Quote:Alex tried this week, he really tried to follow Mike’s advice about those asshole bullies at school, everything from talking to his parents about them after one particularly bad day to asking his guidance counselor about changing gym classes to joking about the whole miserable situation with Carrie. He and the girl were together after drama class, today they’d been doing relaxation exercises and improv techniques, Alex was waiting for Carrie to pack her bookbag, he said to her, "Well, oh boy, now I get to go to gym class and have Clay Olsen torment me.”
“Still?”
“Are you kidding? There’s also Doug Setzer and Ron Maddox. It’s the moron gang.”
“Don’t let them treat you that way.”
“Hey, have you ever looked these guys in the eye? They’re crazy, I’m not kidding, they’re genuine psychopaths.”
“Switch to another gym class or I’ll be very upset with you.”
“I’m working on it,” Alex said, but this day was already doomed, the three psychos took turns harassing and taunting him during calisthenics, during rope-climbing, during the touch football game outside, lots of faggot name-calling and bumping and pushing, the usual. Alex tolerated and ignored all of it even when the abuse continued in the locker room, even when Doug Setzer shoved him from behind in the shower and sent him sprawling onto his ass, you’d assume that being pushed from behind would cause a fall forward but you’d be wrong, in a slippery communal shower it propels you forward with a violent disruption of equilibrium, it’s like sliding and slipping on ice, but then quickly you lose your footing and end up the way Alex did, sitting on the hard tile floor, your tailbone bruised, the other boys having a good laugh at your humiliating pratfall.
Even then Alex endured the punishment and did nothing. But something else happened a few minutes later, Alex was returning to his locker and toweling his hair when Clay Olsen stepped in front of him, strangely cross-eyed kid with a permanent sneer, Alex looked up just in time to see the boy spit point-blank into his face. Something happened this time, he’d been spit on before but something snapped this time when Clay Olsen hocked right into his face and then stood there with that grin of lunatic smugness, Alex turned wildcat and lunged at him and sent him reeling backward with furious jabs to his chest, the look on Clay Olsen’s face was something that Alex will never forget, shock and bewilderment and maybe even a momentary fear, suddenly to be attacked by your own victim this way, the predator assaulted by its own prey. But Olsen is a senior and much larger than Alex, much heavier and stronger, it didn’t take him long to recover and begin his own counterattack and bring Alex’s berserk charge under control, they ended up tangled in each other’s headlocks, a defensive stalemate, both of them suddenly and acutely aware of their own nakedness and vulnerability. A group had formed by now to watch, Doug Setzer and Ron Maddox among them, they were laughing at their friend’s predicament and enjoying the show, this only managed to fuel Clay Olsen’s embarrassment and his fury for revenge. He wrenched himself free from Alex’s headlock and pointed his finger, aiming it like a gun. “You’re dead, Salazar, you are so fucking dead,” he announced for everyone to hear, nodding in terrible emphasis, his finger still pointing its judgment. “We’ll finish this later.