Chapter 10: Liabilities
It had been a very typical Friday night for Norton Williams. Now, as Saturday officially had crept upon him and the rest of the greasers, he was tired and bored. It didn't sit well with his image, but the tall black bruiser was actually a teetotaler and every time his clique had any money to spare for booze, he simply watched over his friends and socialized with the girls they called over. Right now, Norton couldn't even really do that, either, because the girl he had spent the night with was snoozing against his shoulder on one of the broken beds in the abandoned tenements.
It was a shame though. She looked passable and she had seemed like a pretty sweet chick prior to passing out, but Norton wasn't sure what her name was and he hadn't asked where she lived. All he knew was that she went to school in a different town. Oh well.
Norton looked around. Vance, Lefty, Hal, Vance's friend or acquaintance, and their girls were sitting around on old furniture and debris that they had dragged in a circle in the middle of the room. Vance knew surprisingly many people around Bullworth and most of the time that was an asset to the clique – he always seemed to have friend of a friend who knew something interesting or had something they needed. This time, he had hooked the greasers up with some girls, although they had refused to come to the ever so notorious tenements without their bodyguard.
The group was done messing around and raising a ruckus and was now having an enthusiastic dirty conversation about the rumored past jobs of Miss Danvers. Lucky had gone to escort his girlfriend home, Ricky was probably getting some action with his date, and Johnny was probably getting the same with Lola. Norton thought about the options he had and thought that he should probably tuck his girl in and call dibs on one of the more decent and not hazardous beds around their run-down hideout.
He hadn't noticed it, nobody did until the intruder was standing right at the door to the room, but they had a visitor. Unsure, overly careful steps had brought Constantinos Brakus to the last place in Bullworth he wanted to be in and he was now struggling to raise his voice to get the attention of the occupied greasers and their company.
"What the- What's this skeletal wimp doin' here?" Hal asked, slurring slightly, when he laid eyes on the nervous non-clique student.
"Ahem... Um... There's...", he stammered as he was suddenly the target of everyone's mean-spirited attention. He felt like shriveling up and dying right then and there.
"I, uhh, I have a message to Johnny Vincent!" he managed to blurt out, his voice cracking. He shifted his weight in discomfort and hid his hands behind his back.
"Johnny's got no time for no-name twerps. Spit it out, we'll relay the message to him. If we feel like it", Norton said gruffly while standing up, letting the passed out girl slump on the mattress.
"Well, hum. The preppies. They said they have a present for you. At the Harrington house", Constantinos said while he lowered his head in submission. Everyone looked at him doubtfully.
"Oh, and, they said that you should get there ASAP", he added shakily.
Suspicion crept to Norton's mind as he walked to Constantinos, staring straight into his eyes as he did so.
"Is this about Peanut?" he asked with a dark, threatening tone of voice and grabbed the scrawny boy's collar.
"Y-yes!" Constantinos squeaked. Norton's grip tightened.
"Hey hey hey! I- I'm just a victim! They said they'd beat me up if I didn't cooperate!" the panicked youth hollered. Well, they had offered him some money too, but mentioning that would make him less sympathetic, he reckoned.
Norton released him, pushing him back violently so he almost fell, and then turned to his fellow greasers.
"Alright, who's sober enough to keep up with me on a bike?" he asked.
It had been pretty bad. Norton had judged only two of the other greasers to be sufficiently able: Vance and Ricky. The latter had to be interrupted while putting on the moves on his girl, so he was supremely frustrated and had attempted to oppose Norton. Norton Williams was, however, very scary when he was serious.
When he had mobilized the rest to get their clique leader up and out, they had at first demanded that they should get Johnny first and go as one group. Norton had decided against it and had accepted no buts: it was possible that they were right, that this could embarrass Johnny in front of the preppies, not to mention heavily piss him off, but the second-in-command of the greasers had a very bad feeling. Norton had seen Johnny drink some, and when he started, it was hard to make him stop. A drunk Johnny Vincent and swaggering preppies would have been a very bad combination now that Hopkins and the head boy and his prefects had a strict no-clique-war policy.
So, as things were now, the rest of the clique were looking for Johnny, who surprisingly had slipped away from the tenements, and Norton's gang was just arriving at the school's gates. They pedaled to the auto shop area and left their bikes there, then they started running towards the Harrington house. As they approached the classy, secluded dormitory, they saw someone standing against the stone walls surrounding the walkway there – they started running for the house immediately after noticing the greasers. Probably another non-clique student that preppies had threatened into serving them. The poor bastards got a lot of that from all the cliques.
"Guys, follow me a bit further behind", Norton said quietly.
He walked up the stairs to the lit walkway to the building to look around while Vance and Ricky let him gain some distance. The black greaser didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but he did see a glimpse of a lit window going dark all of a sudden. So the preppies were watching, at the very least. Then he looked to the right and noticed something that wasn't abnormal, but still a bit off. On the lawn where Chad's dog usually resided, there was something that had been covered with a tarpaulin. Was it a trap? He wasn't sure, but he figured that he had to go check it out anyway. He walked up to it, slowly.
"Norton, what the hell are you doin'? Those scumbags are probably waitin' for us inside!" Ricky asked, annoyed.
"Like we could go in there, idiot! There's only three of us!" Vance snapped at him. The two bickered about it for a moment, both speaking over the other.
"Shut the hell up!" Norton yelled as he reached whatever was covered underneath the tarpaulin. Then, he pulled it away.
"Holy shit", he said, his eyes shooting open.
"Guys, gimme a hand, now!" he barked at Ricky and Vance, who ran to him.
"What the hell?" snapped Ricky as he laid his eyes on Larry, soaking wet and splayed across the ground. Vance gasped and seemed very disturbed, rightfully so. Norton was already removing the cuffs that were keeping him tied down, huffing in both anger and deep concern.
"Dude, are you okay?" Ricky asked when he lunged to help him.
"C'mon Pea- err Larry, say somethin'!" Vance pleaded when he, too, joined.
As the three boys untied and ungagged their chilly friend and made him stand against them so they could start taking him to the boys' dorm, Larry's teeth started to chatter uncontrollably. He was trying to say something, but it came out as incomprehensible noises mixed with the sound if his teeth hitting together. But, at least his friends knew that he was still around.
"Ah, I see. So Johnny Vincent didn't show up. Quite a shame, I wanted to see whether he'd be glad for punishing this feller, enraged, or pissing himself in fear of us! I bet on the latter", a loud voice echoed from above as the four youngsters walked away from the Harrington house.
When Norton looked over his shoulder, lo and behold, it was Derby Harrington's smug face peering out of a window. Soon, several windows opened to reveal more preppies, many of them holding eggs in their hands. Norton gave his portion of Larry's weight to the unoccupied Vance and turned to fully face their enemies. While they wouldn't have needed to, Ricky and Vance also turned around while holding Larry between them.
Norton took a glance at Larry, his head hung low and limp, and apologized to him in his mind.
"I'm not sure what kinda shit you're sputterin', Harrington. You expectin' Johnny fuckin' Vincent to come over personally for some kid who turned his back to the gang?" he asked, spreading his arms invitingly for more inane quips to shrug off. Vance and Ricky looked at him, holding their breaths.
"Well I don't blame him! It takes a special kind of imbecile to follow a man who publicly beats up a henchman because he thinks someone actually cares! About him and his wretched rutting bitch, no less!" Derby cackled and threw an egg at Norton, who barely managed to dodge it.
"Shit, run for it!" Norton yelped as a rain of eggs fell on him and his fellow greasers.
The preppies laughed as their enemies ran away as fast as they could while hauling Larry. Derby's laugh, however, was cut short.
"Where the hell is that idiot Tad?" he asked from Gord, seething anger dripping from his words.
"I, I don't know. I thought he was outside", the startled youth stuttered, somewhat hurt at Derby's sudden lash.
The blond clique leader shot one more look at the escaping greasers, now more than halfway to the fountain with the stiff, very obviously unwell Larry on tow. Tad Williams had a lot of explaining to do.
Author's Notes: You might have noticed Vance somewhere in there, hanging out with the girls. Bully Wiki is of the opinion that he's the most exclusively gay character among the kissable boys, but I have no idea what that's about. I mean, the dude says "Don't let the chicks see me like this!" when you humiliate him and claims that every girl in school has the hots for him, among other things.