finish, and for Kyle to get started. “You have a choice.” I paused to steady my voice. “I’ll stand alone and fight for all of you who are tired of the threats, tired of the violence, and tired of living in fear. And you can be glad it’s not you getting beat up, not this time anyway.”
Allie fixed me with a sharp glare and shook her head. I looked down for a moment and then lifted my gaze. “Or you can stand with me, and together we’ll teach these fuckers a lesson!” With hundreds of eyes glued to me, I gave Kyle a slack grin. “Who’s with me?”
Fink’s eyes flicked over the horde of onlookers, and Bundy stood with a vacant expression, like I’d been speaking Chinese. Standing between them, Kyle sucked air through his nose, surveying the crowd for a long moment. Satisfied with the silence, his face softened. “That was truly inspirational, Maddox. It almost makes me sad nobody cares about you.”
All around, hundreds of spectators waited patiently, a 360-degree panorama of not giving a damn. I turned to the Cooper brothers standing in the front row, and then the swelling masses behind me. “We can do this. We can show them we’re strong when we stand together.”
Silence.
An invisible soundproof wall had gone up around me. My heart was pumping so hard my neck pulsed. I turned back and raised my voice. “If we can’t even look out for each other… what are we doing?”
More silence.
They weren’t with me. They’d come to see a fight, not be part of one. My hope faded, and my shoulders sank. I turned to Kyle. “What are you waiting for?” I stepped closer and yelled so loud my throat burned, “What’s wrong with you? Are you weak?”
He stretched his neck on both sides and clenched his right hand.
“Do you want to hurry up?” I shouted. “I’m getting bored here!”
In a flash of movement, he launched his fist at my face, and an intense pain exploded in my jaw. The world tipped sideways, and my head struck the ground with sickening force. I rolled onto my stomach, and dirt and gravel pressed against my face.
The crowd erupted into a roar of shouting. I lay still with my eyes squeezed shut, spinning on a rollercoaster with my jaw on fire. I opened an eye, and a blurry shoe slammed into my mouth. My head jerked back and pain shot through my lips and gums. Salty blood spilled onto my tongue as I rolled onto my back, coughing and spitting. A low cloud drifted lazily across the sky as I gasped for air.
A shoe scuffed the ground behind my head. With what little strength I had left, I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself onto my knees. From behind, an arm wrapped around my neck. The smell of coconut filled my nose, and a soft voice spoke into my ear. “Chris…” Allie’s hair fell across my face. Her warm touch was better than twenty layers of bubble wrap.
It took all my self-control not to hold onto her as she pressed her cheek to mine, her tears dripping onto my bloodied jacket. I pulled away and climbed to my feet, swaying like a drunk. “Get out of here, Allie.”
Kyle raised his fist and shifted his weight from foot to foot, his teeth gleaming.
“Stop!” Allie stepped between us and raised her hands. “That’s enough!”
Without breaking eye contact with me, Bundy snatched her wrist and wrenched her down onto the shoes of onlookers. She climbed to her feet and rushed back at me, but two seniors moved in from the crowd and pulled her back. She fought them, but couldn’t break free. Nobody was getting in the way of this crowd’s entertainment.
I staggered toward her, my heart slamming my chest. A hand gripped my arm from behind and pulled me back into a choking headlock. Gasping, I pulled at the arm and thrashed my body, my lungs burning. Kyle grunted in my ear as he grappled with my hands and tightened his grip on my throat. Light danced in my eyes, and my arms weakened.
Somewhere behind me, a low voice spoke. “My turn.”
The pressure on my throat eased, and I coughed and gasped, trying to find air. The sharp jab of a fist in my back sent me stumbling into the crowd, and a shove from the crowd sent me back into the circle.
With a determined look, Fink limped toward me, slow and unbalanced. Approaching, he raised his fist and threw it at my face. Even in a daze it wasn’t hard to dodge his clumsy swing. He let out a low moan and buckled, clutching his stomach. With a slow breath, he straightened and raised his fist again.
A slow rage crept over me. Did he expect me to stand still and wait for him to get organized? I squeezed my hand into a fist, channeling all my hate, all my fury, and let out a lifetime of anger as I hurled it into his stomach wound. He shrieked and buckled, gripping his gut with both hands and gasping. Possessed, I grabbed a handful of his mohawk and swung my fist up hard at his nose.
Crunch.
Bone cracked against bone and blood splashed from his nostrils. He collapsed to the gravel and the crowd exploded, shouting my name from all directions.
A blur of movement came at me, and Bundy collided into my chest like a truck without brakes. The sky flashed past as I tipped sideways and hit the ground, my lungs screaming for air.
Through a dust haze, I saw Allie kneel at the edge of the crowd, tears streaming down her cheeks, restrained by two seniors holding her arms.
On my back, I gritted my teeth and lifted my arms over my face, bracing for more. Whispers came from every direction, and footsteps scraped gravel nearby. I rolled over and staggered to my feet. Barely giving me a sporting chance, Bundy ran at me and knocked me onto my back, landing on my chest. His flailing body crushed me with the weight of a dying star as I kicked, pushed, and punched – everything I could to get out from under his fat ass.
A breath of warm air brushed against my neck. I squinted. “Allie?” The stink of stale cigarettes filled my nose. I opened my sticky eyes, and Kyle crouched next to my head and swung his fist hard.
Crack.
A whirlwind of fists struck my head with loud cracks and agonizing pain. The razor-sharp edges of Kyle’s skull rings sliced away at my cheek with each blow, spilling warm blood down my neck. I gasped for breath as Bundy clumsily drove his fist into my temple from on top of me. He snorted and writhed, pushing himself upright till he was sitting on my stomach. Leaning on one hand, he pressed his chubby blood-smeared fingers into my chin and inched them down to my throat. I kicked and thrashed, choking for breath, trapped under a homicidal cow.
In a daze, I called out for Raj, and was hit by a feeling of loneliness when I realized he was gone. I grabbed Bundy’s ear and wrenched his head closer to mine, trying to butt his crooked nose. It was a long shot, but I’d take what I could get when my future was being decided by whatever damaged neuron fired next in his brain. Half a dozen students moved into the circle, blocking the daylight as they aimed their cell phones at me. Kyle’s fist struck my eyebrow and showers of white stars filled my vision. I collapsed flat against the gravel, warm blood running down my face. The world lurched around me as I blinked away the blood and fought the urge to sleep.
A hand grabbed my wrist and pushed a piece of cold metal into it. Sparky Donovan nodded at me and stepped back into the crowd. In my hand, I felt the four rings of a set of brass knuckles.
On top of me, Bundy tightened his grip around my throat, suffocating the air from my lungs. I slipped my fingers through the rings of the brass knuckles and clenched my fist, squeezing the curved bar into the fleshy part of my palm. Another hard blow struck my temple and sent a sharp pain through my skull. Aiming for Bundy’s right eye, I swung my arm up at him. He lifted his head and my metal-reinforced fist connected with his throat. He coughed, blinking several times as he took the pain. With my other hand, I grabbed the back of his head, pulling him down onto me, and swung the brass knuckles hard at his mouth. The skin on my middle finger split open and pain shot through my hand. He relaxed his grip on me and spat a bloody tooth onto the dirt as he fell sideways, moaning. A roar of cheering and clapping rose up from the crowd.
I went into this without a chance in hell, but now I was two points ahead. Kyle’s turn.
Kn
eeling above me, Kyle glared from behind the glint of a pocketknife. With the blade aimed down, he gripped my wrist, forced my brass-knuckled hand against the gravel, and plunged the tip of the blade down hard into my palm. In vivid close-up slow motion, I followed the blade as it punctured my hand, every different angle all at once, metal slicing through flesh and bone, breaking through the other side and into the dirt below. My heart pounded out of my chest and heat radiated from my hand. The pain was different to anything I’d ever felt. It was deep, real deep, inside the wound, across my hand, and up my arm, throbbing with intense waves of sharp stinging, severe twinges, and dull pounding all at the same time. The crowd noise turned to silence, or maybe I wasn’t aware of it anymore.
Kyle pulled the brass knuckles off my fingers and, with an excruciating twist of his wrist, jerked the blade out from my hand. Warm blood pooled in my palm and spilled onto the gravel. He tossed the brass knuckles over his shoulder and pressed his free hand hard against my brow. “You just don’t know when to quit. Now it really is self defense.” He lifted the blade to my neck, and I pushed at his hand with the strength of a sick child. He pressed firmly on the knife handle, puncturing the skin, and the pain turned white hot as the blade dug deeper, his eyes drilling mine like he was gauging my pain. Unable to wrestle free,