Kung Fu High School (12 page)

Melinda was more dangerous than any of them. The reason the Wolves were still around was almost completely due to her, because she knew how to play their game. Brush their egos the right way and make her moves behind their backs and nobody gets hurt. Well, too hurt. I grew up with Melinda. We went to elementary school together. We played kickball every day back then. We used to think we could be pilots. Technically, she was my first kiss. We were ten. "It'll be like training wheels," she had said, "you know, before riding a bike all by yourself" Her dad had taught her.

Of course, none of that mattered as I was pulling myself up the stairs by the handrail bolted into the red brick walls. My knee burned, was probably swelling, which was bad because there were two guards at the door to the home ec room. I didn't know them from their faces but I knew they were freshmen. Probably had less than six rolls to their combined credit. They were just babies. Melinda was getting sloppy. Everyone was, with Cue gone: Ridley only keeping Mock in the room and not two or three bodyguards, 'Fredo without his armor, and this, Melinda using inexperienced children during an important family meeting never would've happened if my big brother was around. He was so good he'd kept everyone on their toes. Gone a day and everyone was slipping. Pathetic.

Took me less than ten seconds to get both guards on the floor. Here's a pointer to anyone trying to be a good guard. Never hold out your arm and say, "Stop!" or "Halt!" like they do in the movies and TV. Because that makes it easy for an experienced adversary to grab your straight arm and use it to chop your guard partner in the voice box and then partially dislocate your shoulder before kicking you to the ground. Valuable les sons just like how Cue would've taught them. It was the least I could do.

Open sesame.

"Melly!" I said it real loud in front of the whole Wolves council: Aunts, Uncles, even a few high-ranking kids gathered around two shambly tables in the room filled with sewing machines and big white stoves. I hadn't called her that since we were twelve.

"You lookin' to get transferred? Because you're in the right place then, missy." Her voice was raw when she said it. Girl had some power. Melinda put her pen down and stood up. She rolled her shoulders forward and then extended her arms straight back behind her to stretch them. Maybe she just did it to show me that her breasts were still bigger than mine. Of course, Mark and Rico stood up and grabbed her arms to help her stretch better and mostly to look more intimidating. Mark and Rico were her boys. They could roll. Mark was the Wolves Pop but really, he was just Melinda's lapdog and everybody knew it.

I didn't say anything. It was her show.

"Don't make me get the paperwork to put you out of here, because we can put you somewhere nice and sunny, real sunny."

The Wolves laughed at Melinda's sarcasm.

"Wolves only." She was walking toward me, slow but purposeful. She put her hands in her pockets and came out with extra rings: one for every finger and thumb.

Cue used to tell me I could take her, just as long as I didn't lead in with my chin. I had to be ready for more lateral movement and less front-foot fighting. But Melinda was much, much quicker than me. My only chance would've been to go for the diaphragm with my first punch and hope I hit gold. If anything though, I'd get it bad.

If it was anybody else, I would have. Melinda, though, she knew about appearances and she knew about alliances. I just had to ham it up a little more.

"The Waves are gone," I said.

She needed us. We needed her. She wasn't going to let ego get in the way, but she was going to save face for me disrupting the meeting, even if I did have valuable information.

"I didn't have to hear it from you to know that," Melinda said.

"We wish to strengthen the Wolves, we will not retain our name." I said what was traditionally said in blending situations, when one family joined another. Cue taught me the right words just in case I'd ever have to say them. He didn't tell me they'd burn a little when they came out.

"Last I heard you didn't have the power to do that." As the punctuation to the sentence, Melinda hit me, hard. I knew it was coming but I didn't really spot it. She was standing right in front of me and I didn't even see it. Tough to say she hadn't gotten even quicker. I didn't flinch though. I didn't duck. It crashed me right in the jaw, underneath the joint. I felt my skin tear but still I made it look good because the Wolves laughed and did their stupid howl.

"I do now. Alfredo got a flyer." I said it looking down at the carpet. Between the sentences, I spat blood. My back tooth was loose but not too bad. My right ear was ringing, but only my right. I didn't get hit again.

"Leave." Melinda wasn't talking to me, she was talking to the Wolves. They didn't argue. Every single one of them knew she could take me.

"What happened?" Melinda asked, completely different now that we were alone.

"Ridley transferred him. Did it right in front of me and Jimmy."

"How'd he do it?"

"Throat."

"Figures." Melinda grabbed me a towel from the nearest stove door handle after she said it. I was bleeding all over the table.

"Cue was good." That was the closest Melinda got to sympathy and it was the closest she got to saying that she was the next target. She knew it, I knew it, and pretty soon, everybody at Kung Fu would know it. I understood I'd have to stand with her. Our fates were tied together like a lead balloon with two tail strings. She was probably happy I'd done what I did. The Wolves were by far the largest family now, but for how long?

Melinda opened the door with her arm around me. She was twice the leader I was and everybody there knew it.

"I will absorb the Waves." She said it more for her family than for me. "I will stand for Jimmy too."

Her eyes lit up when she said his name. Mark and Rico hunched their shoulders at the exact same time. She liked her boys, Melinda did. She kept them in line. It stung bad though, that look in her eyes. It shouldn't've. I mean, I knew he could never be mine. Cue always used to say that there was no such thing as survival without compromise. And when I walked out of there on a sore knee, with a new family name and an aching jaw, I was beginning to understand what he meant.

I didn't see Jimmy at lunch. I asked a couple people about him but no one had seen him. Apparently he wasn't in his geometry class either, that was the word. At least it made my getting punched in the face worthwhile. As a Wolf now, no one could touch him. He was safe again, at least temporarily. Some stupid Blade would probably challenge him at the first circle after classes but Melinda would stand up for him, she had to. That was the first act of any new Mom or Pop.

Overall, lunch was pretty rough. I walked in from the building entrance to the cafeteria to see that the back right corner was empty. There are three entrances, one from the outside, one from the building, and a one-way in from the swimming pool that was basically forbidden. Where you entered was real important, crossing into another family's area was strictly not done, unless you wanted to challenge. The cafeteria was the one place in the school where families tended to group up a little more than usual, not too much though, Dermoody
was
watching. Our place, Cue's and mine, was empty. One of the big fluorescent lights above the section was out too but I definitely didn't want to read anything into that. The section would stay officially off-limits for one day out of respect. After that, Melinda could move in if she wanted. It was her right now.

My books squashed my sandwitch and the plastic bag popped so I got mustard on my take-home presidents test. It was starting to look like a dirty plate. Guess I'd have to turn it in tomorrow when I had a real civics class instead of a conversation with Ridley. It figured after all that hard work I went through just to get Jimmy's blood off the paper. At least mustard was less conspicuous and my teacher wouldn't say anything about it. Or maybe she'd just give another empty speech about being conscientious citizens and taking pride in our work. Nobody ever listened to her before but she kept saying the same speeches. Must've been automatic.

While eating I didn't really taste my food, it was enough just to move my jaw up and down through the sharp soreness. Once I even had to use my hand to push my chin up and down to chew the last of it. Melinda had got me good. Cue was the only person who punched harder. Mostly I kept thinking about sitting next to four Wolves, two who used to be Waves, and not Cue.

He had the most annoying habit of shaking whatever leg was next to mine, bouncing it up and down and bumping me while I was trying to eat. He said it was because he had a high metabolism but I think it used to be a joke that became a habit after years of doing it. Whatever it really was, my leg missed it when sitting at a new table where all I could feel was the cold steel of the table leg through my nonbloodied khaks. The coldness did make my swollen knee feel slightly better though.

Compared to the stress of the morning, the rest of the day was clear sailing. I made sure to explain to every Wave I came across what happened in the least words possible. Nobody liked it but what were they going to do, argue with me? They could tell I'd taken a shot for them, for all of us really. Nobody said anything about Cue, not in words. But I got a lot of looks that told me they were sorry about what happened. The only blip of discomfort that hovered on my radar screen prior to the end of the day was when Ridley surprised me after my chemistry class.

"Well, Miss Jen, you
are
good. I'm impressed how you took care of big brother's business." Ridley got close enough to touch me.

He smelled like expensive cologne. It went straight to the front of my brain and gave me a headache on the right side of my head, behind the ear. So he'd already heard. That was quick. I'd probably done exactly what he'd wanted me to do, consolidated the last of his two enemies into one, slightly more predictable, and manageable, body. Roll over it. Dress it up. Put a flag in it. Us against them. Only two sides now.

I couldn't be sure but he must've been waiting for me to say something and when I didn't, he traced the rough shape of a corsage—or maybe a heart—on my flannel, from my shoulder to my collarbone to just above my left breast. I could only look over at his little brother when he did it. Fred smiled that super-innocent smile of his and then looked away, all shy. That was when I realized that maybe one of the reasons why Ridley kept him around all the time was that they balanced each other out so well. Somehow Fred had a way of bringing out the best in people.

"Just think about it. That's all I ask. I know you thought I was joking just to be cruel but I really was serious about the prom."

And then he was gone, with his whole posse in tow. Even though he hadn't looked me in the eyes and basically talked to my chest, I could see actual loneliness there in his movements. We can smell our own. But who really cared if an extremely dangerous sociopathic drug kingpin was lonely? I didn't. He'd have to find someone more afraid of him than me if he wanted to bully someone into a date or a fuck. I knew he was playing some kind of angle. I just couldn't figure out what that was just yet.

Really, I don't know what boys see in me. My nose is too big and it's crooked. My face is too round and I have a hard jawline just like my dad's. Puffy is the best way to describe my lips and my cheeks sort of hang down low because I don't seem to have cheekbones, not like the kinds the magazine girls have. So no, I'm not classically beautiful and I'm not even beautiful. And that's before you factor in my scars. Only one is from when I was a kid. I fell over on a potted plant and got a big one (for a kid) across my forehead, eight stitches, or was it seven? I really can't remember, that was so long ago. I got that one scar beneath my lips where a girl put her fingernail through that thin skin and tore. It's kind of a half moon but ragged on the inside. Cue called that raggedness my crater, said I was the woman in the moon, Artemis, with a wicked left hook. My best scar is on my left eyebrow ridge though: it's two inches long and extends down vertical onto my cheek like someone drew a straight line past my eye, but really it was the chipped metal edge of a table I got slammed into, opened my face up like a book. I never wear makeup because that stuff stings when it gets into a cut or my eyes: poison, all of it. I never do anything with my hair beyond tying it back. There are lots of girls more attractive, lots.

Jimmy wasn't at the circle after school, so he missed the big announcement before anyone got called out. I probably should've been worried, but I wasn't. I carried my pack in front of me as I crowded in behind Mark and Rico. Melinda was in the middle and she walked toward me.

"The Waves are Wolves now." She surprised me after she said it though by taking my hand, making me in charge of the changeover in a real public way. Whispers sprang up but it was nothing much. I followed Mark's and Rico's glares across the circle.

"But the Hunters are Blades," came the call from Merrick, keen old 'Fredo's next in line. If they had any more than forty, they probably would've tried to start a new family all by themselves. That's how stupid they were. They'd fit right in with the Blades. Second bananas in the best family to second bananas in the worst family. A step down and they didn't even know it.

"So be it, but anyone who wants to roll a Wave has to roll me today." Melinda just smiled.

This was tradition as well. If a new family stepped in, the Mom or Pop had to take care of business and settle some scores. Anyone challenged could still accept of course, but the Mom or Pop could still step in if a point needed to be proven.

I knew I was a target, especially with Jimmy gone. The look on Merrick's face pretty much blamed me for 'Fredo and there were plenty of Blades that wanted to have a run at me for what Cue did to Karl. Those two were natural allies, enemy of my enemy and all that. If the Hunters were somewhat dangerous, Melinda would've challenged Merrick and beat him down, but they weren't big enough to be worth her time. To her, they were just sore losers who got outmaneuvered for control of the Waves.