Brutal Youth Read Free

the blue woman. “So what’s going on here, Ms. Bromine?” he asked, stroking his naked chin. Bromine. It was a name like chemicals in the mouth.
    “I’m trying to get to the bottom of that myself, Mr. Mankowski,” the guidance counselor sighed.
    “Ahhhh…,” the bald man said, acting like this was serious business. “Should I get Sister Maria?” Sister Maria was the principal, and had welcomed all the visiting students in the assembly hall that morning. She had seemed nice. Davidek actually hoped they would get her.
    Ms. Bromine nodded toward the principal’s closed office door. “I’m waiting for Sister Maria myself—not that it ever matters for much. As you know,” she said, her lips tightening. With a marble-sized mole near the right corner of her mouth, the expression was like a sideways exclamation point. She turned back to Davidek: “We don’t appreciate visitors abusing the rules at St. Michael’s, young man. Tell me your name again?”
    “Peter Daff -ah-deck,” the boy repeated, for the third time. “And I wasn’t—”
    A swell of laughter and a loud, horrified “Oh, God!” echoed from the men’s bathroom, drawing a concerned look from Mr. Mankowski.
    “All right,” said Ms. Bromine. “You can go— this time . But if you find yourself hopelessly confused again in this simple three-story structure—”
    “Stop!” a boy yelled from inside the restroom.
    Laughter erupted again and there was more shouting. Feet scuffled; voices rose. A boy cried out in agony. Mr. Mankowski ran forward and shoved open the bathroom door just as something massive collided against the other side, smashing the door into his face. A clear fluid popped from his nose as he collapsed.
    The bathroom door whooshed open and Davidek saw the greasy boy named Clink shamble out, his eyes bulging beneath tangles of hair. His black duffel bag, clattering with off-key chimes, swung around his belly like a disembowled organ. His uniform gray slacks were unbuttoned, and there was a splash of blood on his open white shirt.
    A boy with a gaping mouth of crooked horse teeth darted from the bathroom, holding a small glass jar over his head. “Have this back, you fucking freak!” Horse-Teeth hollered, heaving the jar against the wall just over Clink’s shoulder, spraying the brick with putrid yellow fluid.
    A new figure emerged from the boys’ room, a kid gushing blood and yelping panicked screams as he pawed delicately at the blunt end of a click-button pen jutting from his right cheek. The tip of the pen, dripping ribbons of scarlet saliva, poked out between his lips like a strange lizard tongue, clicking against his teeth as he moaned for help.
    *   *   *
    The contents of Colin Vickler’s black bag had been a curiosity at St. Mike’s for months. People began noticing the unusual glass clanking sound around the start of the school year, but whenever teachers had taken him aside and forcibly searched him, they never found anything. The rumors got more and more elaborate: It was a portable methamphetamine lab. Or, maybe was he smuggling bomb chemicals. Sickening theories arose: He carried his own urine in jars, filling them at school and keeping them on a shelf in his bedroom. But for what dark purpose could any of this be happening: perversion, paranoia, witchcraft?
    Colin “Clink” Vickler didn’t have a single friend at St. Mike’s, though he had been a student there for three years. As a freshman, he was a lightning rod for the ninety-two-year-old school’s hazing tradition, a yearlong, allegedly good-natured teasing of new students, which the school tacitly approved of as a “fun” bonding exercise for the newcomers. Vickler had carried a disproportionate amount of the torment, with even his fellow freshmen bullying him, usually to impress or distract their own oppressors.
    When he was as a sophomore, the teasing hadn’t stopped. In one of the worst instances, a group of seniors ambushed him in the