Monstrato

  Chapter 12

  When I woke up, my mom was standing over my bed asking, "What the hell happened to you last night?"

  "Nothin'."

  "Then why's your lip all swollen up?" she asked.

  I felt my lip with my hand, and it felt massive. I was imagining how hideous it looked. I tried to sit up, but my head began throbbing so much I had to lay back down. I said, "Just let me wake up, Mom, and I'll tell you about it."

  I slept for another two hours. When I finally got out of bed and went into the living room, I saw Lori, still sleeping on the couch. I went to the kitchen and got some water, sat down, and put my head on the table. Then I heard my mom come into the kitchen. I could feel her standing there, waiting, but I was so hung over I couldn't bear to open my eyes. She barked at me, "All right. So tell me. What happened?" and the sound of her voice made me cringe. Using as few words as possible, I told her. Then came the questions: Who brought the beer? Why did Keenan want to beat up Makayla's boyfriend? Why didn't someone call the police? And everything I told her seemed to confirm what she already thought about me, my friends, and the people we hung out with. She said she knew Keenan was dangerous. And Trent, just by looking at him, she could tell he was a mean kid. She said we should've never been over there in the first place. "This is what happens when kids are unsupervised and drinking." Then she asked me why we didn't try to stop it, and I told her we did. But I was too tired to explain any more, so I let her do the rest of the talking. She had plenty to say. She said my judgment was bad, and I was hanging out with the wrong crowd. She wanted to know, "Who are these parents that are letting their kids go to keg parties?…Was Calvin or K.P. there?—no?—cause they would've stopped it."

  When Lori woke up, we had to go over it all again. Lori explained how the girls were trying to pull the guys off Bobby, and that seemed to make my mom feel a little better. She still spent the rest of the morning walking around the house, shaking her head, and saying she didn't know what she was gonna do about me. Then she called every one of her friends and told them what happened, and I had to listen to it all because when she talks on the phone, she talks real loud and paces back and forth between the living room and kitchen. It was the same worries repeated over and over, "These kids are drinking too much. That Alley's got her own apartment, and these kids are going over there doing God-knows-what. And the way they fight, we never did that as kids—jumping people. They're like animals, and somebody's gonna get killed."

  After Lori left, I laid around the house the whole day. I didn't go anywhere the rest of the weekend except for on Sunday when my mom and I went shopping at South Hills mall. Nobody called me, and I wasn't trying to call them. I did try to call Makayla at her house a few times, but there was no answer—she didn't have a cell phone.

  It was strange. Every time I thought about Bobby getting beat up, I got this queasy, panicked feeling in my stomach. It wasn't because of what happened to Bobby, him getting stomped and all. I'd seen people get beat up before, lots of times, though never like that. What made me feel sick was that I knew all the people involved. I felt embarrassed for them, to see people act like that. I think I was embarrassed for all of us which was why I didn't wanna go out or see anybody and why I wasn't looking forward to Monday. I mean, I knew Trent and Keenan were goons, and they did stuff like that all the time. But guys like Russ and Kyle—they were friends with Makayla. Hell, they'd spend the entire computer class goofing around with her. What were they doing jumping on Bobby? Or Andy and those other guys? How were they ever gonna look Makayla in the face again without feeling bad? How were they ever gonna sit in the same classroom with her?

  When I played it back in my mind, I saw snapshots because that's how I remember things. I get pictures in my mind, and whatever the picture is, that sort of becomes the summary of what happened, which is why I sometimes remember things wrong. The picture is just the most important thing I remember about an incident. It's the part that sticks in my mind, not the whole story. When I think back to that night, I remember arms and legs and hot sweaty bodies being knocked around and people screaming. Unless I sit down and really think about it, it's all vague and fuzzy except for the faces. The snapshots I carry in my mind about that night are of the looks on the guys' faces when they were beating Bobby.

  On some faces I saw pure joy. It was a mean joy like you see when people are having a pillow fight or playing dodge ball at school and letting loose on each other. On other faces I saw fear. Fear! I don't know what they were so scared of, certainly not Bobby because he wasn't getting up. I remember how all the guys ran across the room and started kicking and punching him, like they were scared not to and they didn't wanna be left out. And the way they went about it was so serious, as if they were doing a job that had to get done. It was eerie because it was the same kind of seriousness you see when a bunch of guys are sitting around watching a big game or playing Madden or NBA Live. You could stand in front of them, take your shirt off, and say, "Let's go babe," and they'd say you're blocking the TV and wave you away, irritated.