SPEAKING OF TROUBLE…

A few days later, I get my next beat-down from Tiny Simpkins. He’s stepping to me pretty much all the time now, but some days are worse than others.

Like today, for instance.

There I am, standing in front of my locker, minding my own, when I hear these voices behind me.

“I don’t know, young. Looks kind of tight.”

“Nah, man. He’s got it. No doubt.”

When I turn around, Tiny’s standing there with his boy Jerome Cleary. His brother Tony is there, too. Tony’s in eighth grade, and he looks a lot like Tiny, if you added a couple of inches and twenty pounds of muscle wrapped in blubber.

“Wassup, Grandma’s Boy?” Tiny says.

“Wassup?” I say, like always.

“See, we got this bet going on,” Tiny tells me. “My big brother here thinks there’s no way you can fit inside that locker. But I say he’s wrong.”

I try to get in chill mode, but on the inside I’m already hitting the panic button. Big-time. I probably could fit inside that locker if someone really wanted me to.

And I think someone does.

I start to close the door real quick, but Tiny’s already there to stop me.

“Hold on,” he says.

“Come on, Tiny,” I say. There’s no use pretending anymore. “Why don’t you just keep it moving, man? For real.”

“‘Keep it moving’?” he says. “Listen to this bamma. How about I ‘move’ this upside your head?”

Before I can do anything, he’s picking me up like a human gym bag and stuffing me inside that locker. He gives me a punch in the chest, too, and then slams the locker closed. When I try to stop him, all it gets me is a faceful of door. My nose is smushed, my teeth are rattled, and my pride feels like the bottom of the boots of a guy whose job it is to clean up dog poop at the park. Yeah, like that.

Meanwhile, Tiny and his boys are wilding out in the hall. I can even see little pieces of them through the holes in the metal.

Then I hear Tiny say, “What’re you looking at, Wong? You want some of this?”

They start chasing Arthur down the hall, and that’s it. I’m all on my own here. There’s no handle inside this locker, and nobody bothering to help me, either.

What I could really use right now is some Steel.

Or maybe a crowbar and a little oxygen tank.

My fear of cramped, tiny spaces that smell like sweaty shorts and stale socks is starting to get to me. This is jacked up.