*As of Tuesday, and until two weeks from next Tuesday, I am free from the
shackles of academia! I apologise for the delay in updating, but hopefully
I'll be writing more, at least in the short term. Bored? Need a new fic to
read? Check out my and Schiz's new collaboration, A World Apart (links to
be found in both our profiles), if you're in the mood for something new!*
Cake-Eater: I'll speak for the sentence: Do you, quimby, take this sentence to be your lawfully wedded... mate? Anyway, I give you my blessing! I must say, I've never gotten so much feedback on a single line before. "Tweet, tweet, Spazway," was hella popular! Hee, hee, I thought that Guy-the-Hawk would bother you, his most loyal fan! Don't worry, he'll be back with the Fishies in no time! Want to do your poor, loser of a hero a favour? Leave a review for chapter 4! Say anything! It's just that (don't laugh), you've reviewed every single other chapter I've ever posted here, and I consider you something of a good luck charm!
Tai: Watch this, I won't say a thing about needing more from you guys: I NEED MORE FROM YOU GUYS!!! Oops. Oh, well. Yeah, I too was worried about what would happen if my boys really went at it, so I had to cut it short... Hope the ankle is healing in a non-crooked fashion, and... but you know what else I'm hoping for, don't you? By the way, I worship both Oz and Wonderland, so if you were serious about the story, I'd be first in line...
Solis: Holy shit, Fulton as a porno handyman? Brilliant! Reminds me of the first porn movie I ever saw: The Ups and Downs of a Handyman. Pretty soft- core, but funny. Late-night Showcase rules! Yeah, I too was once almost sucked in by the glue-sniffing crowd; they're sneaky little fucks; you gotta watch 'em! And Fult's mom reminds you of yours? Hmmm... I like her, but I think I'm the only one...
Selena: Hmm... Clash, Doors, and Zep... Now that's more like it. However, I agree with you on both the chap thing, and the voice thing. At least she knows what she wants, and kudos to her for releasing three vastly diverse music videos, and possibly even empowering our entire gender with one or two of them... *looks around fearfully* God, I hope Fulton didn't hear me say that...
RockandRoll: Not sure I'll live up to your hopes for action here, but I have more planned for the future. Yeah, you were the one who told me about Corey Feldman voicing Donatello... I went back and watched them both again, and now I wonder how I could have missed it before... Don't tell me you like T3 as much as T2? They don't even compare, in my book...
Kelly: Awww, tragic story about your car, don't you hate it when they die like that? Yeah, I try to make sure I only write about stuff of which I have at least passing knowledge, I hate reading mistakes in other people's stuff...
Star: Fellow Lemche, Stahl, and bash-slash addict, I'm so glad you've caught on! Hope it lives up to your expectations, and I renew my request for more yucca in Shoebox!
Ryder Web: Oooh, a newbie reviewer, always a pleasure. *extends hand* Welcome! Originality is what I strive for!
Grasshopper: Here are some confrontations for you; nurture them, and they will one day become bash-slash!
QteCuttlfish: Hey, I remember you! First or second chapter of Bash Brothers, right? One of my first reviews! Don't worry; things will get better soon!
And last, but very far from least: SHIZZIE! So sorry, hon, but the lab's about to close! I'll be in tomorrow, though, send you a nice fat email! Much love!
Portman's POV:
Well, this was new. I stood, facing the kid whose ass I was about to kick, feeling the eager, expectant stares of the Hawks behind me pressing down upon my shoulders like some heavy weight. Soon they would disappear, become formless and indistinct, their voices fading into white noise when the fight began.
Moments passed, nothing happened. The burden was on me to make the first move, but for some reason, I hesitated. It wasn't fear, though the kid did look like he might be a more worthy adversary than most of the punks I came across; then again, he was probably as dumb as an ox, moving slowly, relying too much on his strength. Not quite as tall as me, but at least twenty pounds heavier, his dark, fathomless eyes came to rest on my own, seeming to bore holes right through my skull. I'd have to move in fast, and pull back faster if I wanted to take him down without getting hurt, so why was I stalling? I couldn't help noticing the over-familiarity of the situation; the whole thing just smacked of those old gangland movies from the '50's and '60's: Blackboard Jungle, West Side Story, The Wanderers...
My opponent sure had the look of a modern-day Jet, and I probably fit the profile like a glove, myself. Imagine how clichéd we'd look to someone walking by... why was I even thinking this? Why wasn't my mind wiping itself clean, descending into fight mode? First Angel, now this; what was going one with me? I was too young to be having a mid-life crisis. With the possible exception of sex, fighting was what I did best. Ask anyone. If I didn't have that anymore, what was left?
Apparently having had enough of my dawdling, my body divorced itself from my mind, and I was moving. My first punch got him right in the mouth, mashing his lips back against his teeth. I felt sharp pain as they cut into my hand. I'd caught him off-guard, but I could tell he was used to being hit. He stumbled, but didn't fall, and when my next blow came, he planted his feet and jerked his head back, my fist glancing off his cheekbone.
I hopped away out of range, and was about to move in again, when I stopped. The kid was leaning forward, his hands on his knees, spitting mouthfuls of blood onto the ground. He was laughing quietly. "Thank you," he said, straightening up and fixing me with a glare that probably would have intimidated anyone else. Not to say I was immune from its effects, but I overcame quickly.
"Anytime," I snapped, angry with myself for having been first startled, and then almost scared by this guy. I aimed another blow at him, but he dodged this time, and cracked me in the temple.
I went down hard; I'd never been hit like that in my life. My vision swam and my ears rang as the world tilted crazily. For a moment, I thought I was going to pass out, but the idea so revolted me, that I managed to fight it off. When I had partially regained my senses, I saw that the kid had backed off a bit, and I got to my feet, a tad unsteadily.
What had just happened? I hadn't been knocked down by one guy since I was twelve, and never by one hit. The kid was staring at me, and when I met his eyes, he grinned, and coked one eyebrow, as if to say: "Had enough?"
All the muscles in my arms tensed up as I imagined how good it would feel to break this asshole's nose, maybe shatter his jaw. Blood still poured from his lower lip, dripping down his chin and onto the ground. He didn't move to wipe it away.
Who did this guy think he was? Didn't he know I'd never lost a fight? I'd have to take him down, so he couldn't get off another shot like that. I charged him, swiftly and suddenly, wrapping my arms around his waist. We hit the asphalt hard, and rolled over; I pinned his shoulder to the ground, and slammed my fist into his face as hard as I could, once, twice, feeling a rush of fierce joy each time I connected.
He blocked my third shot and, enclosing my fist in his own, bit down hard on my arm. I hit him in the face until he let go, and we rolled over, a flurry of limbs and flying knuckles. Up close like this, we were more evenly matched; he was far more experienced than I'd taken him for. Coming out on top was not going to be easy. This thought was punctuated by him landing a blow to my stomach that completely voided me of all oxygen. He sat on my chest while I gasped, and wondered vaguely why he didn't finish me off while I was vulnerable. Then I heard someone yell something, and the next thing I knew, I was back on the sidewalk, and there wasn't anyone on my chest anymore.
I looked up just in time to see a blue sports car--a Lexus--screech to a halt about fifteen feet away. A blond guy stuck his head out the window and jabbed his middle finger in the air and yelling: "Fucking kids, get off the road!" before gunning the engine and taking off. He had one of those idiotic personalized license plates: JUST WIN.
As he sped away, the kid I was fighting grabbed a rock and heaved it at the car, breaking out one of the taillights; I had to bite back a cheer. His eyes flashing furiously, he still wore the same bloody, shit-eating grin, as he turned to me. "Where were we?"
"Kick his ass, Portman!"
We both turned. It was Tracy, who had apparently regained consciousness at some point during our melee, and was now shouting encouragements. My stomach turned at the sight of him. Tracy McGillis. Son of the coach, undeserving captain of the team, and all-round fuckstick. I wondered what he'd done to piss this kid off; I felt rather like decking him myself.
I turned back to the kid. "By the way, why'd you hit him in the first place?"
He stared at me, but didn't answer. Arms crossed, he looked like he was waiting for the punch line of a bad joke. One of his friends, a black kid I'd seen around school, stepped forward, looking up at me angrily. "Your boys here thought it might be fun to hassle us. McGillis was talking shit to Guy, Fulton nailed him, what more do you need?" For the first time, I looked at the kids who gathered behind... Fulton, his name was. Never heard it before, it was probably his last name. There were four of the, not counting Fulton and the black kid. The blond kid, I recognized as the captain of the Swordfish, this hockey team we'd creamed in my first week as a Hawk. Conway, his name was. The freckled kid was in my English class, never shut up. They guy with the nose ring was Mark something-or-other; I'd seen him around parties and stuff, and the last one was a Hawk himself, #00, Guy Germaine.
Kind of shy and soft-spoken, Guy was the only player who'd so much as given me the time of day since I'd joined, the only one who didn't look at me like I was a bomb about to go off. I liked him, and he was a damn good player, too; he wasn't a flashy forward like Banks, but he was smart, sure- handed and consistent, chipping away at the other team's defences until he found a weakness. A natural peacekeeper, he often tried to break up fights on the ice, and lately, I had expanded my enforcer duties to encompass keeping him from getting crushed, as well. Despite his talent, he wasn't exactly Hawks material, and I imagined he'd been recruited by McGillis, like I had; he was clearly friends with these other kids. I wondered if he knew what he was doing; the team would make like hell for him from now on, if they let him play at all.
And then I knew why I'd been so slow to get into this thing. I was fighting a kid I didn't know, for a bunch of kids I didn't like, and I hadn't even seen what started it. "Tracy, go fuck yourself."
I saw this Fulton kid grin at that, and at the look of mingled shock and dismay on McGillis' face. Come to think of it, he must have pulled me out of the way to avoid getting turned into roadkill by the "just win" asshole in the Lexus. If that was the case, and if what the black kid had said was true--and I imagined it was--then it looked as if I'd been fighting on the wrong side. But now what could I do? I'd started this thing, and if I tried to call a truce now, I'd look like the biggest pussy in the world. Served me right for joining some preppy hockey team.
Whether Fulton divined all this from looking at me, I'll never know, but the next thing I knew, he turned to his friends and said quietly, "Let's go."
They started to leave, and the Hawks looked from them to me in disbelief. "You're just gonna let them go?" I shrugged.
"Hey, Germaine!" Tracy called out, his face flushed with rage. "You think you'll still have a place on this team by tomorrow, think again!"
Fulton took a step towards them, but Guy held him back. "That's a real shame, Tracy," he said quietly. "And just when I was starting to like you, too."
"Yeah, and he didn't fit in with you guys, anyway; he doesn't have a ten- foot stick up his ass! He's playing for our team again!" the black kid snapped.
"You mean you actually call that bunch of losers a team?" Harper sneered. "Too bad we've seen you play."
"Yeah," my wingman, David Price, piped up. "Guy wouldn't even had a helmet if Coach hadn't taken pity on him, and bought him one."
"You snotty little pricks," I said furiously, rounding on them. "He's a better player than all of you put together!"
"That so?" Tracy said coldly. "You like them so much, why don't you go play for them too, trailer-boy?"
"What did you say?" Maybe I shouldn't kill him. Maybe he hit his head on the sidewalk.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he cooed. "Do I have to translate? How do you say: "you're off the team, asshole," in Neanderthal?"
"Like this." I hit him in the face as hard as I could, and the bitch went down again.
***
You don't choose who you fall in love with, wasn't that what people always said? Most of that Harlequin romance stuff was bullshit, of course, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't see the truth in that little euphemism. If anyone ever told me I'd find true love at seventeen--in Minneapolis' East End, no less--I'd have suspected prolonged heavy drug use. And if they told me who was destined to become--in what would later seem an impossibly short period of time--the object of my adulation, I'd have recommended a CAT scan.
Not to say that I'd never admired the male form, but my attraction for the opposite sex had always eclipsed this other one, and I'd mostly written off anything else as a hormonal blip. From a psychiatric point of view, given my mother's likely damaging influence, my own sexual track record, and the fact that all this took place during a period of great change in my life, perhaps what happened wasn't so surprising after all. While I'd learned long ago that I slipped easily into the role of "hetero slut puppy," I had only just realised that it wasn't a part I wanted to be playing for the rest of my life, and he offered me an escape from that, among other things.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. As I made my way back from the quarry behind the ice rink that night, I was aware of neither loves' machinations, nor my latent bisexuality. I'd just succeeded in jumping a pit before dozens of gaping kids, so I was feeling pretty good. I was replaying the jump in my mind, trying to recapture the feeling of total freedom, of weightlessness, when time seemed to stand still in that prolonged moment of hangtime before I began to drop... I was on my way home to take a quick shower and change my clothes, maybe grab something to eat, before heading out again. There were several parties going on that night, and I was determined to hit them all--I wanted nothing more than to get thoroughly tanked; something to take my mind off the dismal end my hockey-playing career had met earlier that evening.
I was a few blocks from home; I'd just turned onto Plymouth when I heard it, a crack, like gunfire, or a car backfiring. It came from far down the street,, the noise carried on the wind, taking on a hollow, echoing quality. A few moments later, I heard it again, clearer as I approached, and followed almost immediately by a heavy thump.
I stopped my bike, got off, and walked over to the black-lipped mouth of the alley from which the noises had originated. I'll never forget how he emerged from the shadows to stand in the dim, sickly yellow glow of the streetlight; it was like he had been brought forth from nothing, like some midnight god had moulded him from the darkness. He would be invisible to anyone else; if someone came along, they would see only me, standing alone at the edge of the world, staring off into space.
Months later, I asked him what he remembered of that night, how I'd appeared to him. He said I'd looked "like the night on fire," that, silhouetted from behind by the streetlight, I'd been a black shape that burned with jagged light at its edges, my features indistinguishable. The way his eyes glowed when he told me that, I knew the moment had meant something to him as well. Maybe more. Always more.
"You again, huh? You nearly killed me."
He was wearing black leather motorcycle gloves, his thick, strong fingers protruding from their cropped tips. He leaned against his hockey stick, squinting at me through the darkness. "That's a bit of an exaggeration. You look fine to me."
I laughed, and started towards him. He tensed, but didn't move. "I didn't mean today. It was you, wasn't it? Who broke the Rabbit's windows?
He shrugged. "So?"
I stopped a few feet away from him, and leaned back against the wall. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the cigarettes I'd promised to bring home to my mother that day. I stuck one of them between my lips, watching him through hooded lids as I lit it. I exhaled, and tried to look like James Dean; I've been told I look very sexy with a cigarette.
"So nothing. A little night time target practice?" I gestured to the worn- out trunk that stood up-ended behind me. "Can I watch?"
He looked at me with something akin to disbelief, but I think there was fear there, as well. "What?"
"You must have a pretty good slapshot to break out two windows like that. Can I see it?" I spoke casually, with mild curiosity, like I didn't really care one way or another. Maybe I didn't, maybe that came later, but I think I knew, even then, that I'd come across something rare.
He stood there, considering, and I could tell he was trying to think of a reason to avoid it. When he couldn't come up with anything, he shrugged, reached down into the darkness that had settled at his feet, and pulled out a puck. It was as if he'd conjured it up from the night air, re-arranged the molecules to form this hard, rubber disk. I was afraid to touch it.
He dropped the puck at his feet. "You might want to get out of the way."
Once I'd positioned myself against the far wall, I saw him glance at me out of the corner of his eye, and then he made his shot.
Wow. It cleared the top of the case by a few inches, and sailed across the street and down the alley opposite in an eyeblink. There was a cacophony of sounds; crashes and metallic clangings, before the puck--excuse me, bat out of hell--finally came to rest, the air humming slightly in the sudden silence.
I turned to face him, and took a long drag on my cigarette. Too long. I wasn't a big smoker, and I nearly choked, but managed to cover it up. "My name's Dean Portman, by the way."
"Fulton Reed."
"Well," I said slowly, refusing to let any of the emotions I was feeling reveal themselves on my face. "Guess this explains a bit."
"Explains what?"
"How you nearly put me out with one shot today." My fingers rose to my temple, feeling the bruised, swollen flesh. I gestured down the alley, in the direction the puck had gone. "I've never seen anything like that before. Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"
"I didn't learn, I just do it."
"Well, you sure do it good. How come you don't play for your friends' team?"
"They're, uh, not my friends."
"Really? Cause you sure could have fooled me."
He shuffled his feet. "I've known them a long time, that's all."
"Right. Cause all my friends are strangers."
He grinned. "Right." Standing in the light the way he was, I could see a thick gash on his lower lip. There was a knot above his left eye, and his right cheekbone was already darkening to purple.
"Did I do that?"
He snorted. "You kidding? You hit like a ten-year-old. I got these from fighting the Lexus guy."
"Oh, yeah? He sure looked like a tough customer; probably gets male manicures, or something."
"Damn straight." He laughed, and shook his head. "Stupid little prick, I've seen him around before, playing slalom with the pedestrians. Think he's compensating for something with that car?" He looked surprised with himself for having strung so many words together at once.
I saw a puck wedged behind a garbage can. I bent to pick it up, and tossed it in the air a few times. I felt his eyes on me. "You off the team?" he asked.
"Guess so." I shrugged. "Whatever, I don't care. Bunch of preppy ass-wipes, they can all go blow me."
"That'd be something to see." I threw the puck at him, and he caught it one- handed. "You could play for the Swordfish, you know."
"After today, are you kidding? Besides, they're barely a team."
"Guy'll be back with them now, he's good. Just ask Charlie; they could use a guy like you."
"How 'bout two guys like me? If we both joined, I bet we could pluck a few Hawks, have some fun."
His face darkened, and he seemed to drift backwards a bit, into the shadows. "I don't play hockey."
I had to laugh. "Again, you could have fooled me, what with the stick and pucks and everything... Wait a minute." Suddenly, I thought I remembered... not his face, but his body, his clothes. "I've seen you before." He shook his head, but now I was certain. "Yeah, I have. I've seen you at hockey games. High up in the bleachers, left hand side. Every game. Come on, man, don't give me this "I don't play hockey" bullshit."
"I don't... I can't... I have to go." He grabbed his stick and took off, his feet pounding out a frantic rhythm on the pavement. He ran down the alley and turned the corner, and like that, he was gone.
***
And that was how it began. After he left, I went home, showered, got dressed, nuked myself a TV dinner, and went back out. According to plan, I drank myself into complete oblivion. Halfway through the second party, some guys and I went for a drive, and ended up egging the McGillis residence. It made the local papers that week. "Local coach targeted by hoodlums," the headline proclaimed.
I didn't remember much after that, but I woke up the next morning in a strange bedroom next to a cute, freckle-faced girl named Sam. I think we'd slept together once before, a party at my friend Ricky's last year. I wondered if she remembered. More than that, though, I wondered about Fulton Reed. He was... a weird kid, to say the least. But interesting. I wondered idly what his deal was, as I lay in the bed, my head already pounding, my stomach queasy, and if I should take his advice about the Swordfish.
Looking back on it now, it seemed almost surreal. All those circumstances coming together, bringing us into contact... what were the chances? First the hockey puck, then the fight... was it nothing more than luck? What if I'd taken a different path home that night, or come a little later, a little earlier? It was almost enough to make me believe in God. I told all this to Fulton once, and he just smiled.
"Serendipity," he said.
I didn't ask him what it meant, but I looked it up the next day, and while it provided no new answers, seeing everything I felt summed up in eleven little letters like that, it felt good. It meant other people had been thinking the same stuff I was, so they'd had to come up with a way to say it.
Serendipity. What a beautiful word.
Cake-Eater: I'll speak for the sentence: Do you, quimby, take this sentence to be your lawfully wedded... mate? Anyway, I give you my blessing! I must say, I've never gotten so much feedback on a single line before. "Tweet, tweet, Spazway," was hella popular! Hee, hee, I thought that Guy-the-Hawk would bother you, his most loyal fan! Don't worry, he'll be back with the Fishies in no time! Want to do your poor, loser of a hero a favour? Leave a review for chapter 4! Say anything! It's just that (don't laugh), you've reviewed every single other chapter I've ever posted here, and I consider you something of a good luck charm!
Tai: Watch this, I won't say a thing about needing more from you guys: I NEED MORE FROM YOU GUYS!!! Oops. Oh, well. Yeah, I too was worried about what would happen if my boys really went at it, so I had to cut it short... Hope the ankle is healing in a non-crooked fashion, and... but you know what else I'm hoping for, don't you? By the way, I worship both Oz and Wonderland, so if you were serious about the story, I'd be first in line...
Solis: Holy shit, Fulton as a porno handyman? Brilliant! Reminds me of the first porn movie I ever saw: The Ups and Downs of a Handyman. Pretty soft- core, but funny. Late-night Showcase rules! Yeah, I too was once almost sucked in by the glue-sniffing crowd; they're sneaky little fucks; you gotta watch 'em! And Fult's mom reminds you of yours? Hmmm... I like her, but I think I'm the only one...
Selena: Hmm... Clash, Doors, and Zep... Now that's more like it. However, I agree with you on both the chap thing, and the voice thing. At least she knows what she wants, and kudos to her for releasing three vastly diverse music videos, and possibly even empowering our entire gender with one or two of them... *looks around fearfully* God, I hope Fulton didn't hear me say that...
RockandRoll: Not sure I'll live up to your hopes for action here, but I have more planned for the future. Yeah, you were the one who told me about Corey Feldman voicing Donatello... I went back and watched them both again, and now I wonder how I could have missed it before... Don't tell me you like T3 as much as T2? They don't even compare, in my book...
Kelly: Awww, tragic story about your car, don't you hate it when they die like that? Yeah, I try to make sure I only write about stuff of which I have at least passing knowledge, I hate reading mistakes in other people's stuff...
Star: Fellow Lemche, Stahl, and bash-slash addict, I'm so glad you've caught on! Hope it lives up to your expectations, and I renew my request for more yucca in Shoebox!
Ryder Web: Oooh, a newbie reviewer, always a pleasure. *extends hand* Welcome! Originality is what I strive for!
Grasshopper: Here are some confrontations for you; nurture them, and they will one day become bash-slash!
QteCuttlfish: Hey, I remember you! First or second chapter of Bash Brothers, right? One of my first reviews! Don't worry; things will get better soon!
And last, but very far from least: SHIZZIE! So sorry, hon, but the lab's about to close! I'll be in tomorrow, though, send you a nice fat email! Much love!
Portman's POV:
Well, this was new. I stood, facing the kid whose ass I was about to kick, feeling the eager, expectant stares of the Hawks behind me pressing down upon my shoulders like some heavy weight. Soon they would disappear, become formless and indistinct, their voices fading into white noise when the fight began.
Moments passed, nothing happened. The burden was on me to make the first move, but for some reason, I hesitated. It wasn't fear, though the kid did look like he might be a more worthy adversary than most of the punks I came across; then again, he was probably as dumb as an ox, moving slowly, relying too much on his strength. Not quite as tall as me, but at least twenty pounds heavier, his dark, fathomless eyes came to rest on my own, seeming to bore holes right through my skull. I'd have to move in fast, and pull back faster if I wanted to take him down without getting hurt, so why was I stalling? I couldn't help noticing the over-familiarity of the situation; the whole thing just smacked of those old gangland movies from the '50's and '60's: Blackboard Jungle, West Side Story, The Wanderers...
My opponent sure had the look of a modern-day Jet, and I probably fit the profile like a glove, myself. Imagine how clichéd we'd look to someone walking by... why was I even thinking this? Why wasn't my mind wiping itself clean, descending into fight mode? First Angel, now this; what was going one with me? I was too young to be having a mid-life crisis. With the possible exception of sex, fighting was what I did best. Ask anyone. If I didn't have that anymore, what was left?
Apparently having had enough of my dawdling, my body divorced itself from my mind, and I was moving. My first punch got him right in the mouth, mashing his lips back against his teeth. I felt sharp pain as they cut into my hand. I'd caught him off-guard, but I could tell he was used to being hit. He stumbled, but didn't fall, and when my next blow came, he planted his feet and jerked his head back, my fist glancing off his cheekbone.
I hopped away out of range, and was about to move in again, when I stopped. The kid was leaning forward, his hands on his knees, spitting mouthfuls of blood onto the ground. He was laughing quietly. "Thank you," he said, straightening up and fixing me with a glare that probably would have intimidated anyone else. Not to say I was immune from its effects, but I overcame quickly.
"Anytime," I snapped, angry with myself for having been first startled, and then almost scared by this guy. I aimed another blow at him, but he dodged this time, and cracked me in the temple.
I went down hard; I'd never been hit like that in my life. My vision swam and my ears rang as the world tilted crazily. For a moment, I thought I was going to pass out, but the idea so revolted me, that I managed to fight it off. When I had partially regained my senses, I saw that the kid had backed off a bit, and I got to my feet, a tad unsteadily.
What had just happened? I hadn't been knocked down by one guy since I was twelve, and never by one hit. The kid was staring at me, and when I met his eyes, he grinned, and coked one eyebrow, as if to say: "Had enough?"
All the muscles in my arms tensed up as I imagined how good it would feel to break this asshole's nose, maybe shatter his jaw. Blood still poured from his lower lip, dripping down his chin and onto the ground. He didn't move to wipe it away.
Who did this guy think he was? Didn't he know I'd never lost a fight? I'd have to take him down, so he couldn't get off another shot like that. I charged him, swiftly and suddenly, wrapping my arms around his waist. We hit the asphalt hard, and rolled over; I pinned his shoulder to the ground, and slammed my fist into his face as hard as I could, once, twice, feeling a rush of fierce joy each time I connected.
He blocked my third shot and, enclosing my fist in his own, bit down hard on my arm. I hit him in the face until he let go, and we rolled over, a flurry of limbs and flying knuckles. Up close like this, we were more evenly matched; he was far more experienced than I'd taken him for. Coming out on top was not going to be easy. This thought was punctuated by him landing a blow to my stomach that completely voided me of all oxygen. He sat on my chest while I gasped, and wondered vaguely why he didn't finish me off while I was vulnerable. Then I heard someone yell something, and the next thing I knew, I was back on the sidewalk, and there wasn't anyone on my chest anymore.
I looked up just in time to see a blue sports car--a Lexus--screech to a halt about fifteen feet away. A blond guy stuck his head out the window and jabbed his middle finger in the air and yelling: "Fucking kids, get off the road!" before gunning the engine and taking off. He had one of those idiotic personalized license plates: JUST WIN.
As he sped away, the kid I was fighting grabbed a rock and heaved it at the car, breaking out one of the taillights; I had to bite back a cheer. His eyes flashing furiously, he still wore the same bloody, shit-eating grin, as he turned to me. "Where were we?"
"Kick his ass, Portman!"
We both turned. It was Tracy, who had apparently regained consciousness at some point during our melee, and was now shouting encouragements. My stomach turned at the sight of him. Tracy McGillis. Son of the coach, undeserving captain of the team, and all-round fuckstick. I wondered what he'd done to piss this kid off; I felt rather like decking him myself.
I turned back to the kid. "By the way, why'd you hit him in the first place?"
He stared at me, but didn't answer. Arms crossed, he looked like he was waiting for the punch line of a bad joke. One of his friends, a black kid I'd seen around school, stepped forward, looking up at me angrily. "Your boys here thought it might be fun to hassle us. McGillis was talking shit to Guy, Fulton nailed him, what more do you need?" For the first time, I looked at the kids who gathered behind... Fulton, his name was. Never heard it before, it was probably his last name. There were four of the, not counting Fulton and the black kid. The blond kid, I recognized as the captain of the Swordfish, this hockey team we'd creamed in my first week as a Hawk. Conway, his name was. The freckled kid was in my English class, never shut up. They guy with the nose ring was Mark something-or-other; I'd seen him around parties and stuff, and the last one was a Hawk himself, #00, Guy Germaine.
Kind of shy and soft-spoken, Guy was the only player who'd so much as given me the time of day since I'd joined, the only one who didn't look at me like I was a bomb about to go off. I liked him, and he was a damn good player, too; he wasn't a flashy forward like Banks, but he was smart, sure- handed and consistent, chipping away at the other team's defences until he found a weakness. A natural peacekeeper, he often tried to break up fights on the ice, and lately, I had expanded my enforcer duties to encompass keeping him from getting crushed, as well. Despite his talent, he wasn't exactly Hawks material, and I imagined he'd been recruited by McGillis, like I had; he was clearly friends with these other kids. I wondered if he knew what he was doing; the team would make like hell for him from now on, if they let him play at all.
And then I knew why I'd been so slow to get into this thing. I was fighting a kid I didn't know, for a bunch of kids I didn't like, and I hadn't even seen what started it. "Tracy, go fuck yourself."
I saw this Fulton kid grin at that, and at the look of mingled shock and dismay on McGillis' face. Come to think of it, he must have pulled me out of the way to avoid getting turned into roadkill by the "just win" asshole in the Lexus. If that was the case, and if what the black kid had said was true--and I imagined it was--then it looked as if I'd been fighting on the wrong side. But now what could I do? I'd started this thing, and if I tried to call a truce now, I'd look like the biggest pussy in the world. Served me right for joining some preppy hockey team.
Whether Fulton divined all this from looking at me, I'll never know, but the next thing I knew, he turned to his friends and said quietly, "Let's go."
They started to leave, and the Hawks looked from them to me in disbelief. "You're just gonna let them go?" I shrugged.
"Hey, Germaine!" Tracy called out, his face flushed with rage. "You think you'll still have a place on this team by tomorrow, think again!"
Fulton took a step towards them, but Guy held him back. "That's a real shame, Tracy," he said quietly. "And just when I was starting to like you, too."
"Yeah, and he didn't fit in with you guys, anyway; he doesn't have a ten- foot stick up his ass! He's playing for our team again!" the black kid snapped.
"You mean you actually call that bunch of losers a team?" Harper sneered. "Too bad we've seen you play."
"Yeah," my wingman, David Price, piped up. "Guy wouldn't even had a helmet if Coach hadn't taken pity on him, and bought him one."
"You snotty little pricks," I said furiously, rounding on them. "He's a better player than all of you put together!"
"That so?" Tracy said coldly. "You like them so much, why don't you go play for them too, trailer-boy?"
"What did you say?" Maybe I shouldn't kill him. Maybe he hit his head on the sidewalk.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he cooed. "Do I have to translate? How do you say: "you're off the team, asshole," in Neanderthal?"
"Like this." I hit him in the face as hard as I could, and the bitch went down again.
***
You don't choose who you fall in love with, wasn't that what people always said? Most of that Harlequin romance stuff was bullshit, of course, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't see the truth in that little euphemism. If anyone ever told me I'd find true love at seventeen--in Minneapolis' East End, no less--I'd have suspected prolonged heavy drug use. And if they told me who was destined to become--in what would later seem an impossibly short period of time--the object of my adulation, I'd have recommended a CAT scan.
Not to say that I'd never admired the male form, but my attraction for the opposite sex had always eclipsed this other one, and I'd mostly written off anything else as a hormonal blip. From a psychiatric point of view, given my mother's likely damaging influence, my own sexual track record, and the fact that all this took place during a period of great change in my life, perhaps what happened wasn't so surprising after all. While I'd learned long ago that I slipped easily into the role of "hetero slut puppy," I had only just realised that it wasn't a part I wanted to be playing for the rest of my life, and he offered me an escape from that, among other things.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. As I made my way back from the quarry behind the ice rink that night, I was aware of neither loves' machinations, nor my latent bisexuality. I'd just succeeded in jumping a pit before dozens of gaping kids, so I was feeling pretty good. I was replaying the jump in my mind, trying to recapture the feeling of total freedom, of weightlessness, when time seemed to stand still in that prolonged moment of hangtime before I began to drop... I was on my way home to take a quick shower and change my clothes, maybe grab something to eat, before heading out again. There were several parties going on that night, and I was determined to hit them all--I wanted nothing more than to get thoroughly tanked; something to take my mind off the dismal end my hockey-playing career had met earlier that evening.
I was a few blocks from home; I'd just turned onto Plymouth when I heard it, a crack, like gunfire, or a car backfiring. It came from far down the street,, the noise carried on the wind, taking on a hollow, echoing quality. A few moments later, I heard it again, clearer as I approached, and followed almost immediately by a heavy thump.
I stopped my bike, got off, and walked over to the black-lipped mouth of the alley from which the noises had originated. I'll never forget how he emerged from the shadows to stand in the dim, sickly yellow glow of the streetlight; it was like he had been brought forth from nothing, like some midnight god had moulded him from the darkness. He would be invisible to anyone else; if someone came along, they would see only me, standing alone at the edge of the world, staring off into space.
Months later, I asked him what he remembered of that night, how I'd appeared to him. He said I'd looked "like the night on fire," that, silhouetted from behind by the streetlight, I'd been a black shape that burned with jagged light at its edges, my features indistinguishable. The way his eyes glowed when he told me that, I knew the moment had meant something to him as well. Maybe more. Always more.
"You again, huh? You nearly killed me."
He was wearing black leather motorcycle gloves, his thick, strong fingers protruding from their cropped tips. He leaned against his hockey stick, squinting at me through the darkness. "That's a bit of an exaggeration. You look fine to me."
I laughed, and started towards him. He tensed, but didn't move. "I didn't mean today. It was you, wasn't it? Who broke the Rabbit's windows?
He shrugged. "So?"
I stopped a few feet away from him, and leaned back against the wall. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the cigarettes I'd promised to bring home to my mother that day. I stuck one of them between my lips, watching him through hooded lids as I lit it. I exhaled, and tried to look like James Dean; I've been told I look very sexy with a cigarette.
"So nothing. A little night time target practice?" I gestured to the worn- out trunk that stood up-ended behind me. "Can I watch?"
He looked at me with something akin to disbelief, but I think there was fear there, as well. "What?"
"You must have a pretty good slapshot to break out two windows like that. Can I see it?" I spoke casually, with mild curiosity, like I didn't really care one way or another. Maybe I didn't, maybe that came later, but I think I knew, even then, that I'd come across something rare.
He stood there, considering, and I could tell he was trying to think of a reason to avoid it. When he couldn't come up with anything, he shrugged, reached down into the darkness that had settled at his feet, and pulled out a puck. It was as if he'd conjured it up from the night air, re-arranged the molecules to form this hard, rubber disk. I was afraid to touch it.
He dropped the puck at his feet. "You might want to get out of the way."
Once I'd positioned myself against the far wall, I saw him glance at me out of the corner of his eye, and then he made his shot.
Wow. It cleared the top of the case by a few inches, and sailed across the street and down the alley opposite in an eyeblink. There was a cacophony of sounds; crashes and metallic clangings, before the puck--excuse me, bat out of hell--finally came to rest, the air humming slightly in the sudden silence.
I turned to face him, and took a long drag on my cigarette. Too long. I wasn't a big smoker, and I nearly choked, but managed to cover it up. "My name's Dean Portman, by the way."
"Fulton Reed."
"Well," I said slowly, refusing to let any of the emotions I was feeling reveal themselves on my face. "Guess this explains a bit."
"Explains what?"
"How you nearly put me out with one shot today." My fingers rose to my temple, feeling the bruised, swollen flesh. I gestured down the alley, in the direction the puck had gone. "I've never seen anything like that before. Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"
"I didn't learn, I just do it."
"Well, you sure do it good. How come you don't play for your friends' team?"
"They're, uh, not my friends."
"Really? Cause you sure could have fooled me."
He shuffled his feet. "I've known them a long time, that's all."
"Right. Cause all my friends are strangers."
He grinned. "Right." Standing in the light the way he was, I could see a thick gash on his lower lip. There was a knot above his left eye, and his right cheekbone was already darkening to purple.
"Did I do that?"
He snorted. "You kidding? You hit like a ten-year-old. I got these from fighting the Lexus guy."
"Oh, yeah? He sure looked like a tough customer; probably gets male manicures, or something."
"Damn straight." He laughed, and shook his head. "Stupid little prick, I've seen him around before, playing slalom with the pedestrians. Think he's compensating for something with that car?" He looked surprised with himself for having strung so many words together at once.
I saw a puck wedged behind a garbage can. I bent to pick it up, and tossed it in the air a few times. I felt his eyes on me. "You off the team?" he asked.
"Guess so." I shrugged. "Whatever, I don't care. Bunch of preppy ass-wipes, they can all go blow me."
"That'd be something to see." I threw the puck at him, and he caught it one- handed. "You could play for the Swordfish, you know."
"After today, are you kidding? Besides, they're barely a team."
"Guy'll be back with them now, he's good. Just ask Charlie; they could use a guy like you."
"How 'bout two guys like me? If we both joined, I bet we could pluck a few Hawks, have some fun."
His face darkened, and he seemed to drift backwards a bit, into the shadows. "I don't play hockey."
I had to laugh. "Again, you could have fooled me, what with the stick and pucks and everything... Wait a minute." Suddenly, I thought I remembered... not his face, but his body, his clothes. "I've seen you before." He shook his head, but now I was certain. "Yeah, I have. I've seen you at hockey games. High up in the bleachers, left hand side. Every game. Come on, man, don't give me this "I don't play hockey" bullshit."
"I don't... I can't... I have to go." He grabbed his stick and took off, his feet pounding out a frantic rhythm on the pavement. He ran down the alley and turned the corner, and like that, he was gone.
***
And that was how it began. After he left, I went home, showered, got dressed, nuked myself a TV dinner, and went back out. According to plan, I drank myself into complete oblivion. Halfway through the second party, some guys and I went for a drive, and ended up egging the McGillis residence. It made the local papers that week. "Local coach targeted by hoodlums," the headline proclaimed.
I didn't remember much after that, but I woke up the next morning in a strange bedroom next to a cute, freckle-faced girl named Sam. I think we'd slept together once before, a party at my friend Ricky's last year. I wondered if she remembered. More than that, though, I wondered about Fulton Reed. He was... a weird kid, to say the least. But interesting. I wondered idly what his deal was, as I lay in the bed, my head already pounding, my stomach queasy, and if I should take his advice about the Swordfish.
Looking back on it now, it seemed almost surreal. All those circumstances coming together, bringing us into contact... what were the chances? First the hockey puck, then the fight... was it nothing more than luck? What if I'd taken a different path home that night, or come a little later, a little earlier? It was almost enough to make me believe in God. I told all this to Fulton once, and he just smiled.
"Serendipity," he said.
I didn't ask him what it meant, but I looked it up the next day, and while it provided no new answers, seeing everything I felt summed up in eleven little letters like that, it felt good. It meant other people had been thinking the same stuff I was, so they'd had to come up with a way to say it.
Serendipity. What a beautiful word.