Flagged Victor Read Free Page B

which the universe and I would be finally in sync. Then the bird got bored and flew off, as birds do.
    I got used to the cast by the time the school year ended, and I started running into some other kids from the neighbourhood on the street. Since I was new and had a broken arm, I was the object of some curiosity. They asked me where I was from and what had happened to the arm. It turned out one of the boys had been in my class and knew some of the details. He filled everyone in.
    He and Lewis had a fight lined up—
    Lewis Garner?
    And practically the whole school followed them out to the field under the overpass—
    I heard about that.
    And they started fighting, and it was more or less even until all of a sudden Dusty jumped in and booted him right in the face. Twice.
    Booted him?
    In the fucking face. Boom. Splat. He flopped over like a sack of shit.
    At first, I didn’t quite know what had happened, not just because I didn’t see the kick but because I didn’t understand where that kind of anger could come from. Lewis and I were only going at it half-assed. He wasn’t nearly as strong or mean as I’d feared and I became comfortable, or at least complacent, realizing I could hold my own. The entire fight seemed staged, a storyline we were forced to follow to satisfy the audience’s whooped-up depravity. Maybe Dusty sensed something bogus. Maybe he just hated me too much to hold back when I appeared to be winning. All his rage came out when he kicked me. And afterwards, I lay passively on my back with my hands on myface, incapable of doing anything else, not because of the pain, which was surprisingly mild, but because of the shame. The kick to the face was so humiliating and unjust, so morally wrong, that it gave me the excuse I needed—an excuse I didn’t know until then had been available to me—to do the unthinkable and just give up. All the weight I felt, the reign of terror I’d been experiencing as the new kid, the anxiety of being battle ready while also staying open to any gesture of kindness, all of that heaviness vanished when Dusty gave me the boot. The worst thing had happened. And so the dread lifted.
    I didn’t know, however, that Dusty wasn’t through. He pulled my hand back from my face. Part of me thought it was a gesture of regret, that he was trying to apologize for his impulse, for the rage that had come over him, that he wanted to examine my face to see if I was all right. Then, while I was still puzzling through his motives and as passive as a patient with a doctor, I felt him straighten my arm, hold it still, and stomp down.
    He stomped on it?
    Like he was breaking a stick. Like it was kindling.
    I heard it snap.
    I almost puked.
    And then Mr. Henderson showed up and we all ran like hell.
    Except for me, on my knees, with my arm cradled, gulping air. I don’t know if it was shock, fear, misery, or an act of defiance in the face of immense cosmic injustice, but when Mr. Henderson, one of the teachers, asked if I was all right, I said yes. I stood up, managed to wipe my flushed and tear-streaked face, and carried my broken arm in my good arm all the way home.
    Dusty’s psycho.
    No kidding.
    He can fight though. Remember that time he caved the guy’s face in?
    Fucking brutal. They had to pull the guy’s nose back out with surgery.
    That’s because Dusty boxes. He knows how to punch.
    Yeah, it’s the boxing and the insane killer part that makes him scary.
    Is he going to Westphal next year?
    Fucking hope not.
    Should be going to jail.
    He’ll get there.
    He’s already been in juvie.
    You can’t go to juvie when you’re barely twelve.
    Sure you can. Where the fuck do you think you go—to your room?
    I didn’t verify or dispute the story or interject with any information of my own. I just listened to their analysis and took some solace from the indirect way they were commiserating with me. For some reason, perhaps because I lived in their neighbourhood and school was over for the