Chapter 13: A Little Help
Time goes by really darn fast when you have a lot to do and think about, as Larry Romano had been bound to notice. He hadn't managed to find a job yet, but thanks to his sister's pestering, he was trying to figure out what to do after high school. Not used to thinking about that, his stomach seemed to fill with stones when he tried to. The range of possibilities was so narrow to a guy who has hardly done anything remotely resembling school work during high school.
The young man looked up from the ground, focusing on looking ahead again as he walked towards his sister's place with the groceries. Something floated from the sky as he did so: snow. Great, just what he needed. Although Larry's brown hair was now short, he hadn't quite yet gotten the hang of wearing hats for warmth.
Then, suddenly, snow was his smallest worry. From the corner of his eye, he saw a couple of young men and caught them looking at him over their shoulders. When he looked to the side, he saw another two loitering around, and they seemed to nod at the others, who now started to approach Larry with casual, lazy steps. Young men who wore orange pieces of clothing and reeked of danger... These weren't just any people, these belonged into a group of people Larry had been in dozens of scuffles before: the dropouts.
"Yer... Urgh... Walnut, right?" a raspy voice asked.
"It's Pea-... Larry Romano", Larry answered, his body tensing and his grip on his grocery bag tightening. He would possibly have to run for it: one pissed off dropout was already a whole lot. He was no match to four of these people.
"See? I told ya it wasn't Walnut", sniffed another guy, this one dark-skinned and seemingly very uninterested about all of this.
"Whatever man! I think we found our guy, anyhows. I remember the face."
Larry looked at the men with an increasingly doubtful scowl.
"We saw ya at the Hole... You were fightin' against that Johnny Vincent guy", said a stout brown-haired man.
"Yeah, you two fought like girls. But I guess that's what you can expect from greasers, ha! I heard you were high durin' the fight, though. That's rad, that actually takes some guts", the raspy-voiced young man laughed.
That, of course, wasn't exactly true but Larry wasn't going to argue against it if it was going to help him not get beaten.
"Whatcha want from me?" he growled.
The men looked at each other, grinning.
"Hopkins said yer lookin' for work", said the unenthusiastic dark-skinned youngster.
"And I've got a lil' job fer ya", said the raspy-voiced, somehow maniacal man.
"What kinda job?" Larry asked out of suspicion, but also showing genuine curiosity.
"You know yer bikes, right greaseball? Well I got bikes, and they need some fixin'. The name's Clint, by the way", the same man chuckled.
"What's in it for me?" Larry asked.
"Money, dumbass. Also, we're buddies with Edgar: if someone knows them open jobs, its him", Clint snorted.
"Guys, I'm getting' hungry. Can we go already?" said the fourth man, who had remained quiet this far.
"Alright, sheesh! Listen, kid: tomorrow, at six, this location. Got it?" Clint snarled and handed Larry a grimy piece of paper with an address scribbled on it. The four men started walking towards New Coventry and the confused ex-greaser tried to make something out of whatever was written on the paper.
As the band of dropouts was gaining distance, a thought suddenly came to Clint and he turned around.
"DUDE! Six in the evening!" he shouted at Larry, who was still somewhat dazed. He looked up from the scrap of paper and nodded at him.
After brandishing some mad deciphering skills on the note he had been given, Larry had determined that he was expected to turn up at a certain run-down warehouse in Blue Skies industrial area. The night was increasingly cold as he pedaled through New Coventry, wary of slippery spots on the road. He gulped as he passed Lucky and Lefty hanging at a street corner, but managed to seem like he hadn't noticed them. He wondered what they would think if they knew that the previous right-hand man of Johnny Vincent was meeting up with the dropouts.
Greasers and the townie kids, affectionately called the dropouts, had been involved with each other in the past and the results had almost always been violent. The two groups were sharing the same ecological niche in Bullworth, and that niche was usually dominated by the dropouts. Greasers, their common trait being that they were students of Bullworth, had the misfortune – or rather, fortune – of losing members to further education, jobs, or spouses. The dropouts, however, were the bottom of the barrel: they hardly had any further aspirations than to have a minimum-wage job, steal stuff, and be a general nuisance to everyone in their vicinity.
To greasers, probably the most annoying aspect of the dropouts was their liking for stealing bicycles. The greasers themselves did it too, but it was far less forgivable when you yourself were the victim of it. Larry himself remembered several times when he had lost a newly tuned bike to a greedy townie kid and now he was going to what was most likely Clint's bike stash, to fix and tune broken goodies.
Larry passed a pile of large industrial crates, then he saw his destination. When he hit the brakes and skidded across the snow, he saw Clint ahead, leaning against a wall and smoking. He gave a crazy smirk as the ex-greaser walked up to him with his bike.
"Nice bike man. Didja tune it yerself?"
"Uh-huh", Larry grunted.
"Bring it inside with ya, otherwise it's as good as gone", Clint snickered and started escorting Larry and his bike around the corner of the warehouse that he had just leaned against. When the two were inside, the ex-greaser's jaw dropped in disbelief.
"That's... That's a lot of bikes", he said as he looked at rows of different-looking bicycles, even kids' bicycles. There was even one unicycle and a couple of tricycles in the mix.
"Better start workin' on them, huh?" Clint sneered, proudly standing with his arms akimbo while looking at his collection.
This could take a while, Larry thought.
Author's Notes: I don't know if you can tell, but my favorite greaser is actually... Hal Esposito. MMMM, BABY HUMAN.