9

It began the next day, Sunday.

Destiny texted me that the crew was hyped up on the video and wanted to play again. “Fish gotta swim,” she texted. I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Then she added, “K wants u there.”

I got ready quick.

They wanted to meet over by The Loop, which was a local hot spot. I went down once with Mom—it was packed with too many teens and tourists for her. Seemed like a crazy place to play the Knockout Game.

But that’s what made it exciting.

Mom had read in the paper about some attack on Grand Avenue by a group of young hoodlums. They called it a flash mob. “You better be careful, Erica. They say that pizza man might have brain damage from the attack.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Sometimes I wonder why we came here. . . .”

When she said brain damage, I had a weird feeling in my head, like a dull burning sensation in the back of my brain. I didn’t want to think about that man and wiped him from my thoughts, but not before wondering if someday she’d read about me.

We met by the Chuck Berry statue. Destiny was there with some of the Tokers. Chuck Berry was some kind of St. Louis hero. They said he invented rock ‘n’ roll. I’d never heard of him.

I was a little nervous. There were no Eyez watching us but the cops were out in force among all the regular people walking around The Loop, shopping, enjoying their Sunday. It was stupid to try something here. We’d get caught for sure—

“Er-i-caaa . . .” a funny voice said behind me. Then I felt a cold nose on my cheek.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Boner’s big eyes dancing next to mine. He was excited (though I didn’t want to see if he was excited like his name).

Kalvin was holding him up to me, talking in a funny voice like a dog might. “Erica. Will you kiss me? Huh, huh, huh?”

Hearing that come out of his mouth made my mind go blank. I tried not to blush.

Kalvin laughed. “I’m just shitting you. You don’t have to kiss the dog. Got your camera?”

I held it up.

“Good. Come get a shot of us in front of this statue.”

He gathered everyone up just like a tourist family posing in front of a monument. He put a nervous Boner up on Chuck’s head. Everyone thought it was funny, but I rescued him after I got the shot.

We walked around, cruised in and out of the stores there—a comic book store, a record store, a sports shoe store. Grabbed some ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s.

After a while, we seemed like regular people too.

The Tokers cruised to a less crowded part of the Loop, toward a parking lot off to the side. I was lagging behind, recording tourists shopping and teens hanging out listening to their iPods. I tried not to judge too much what I was filming—some of the vids on that DVD were tough to watch but it was all symbolic—animals being experimented on, people dying of AIDS, a woman who used blood to paint with—I guess that made it art. Maybe it was too much to think I was like them, but I was doing something different. And that’s what Mrs. Lee was talking about.

When we caught up, Kalvin had his crew in a circle around him. He looked like a coach in a huddle before the big game. “Alright, who gonna be a man today?” he asked.

The Tokers all raised their hands, jostling for his attention. “Let’s see,” he said, his eyes studying them closely. I got in there with my camera, catching the excitement in their eyes.

Kalvin picked a Toker called Doughboy. He was my height, but must’ve weighed over two hundred pounds. And it wasn’t muscle.

“I’m gonna be MVP today!” he piped up.

Prince interrupted, “Didn’t work out that way last week, did it, ese? Most Valuable Punk, is more like it.”

Kalvin put his hand on Doughboy’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to him. You fall down; you get back up and try again, yeah?”

I zoomed in on Doughboy’s pinched face. His eyes darted around, unsure. He nodded, his voice cracking, “I’ll do right by you, K.”

Kalvin waved his fist up to Doughboy’s mug. “Just remember: the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

He pretended to pop Doughboy in the jaw and Doughboy made a cartoon face like a character who got hit with a frying pan and was seeing stars. “But in your case, you better not fall on the dude. You might kill him.”

Everyone busted up laughing. They all looked up to the Knockout King, and he liked being the center of attention.

Destiny couldn’t make it, so it was interesting to get a glimpse into this all-guys world, something girls hardly ever see. Kalvin walked Doughboy away from the others, pumping up his confidence as they moved around the parking lot. I stepped in close enough to hear.

They stopped when they spotted a guy getting out of a powder blue Honda. The target was some sensitive college-type. He wore a sweater and Converse shoes, a pretty-boy haircut, and shaved eyebrows. He did not look like he’d put up a fight.

“Him.” The King had spoken. “One hit or quit.”

They bumped fists.

“Better get him a blanket and pillow; he gonna say g’nite,” I heard Doughboy say. He started making his way over to the unsuspecting guy.

“Check this shit out,” said Kalvin. “Better than anything you’ll catch on HBO.”

I knew what was coming up, but I tried not to think about it too much. I went into Fish-mode. Like Destiny said, my camera gave me a protective shield, like I was safe underwater in my tank, staring out at the world. I was just observing this weird scene unfolding in front of me. It was so unreal, it might as well have been a movie already.

I followed Doughboy from the next row over as he snuck around in between cars. When he picked up speed, so did I, though that wasn’t hard since he didn’t run that fast.

The action was quick and awkward. This time I came up right behind Doughboy and got close up in the heat of it all. He was slow, though, bouncing up out of breath. You could hear him wheezing. The college guy heard him too. When Doughboy swung, the college guy ducked. His fist barely grazed him. The target panicked and ran. Unfortunately, the other Tokers caught up to him.

They pushed college boy to the ground, where he rolled up like an armadillo. The boys played him like a soccer ball.

I’m making art, I told myself.

A security guard came out of nowhere, yelling at us. He was huge—a grown-up Doughboy—his ginormous mass jiggling under his windbreaker. This is where the running part came in. The boys took off laughing at the guard. Kalvin wanted me to keep shooting, which I did as I ran away. The security guard was slow. Too many frozen custards and butter cakes.

After a couple of blocks, he gave up and we stood across the street egging him on. He flipped us off, which made for a great shot. When he started back, the boys thought it’d be funny to play the Game on him.

The security guard started running. He didn’t get far.

Doughboy knew he had to make up for his failure. He had been so winded that he’d just stayed behind and the security guard hadn’t noticed.

Doughboy popped out from behind a van and clocked him good. I just happened to have had my camera pointing that way when it happened.

The boys all leapt in the air and yelled, “Knockout!” They ran over, crowded around him, celebrating and whooping it up, patting Doughboy on the back of his head.

There were real cops to avoid, so we headed into an alley. Kalvin raised Doughboy’s arm and shouted into the camera. “The Champ! You my MVP today, Toker!”

Doughboy beamed. There was no higher compliment. It was a great ending to my movie.