shook his head and danced around the hallway like he was the happiest kid on earth, not someone who’d just had his face toilet-trained.
“Naw, I like being wet, it reminds me of running through the sprinklers in summer.”
Will gave Rudy a sideways glance. “Rudy, you’re whack, you know that?”
Rudy smiled. “Hey, thanks, man!”
The boys’ room door slammed open and Duncan and his bullies blasted angrily out into the hallway. Duncan raised his fist and yelled at Will.
“Hey, New Kid! So you got in a lucky sucker punch. This ain’t over!”
“I never said it was,” said Will calmly.
Then he opened the door to his class and entered as Rudy watched in awe, a humongous smile spreading across his face.
“Cool. . . .” Rudy was beyond impressed. This was huge, this called for rejoicing! Someone finally had the cojones to stand up to the great Duncan Walker! He heard footsteps—which he knew had to be Duncan and his butt-faced cronies—and sprinted away from them down the hall.
Will breezed through his chemistry class, taking a pop quiz and purposefully missing a few of the rudimentary questions to make it look good. Inside he was laughing; he could teach this class himself. He skated through his trigonometry and government classes as well; all the information was stuff he’d learned years ago so the biggest challenge was to appear interested and not tip the teachers off that he knew more than they did.
Will saw Natalie again in his English class, where his ears perked up as he heard the teacher, Mrs. Nevins, a thin woman awash in freckles and good cheer, call Natalie “Miss Holand.” The face, and now the name—it was all too familiar. As the smiling teacher passed out copies of Romeo and Juliet, Will slouched in his chair and prayed not to be called on. He didn’t want to interact with Natalie like this. It worked. Mrs. Nevins assigned some other kid the role of Romeo and Juliet to Natalie. Will watched as Natalie and the kid performed a scene “with feeling” in front of the class. Natalie went first. As the color rose steadily in her cheeks, kids snickered.
“Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale!”
Will knew the play fairly well. He wasn’t a big fan or anything but since he could speed read with about ninety-five percent comprehension he’d devoured every book he could get his hands on. He watched and listened, just like he always did; always on the sidelines, never in the social game in school. The kid mumbled his way through the passage, embarrassed.
“Um . . . It was the lark, the herald of the morn, no nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks . . . uh . . . the severing clouds in yonder east: Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.”
A few chuckles rippled through the room. Will just stared at the floor. Finally, he couldn’t help himself and looked at Natalie. She was still blushing.
When lunch time rolled around Will found himself in line at the cafeteria and immediately felt queasy. It was amazing how, at nearly every school, the lunch ladies were so freakish and hideous-looking that they were almost as scary as demons. Not a single one had turned out to be a demon yet, but he still watched carefully as they slopped the gut-busting institutional food onto those big, ugly green plastic trays. You never knew when patterns would suddenly change and if he wasn’t careful he might just get poisoned. He chose today’s special, the “rockin’ pizza combo,” then sauntered into the lunch-room and found the most appropriate table for a New Kid, the one populated by the school’s loser/misfit club, including Roto Rudy, who scooted uncomfortably close to Will and gawked up at him like he was some kind of Greek god or something.
“Where you from?” asked Rudy.
“San Diego, Corpus Christi . . . a few other places.”
“Yeah, you have that look about you.”
“What kind of look would that be?” asked Will.
“Like someone who’s been around and seen some things.”
Rudy had no idea. Will had been around all right and seen things; the kinds of things that nightmares are made of. Will took a bite of his pizza and glanced out at the parking lot. The cheerleaders from that morning, including the one who’d caught his eye (her name was Sharon Mitchell, he had learned in chemistry class), were out working on the float again.
Rudy tapped his fingers on the table top. He wanted to know more about his new hero. “You must be some kind of army brat or something, right?”
“Something like that,” said Will.
He was growing increasingly nervous because of the scene unfolding in the parking lot, where one of the super-cool unbelievably-beautiful totally-wonderful-in-every-way cheerleaders was using an ancient ball peen hammer to pound away at something on the old Ford that held the float. Will had a bad feeling, and when he had bad feelings, most often Hell came calling. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. A group of black-clad punks who thought they were wicked were walking across the parking lot toward a gray van tricked out with skulls and crossbones on the side. He sensed that these two disparate groups would collide; he could feel it in his gut. He just didn’t know how, or whether it would be his problem when it did. Rudy tapped Will’s arm to get his attention.
“Hey, are you a gamer? Because if you are, maybe we could hit up. I’m on level 3 of Demon Hunter. I’ve got over a hundred kills.” Rudy beamed as if he’d won the state wrestling title or something. “In the Village of Madness I never saw the Rat Man Demon coming, I kept looking at the sewer grates and he like comes swooping down off the roof.”
His attention still drawn outside, Will spoke matter-of-factly.
“He hated the sewer, wouldn’t go anywhere near it. He hid in the rafters, mostly. That’s where I nailed his ass. Caught him totally by surprise.”
Rudy gave Will a questioning look. Will cleared his throat.
“At least that’s what I figured. Who knows? It’s just a game.”
Rudy nodded. “Hey, again, thanks for saving my butt earlier. That was really cool of you. And nobody’s hardly ever cool to me. I don’t have a lot of friends in this school. Or any other school for that matter.” Rudy snort-laughed and then hiccuped until milk shot out his nose. “Sorry, I guess I took too many dork pills this morning,” he said, blushing.
Will dropped his pizza and stood up abruptly, extricating himself from the lunch table. Whatever was going down outside was going to happen soon. Then he saw it. The old float truck’s gas tank was leaking, thanks to the ditzy cheerleader’s ball peen hammer blows.
“I talk too much, I know. I’m sorry, I’ll shut up if you want,” said Rudy.
But Will was already out the door.
In the parking lot he moved as fast as he could without running; he didn’t want to tip the freaks off. They were handsome but at the same time scummy-looking leather Goths,
