They say I have to be taught a lesson.
To them, that means they have to kick the shit out of me.
This is how everything works in the home. The older boys teach lessons. Why they teach them, they don’t know. They just use words like ‘disrespect’ and think that it means something.
I didn’t disrespect these guys, I just didn’t let them take my money. I earned that money working. It’s mine, and I never let people take what’s mine.
But that’s not how they see it.
I don’t deny that I’m afraid. I don’t deny that I’m nervous. These boys are bigger than me, and they want to kick my ass, give me a beating, put me down and tell me to stay down.
They want to build their name, like a brand. They want other people to know not to mess with them, not to cross them, to hand over everything without hesitation.
They’re thieves and bullies, and they think that because they’re cocky and older, they have a right to do this to me.
I have no training, but I’m confident in a fight. It’s not my first, and it won’t be my last. I’ve lost before, many times, but I’ve won many times more. I’ve taken hits, kicks, and slaps. I’ve dished out worse.
Back me into a corner and I know I’ll stop at nothing to make sure I’m the one leaving the corner walking, not crawling.
The social workers tell me that I have a violent streak. I tell them that the only other option is to let people take what’s rightfully mine.
I’ll never do that.
Anyway, if worst comes to worst, I can run, and they’ll never catch up to me. I can go for miles, whereas they’ll be out of breath in minutes.
But that’s only a last resort. They’ll call me names, say I’m a fucking coward for not standing and fighting ‘like a man’.
But it is three against one. Running would be wisdom in the face of danger… not cowardice. If it comes to that.
I won’t run if I don’t have to.
You earn a name if you run.
One of the boys takes off his gloves. He’s the tallest, the strongest, the oldest. His knuckles are scarred and chapped dry by winter, but his hands still shake a little.
He’s scared. I guess we all are.
The difference is I like the fear. It gets me feeling amped, gets the adrenaline kicking through my body. I feel like my engine is revving, that I’m ready to go from zero to one-hundred instantly. My heart hammers so hard in my chest.
I… I like this feeling. Really like it. Distantly, I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.
The older boy is eighteen, has got nearly two years on me and maybe two inches. He’s stocky, wide, strong. He’s cocky, but not necessarily confident.
He’s already out. Once they turn eighteen they’re on their own. That’s how it is, kicked out the door. No resources, nothing but a fucking guidance counselor and a bunch of ready-made emails and bare-as-fuck resumes that, if you’re lucky, land you menial work.
Nothing wrong with menial work. I clean up a tattoo parlor part time. Mopping the floor is not above me if it buys me a ticket to the movies, an hour at the gym, maybe a seat at the game, nosebleeds of course.
But these boys want glitz. They won’t mop floors. They talk about fat stacks. What little help they offered him, the older boy now squaring up against me, he threw it all aside, turned to recruiting kids from the same group home he lived in to work corners for him.
He calls himself a manager. White-collar, motherfucker. His words, not mine.
His name is Danny, and he’s got a reputation. He carries a gun, but he likes to use a knife. He likes to carve people up. It’s a butterfly knife, the kind that you have to twirl open, the kind people learn to do tricks with, and if they’re lucky, not lose a finger as part of their education.
That’s the one thing keeping me from just wailing on him. I don’t know if he’s got his weapons today. If he does, it might be a short fight for me.
“You owe me,” he says. “Pay up, bitch.” He pulls out his gun from the front of his jeans. I tense up, but he puts it on the lid of the dumpster beside us.
“Don’t worry,” he tells me. “I ain’t a fucking coward. I’ll beat you with my fists. Like a man.”
Like a man. What the fuck does he know about being a man?
What the fuck do any of us know?
“I don’t owe you jack shit,” I tell him. “You want my money, you come and take it.”
It’s not much. It’s twenty-five bucks crumpled up in my back pocket. He’s not doing it for the money – he carries around thousands, an inch-thick wad of cash that he keeps in a gold money clip. The bills are dirty, though, crumpled, once clenched in the shaking fists of addicts on their way down before they make it to him.
He likes to take it out, wave it about. Some of the boys grovel at his feet for a handout.
I don’t blame them. We have nothing.
But I’ll never do it. I don’t fucking beg.
So it’s not money he wants from me. He wants me to bend. He wants me to break. He wants to stand over me and thump his chest and shout that he was the one to beat me when nobody else before him ever could.
He’s a bully. I’ve never backed down from bullies, and I’m not going to start now. As far as I’m concerned, the world could use less bullies.
“You better give me that fucking money,” he says. “You want to disrespect me? Like Lucas did?”
He’s talking about another boy from the home. Lucas disappeared after saying he was going to get Danny, going to fight back. Nobody ever found out what happened to him. That was two months ago.
Danny comes closer, and his two friends do as well. They’re surrounding me. It’s crazy, but I feel this thrill. It’s… fun. It’s like energy is being pumped into my body and I’m about to burst.
Down at the street, a limousine sidles past. It takes forever to cross the gap between the two walls of the dirty alley we stand in. Once it’s past, we hear it slow, then whine backward in reverse before stopping at the mouth to the alley.
The limo has tinted windows. We all stare at it for a moment. It’s an odd sight in this part of town, but some rich fuck in a suit isn’t going to bother with us nobodies.
I return my attention back to Danny, and he to me.
There’s a pause of time, the space of a blink, and then he moves. Time remains slow for me. I see his hand reaching behind his back.
I grab his arm, run forward so I’ve got it behind his body, and then wrap it around his back. I yank upward, slap his elbow, hear something pop, and he grabs his shoulder, grunting, and drops to the ground.
I spin with my arm outstretched, anticipating someone getting close to me from behind. My fist hits a nose, blood spurts, the boy cries and runs away.
Just one left. I drop into a natural stance, leading with my left. He tries to punch me, a wild, aimless haymaker, I slap the outside of his forearm with my palm, redirect the punch away from me across his own body.
He’s jailed by his own arm now, and his side is exposed. I thump him twice in the rib cage, hard hits, too. I feel the bone against my knuckles.
The boy coughs, tries to throw another crazy swing at me.
I duck it, kick his knee out, and then when he’s on the ground I pull his head up by his hair and hit him on the nose.
There are two places to hit somebody on the face if you want to stop them. One is the nose, the other the jaw. With the nose, you don’t even need to hit hard to send those nerve endings exploding, to send a man reeling. With the jaw it’s a little tougher, but if you hit hard enough, the brain shuts off. It’s lights-out to protect you from the pain.
I know what it feels like. It sucks. My jaw didn’t break or unhinge that time, but it throbbed for weeks. I came to with my shoes missing.
The boy on the ground grabs at his nose, scrambles to his feet, limps off, doesn’t look back at me once.
I approach Danny, reach into his back pocket and take out his knife. It’s thinner and lighter than I expected, more rectangular than I expected.
I open it up, unfold it carefully, expose a glistening and sharp blade. He obviously cleans it regularly.
“What were you going to do to me with your fists?” I growl, bending down onto one knee, holding the blade in front of his face.
“No!” Danny cries, trying to scramble away.
I put my heel on the small of his back, and press down until he goes still.
“Don’t move anymore,” I warn.
“No, please!”
“What do I owe you?”
“What?”
I bring my foot down hard on his tailbone. His wail of pain echoes down the alley. “I said what the fuck do I owe you?”
“Nothing!” he cries. “You owe me nothing! You owe me noth—”
“Stop it, boy.”
I whip around, see a huge man standing there. Instantly my heart stops. I’ve been caught by an adult. The world drains away.
I’m in deep fucking shit, now.
Behind the man, I glimpse the door to the limousine standing open. He watched the whole thing.
He’s big, stocky, with a bald head and a glowing gold watch. He looks mean as hell, and when he smiles I see gold teeth.
“Give me the knife, boy,” he says.
I fold the knife slowly, give it to him. He takes it, holds it, tosses it to himself in one hand.
“It’s good, nice weight to it. Balanced.”
The man puts a hand on my shoulder, pushes me up against the brick wall of the alley. It’s wet, and my clothes are getting dirty, but I don’t dare say anything or push back.
You learn to tell who the mean fuckers are, the ones who are not afraid to beat up a kid… or worse. This guy is one of ’em. It’s in the eyes, the peeled and snarling lips.
Then he kneels down by Danny, feels around his shoulder. He grabs his wrist, wrenches the arm, pops the shoulder back into place.
Danny’s moan of pain is haunting.
“You better see a doctor,” he says to Danny. “If anybody asks, you slipped on ice. If not, I’m coming for you. Don’t think I don’t know you and your crew work the corner at Madison and Crow. You already got eyes on you boy, some of the bigger crews don’t like where you’ve set up shop, so if I were you, I’d relocate.”
Danny’s eyes fill with fear. He and I both come to the realization quickly that we’re dealing with a mobster, a proper big-time gangster.
“Ice,” Danny says, nodding quickly. “I slipped on ice!” He gets up, runs away, one hand clamped to his shoulder.
Ice… it hasn’t been that cold for weeks.
“You,” the man says, shifting his black eyes toward me. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” I say.
“Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
I shrug. “I taught myself.”
“You knew that kid was going to try and hit you from behind. How?”
I shrug again. “I don’t know. Instinct.”
“Huh,” the man sounds. He grabs me by the back of my neck, yanks me toward him. “Take off your jacket.”
My eyes widen, and I tense up. “Uh-uh, you sick fucker,” I say. I turn to run, but he catches the collar of my jacket, jerks me toward him.
“Relax. It’s not like that.”
He rips my jacket from me, then starts feeling around my shoulders, hard presses of his thumb and forefinger.
“Good,” he says. “You wearing your pants low?”
“No,” I say. “On my hips.”
He seems to be measuring me up.
“Show me your hands.”
I put them out, and he takes them into his, turns them over. I notice his fingers are thick, rough, and his palms are calloused.
“You got good hands.”
“For what?”
“For fighting.”
He takes my arms, slaps them out. “Hold them straight out. Yes, like that.” He steps backward for a moment, considers me.
“Good stock,” he murmurs to himself. I don’t know what that means, or why he would be talking about soup.
He throws my jacket back at me, and as I put it on, he guides me into walking with him. “Come on, we’re going.”
“Where?”
“To start your fighting training.”
“Why should I come with you?”
“You want to be a pathetic drug dealer like Danny over there?” he asks me. “Or do you want to do something with your life? Be somebody?”
“I was never going to become a drug dealer,” I say, turning to the man. I shake his hand off my neck, stare up into his eyes.
The man regards me. “You like to fight?”
I think about it. “I’m good at it.”
“You want to make money fighting?”
I lick my lips. “I want to make money, period.”
“Then get in the fucking car, boy,” he says. “I’ll make you a fucking champion.”
I don’t hesitate.
I get into the limousine.
“Name’s Johnny Marino,” he says once he’s in, sticking out a hand. “But you can call me Glass.”