Charles Benoit - You

Two minutes later, the class is back to normal, the students pretending to read silently to themselves and Ms. Casey pretending to care.

The weather holds and there’s a fire drill during fifth period.

Thursday morning. Homeroom. A summary of the things Ashley says during your eight-minute conversation:

· She got the job at the ear-piercing place

· Cici also got a job there

· This is a good thing because Cici is her best friend

· Next week she’ll be spending Thanksgiving at her grandparents’ house

· She wants a new phone

· She saw the funniest video online

· No, she has never seen a porno online and thinks it’s gross

· She texts too much

· She thinks she needs glasses

· She would rather have contacts

· She asks if you know the new kid in school named Zack

· Just because someone wears a sport coat doesn’t make him gay

· He got kicked out of class for swearing at Ms. Casey

· This is what everyone is saying

· She didn’t know that he was in your English class

· She thinks what he really said was funny

· She thinks he sounds cool

· No, she is not kidding

· She has a test in social studies first period

· She really should have studied

With forty-five seconds left in homeroom, she asks you to explain the elastic clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“You didn’t think I’d forget about it, did you?”

It’s Thursday afternoon. You’re in the boys’ locker room. You’re wearing a pair of black gym shorts and socks-your T-shirt is balled up on the floor and you don’t know what they did with your sneakers.

They had come in fast-you didn’t see a thing and you are sure no one else did either. So it’ll be your word against theirs. Guess who’ll win that one?

Three members of the school’s varsity lacrosse team are gathered around the back corner where your gym locker is located, watching as the team’s co-captain leans his thick forearm into your neck, pinning you up against a row of cold, metal doors, the dial of a Master lock digging into the back of your head.

And of course it’s Jake the Jock doing the talking, the “it” being the ass-kicking he promised you last week.

Thanks to the school’s rotating schedule, your last class was gym. The gym teacher held everybody till right before the bell, so no matter how fast you changed you would not have made the bus.

So you didn’t rush.

You were going to stay after school anyway, maybe see Ashley. Bump into her all casual-oh, you’re here, too?-talk about nothing until her mother picked her up. That may not be such a good idea now, since in a few seconds you’ll have a broken nose and a swollen-shut eye. Not a look you think Ashley will find attractive.

The jocks are all wearing jeans and polo shirts, the type of shirts these kinds of jocks always wear, neat and tailored looking, with the short sleeves that cling to their biceps and the colors that show off their late-fall tans.

If you yelled, shouted for help, there’s a good chance the gym teacher might hear you and bust this up, but you wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t call for help. Better to get the piss beat out of you than call for help. It’d only take a few weeks to recover from a beating. Yelling for help would scar you for life.

Besides, you can hardly breathe as it is with his arm crushing your windpipe.

This is where Jake is supposed to say something like, “I’ll teach you to try to steal my wallet,” or, “How’d you like a knuckle sandwich?” or some other stupid movie-line crap, but he doesn’t, and you watch-everything slow motion now-as he rolls his lower lip between his teeth, clenches his fist tighter, draws in a sharp breath, and cocks his arm back an extra inch.

Then a voice.

“And… cut .”

A voice you know.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Zack says, leaning over the top of the row of lockers behind Jake, a cell phone in his hands. “That’s a wrap.”

Everything hangs in place-the slack jaws of Jake’s pals, Jake’s fist a dozen inches from your face, the sweat rolling down your nose-as Zack jumps down the back of the lockers and strolls around to join the group. He’s looking at his cell phone, his thumb texting away, the green plaid of his sport coat a few shades off from the color of the painted concrete walls.

And still nobody moves.

“Excellent. Outstanding. Each of you. Truly well done.” Phone held in his fingertips, Zack claps softly. “Jake’s brutish anger, the stoic defiance in young Chase’s eyes. And you,” he says, aiming his claps at the other jocks, “supporting roles are so difficult, yet you brought them to life. Bravos all around.”

“What the hell you think-”

Zack points to his phone. “Have you seen these? They’re amazing. Not the phone part, the video part. The resolution is unbelievable , even in low light like this.” He glances up at the fluorescent lights then turns his attention back to his phone. “The zoom feature is very cool. You can get in real close. And the audio. That’s probably the most impressive feature.”

Jake jerks his forearm and your head bangs against the locker, and he turns to look at Zack. You can feel something warm running down the back of your neck, but you can breathe again.

“Hey!” Jake shouts. It’s a voice that’s used to being obeyed. “I’m talking to you, freak.”

“Be with you in a second,” Zack says, holding up a finger of his free hand, his thumb dancing across the keypad. “Just sending this off.”

“It’s that queer kid,” one of the jocks says, finally placing the face or the sport coat. The others agree and add in their own descriptors.

“Gentlemen. Such language. Besides, I’m not the one who spent the last twenty minutes lurking around the locker room waiting for some boy to get undressed.”

Jake grunts and steps over the bench. “That’s it. You’re dead.”

Zack is smiling that smirky smile and you think, yup, he’s dead. Jake gets right up on him, bumping Zack with his chest and glaring at him, staring him down to the tile floor. Zack meets his eyes, the smile still on his face. “Jake, Jake, Jake. Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious what I was doing?”

You see the edges of Jake’s mouth twitch, but he keeps leaning in so that Zack has to bend back to keep their eyes locked.

“I filmed the whole thing, Jake. All of it. Starting out in the hallway when I heard you and your compadres talking about how you were going to beat up young Chase here, the sneaking around the locker room, the way you came around the corner, ambushing him as he’s pulling his shirt over his head. The way you slammed him up against the locker was quite impressive. Oh, and gentlemen?” Zack allows himself a quick glance at the other jocks. “You’re all in it, too. Unquestionably, undeniably you.”

Jake inches back on his heels. “So? You show it to anybody and you’re a dead man.” Jake chuckles and his friends chuckle, too. But there’s no mistaking the nervous edge.

“Won’t you ever learn, Jake?” You watch as Zack taps the keys on his phone, holding it out as Jake’s voice, tinny but clear in the phone’s small speaker, repeats the threat. “Now I’ve already emailed the video to myself. Whether I email it to Principal Lyttle and Coach Comeau is completely up to you.”

You’re certain that Jake is not as dumb as he looks, but he proves otherwise. “What do you mean?”

Now Zack leans forward and Jake steps back, playing it off by resting an elbow on the top of an open locker door. “If anything unfortunate should happen to either Mr. Chase or myself-for the rest of the year-I’ll be sure to include you when I send out the video.”