Bleed

  First on my list … Danny Winslow. I hate Danny Winslow. More than anything. More than Robby from this afternoon, or Jay from last year. More than the skinny-dipping Guerino twins from the pool. Or peeping Mr. Gallo from next door.

  And it’s time I make Danny pay. Make them all pay—one by one. See how they like it… their lives being ruined by a stupid, ugly, pulsating dick.

  Danny Winslow has made my life a living hell for five years, ever since the fifth grade. A whole year of bra-snapping and boob-pinching. Then two years of riding the bus with him, waiting at the stop while he called me names like Joy-the-boy and Rider-for-hire, and pulled at my hair, and hacked loogies into my lap. Then eighth grade, and all the prank phone calls to my house. All the heavy breathing and telling me how he was whacking off to the sound of my voice.

  This past year was the worst.

  We ended up in the same freshman algebra class. On the first day, he walked in, smiled when he saw me, and slithered into the chair next to mine. He’d make it a habit to come to class early and scoot the chair over extra, extra close. He’d lean into my ear and whisper something gross, always with peanut butter—flavored breath. “How about we slip into the janitor’s closet?” he’d say. “I can lift up that skirt of yours and pull down those tights. And show you my dick and jam it right in. Doesn’t that sound so nice? From behind? Right after algebra? You know you wanna, Joy Ryder. You know you wanna ride me.”

  And then algebra would start and I’d ask Mrs. Fitzpatrick to move my seat, because whenever she’d turn her back to write something on the board, Danny would ask me who I was sucking on that morning because my breath smelled like penis. But it only smelled that way because I was too nervous to eat and so my mouth was all dry and pasty. Nervous because of him. And what he’d do.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick would ask me why I wanted to move and I’d tell her because Danny was bothering me, but she’d just tell him to stop, to keep his hands to himself, to pay attention to what was on the board. At first I thought it was because she didn’t want to mess up her seating chart, all those square tags of cardboard arranged in neat little rows; but then I realized it was because she just didn’t believe me. Of course, it didn’t help things when she saw me hit him. It was more of a push, really, to the shoulder, like that even hurts. But from then on she didn’t take me seriously and told us both to grow up.

  He would whisper my full name over and over again, inserting the words “I wanna” in the middle, telling me how much he wanted to screw me—and no one even cared. Most of the kids were lemmings and thought it was the funniest thing in the world to see me suffer like that. The few left over were either too scared of him, or just happy it wasn’t them he was bugging, to bother sticking up for me.

  I’ve stopped speaking to my parents several times for naming me after my father’s motorcycle. My dad bought the Harley three years before I was born and dubbed it right away. Joy Ryder. The letters in flaming yellow with red sparks airbrushed to the sides of the gas tank. When I came along, he saw naming me after it as paying some tribute to his two most prized possessions.

  I grab the rubber dick, along with all the money out of my piggy bank and a fistful of dollar bills from my shift this morning, and storm out of my house.

  Danny Winslow lives just two blocks down. He and some other jerky boys play basketball in Danny’s driveway every day after summer pre-season football practice. I’ve seen their routine. They come home from McD’s, toss their hamburger wrappers into the trash, dump their bags on the porch, and hit the court.

  Today, I’m going to crash the game. Cause a big stir. Flash them my loot and hope they let me join the game.

  I’ll just need to figure out which bag is Danny’s. And I hope forty-one dollars is enough.

  I can hear them in the distance. The ball bouncing, echoing against the pavement. When Danny sees me approaching, everything stops—my feet, my nerve, the plane flying above, even the echo of the ball—but then his voice breaks the air.

  “Hey, Penis Breath, your stench is funkin’up the game.”

  Jeremy Hicks, the boy I used to play house with in the third grade, is standing behind him, the tips of his fingers tucked into his pockets.

  I reach into my bag to feel the rubber dick, to feel its power and all it promises.

  “Whatcha got in there?” Danny asks. “Some mouthwash? You could use it.”

  “I’ve got some money,” I say, fanning out a few ones.

  “Why don’t you take it and get your face fixed? You and Hicks can go together. Hey, Hicks.” He turns to Jeremy. “Maybe you and Penis Breath can hook up and go to the plastic surgeon … get a group discount.”

  I hate my face. All the purply freckles jumbled over my nose and cheeks. My curly orange hair. Sometimes I feel like it’s a costume, that I don’t really look this bad. That my skin isn’t really as chalky as I think it is; that my eyes aren’t quite as big and buggy. That I’m not really this short. And my lips aren’t so thin.

  Jeremy laughs off Danny’s comment, but I can’t imagine he thinks all those oozy pimples are really funny.

  I swallow down the fear I feel creeping into my mouth, poking at my eyes. “I want to use my money to play.”

  “What are you talking about?” Danny takes a couple steps toward me, and now we’re just a few feet apart—his bullet-gray eyes aiming down at me; his curly brown hair in a sweat wad on his head; those stupid, furry eyebrows, like giant black caterpillars, across the center of his forehead. How I would just love to tell him how stupid they look.

  I hate him. I hate him. I HATE him.

  “I’ll bet you twenty dollars that I can kick your caboose at PIG,” I say, stuffing the dollars in my pocket.

  “Are you serious?” he asks.

  “Do you even have twenty dollars?” I ask.

  His four clone friends start squealing in the background like the pigs they really are. Like this is the most action they’ve gotten in a long time.

  “Yeah, I got twenty bucks.”

  “So you wanna play me?”

  I suck at basketball; all sports, really. When I was little, I couldn’t even play jump rope right, kept getting my feet all tangled up. But I don’t care about winning this game, nor do I care about the twenty bucks. I know I’ll win in the end, and that’s worth all the money I have.

  He socks the basketball into my gut and says, “You just made a big mistake, Penis Breath.”

  I dribble as best I can, both hands slapping at the ball, over to the net. “I wanna see your twenty bucks before we play.”

  Danny jogs, I’m-so-tough style, over to the bag-littered porch. He reaches into his bag, a nylon green one with white straps, extracts a wallet and approaches me, waving a twenty dollar bill in the air. “It’s just you and me now, Penis Breath,” he says, poking his finger into my chest, grinding it in hard to leave his mark.

  “I don’t mind,” I say, my eyes still locked on his bag. “I’ve always wanted to play you.’

  “Yeah, well, you’re really gonna get yourself fucked today.”

  “No shit,” one of the lemmings chimes in.

  “Sounds like fun,” I fake giggle.

  “Yeah?” Danny grabs his crotch. “All five of us on you?”

  “No thanks,” sweat-faced Bobby Eskinas yells. “Even I’m not that hard up.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right,” Danny says to him. “I almost forgot you prefer schlong.”

  I cock my head to the side and smile like what they’re saying isn’t what I’m really hearing, like we speak two different languages. And try my best not to cry or throw up.

  I place my bag down on the porch, next to Danny’s, look over my shoulder, and they’re all just standing there waiting for me. Double damn!

  We start playing, and it’s really no puzzle as to who’s gonna win. Danny’s first shot ends up a swish, and within five minutes I already have a big fat P. The lemmings are cheering him on at the sidelines and Danny’s trying to act extra cool, gettin
g all fancy, doing backward shots and under-one-leg tosses like he’s so great. If I wasted every day of my life throwing a rubber ball at a stupid net, I could do that, too.

  Two minutes later I have P-I.

  “I smell pig!” Jeremy shouts out. I turn and look at him, can almost hear him—eight years old, whispering from inside the shed behind my house, I’ll be the husband and you be the wife and this will be our bedroom.

  “Yeah, Penis Breath, close your legs.” Danny tosses the ball at my head to knock me back to earth.

  At that, they all start laughing, Jeremy flopping back on the grass like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen and heard. My mouth starts trembling and I want more than anything else to cry—to be at home, in my room, under the covers, my nose pressed into my pillow in blubbering bliss. I look away to try and stop the emotion I feel building up on my face, to try and imagine myself floating above this whole scene, looking down on Danny and his pathetic friends and seeing them for what they really are—pure American white trash.

  “Time out,” I say, moving over to the steps. “I need a tissue.” I hold underneath my nose, pretend that it’s running.

  “Aw, baby’s crying,” Danny says. He joins them on the sidelines and they all high-five one another.

  Meanwhile, I fish into my bag for a tissue, making sure the rubber dick is well within eyeshot beside my change purse, and peek over my shoulder.

  They’re all just staring at me.

  “I need to take a little break,” I say, rubbing at my stomach and taking a seat on the steps. “I’m not feeling so good. Female stuff.”

  “Like we needed to know that,” Danny says, poking his finger in his mouth like he’s going to heave. “Two minutes or you’re a big fat pig by default and I’m twenty bucks richer.”

  “She’s a big fat pig anyway,” Jeremy hollers.

  They all start laughing again but then resume playing like I don’t even exist. My bag still open, I can see the rubber dick from here. Danny’s bag is just inches away. I decide it would be best to get his bag unzipped first and then make the transfer.

  I place my bag atop Danny’s, pretending to be searching around for something, using his bag as a makeshift table. While my left hand fishes around in my main compartment, my right hand, concealed by my bag, tugs ever so slowly at his zipper. I get it opened just a couple inches.

  That’s when I hear him—when my heart clenches into a rock-hard fist.

  “Hey, Penis Breath,” he shouts, glaring right at me. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  My mouth trembles open. My upper lip twitches.

  “Get your infected shit off my stuff,” he says, referring to my bag.

  “I was just looking for something,” I say, feeling my cheeks get extra hot.

  “Off-—now!” he demands.

  My heart is moshing around inside my chest. I move my bag to my lap. Luckily, Danny doesn’t notice that his zipper is undone a bit.

  “Hurry up. I want my twenty bucks and then I want you and your ass-breath out of here.” He turns his back. Jeremy, Bobby, and them are playing close to the net. In one quick motion, I grab my rubber dick and stuff it into Danny’s bag so that the head sticks out from the zipper part.

  “All better,” I call out, giving my stomach a convincing pat—if I do say so myself.

  We resume our game, I get the final G, Danny starts dancing around the driveway, demanding his twenty bucks, and I’ve almost won.

  I pull the twenty dollars out of my pocket and hand it over. Danny starts counting up all the ones, practically my whole day’s tip money, and then tells me to leave.

  “I don’t want to go just yet,” I say. “Doesn’t anyone else want to play me?”

  “I got twenty,” Jeremy yells out.

  “I need to see it first,” I say.

  Jeremy walks toward the porch to fetch his moola, and I peek at Danny. He doesn’t look happy with this arrangement. “I just wanna see if I can win my money back,” I tell him.

  “Only one way you’re gonna win your money back, Penis Breath.” Danny grabs his crotch and starts walking toward me.

  “What do you mean?” I giggle.

  “You know what I mean.” He takes a step closer; his chest, shoulders, and head towering over me, making me feel two inches tall. And if I didn’t believe in guardian angels before, I do now, because all of a sudden I hear Jeremy yell out, “What the fuck?” and I’m saved. Danny turns around, and Jeremy’s pointing at the rubber dick, Barbie’s former boyfriend, standing straight out the top of Danny’s bag.

  The other lemmings gather around. “What the fuck is that?” Bobby shouts. And then they start laughing and pushing each other and high-fiving, like this is the juiciest.

  Danny storms over and rips the dick out of the bag. He’s just holding it in his hand, and all the lemmings scatter like it’s a bomb.

  “Who put this in here?” Danny takes a step toward them, the rubber dick now soaring in his hand.

  “Hey, you keep the fuck away from me with that, man,” Bobby says.

  “No shit,” Jeremy says. “Don’t go gettin’ any ideas. When you said you wanted to play ball, I didn’t think you meant it like that.”

  “It’s not fuckin’ mine,” Danny says. “You were the one who was over here.”

  “Hey, I was just gettin’my money.”

  Danny throws the rubber dick at Jeremy, but they’re still all laughing like they don’t believe him, like they’re just as happy as I am that this happened. Danny turns to me and says, “Ha-ha. Is this yours? Did you put this in here, you bitch? Is this your fuckin’ dildo, you fuckin’ dyke?”

  “Shut up, pretty boy,” I say. “Why don’t you run along now to the beauty parlor so you can get those furry eyebrows waxed?”

  “Hey, it came out of your bag, man,” Jeremy interrupts.

  “Fuck you,” Danny says to him. “Why don’t you get the hell out of here, pansy.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one with the joystick in my bag.”

  At that, Danny lunges at Jeremy, grabs him around the T-shirt collar, and starts shaking him. “I said get the fuck out of here,” Danny says, foam spitting out of his mouth.

  Bobby and the other lemmings pull Danny off, and now it’s just him against all of them, and me on the sidelines.

  “Hey, this is my house,” Danny says. “I want Jeremy out of here.”

  “How ‘bout we all get out of here?” Bobby moves to the porch to grab his gear. “I’m nobody’s bitch.”

  “No shit.” Jeremy grabs his bag and swings it over his shoulder, and the other lemmings follow suit.

  “Assholes.” Danny furrows those furry caterpillar eyebrows and pushes by the group, grabbing his bag, storming inside the house and slamming the door, like he’s gonna cry.

  I walk home, feeling better than I have in a long time. In my room, I open up all the windows and invite the smell of fresh lilacs inside. Everything feels tingly and new. Fixed. Like a wound that’s been healed, a tear that’s been stitched.

  I look in the mirror at the new me. My hair looks pretty today, the ends curling up like jelly rolls. My heart-shaped face with its pinkish glow. Pretty. Like a princess. A princess way too good for Robby from the diner, or disgusting furry-eyebrowed Danny Winslow, or any of the rest of them.

  I twirl myself around and around, thinking about everything. About how good I look today. About what Danny Winslow must be doing right now, how he must be feeling. About making that phone call to Robby’s girlfriend and how she’ll probably break up with him over it. “I hate you, Robby!” I shout. “And you, too, furry-eyebrowed Danny Winslow. And all the rest of the jerky boys in this town. I hate all of you!”

  But then I almost trip over my own feet and have to catch myself against the dresser. I look up and I’m caught in the mirror, and my reflection is just… staring at me, like the big liar that it is. A liar because, when I look closer, I see that I’m still wearing the same old costume. The same old freckly fac
e. The same curly, ugly, carrottop-orange hair. Chubby, ruddy cheeks. Big, buggy eyes. And flat, colorless lips that blend right into my skin.

  Princesses aren’t supposed to be ugly.

  I turn around to go into my bag for lipstick and eye shadow, but the bag isn’t there. Isn’t on my bed or slouched on the floor. Isn’t in the kitchen or hanging in the mud-room. Isn’t anywhere I can think of but one place: Danny Winslow’s porch.

  Double damn!

  I eat up all the courage I can find in the pint-size container of Ben & Jerry’s, and when I’m finished, start my walk over there. I’m hoping Danny hasn’t dared come out of the house yet, that my stuff is still sitting on the bottom step, and that none of the lemmings did anything to it. I can just imagine them opening it up, finding my old Barbie doll (I put her in there so she and Buzz could have a chance to say their good-byes), a half-eaten olive loaf sandwich, my collection of glittery plastic sandwich swords (I carry them around for luck), and all my Bonne Bell makeup. My mind blows out a daydream bubble in which Jeremy Hicks and Bobby Eskinas wrap a Bonne Bell—made-over Barbie with a slimy piece of olive-spotted bologna and poke her with swords. I pop the bubble out of my mind and quicken my pace. Hurry past the Fourniers’ boob-shaped bushes, across Broad Street, and two driveways down from the house still draped in Christmas lights.

  And when I get there, all I find is an empty porch. No bag. No Danny. No lemmings. Nothing.

  Triple and quadruple damn!

  The house looks so empty, I’m thinking nobody’s home, but when I walk up to the door, I see it’s open. I press my nose against the screen to look into the kitchen and see if my bag is in there somewhere. There’s a box of Nutter Butter cookies on the counter. I wonder if that’s where Danny gets his yucky peanut-butter breath. If he’s the one who left them out.

  I don’t see my bag anywhere, so I decide to knock. If Danny Winslow is home, I’ll just stand up to him. I’ll picture him the way he looked earlier: the rubber dick sitting in his palm; the recipient of all that lemming laughter; the ugly, disgusting, furry-eyebrowed worm that I hook-line-and-sinkered.