal remote that had about a hundred buttons on it for everything in the room. It reminded me of the cockpit of a jet plane. Where the hell was the power button? I pressed something that said (on).
The CD player began blasting Garbage into our ears. We both jumped at the loud fright.
"Oops," I tried the same button, but instead the lights turned off. Sophia started laughing uncontrollably at my incompetence while I strained to even see the remote. I tried another. Now Garbage was being accompanied by some gritty industrial techno, and the next button I pressed turned on the ceiling fan at full speed, and the next turned on the mood lighting. Sophia, in hysterics, finally couldn't take any more of my feeble attempts to set things right and snatched the remote away from me. One by one she turned off the stereo, CD player, ceiling fan, and turned on the TV. Then she handed the remote back to me, smiling. I took it, set it beside me and leaned back into the couch. Sophia nuzzled her head into my shoulder and pulled the blanket over both of us.
This was, undoubtedly, the most content I had ever been in my life. My happiness was beyond any earthly comparison. The girl I cared the most about was in my arms, under this unbelievably comfortable blanket, watching a big-screen TV, in the soft darkness. I didn't want it to end, I tried to shut out thoughts of what would happen when it did. Instead, I focused on the stillness, the serenity. I just held Sophia closer and relaxed...
And eventually, I fell asleep.