I knew right away this was a bad situation. Jeff and his friends were bullies, and Jennifer was a natural victim if ever there was one. She was small, weak, odd, confused, and all alone out here in the middle of nowhere. The minute Jeff set eyes on her there was going to be trouble. I was sure of it.
I watched the chrome of the Camaro’s fender plowing up the hill toward us. Then I looked back at Jennifer. She hadn’t even turned at the sound of the car. She was still staring at me, still studying me, as if she expected to find something surprising hidden in my face.
I had this instinct to tell her to run away while there was still time—before the car reached us. But I didn’t. I should have.
The Camaro roared right toward us—so fast that I edged my bike out of the way to make sure I wouldn’t get flattened. But just before the car reached me, it stopped. The doors came open immediately. Jeff and Ed P. and Harry Mac got out and walked over to us.
Only then did Jennifer turn to look at them. It was as if she had just noticed they’d arrived. I heard her take a little frightened breath. I saw her eyes go wide. She was afraid. I didn’t blame her. So was I.
I tried to talk in a normal, relaxed tone of voice. “Hey, guys,” I said. “You heading up to the barn?” I guess I was hoping that if I pretended everything was all right, then somehow everything would be all right.
But Jeff didn’t even answer me. He didn’t even look at me. He walked up and stood in front of us with his friends flanking him, Ed P. behind his left shoulder, Harry Mac behind his right. He looked at Jennifer. He grinned his weaselly grin.
Jennifer quailed, afraid. She sort of pulled her arms close to herself as if she wanted to shrink away to nothing.
Jeff kept looking down at her, but he spoke to me. He said, “Hey, punk, who’s your friend?”
I had to lick my lips before I could answer. They were very dry. “You know Jennifer,” I said. “She’s Mark Sales’s sister.”
Jeff gave a harsh bark of a laugh, right into Jennifer’s frightened face. “Yeah, I know Mark Sales’s sister, all right,” he said in a sneering tone. Then he said to her, “You’re the bug-head, aren’t you? Huh? Your brother’s smart. He’s a little too smart, in fact. But you—there’s something wrong with you, isn’t there? You’re a little bit . . .” He turned his finger in a circular motion around his temple to indicate “crazy.” “You got bugs in the brain, haven’t you?”
I saw Jennifer’s eyes change. She might be weird, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew when she was being insulted. Her pale face went even paler, her expression blank with hurt and fear.
“Bugs can be in a computer. A brain’s like a computer,” Jennifer said.
Jeff laughed at that as if she had told a joke. And of course Ed P. and Harry Mac laughed along.
“Bugs in a computer . . .,” Jeff said.
“Hey, look . . .,” I started to say, hoping to distract him.
But Jeff just ignored me. He went on talking to Jennifer. “The stuff you say, bug-girl,” he said. “Where do you come up with that crazy stuff?”
“I buy it at the crazy store,” she answered him. Her tone was defiant, but her eyes were flicking around this way and that as if she was looking for a way to escape. Her lips were trembling in fear.
For a second I saw a flash of anger in Jeff’s eyes. He didn’t like her smart-aleck answer. But a second later he laughed again and his pals laughed. “The crazy store,” Jeff said. “I’ll bet. I’ll bet that’s exactly right.”
“Hey, Jennifer,” I said. Quickly I climbed off my bike and laid it down on the road. I stepped toward Jennifer, trying to maneuver myself between her and Jeff. “Maybe you ought to go home now,” I told her. “You know what I’m . . .”
Jeff put his hand on my shoulder and moved me aside—not hard or anything—just sort of gently pushing me out of his way. He stepped even closer to Jennifer. There was no way for me to get between them now.
“Oh, she doesn’t want to leave,” he said, not looking at me, only looking down at her. “The fun’s just getting started. Isn’t it, buggy?”
“Listen, Jeff,” I said desperately. “You know Mark doesn’t like it when anyone . . .”
He turned swiftly, like a snake turning. The words died in my throat. “You think I care what Mark doesn’t like?” he said.
“No, I . . .”
“You think I’m scared of Mark? I’m sick of Mark. Mark’s pushed me just as far as I’m gonna go.”
“I’m just saying . . . Look,” I pleaded. “You know, she’s . . . It’s not right.”
Jeff looked at me a long moment. It wasn’t a nice look. I thought he might be about to knock me around again. But instead he smiled that smile. “It’s not right? It’s not right? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you know . . .”
“No, I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me, punk?”
“I mean, well, Jennifer, she’s . . . You know. You shouldn’t . . . She’s . . .”
“O-o-oh,” said Jeff, turning his smile back to Jennifer again. “I see what you mean. You mean she’s not right. She’s crazy, isn’t she? She’s got bugs in her brain. Don’t you, bug-girl?”
And now Jeff made this crazy noise, this sort of high-pitched warbling sound—you know, to indicate that Jennifer was nuts: a way of making fun of her. Ed P. and Harry Mac laughed loudly. And Jeff kind of illustrated the crazy noise with his hands—waggling his fingers in Jennifer’s face. Jennifer just sort of stared at the fingers as if she was mesmerized by them.
“Crazy, crazy, crazy,” Jeff said.
And I said, “Hey, Jeff, listen . . .”
Then—very suddenly, very fast—Jeff slapped her.
It happened before I could do anything, before I could even think. Jeff was doing that thing with his hands, waggling his fingers in Jennifer’s face, and she was staring at his fingers, and then the next second he kind of rolled his hands over and over, the way a boxer does when he’s punching a bag. He rolled his hands over and hit Jennifer in the face with them four times really quickly, whack-whack-whack-whack, too fast for her to block them or get away.
Jennifer stumbled back from the blows and covered herself, cowering in pain, trembling in terror.
Ed P. and Harry Mac laughed and laughed, and Jeff laughed and called at her, “How was that, bug-head? That was pretty funny, huh? Was that crazy enough for you? Why don’t you take that to the crazy store?”
Have you ever had a revelation? You know, like, one minute you don’t understand something and the next minute you do. Like maybe you’re playing a video game and you can’t figure out how you’re supposed to climb up on this ledge that’s out of reach and then all of a sudden the answer’s obvious; it just comes to you as if from out of nowhere.
Well, that’s what happened to me then. When Jeff slapped Jennifer, I had a revelation.
My revelation went like this: Do right. Fear nothing.
Before, when I was riding my bike up the hill, worrying about what I was going to tell Jeff, that idea had seemed complicated. Difficult. Even impossible. How could you just stop being afraid? How could you just do what was right when the consequences might be really painful?
Now, all of a sudden, in a bright brain flash, it came to me.
I thought: Oh wait, I get it! Do right. Fear nothing. It’s as simple as that!
Jeff and Harry Mac and Ed P. were still laughing, and Jeff was making noises again as Jennifer cringed in front of him, her face red from his slaps and stained with tears. I could see that Jeff was getting all excited by his own cruelty, that he was planning to hurt her again, to hurt her more.
“Hey, Jeff!” I said.
He turned to me, grinning. “What do you want, punk?” he said.
I thought: Do right. Fear nothing.
And I slugged him.
Hey, under the circumstances it was the only thing I could think of. And sure, I knew what was going to happen to me next. But I wasn’t afraid because . . . Well, because I understood the words on the angel statue. Do right. Fear nothing. It was just that easy.
Anyway, I slugged Jeff in the face, and it was a good one too—a good, solid punch, not like before when we were up on the ridge. This one came up from my knee with my whole body turning into it. My knuckles smacked hard into Jeff’s cheek and sent him stumbling backward, his arms pin-wheeling, until he tripped and sat down hard on the ground.
“Run, Jennifer!” I shouted. “Run now!”
But she didn’t—not at first. At first she just backed slowly away, gaping at me in wild-eyed terror.
“Run!” I shouted again.
“I don’t want to leave-you-believe-you!” she cried out wildly.
“Believe me, leave me!” I shouted back. If I was going to get beaten up, I didn’t want it to be for nothing.
Before I could say anything else, Harry Mac grabbed hold of me from behind, wrapping his powerful arms around me in a bear hug. Without thinking, I forced my elbow back into his belly. His belly felt like it was made of steel, but I guess I hit him in a good spot because the blow made him grunt and his grip on me loosened. With the strength of crazy panic, I yanked myself free of him.
“Run, Jennifer!” I shouted one more time.
Finally—finally!—Jennifer ran; at least she tried to. But just as she started to turn away, Ed P. went after her. You wouldn’t have thought the lumbering thug could move so fast, but his arm snapped out like a whip and his big hand wrapped around her elbow.
I leapt onto his back. I put a stranglehold on him with one arm while I pummeled him with my free fist.
He lost his grip on Jennifer and she tore off into the woods. I caught a final glimpse of her, dodging through the trees at full speed, her coat spreading out around her like wings, her brown hair flying out behind her.
I was still clinging to Ed P. and he was reeling around, trying to throw me off. And now Jeff was on his feet and he and Harry Mac came at me at once. Jeff grabbed me from one side and Harry Mac grabbed me from the other. They pulled me off Ed P.’s back, and as I fell away, Ed P. took a blind, furious swing with his fist that caught me like a hammer blow on the side of the head.
I saw lights flash in front of my eyes. My knees went weak. Jeff and Harry Mac hurled me down hard onto the broken road.
The impact of the fall knocked the wind out of me. For a moment all I could do was lie there on my back, dazed. I saw the three thugs standing over me, looking down at me. Blood was pouring out of Jeff’s nose from where I’d decked him. He wiped the thick stream away with his sweatshirt sleeve.
Then he grinned down at me, his teeth bloodstained. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, punk. You are really going to get it now.”
So that’s how I ended up just about dead, lying in a pool of blood by the side of the road.
But that’s only the beginning of the story.