THUGLIT Issue Two Read Free Page B

blade.
    The kids from Tyrell’s neighborhood were the only ones who walked to the high school. Every morning they’d tromp to the far right corner of the development, turn onto a wide orange-tinted dirt road and follow it until they reached the paved street which would take them to the high school. The brown brick building sat before a wide field of dry grass and weeds, surrounded by pine barren trees, and beyond that, abandoned cranberry bogs. When Tyrell and the other kids walked along the paved road, yellow buses sped by, the growling motors piercing the walkers’ ears. Usually someone inside a bus would press their hand against a window and flip them the bird.
    But on this morning, Tyrell didn’t take the regular way. He went beyond the orange dirt road, favoring a trail through the woods. Most of the path was thick with gray sugar sand that was difficult to walk through—not a popular way to go to school unless there was a joint to be smoked. Tyrell didn’t think he’d meet anyone this early, and he skirted along the sides of the sand trail where the terrain was harder, letting pine tree branches slap against the army coat. Sometimes, when the moment was right, Tyrell could smell his father in this jacket—an odor of man’s skin, cigarette smoke, kerosene. His father had spent many nights in the garage, sitting with liquor and a portable heater.
    The pipe was riding against his shoulder blade, so Tyrell stopped, opened his coat and took the pipe out. He found his mother’s cigarettes and attempted to light one with a match. The drizzle had stopped but it was still cold and windy. After three tries, the cigarette was lit, and Tyrell stood in nature, feeling the harshness of smoke in his lungs, becoming lightheaded. He watched a cardinal flutter from tree to tree, its red coat pretty against the dull browns, tans, and dreary greens of the scrub pine forest.
    Tyrell reviewed his plan. He’d get to school before the buses, before he had to walk through the knots of students—the girls with their feathered hair and tight jeans, smoking cigarettes and cackling; the guys wearing camouflage jackets, dip tucked under their bottom lips, spitting the tobacco into plastic cups or onto the concrete patio of the school. There were black kids and Puerto Rican kids too, and they hung out with their boom boxes on the edge of the patio, leaning against the brown brick walls, playing rap music, raising the volume after one of the guys with a lump of Skoal in his mouth would shout, “Shut that shit off, asshole!”
    Tyrell had few friends. Ever since his father had killed himself, he’d been branded as strange, damaged, cursed. He was a quiet kid, never in trouble, good at math, a secret lover of all things science fiction but not obsessed with it. He had a crush on Iris Cruz, the pretty girl from New York whose parents spoke only Spanish.
    He dropped the cigarette into the sand and thought about smoking the second one, but that was part of the plan, too. That was the victory cigarette, after he beat the shit out of Mark Horak with his pipe.
     
    Tyrell looked at his watch: 6:46. Homeroom began at 7:22. He placed the pipe in his coat and began to walk again. He’d go into school early, put his jacket and pipe in his locker, and then head over to the library to hide out until the early morning bell. When it was time, he’d take the long way around to homeroom, then to first period. After first period ended, he’d head back to his locker, put on the jacket, sneak the pipe into the pocket, and slip into the bathroom near the science rooms. There he’d wait, eyeing his watch for the end of second period. Mark Horak always strolled by the bathroom at the end of second period, sometimes with his buddies DJ Trout and Scott Parker, but more often by himself. Tyrell was betting on Mark being alone, and he planned to ambush the guy then.
    If all three were together, this was a concern. DJ Trout, with a full dark beard, was as wide