Risen (12 page)

“If you don’t do something, we’ll do it for you,” Alec says.

Nick is sitting on the couch and chatting with a couple of girls, but he’s watching us too, noticing what’s going on.

“Your uncle and his friends are way out of line,” I say. “You need to do something about it.”

Alec nods, agreeing with me. I feel a twinge of pride that I stepped up to handle the situation without needing to involve Jay.

Leo’s trying hard to think but it doesn’t seem to be getting him anywhere. His large brow is furrowed. “They don’t mean anything, man, they’re just roughnecks, you know? This isn’t their scene.”

“Then they shouldn’t have come here,” Alec says. “And if they mess this party up, Jay is gonna blame you, bro.”

“I’ll go ask them to chill, okay?” Leo says.

“You do that,” Alec replies.

Leo takes a deep breath and then heads over to where Dillon and his friends are standing.

“You think he can get them to stop being such pricks?” I say.

Alec laughs. “Not a chance in hell. But it was worth a shot.”

A moment later, Leo’s trying to talk to his uncle and it’s obviously not going well. The uncle is shaking his head and mouthing off. His two friends look ready for a fight.

“Time to tell the boss,” Alec says. “Hurry.”

I run over to the bar.

Candice sees me and pulls a face. “Your little servant boy is back,” she says.

“I’m not a servant boy.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Jay looks at me, annoyed. “What now.”

“Code red. Leo’s guests are not cooperating.”

Jay’s eyes focus in on the commotion by the door and he gets a look of rage on his face. Rage and something else. Maybe it’s glee? His eyes glitter with anticipation.

“Come with me, Richardson. We’ve got some house cleaning to do.”

I follow Jay across the room to confront the goons. Nick and Alec are close behind. My heart is thumping in my chest and my legs feel like jelly.

When we get over to where they’re standing, Jay smiles at them.

Dillon looks at us. He’s a wiry guy, about six feet tall, with tattoos spiraling up both forearms. One tattoo in particular catches my eye. A red dragon with a long tongue lolling from its half open mouth.

“Hey, look, it’s the IRS,” Dillon says, grinning at his own joke, and his smile mimics the dragon’s smile on his forearm. “Did you guys come to do my taxes?”

I want to tell him that the IRS doesn’t actually DO your taxes, you report your income to them (I know this because my dad is always bitching about it), but I think better of it and keep my mouth firmly shut.

“You’re only here because my friend Leo wanted you to be here,” Jay says to Dillon. “But this is a private party and you guys are a little old to be hanging with high school kids anyhow.”

“We like staring at the hot young ladies,” Dillon says. “So I think we’ll stay a little while longer.”

Jay shakes his head. “You don’t seem to understand. You’re acting way out of line and I’m not asking. I’m telling you to please go.”

“Oh, and I’m really scared of Leo’s corny friend wearing a fucking monkey suit.

Man, get the fuck out of my face.”

Jay smiles wider. “We extended our hospitality to you and your buddies, but since you’ve been so disrespectful, you better leave right now.”

“Why don’t you get me a drink. Fucking clown.” Dillon looks over at his buddies and they all burst out laughing.

Suddenly, Leo comes out of nowhere and smashes a bottle across his uncle’s head. Shards of it fly in all directions, showering us as Dillon screams and falls to the ground. I put my hand up to ward off the spray of alcohol and glass as madness breaks out across the room.

Within the space of seconds, Nick and Jay are kicking the shit out of the guy who tried to grab Jenna’s ass and Alec is fighting the other friend, while I just stand there, paralyzed.

The entire room erupts into pure chaos.

It’s like one of those old western movies where a bar fight breaks out and one guy punches the other and then suddenly there’s chairs flying across the room and shattering against the wall, dudes hitting other dudes with glasses of beer, bodies sailing through plate glass windows.

This isn’t quite that bad—but it’s pretty close. Nobody seems to know what’s going on but there are kids throwing punches and yelling. I’m just standing there, afraid to even move, when I’m pushed HARD from behind and I stumble forward, eventually landing on my hands and knees.

My right pant leg is covered in beer when I stand up again.

I know I should do something to help my friends but I don’t feel like I have any strength in my body. It’s as if I’m nothing but a big blob of jello, quivering in the corner as my buddies go to war.

As quickly as it starts--it’s over. Jay and Nick have pummeled one guy into a crying mess and he’s screaming for mercy.

I’m shocked at the blood and mayhem and sheer brutality of it. I’m completely paralyzed.

“Get up and get the fuck out of my house,” Jay says, grabbing one guy by his shirt and pulling him out the back door. He literally tosses him outside. Alec and his opponent seemed to have called a truce. Jay gives that guy one look and he runs for the door and follows the other kid outside.

Then Jay pulls Leo off of his uncle. Dillon’s head is gushing blood and he’s badly hurt. One of his eyes is swollen shut. I grimace and look away from the carnage.

“Don’t ever disrespect my friends again!” Leo screams, and he’s crying as Jay holds him back from doing anything else.

The party is dead silent now. Whatever other random scuffles started up have died out.

Nick and Alec help to pick Dillon up, since he can barely move on his own.

“Make sure Leo’s uncle gets home,” Jay tells Alec. “Even if you have to drive him yourself. Nick, you go with them.”

“Sure thing.”

The two of them usher Leo’s staggering, bloodied uncle outside.

“Maybe Leo’s uncle needs to go to the hospital,” I whisper to Jay. “His head looked bad.”

Jay turns and gives me a cold stare.

Ignoring me, he turns around and looks at everybody standing there. The crowd is quiet. He smiles like nothing’s happened and there isn’t a mass of broken glass and blood across the floor. “Come on, let’s get the music back on, people. The night is young.” He gestures to the DJ. “Put something upbeat on, get everyone dancing again.”

I stare at the ground and the pieces of glass from the broken bottle and splotches of blood in all directions.

Jay sees me looking at the mess. “Clean that shit up,” he says.

Jay obviously knows I didn’t get involved in the fight. I start to say something, to apologize or explain my lack of action, but he’s still giving me the cold shoulder.

Jay turns to Leo, his demeanor quickly softening. Leo’s still crying, and Jay’s talking to him, no doubt telling him he did the right thing. That he’s proud of him.

I start wandering around the basement, looking for stuff to clean up the mess. I’m sweating and nervous. Firstly because of the violence I just witnessed, and secondly because I turned bitch and stood there while my crew fought.

I feel like I might be kicked out of the group for this. One of the lowest things a guy can do is refuse to back his friends in a fight. It’s something that my reputation—as small as it is—may never recover from.

I wonder if Jay will start freezing me out again like he did when we were younger. The very thought of that makes me almost sick to my stomach.

I find a big roll of paper towels in the far corner of a room near a trash bag full of empty beer cans and pick it up, slowly unwinding a few sheets to use on the mess near the back door.

Jay is still talking to Leo. I wish he’d at least look at me, say something. Even if it’s just to tell me what a pussy I am, I’d have a chance to explain. But what explanation is there? I wimped out, end of story. There’s nothing I can say to Jay that will change anything.

I picture myself friendless and alone again the way I’ve been for the last few years. Nobody will talk to me after this. The cool kids will think I’m a loser, and the smart kids will always consider me a goon, someone to be avoided like the plague.

This is what I really am, I decide as I sop up the wet beer and blood and glass with my paper towels. Not Jay’s consigliere. Just a lowly maid, cleaning up other people’s messes.

The rest of the night I keep my head down and try to help cleaning up and keeping things organized. Jay and Candice go upstairs to his bedroom and leave the rest of us to clean. Nobody says much to me when I leave, but as I drive home afterward, I have the urge to just ignore the turn onto my street and instead keep driving and driving.

But I don’t.

***

On Monday everybody’s talking about the fight. When Leo and Nick walk by me in the hall without saying a word, I know it isn’t good.

Jay is nowhere to be found and I send him a text, pretending to be casual and say what’s up, but he doesn’t respond.

I’m in the computer lab during free period, working on the website, when Alec and Nick come strolling in. There’s a kid sitting next to me and Nick boots him.

“Adults need to talk. Get moving.”

The kid protests a little but shuts up when Nick glares at him.

“What’s going on?” I say, minimizing my word document and turning toward him.

Alec sits down on the other side of me. “Nothing much, just killing time,” Nick says. “You’re working pretty hard in here. Looking like a young Bill Gates.”

Alec laughs. “Or like that other nerd--Zuckerbergman.”

“Right. The Facebook dude. Why do all computer geeks look the same?”

“There’s someone else Richardson reminds me of…I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Alec says, picking up some of my index cards from the table and pretending to look through them.

Nick snaps his fingers. “I got it.”

“You do?” Alec says.

“Yeah. He kind of looks like Fredo, doesn’t he?”

“Shit. He does!”

I get a chill up my spine. Fredo is the weak, traitorous younger brother in The Godfather. He’s eventually murdered by Michael in The Godfather II.

I shake my head. “I need to get back to work.”

“Oh, do you, Fredo?” Nick says, leaning in. His breath is on my face. “You make sure to really do a good job on that man. We wouldn’t want to get in the way of your important work here.”

Alec grabs the back of my neck and squeezes until it hurts. “Thanks for getting our backs at the party, Fredo.” He overemphasizes the F sound in Fredo and spittle hits my cheek.

I don’t say a word.

They get up and leave the computer lab and I just sit there, my mind blank, stomach queasy with anxiety.

The rest of the day, I keep to myself. Jay never answers my texts (I send him another one later in the day), and I skip lunch.

***

The next day I convince my mom to let me stay home, telling her I don’t feel well. But the truth is I just can’t stand the thought of another day at school with everyone giving me the cold shoulder.

A little after one o’clock, I’m going downstairs to watch some TV and I hear a loud car engine that sounds like it’s heading up our driveway. I go to the front door and see Jay’s SUV coming to a rolling stop a few feet from the garage.

He gets out of his car and starts toward the door. I don’t think he’s seen me, and I contemplate hiding. But if he has somehow seen me, then he’ll realize I’m avoiding him.

Just before he gets up the front steps, I open the door.

Jay’s wearing an Abercrombie sweater and dark blue jeans, complemented by fresh, white and gold Nike sneakers. He looks at me skeptically. “Hiding out, Richardson?”

“No. Just sick.”

“Sure. Sick.”

“It’s true. I feel like shit.”

“The boys gave you some shit for not backing us up at the party?” he says.

“Whatever. I knew eventually it would turn out this way. Those guys hate me.”

Jay shakes his head. “Nobody hates you Richardson. Stop being such a whiny vag and take a look at this.”

He reaches in his pocket and takes out his phone. After a few seconds he angles the screen towards me and I can see a grainy video playing on it.

“It’s hard to see on my phone but the video quality isn’t actually that bad,” he says. “If you play it on a normal computer monitor.”

I move forward and peer at it more closely. There’s also tinny sound coming from the phone’s speaker.

Suddenly I realize it’s video of the party. Specifically the fight during the party. I can make out Jay pummeling one of the kids and then the view shifts to Leo beating up his Uncle Dillon.

“Someone taped it?”

Jay gives me a sly grin. “Candice. That girl is one smart cookie.”

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to press record.”

He chuckles.

“What’s so funny about that?” I ask.

“You’re just cute when you get nervous, Richardson.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughs harder and then tapers off. “So, I’ve been doing some thinking about your problem,” he says, snapping his phone shut and turning abruptly serious.

“My problem?”

“Yeah, how you didn’t back us up during the fight.”

“You guys were handling everything okay on your own,” I say. “I was waiting to see if you needed reinforcements.”

My joke falls flat. Jay regards me coldly. “You need to make amends to the family, Richardson.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, you do. And that starts now, with this video.”

“How so?”

“Well, I had a brilliant idea this morning in computer class. When you didn’t show up and Ms. Spreadwell started grilling me about our project, I made a bunch of shit up.”

I put my face in my hands. “Why’d you do that?”

“I had no choice. She was asking me all kinds of stuff and I couldn’t tell her I didn’t even work one second on the website. But anyway, that’s beside the point. The point is that as I was bullshitting old Spreadwell about our project, I realized that we can use it.”

“Use it how?”

“I want to post this video on the web so people can see what happens when they fuck with our crew.”

“If people see that video, you and Leo will probably end up arrested for assault.”