Neal Shusterman - Bruiser

I only remember fighting Ozzy O’Dell once. It was back in second grade. He threw these weird windmill-like punches, which was probably an early sign that the swim team was in his future.

“Outside,” the manager says, “or I call the cops!” Apparently he doesn’t care how much blood is spilled as long as it’s not on his property.

I storm outside, and Ozzy’s right behind me, along with everyone else.

I probably look pretty angry, but actually I’m not. It’s weird. All I feel is a desire to end this and get on with my day—but when I glance over at Brew, he’s clenching his fists and gritting his teeth. He’s got enough anger for both of us. I know that it’s my responsibility to shut Ozzy up, because if I don’t, it’ll never end. He’ll go on tormenting Brew, spreading lies, and making the Bruiser’s life miserable.

I get in Ozzy’s face. “You don’t know anything about anything, so from now on you’re gonna keep your mouth shut about the Bruiser or I swear I’ll rip out your spleen and make you eat it.” The spleen line usually works, because it’s one of the more mysterious organs and so any threat involving it is deeply troubling. In this case, however, Ozzy O’Dell has his own deeply troubling response.

“You’re a nut job, just like him—even Katrina thinks so! She told me!”

As I reel from this below-the-belt blow, more kids begin to gather. Now my voice comes out as a warning growl. “You have until the count of three to get out of my sight.”

He doesn’t even wait for the count; he starts swinging right away—the same odd, roundhouse punches but much more powerful than they were in second grade. I’m caught off guard, and he lands one right on my mouth, then backs away to let it sink in.

Part of me welcomes this chance to put Ozzy in his place—but suddenly I realize something. Brew is holding his mouth. It’s bleeding. It’s swelling. He’s taken the punch Ozzy landed on me! I’m pretty sure I can beat Ozzy in a fight but not without taking substantial damage of my own. But any damage I take will bounce right to Brew… and everyone will see! Everyone will know, and his life will become the living hell he’s feared for so long.

I can’t let that happen.

The only way to prevent outing him as an empath is to end this quickly and decisively. I can’t just take Ozzy down…I have to take him out. And fast.

I fend off Ozzy’s next round of swings, and he backs off for a moment of taunting.

“You think you’re so smart, so cool,” Ozzy says, “like the world owes you something because of it.”

“I don’t want to fight you, Ozzy.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you don’t!” And he comes at me again.

There’s a set of unspoken rules we live by when it comes to fighting. We can’t help it. It comes from living in a civilized world. Even when you’re fighting your hardest, somewhere deep down, you know how far you can go. But today the rules are gone. Today I fight not to win, but to destroy.

I start in on Ozzy with perfectly controlled methodology.

A sharp sock to the eye: He’s slightly dazed.

An upper cut to the chin: His head snaps back. A powerful piston-punch to the gut: He doubles over, his face jutting toward me.

Then the fourth and final punch. Holding nothing back, I put the full force of my will behind my fist and send it on a decimating collision course with his nose.

I feel bone breaking against my knuckles. He stumbles back, and blood immediately begins to gush from his face, spilling onto the ground. He collapses to his knees, screaming and bringing his hands to his face. He’s forgotten the fight; he’s forgotten me; all that’s left for Ozzy in this moment is the blood, the pain, and the pavement.

The crowd around us that was so quick to cheer and jeer now falls silent behind Ozzy’s wet, nasal wails.

Crippendorf looks at me and shakes his head. “Dude, that was so… uncalled for.”

All I can do is stand there and stare at Ozzy as he bleeds on the sidewalk until Brew grabs me and pulls me away.

“Thanks for taking out the team’s star sprinter,” Brontë says when Brewster and I get home. Somehow the news got home even before we did. “Do you realize you’ve just turned Ozzy from a standard school ass into a sympathetic victim? Was that your intent?”

“It was self-defense!” I tell her. “There are witnesses to prove it!”

“Witnesses enough to keep you out of juvie?”

The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. “Yes,” I tell her, then Brew chimes in.

“Ozzy started it—everyone heard Tennyson say he didn’t want to fight, but Ozzy came after him.” He gives her the details—how I had stood up for him. She is both horrified and impressed by the smoothie backwash, which I suspect will go down in local history.

“Someday, Tennyson,” she says, “I’m convinced there’ll be bulletproof glass and armed guards between our conversations.”

“Ozzy has lots of friends,” says Brew. “What if his friends lie and say you started it?”

“Relax,” I tell Brew, impressed by my own calmness.

Even my parents, whose reaction-factor could usually rattle the house off its foundations, are unexpectedly rational. Dad sits me down calmly for the obligatory “What were you thinking?” speech and talks about putting me in an anger management program.

“I wasn’t angry when I hit him,” I tell him—which is true. I probably should have been, but I wasn’t. I was just taking care of a problem.

He and Mom call the O’Dells and offer to pay all of Ozzy’s medical expenses; but the O’Dells—who are disgusted both with me and with their own son— refuse, and want to have absolutely nothing to do with us. The threat of a lawsuit looms like a storm cell.

And yet, in spite of all that, things seem as normal as normal can be. Mom and Dad sit in the family room together—in separate chairs, but still in the same room—sharing communal laughter as they watch a dumb sitcom.

I spend most of the night sitting at my desk trying to do homework while fielding calls from my friends —since everyone who wasn’t there wants to know how it went down.

When I hang up from one of the calls, I see Cody standing right beside me. I jump a little, not expecting him to be there.

“Is it true you killed a kid?” he asks.

“No!” I tell him. “I broke his nose.”

“Oh.” Cody seems both relieved and disappointed. “Well, ninjas know how to break your nose so the bone goes right into your brain and you die.”

“I’m not a ninja,” I remind him. He seems both relieved and disappointed by that, too. Then he thinks about it some more. “Are you gonna get like Uncle Hoyt?” he asks, then he looks at me, waiting for an answer. It makes me shiver, because I know he’s looking for something in my eyes—maybe something he saw in his uncle’s eyes—and I hope to God he hasn’t found it in mine.

“I’ll never hit you or your brother, Cody.”

“That’s not what I mean….” And still he’s looking. A little kid’s gaze can be innocent; but sometimes their eyes are so wide, they catch all kinds of things older eyes don’t. Kind of like those radio telescopes that stare at empty space so hard and so long they find thousands of galaxies in the darkness. Cody’s gaze reaches a little too deep, and I have to look away.

“Just don’t be like him, okay?” he says, then he leaves, and I’m glad for it—because once he’s gone I start to feel pretty good about things. Not just good, but great. In fact, I fall asleep that night feeling a bizarre bliss that flies in the face of everything going on in my life. I know I should probably wonder why, but who questions a good feeling? Better to just enjoy it. The fight with Ozzy seems too small and too far away to matter. So do the old fights between my parents. Ancient history. And all the fallout is little more than stardust settling on my shoulders.