Konrath, J.A. - DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

“Maybe if you left the stall for a minute…?”

For a moment, Toby thought that Larry was actually going to let him go so that he could focus his attention on beating the crap out of Nick. His optimism was quickly extinguished as Larry slammed him against the wall hard enough to make him bite his tongue. He winced and tasted blood.

The sound of a healthy stream of urine hitting the toilet water filled the stall. Nick was cured.

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Larry. “We’ve gotta hurry up.”

“I can’t stop once I’ve started!”

“ Jesus Christ !”

“Just let me finish!”

Larry stood there, visibly fuming, as Nick continued the challenging process of relieving himself. Toby kept praying that a teacher or some other adult visitor would walk in and question the presence of three teenage boys sharing a restroom stall, but as the stream slowed to a trickle and then to a spatter, Toby knew his moment of extreme indignity had almost arrived.

Larry shoved Nick out of the way before he was completely done. Nick punched him in the arm. “I bought these pants with my own money!”

Ignoring his friend, Larry pushed Toby to his knees in front of the toilet bowl and then quickly pushed his face toward the aromatic liquid. Toby squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath as his face dipped into the warm water. He gagged and desperately tried not to inhale as the toilet flushed and the water swirled around his head.

Once the water had completely exited the bowl, Larry let go of his neck. He and Nick walked out of the stall, laughing. Another scrawny twerp successfully humiliated.

Could’ve been worse. Had been worse, several times. Still, Toby’s cheeks burned from shame and he felt like he was going to throw up as he coughed and gagged and gasped for breath.

Toby left the stall, turned on one of the faucets, and tried to rinse the piss out of his hair. He could tattle on those jerks and get them suspended, but suspensions were temporary, and there wasn’t much the school board could do if the bullies decided to lie in wait for him next to his front porch with tire irons and broken bottles.

Okay, he didn’t actually believe that Larry and Nick would kill him, or even hospitalize him. The most violence they’d inflict was a hard punch to the stomach, maybe some light bruises elsewhere. But there was a code of honor at Orange Leaf High: you didn’t rat out your peers. Not even awful, reprehensible, deserve-to-die peers. Nobody liked a rat fink. If Toby went to his parents or a teacher, he’d be scorned by every kid in school.

He was already the Weird Kid in a school that was severely lacking in other weird kids. If he became the Weird Kid Who Was Also A Rat Fink, he might as well kiss any glimpse of hope for making friends—real friends, maybe even a girlfriend—goodbye. He didn’t have many friends in elementary school or junior high, but at least the kids there talked to him, sometimes. But most of his half-friends had gone to West End High, and his out-of-the-way address put him in the Orange Leaf High district, so he was starting over.

Anyway, someday he’d get Larry and Nick back. He was doing chin-ups every day. He could do eleven or twelve of them now. By the end of the year, who knew how big his muscles might be?

“Time for a dunking!” Larry might say, pulling Toby into the stall. Toby would drop to his knees, and Nick would laugh and laugh at how easy it was to overpower him. But, oh, how his laughter would stop when Toby suddenly used his brute strength to rip the toilet right out of the floor!

“Holy cow!” Nick would scream. “How many chin-ups has he done ?”

Toby would smash the toilet into Larry’s face, shattering the porcelain and splashing its abhorrent contents all over him. As Larry dropped to the tile floor, unconscious, Nick would stand there, paralyzed with fear.

“Please don’t kill me,” Nick would whimper.

Toby would shake his head and chuckle. “I’m no killer,” he would say. But then he would give Nick a stern glare, a glare that chilled Nick’s blood. “Dunk yourself.”

“But I’ll be shamed and ridiculed!”

“Don’t make me tell you twice.”

Nick would thrust his own head into the toilet, sobbing like a baby. Toby would watch him flush and flush and flush, inwardly amused but far too mature to point and laugh. Perhaps he’d allow the other students to file through the restroom to witness the defeat and learn from it, or perhaps he’d keep it to himself and merely raise an eyebrow at Larry and Nick when they started to get out of line. Either way, Toby Floren would be the victor.

But that would be later. For now, he had to go back to class with wet hair and embarrassment scorching his cheeks.

A few of the other kids snickered as Toby returned to history class, but Mr. Hastings didn’t say anything about his appearance or tardiness.

During lunch, kids continued to snicker when they looked at him, even though his hair was dry. Clearly, Larry and Nick had shared the uproarious news of their latest conquest. Toby hoped for a sympathetic glance from somebody, anybody, but didn’t receive one. At least a couple of the kids who smiled in his direction had been dunkees themselves.

He sat in his usual spot at the corner table, doodling in his notebook while he ate a roast beef sandwich. There weren’t enough tables in the lunchroom for him to sit by himself, so he sat with his standard group, but an empty seat separated him from the others.

At least his sandwich was good. Mom had made an outstanding dinner last night, and the leftovers were even better in sandwich form.

“What’re you drawing?” asked J.D. Jerick, through a mouthful of potato chips.

“Nothing.”

“Let me see it.”

Toby shook his head. He’d fallen for this before. J.D. had expressed an interest in his art, and Toby had proudly explained exactly how the robot’s jet pack functioned in zero gravity. Then J.D. had let out a donkey-like laugh, grabbed Toby’s notebook, and showed it to everybody at the table. Robots weren’t cool at Orange Leaf High.

“C’mon, I just want to see what you’re drawing.”

“No way.”

“I’m not gonna do anything.”

Toby closed his notebook. There wasn’t much he could do when he was overpowered by physically imposing bullies like Larry and Nick, but J.D. was a different kind of bully, and Toby wasn’t threatened by him at all.

J.D. made a lunge for the notebook, but Toby slid it out of the way. “Just let me see it, Zit Farm. What is it, naked pictures of the teachers?” He raised his voice. “You really shouldn’t be drawing naked pictures of teachers, Toby Floren!”

Toby gave him the finger.

“By the way, you reek. What have you been doing, swimming in the toilet?”

Toby gave him the finger with both hands.

“Loser,” said J.D.

Toby returned his attention to his notebook and his sandwich while the other kids at the table laughed. Why were they on J.D.’s side? Couldn’t they see that he was a complete cretin?

He sketched for a few more minutes, knowing that J.D. was watching him and wasn’t going to let the matter drop.

“What’re you drawing?” J.D. finally repeated.

Toby held up the picture: a hand giving the finger.

J.D. frowned, obviously not thinking that the drawing was very funny. Toby grinned, but stopped grinning when he saw Mr. Hastings staring right at the drawing from across the lunchroom. The teacher made a beeline toward him, and Toby knew that his day was about to get even worse.

Toby wanted to take a shower when he got home, but he wasn’t up to explaining the need for the shower to Mom. He also didn’t want her to think that he had a different, much more private reason for taking a shower at an unusual time. Though he supposed he could just make something up, he’d probably get caught in the lie—he had an active fantasy life, but his skills at deceit were almost non-existent.