What I found out later: there was method to Ridley's madness. See, we're not allowed to wear street clothes to our gym classes. The gym building is actually connected to the main building by the cafeteria extension, which snuggled up to the indoor swimming pool. And fifth period was Jimmy's gym class, so he went to the locker room and put his gym clothes on. No weapons, no protection, just Jimmy in a pair of school-issued red shorts, a yellow T-shirt that said MLKHS in red above the face of a roaring cougar and some socks and athletic shoes, white ones. Probably not the best idea to leave his protective gear behind but he did what he was told and followed the coach and the rest of the twenty-five kids in the class up to the second-floor landing and into the gymnastics/weight room.
The coach pushed open the big wooden double doors and led everyone onto the blue gymnastics flooring as the different-sounding bell went off and the idiot must not have known what it meant because he just kept on with class, saying something like:
"Alright, y'all got your circuit training forms, now I want those filled out before the end of the period, and Drew, Peter, and Billy, y'all better actually do the exercises this time. I'll be watching ya."
It was only Jimmy's second time in the combined gymnastics/weight-lifting room: L-shaped and large, it was yet another cost-cutting measure of the school district administration, severing what used to be a large rectangular room only meant for one thing, gymnastics, into three pieces and making it multiuse by bricking off a quarter of it for a wrestling room that was padded on every wall with the school colors and had a big red wrestling mat doubling as the floor. It had no windows. That was the county's money at work.
Right next to the wrestling room was the weight room, the skinny bottom part of the L, occupying the other quarter of the rectangle but it didn't have a wall between it and the gymnastics equipment. The uneven bars were right next to the leg press sled, the only border that separated them was the color of the carpet. Weight-lifting room: maroon pile. Nearly every piece of equipment was for free weights, bench press, leg curl, and shoulder press. Each little metal skeleton lined up along the wall except for the far one, which was full of mirrors and hand weights on metal shelves.
On the far side of the gymnastics room, in the corner, was a climbing rope only accessible by the giant pad in place for the vault and springboard. In front of that was the runway. Stretched out along the wall, next to the uneven bars, stood the balance beam. It was all too close together.
Normally, every class started with stretching. Everybody got in a circle and the coach would tell them what to do. But that didn't happen.
"Alright, y'all, circle up. Stretch it on down now," he said, and looked at his clipboard, shook each leg like he was about to start running, and then rolled his head on his neck and popped a new piece of gum in his mouth.
Jimmy was the only one who sat down. He knew that wasn't good. He didn't need to look up and survey the eyes of his classmates. He just pulled his right shoe off then the sock.
"What the hell? All y'all need to sit your asses down or we'll be running laps." He was starting to get mad. Coach was like, "Lots and lots of laps."
Three Whips and a Blade shut the big double doors and locked them by driving a metal rod from the shoulder press, which was conveniently lying next to the wall, down through the horizontal push bars. As it was, no one could pull them open from outside. Jimmy had his other shoe off, the sock too, and he was still sitting. The rest of the class moved behind Jimmy, blocking off the exit through the weight room.
"That's twenty laps right there, boys! Want more? Fifty! I can't wait to see ya puke. Whew, I didn't think y'all were that stupid. Besides, I got the keys." And the rest of his talk was really to himself as he turned his back on the doors. "Bunch of dumb-asses, man, I don't know where they get this stuff..." The sound of a ten-pound iron weight on the back of a skull isn't the most pleasant noise in the world. When the coach hit the floor face-first and bounced one inch up off the cushioned mat before settling, it began.
Jimmy hopped to his feet as if on a wire, took one step back and without even looking, grabbed the collar of the smallest kid in the whole class. He didn't strike the kid as the others gathered weapons: weights, bars, jump ropes. He just waited. The kid was so scared of Jimmy that he started to cry. Big, uncontrollable, where's-my-mommy tears and it wasn't long before the kid broke out in moans that came from the bottom of his lungs and sliced through the buzzing of the fluorescent lights high above them like double foghorns.
Fighting back didn't even occur to him, he was so terrified of Jimmy. He stood stock straight on his tiptoes and had his palms up in surrender. Just like a poisonous insect was on his neck, something that would sting if he moved, something he wasn't quick enough to take care of himself. This was psychological warfare. Jimmy turned three hundred and sixty degrees in a tight circle so that every class member in the room, even the stragglers trying to circle him, could see the urine soaking the smallest kid's thighs and look in his scrunched-up face as he pleaded to live. He had devolved to a six-year-old in Jimmy's grip and his noises were truly scaring everyone else, picking on the last nerve in all of them, but they had weapons. They had superior numbers. Most of them were high on at least one of Ridley's concoctions. They thought they had a chance.
It was no surprise that the biggest Runner brought his metal pole down hard on the face of the kid Jimmy had collared. Then he did it again. That shut him up. Crying wasn't aloud at Kung Fu. Never. Everyone indoctrinated into the school would've had no trouble with the punishment. If the kid wasn't helping to defeat Jimmy, he was only in the way. That was expected. What wasn't expected was Jimmy pushing the kid's body into the crowd and taking off on a diagonal across the room. He was running for the springboard before the kid's body settled on the floor next to the coach. The bright blue gymnastics flooring absorbed their blood like a hungry sponge, leaving only patches of purple-red behind.