Silver and Salt (2 page)

There was a trick.  

“Hey, Nicky, you hanging out with Jaws?”
Isaac sat across from me chin propped in his hand.

He definitely had the teeth for the nickname, but no one had ever called it to him to his face.
“Nah, just my turn on his list.” Isaac frowned. His parents had come over from Mexico and he’d already had his turn over that with Jed.

“Oh shit,” he said, wincing.
“Whatcha going to do?”

“Don’t know yet.” I dropped my fork. “Guess I’ll have to think about it. Sneak through the woods home until he figures that out.” 

After the last class, I bolted into the woods. They were thick and deep, full of poison ivy and tangles of blackberry bushes that would tear you to pieces if you tried to push through. I managed. Scratches were scratches. They’d fade quick enough. And I’d avoided Jed.

This time.

*              *              *

The next afternoon I was at the store looking for a present for Tessa. I scowled at the Santa ringing the bell by the door. One more reminder…everywhere you looked. Skinny or with sagging beards and worn black boots or faded red pants.
Fakes. It made the whole season fake.

But there were only two more days until Christmas Eve and I couldn’t put off shopping any more. I couldn’t get Tessa what she really wanted, so I wandered up and down the doll aisle. It was amazing. They had dolls that walked and talked, crawled and cried, ate and pooped. Why would anyone want a toy that threw up on you while you changed its diaper? That was crazy. But Mom sent me out with a list and one of these nasty things was on it. I picked up the nearest one. It only talked and waved its arms, no puking involved. That was the one.

“Playing with dollies now,” Jed purred from behind me. “Why not? You run like a goddamn girl. You might as well play like one too.” His hand circled my arm above my elbow so hard it cut the blood off. I felt the tingle in my fingers.

Jed had been behind me in the woods yesterday afternoon, but he didn’t know them like I did. He’d come closer than I’d have thought though. He just didn’t care. Pain was nothing to him.
Diving through blackberry bushes, sliding down ravines. He was one scratched, bruised mess now, and wasn’t that too bad? I might try and stay out of trouble but there was no way I was sorry about that.

I ignored him, yanked my arm away, and took the doll to the checkout counter. He followed me every step of the way. “You can’t run forever,
Nicky,”
he whispered. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck ruffle in the godawful stench of his breath. “No one’s ever gotten away. And when I’m done with you and you hide like a little bitch every time you see me, I’ll make your little sister sorry, too. Her and her dolly.”

And that was that.

I’d put it off. I’d tried to stay out of trouble. I’d tried not to piss off Mom and Dad. But you couldn’t let the assholes win, even crazy ones like Jed. I sat in a plastic chair by the door, eyes on the floor, until Jed gave up and left. And I never said a word to him.

There were kids that hated Jed.
Lots of kids. If I could get all of them to stand up to him, join together, Jed might not be as tough as he thought he was. I could give it a try, but the thing about being beaten down…it’s hard to get back up. I’d been to four schools now, Dad’s job kept us traveling, and each school had a bully. Sometimes the bully would get caught and punished, but half the time it didn’t matter. In weeks he would go back to doing what he did. The kids wouldn’t stand up for themselves and hardly any of them would tell. They just took the bullying, sure the teachers couldn’t help them. They were right. If the principal kicked the bully out of school, then he’d just wait it outside.

My dad said in life there were sheep and wolves and most of the time they just couldn’t cross over.

I sighed. Jed damn sure seemed like he thought he was a wolf. He was nuts as they came. He’d keep coming after me, going after the others, start messing with Tess. I folded the top of the bag the doll was in and got up. Nope, it probably wouldn’t work, no matter how many kids Jed had given reason to hate him, but I’d give it a shot. There had to be some that’d band together against Jed. Hell, it always worked in the movies.

Right?

*          *          *

Wrong.

Isaac peered through black bangs at me in disbelief. “The guy’s not human, okay? When he stomps you it’s like he’s never gonna stop. He could take on Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Werewolf all at once and go out for pizza after.” Isaac was a huge fan of horror movies. He’d seen ones made before I was born, before my
parents
were born. The inside of the door of his locker was covered with pictures of monsters. Snarling, crouching, flying, sucking blood. They papered every square inch. I liked Isaac but he was a little weird.

“Come on.” I stood at his locker and snorted, “He’s not all that.”

“Yeah, Nicky, he
is
all that. He caught me in the woods and he broke my arm, okay? And he said if I told anyone how it happened, he’d break the other one. I believed him because he
meant
it.” He slammed the locker shut. “No way. Leave me out of it. He’s crazy and if you had any sense you’d be watching behind you every minute.” With that he hurried down the hall.

I gave up on Isaac and went on to Dog Boy…Sammy, I meant. Sammy. Five words out of my mouth and he was gone, fast as any of his dogs. It went that way all day. I’d expected it, but I’d hoped it’d be different.

Isaac had said Jed had caught him in the woods, the same ones Jed had chased me in. Jed didn’t do his fighting on campus. That’d get him expelled and he knew it. Yeah, it would get
him
expelled—him, not me.

He didn’t have the little
in
that I had with Principal Johnson. Good old Principal Johnson, not the brightest man to choke on chalk dust.

So I went to plan B. That day when Jed, who was dependable as C’s in math, sat down opposite me in the cafeteria and took my slice of pizza, I picked up my tray, dumped the food off of it, and whacked him hard in the side of the head with it.

It knocked him sideways, almost off the seat, but he caught himself with one hand on the table. His eyes were ice, his teeth bared, and violence shivered under his skin. “Who’s the bitch now?” I asked quietly. “You gonna roll over and take it? Or you gonna stand up and do something about it?” He’d been barely smart enough not to fight in school before, but this was a whole lot of different.

As plans went it wasn’t as idiotic as it seemed. There were teachers already moving towards us. They’d pull him off me before he got me too bad. And then out he’d go. Maybe it’d only be outside the school itself but that was something. 

He shook with black anger, but as crazy as he was, he wasn’t as stupid as I thought. I might not get expelled if there was a fight, but he knew he would. And I had a feeling his daddy would be a whole lot more disappointed than mine. I had a feeling Jed was a chip off the old block.

He stood and hissed, “Dead. You’re dead.”

He left the cafeteria and I sighed. Another plan shot to hell. Glumly I sat back down and waited for a teacher to come drag me off to Principal Johnson for a few weeks of detention.

It was actually two months.

After a lot of clutching at his comb over of black hair and warnings on how he couldn’t cover up things like this—he simply couldn’t…he did. Like I knew he would. I was going to have to call Mom to go fetch Tessa from the bus stop and she wasn’t going to be happy at the reason why. Understanding maybe, but not happy.

The same day, after two hours of detention, as I slid through the woods, I heard Jed behind me. This time was the first time I actually heard him howling with fury as he chased me. I might’ve been chunky and short, but I was quick. I had hit that gym door running. Jed hadn’t been as fast.

“You son of a bitch! You son of a bitch! Where are you?” All that was followed by screams of rage. Incoherent animal sounds. Isaac was right. Jed did sound like a monster…a movie monster anyway. I slid under a thick overhang of dead blackberry vines and thought how I definitely hadn’t made things any better. Not to say whacking him with a tray hadn’t felt good, but it hadn’t gotten me out of the trouble I thought it would.

Although, it really,
really
had felt good.

Finally I climbed a tree, my brown jacket blending in with the bark and held still as he passed like a rabid Doberman beneath me. Swear to God, there was foam flying from his mouth as he screamed for me.

You skip a few Ritalin and things just go to hell.

Right.
Like you could blame that kind of nuts on a little ADHD. I hugged the tree, rested my head against it and stayed there for an hour. It was cold, but I didn’t mind the cold. And it got dark, but I didn’t mind that either. As far as monsters went, Jed’s night vision must not have been too hot. He didn’t hang around. I heard his last howl nearly half mile away and then nothing again.

I finally climbed down and went home to face two things a lot worse than Jed: Mom and Dad. Dad ripped me a new one over detention. It didn’t matter why I got it.
Skorazys didn’t make waves, didn’t get noticed. Our grandparents and their grandparents had learned that over in Russia. Keep your head down or lose it altogether.

After the yelling was over the worst came. Mom wanted me to help her and Tessa make Christmas cookies for Santa. When I wandered into the kitchen, Tess turned out to be making her Merry Christmas, Santa note in her room, all tongue and crooked crayon writing, as Mom roped me in. “You’ll have a good time, Nicky,” she said, smiling. She was a great mom, a pretty one too even with flour streaked across one cheek. Dark blond hair worn in braid just past her shoulders, violet eyes and a scar that bisected one eyebrow that only made her look curious all the time. I loved my mom. I know I was thirteen and not supposed to think things like that, but I did.

But she wanted me to make cookies for Santa? “You know there’s no Santa, Mom,” I grumped. “This whole Christmas thing,” I opened a bag of chocolate chips, “it’s a waste of time.”

A spoon smacked my hand. “The holiday spirit is in your heart. It’s not about presents and shiny paper. Christmas is in you.” She poked a finger in my chest. “And Santa is everywhere you look. If only you
would
look.” She shook her head, smiled again, and dabbed my nose with cookie batter. I rolled my eyes and wiped it off with a finger, which I licked clean. “Now,” she said firmly, “make your sister happy and help with the cookies. She’ll be out here any minute.”

And it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t believe in any of it anymore, but Mom and Tess laughed. Dad came in and we ended up having a cookie batter fight. It might’ve not been the real thing, but it was as close as you could get.

Right then, that was good enough.

*               *           *

The next day was the day before Christmas Eve, our last day of school before break. And my last day, I had a feeling, to figure things out with Jed. But first Mary Francesca tried to figure out things with me.

I’d seen her around, Mary Francesca…never just Mary or Fran…Mary Francesca. She was in some of my classes. She seemed nice, funny. She had curly red hair that fell in a mass of curls past her shoulders, bright red freckles, even brighter blue eyes and she was smart.
Definitely smarter than I was. No C’s in Math for her.

She cornered me outside English, smiling. Her teeth were so bright I swore I could see my reflection. “Hey, Nick.”

Nick. Not Nicky. I liked that.

“Hey,” I said back. That was about it for me, conversation wise. I mean, a pretty girl. What do you say?

She didn’t have any problem. “I was wondering…” She leaned a little closer and I could smell strawberries and cream shampoo. “I was wondering if maybe you’d want to go to the Christmas dance with me?” I felt crushing disappointment and utter relief all at the same time. On one hand I wouldn’t have to worry about clothes and flowers and talking and dancing. I’d seen what they did on MTV. No way I could do that and not get a boner right on the floor.

On the other hand I liked Mary Francesca.

Not that it mattered how funny or smart she was or that she smelled like strawberries. There was no way my parents would go for it. It went back to the bad old days when persecution was everywhere. You couldn’t trust strangers, secret police were around every corner, and you never knew who might turn you in. It was a lesson no one in the family had forgotten. We were Orthodox all the way and we didn’t date outsiders. Which was going to make finding a prom date pretty damn hard. There were lots of us in Russia, not too many here. But those were the rules.

I added that to Christmas and bullies in the whole sucking category.

“Sorry.” I shifted my backpack from one side to another, and I really was sorry. “I have detention for two months. My parents won’t let me go anywhere. I’m grounded, damn, forever.”

She frowned in disappointment—real disappointment, which made me again think how rules sucked. “Well, okay, I get that.” Sighing, she unhooked a pin from her sweater and pinned it on mine. “Maybe by Spring Fling then.” She looked around quickly then leaned in to give me the quickest of kisses.