NORTH KANSAS NIGHTMARE      AJ

 

 

 

            The first day we got to Stanton’s Fork, the sun was coming down hot out of a bright blue sky. I couldn’t believe how small the town was as my dad brought the Ryder truck over the Highland Pass and we saw our new hometown for the first time. You could see the entire downtown with one pass of the eye, from the waffle house all the way down Main Street to the Snake River Bridge. There was more to the town than that, nestled up in rolling foothills past the bridge. That’s where the really expensive houses were.

            Mom and Mindy -- Amanda hates it when I call her that -- followed us in the Taurus. We stopped at the waffle house for lunch before we got to our new place. Pulling up in front of the house, I was actually sort of impressed. The last three places Dad had bought had been “fixer-uppers”  -- I got in a little trouble when I referred to them as “throw ‘er away-ers” -- but this place was actually... decent.

            Mindy shot me a look and a little smile after she’d climbed out and had an eye-full of the two-story mint-green exterior -- I guess great minds do indeed think alike. Dad swung the door of the Ryder truck hut and just stood there looking at the place for a minute. I looked at Mindy and tilted my head toward the place. Check out the yard? She shrugged. Why not? We took off.

            “Hey, stay close, you two!” Mom called after us. Well, hey... the yard’s pretty close, right? Right!

            “Wow...” Mindy noted as we rounded the side of the house and caught our first glimpse of the back yard.

            “Yeah.” The grass back here reminded me of pictures I’d seen of the African veldt. The emerald blades waved in the light early fall breeze, up to my sister’s chest. There were what looked like chopped up sections of telephone pole hiding in the ocean of green, and something scurried away from us that didn’t even leave a wake. Mindy squeaked. “Guess who’s gonna be taking care of this?” I noted grimly. Not a fixer-upper... yeah, right. Oh, well.

            “Hi!”

            I was stuck under a slowly forming black cloud thinking of all the work I’d be doing -- again -- so Mindy was the first to turn and light up her smile. “Hi!”

            Uh oh -- that was the ‘I just saw a cute boy’ voice. I turned to look. Sure enough, a kid about our age, maybe 17 at the oldest, stood with his arms folded in front of him and resting on the fence between our yards. Ugh... theirs was immaculate.

            No wonder he’d got Mindy’s attention. His hair was short, kind of wild and the color of straw and he had cornflower blue eyes -- actually, he looked a lot like me. I got a sudden weird vibe thinking about that, so I pushed past it, “Hey.” Then I noticed the shiner he was sporting, a real beauty that looked pretty fresh.

            “Y’all just movin’ in, huh?” Okay, this kid was a master of the obvious.

            “Yeah.” I looked around at our new private jungle, then back at him after a few seconds. I was right, the shiner was a fresh one -- it had darkened a little just since I’d looked away. “How’d you get the black eye?” I studied his reaction. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

            “Why would I mind you askin’?” he grinned. Then his bravado fell a little and he sighed. “It was... uh... it was Sheri.”

            “Wait.” Mindy put her hands on her little hips and cocked her head at him with a disbelieving look. “You let a girl hit you?”

            He shrugged, looking apologetic. “Well, I wasn’t gonna hit a girl...”

            Mindy and I stared at him for a moment. Then she spoke up, “That’s so romantic!” Now he and I stared at her.

            “I don’t know her.” I backed away from my sister, feigning surprise. “Who are you!”

            She giggled and rushed me, jumping up to try to give me a noogie, the show she was probably intending to put on for the neighbor boy forgotten for a moment. I caught her and set her down.

            “Uh, seriously...” the kid looked over at us, and indeed his expression was very serious. “Y’all want to watch out for Sheri. She’s bad news, and she’s harder on new kids than anybody else. Anyway,” he extended his hand over the fence toward me. “My name’s Nicky.” I grinned and walked over to him. Hey, less than an hour in the neighborhood and making friends already, not bad... although I had started to get the faintest feeling that it wouldn’t be hard to do around here on account of whoever this wild girl was. There was almost a mixed feeling of mentorship and desperation to gain power through numbers coming off Nicky. If I’d known then what I know now, that would’ve been no surprise at all.

 

            First day at school came early. Not just because we’d gotten used to the lazy days of summer, sleeping late, wandering into the shower to wake up, but because after we’d left Nicky to wander back inside our respected houses, we’d busted our little butts right along side Mom and Dad to get the Ryder unloaded -- with promises of more trucks to come.

            But we’d gotten our beds and dressers into our rooms and plates, cups, silverware and more into the kitchen. We didn’t hit the pillows until nearly midnight, and when six in the morning came around cold and crisp, we just weren’t ready. Hard thing about being a kid is, not being ready doesn’t mean you’re not up and doing it anyway.

            I caught up with Mindy after Home-room on the way to her Science class and my Social Studies class. We met up in the hallway. “How you holdin’ up, kid?” I asked, my own eyes finally bright.

            She gave me a dirty look, “Don’t call me ‘kid’.”

            “You got it, kid.” I laughed as she swatted the back of my head.

            “I’m okay. My home-room teacher is a withered old woman who looks like she’ll get me and my little dog, too.” she screwed up her face at the mental image. “But she’s nice.”

            I laughed at the image she evoked. “God, Mindy --” she growled at me, and I corrected myself, “-- Amanda -- you always come up with the best descriptions. Hey!” I jerked my head toward the lockers, “There’s your new boyfriend.”

            “Huh?” she blinked, then looked. Her cheeks flushed bright red. Nicky waved us over.

            “Hey, y’all.” he grinned. His shiner was fully set in, and I couldn’t help wincing. Jeez, that Sheri chick must’ve hit him with a damn baseball bat, so went my thinking.

            “Hey, Nicky.” I caught a whiff of something dark and potent from his locker, and he waved us in closer. “Jeez, man, what have you got in there, coffee?” His grin widened, and then I felt one form on my lips, too.

            “Keep your voice down!” he scolded me. “Damn! Okay, c’mere. You want a slug of this stuff? Hazelnut with a little sugar.”

            I looked at Mindy, raised an eyebrow. We weren’t supposed to have coffee, Mom and Dad went off on us once to the four corners and back when they’d come home early from their Parents Out night once and spotted a cup of coffee I left sitting on the coffee table. “You gonna squeal?” I asked her.

            “Yeah, right!” she insisted in a hushed voice, “Give me some!” Well, I don’t know if it was ‘cause she really needed the pick-me-up or if it was because she really was crushin’ on our fair-haired boy Nicky, but whatever worked. The chatter of kids around us formed a sort of comforting cocoon as we all huddled in close and Nicky passed the thermos first to Mindy, who took a healthy but discreet pull, then licked her lips as she offered it to him and he waved it to me.

            I was about halfway through my own pull on the hot, absolutely delicious wake-up juice when I heard Nicky say, “Uh-oh...” I lowered the thermos, popped the spout closed and turned to follow where his worried eyes were looking.

            “Huh.” I took in the sight of the girl coming toward us. She was about 5’3” to my 5’9”, and damn, she was pretty. A light tan to her skin, bright blue eyes, full pink lips, long blonde hair that fell around her shoulders. Kind of what you’d imagine the midwest farmer’s daughter would look like if the average midwest farmer’s daughter were a lot prettier.

            She wore a sweet little smile as she passed us, but Nicky shrank back against his locker, tucking the thermos hurriedly out of sight.  Mindy looked at Nicky curiously, but at the time I didn’t notice either of those things. I was staring at her butt, and if you’d seen it you wouldn’t blame me. At 16 years old, I’d never before seen a pair of faded blue jeans (tight ones, too) filled out that nicely. I finally pried my eyes away and noticed Nicky’s expression of dismay.

            “That was Sheri.” he explained.

 

            Although I wasn’t around to see this myself, I was told all about it later: Mindy walked into her Science class a few minutes earlier than the teacher, Mrs. McElroy. She walked to the back of the classroom -- she’d never been into Science -- and sat down.

            “You’re in my seat.” she heard someone tell her. She looked up to see Sheri standing over her, arms folded and glaring down imperiously. She stood there, tapping her foot.

            Mindy looked around at the empty seats to either side of her, then back up at the slightly taller girl. “What do you mean, ‘your’ seat? There are plenty of seats back here.

            “And that one is mine.” Sheri shot back.

            Mindy sighed, pushing her long auburn hair back from her green eyes to look up at Sheri. “Tough shit.” I had never heard Mindy swear before, and when she did relating this to me later, I couldn’t decide whether to pass out from shock or fall down laughing. My sweet little sister using the S-word... unthinkable!

            Sheri looked down at her slack-jawed, her mouth forming a comical, shocked O for a moment. “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

            “You’re the President,” Mindy replied sarcastically. “Right?”

            Sheri blinked. “No.”

            “The Pope?”

            Sheri shook her head, getting the drift.

            Mindy looked up at her sweetly. “Are you a fairy princess? Hmm?”

            Sheri crossed her arms over her chest. “No.”

            Mindy looked up at her with a sudden seriousness. “Then you don’t own a god damn thing in this room but what you walked in with, so why don’t you beat it.”

            Sheri stood there for a moment, apparently floored. Then: “Beat it, huh?” she hooked her fingers under Mindy’s desk, then abruptly heaved, sending the desk up and over, Mindy barely slipping free in time to avoid landing on her back, her textbook and pen sent flying. As it was, she stumbled in her escape from the chair, giving Sheri a window of a half second, and she took full advantage of it, drawing her elbow back and then slamming her fist underhand into Mindy’s stomach hard enough to knock the air out of her and double her over.

            As Mindy gagged and clutched at her stomach, Sheri stood over her, content for the moment, staring down her pretty little ski-jump nose at my sister. “Yeah, I think ‘beat it’ sounds pretty good, sweetie.” She stepped forward to make good on the threat, but turned at the bell for class sounded and the volume of chatting students rose in the hall. She took a step forward, yanking Mindi to her feet, and whispered in her ear, “Say a word and I swear I’ll mess you up -- bad!”

            Then she righted Mindi’s desk, turned and plopped into the seat in front of my sister’s.

 

            Mindy was quiet when we sat down at the table in the cafeteria, just picking at the godawful tater tots all junior high schools served, apparently even junior high schools in little one horse towns like Stanton’s Fork. I let her sit there for a few seconds. I could tell she was upset, but still too upset to talk. I saw Nicky notice us over his shoulder as he went down the line to get his semi-prefabricated slop. I waved him over. Well, damn, I was 16, I wasn’t quite savvy enough at that age to know that right now fit the criteria of a Bad Time.

            So when he sat beside me and gave Mindy a smile, it caught us both by surprise when she lowered her face into her hands and started to cry. “Hey, whoa!” I reached for her hand, but she shook out of my grip. “What happened? Amanda, what’s wrong?”

            She fumbled blindly in her purse for a second, dragged out a Kleenex and wiped at her eyes. “It was Sheri.” she admitted. You know how sometimes in a book you read about somebody getting mad and they say ‘so and so’s face darkened’? Well, I can tell you that’s not really a figure of speech like you’d think - I’ve actually seen it happen, and it happened to Nicky when she said that. I guess it happened to me, too.

            “I’m going to the Principal.” I said.

            Nicky shook his head in resignation. “Don’t bother.”

            “Why the hell not?” I kept my voice low - it was either that or start yelling, and it wouldn’t do my cause any good to get myself in trouble. Still, a couple of kids at the table next to ours looked over, then saw the looks on our faces and looked away again quick.

            “Come on, sit down.” he nodded toward the hard plastic bench. I sighed and sat, then he leaned forward, his fingers steepled in front of him. He drew us in close. “People have tried doing that. Problem is, this is Stanton's Fork.”

            “What’s that got to do with it?” Mindy demanded, confused.

            “Y’all don’t know how things work in a town like this. Average people here got a house and a truck, maybe a decent income but for most, a little shy of what would be decent anywhere else. The Cannells live up in the foothills. Three story house, and I mean a big one. Three cars. Stable full of horses, I think Arabians. Her daddy owns about half this podunk town and her Mama’s got claws in the city council.” The look on his face was open and earnest. “If there’s one kid in this whole school nobody will touch, including the teachers, it’s her. You’d get Principal Villanueva to suspend himself before he’d lift a finger to do anything about Sheri Cannell.”

            I nodded. “Then I guess I gotta take care of it myself.”

            “Billy, don’t!” Mindy’s voice had a kind of pleading quality to it that only made me angrier. I’d never heard my baby sister sound like that except for one terrifying incident when we were little and a stray dog crossed our path while we were playing in the park down the street from our house, blocking our path and growling, refusing to let us pass.

            That made my mind up. “Don’t worry,” I rested my hand on Mindy’s. But in my mind, I was already planning.

 

            I thought I’d catch her waiting for the bus; I was wrong. I caught sight of her in the cul-de-sac behind the vast white concrete domes of the school, but as a gaggle of girls climbed aboard, she stayed behind, waving and yelling back and forth with them as the Number-2-pencil orange monstrosity chuffed away and around the curve; then she headed off herself on foot.

            I had “lost” Mindy in the final bell crowd. I felt kind of bad about that. She needed sympathy, and probably a good story to tell Mom and Dad about things. But I could also tell that she and our new friend Nicky were forming a little mutual crush, and that was okay with me. I was a pretty quick judge of character, and Nicky seemed like a decent kid to me. Of course, I’d beat his ass if I found out he got too frisky, but even that’d probably be a friendly kind of thing. Anyway, I was satisfied she’d make it home okay.

            So I had no qualms about taking my time and the long way home; this bitch needed a talking to, and by God, she was going to get one just as soon as we got clear of anywhere where trouble could come down because of it.

            After a little while, we were walking a lonely stretch of two lane road. The sun shone down hot again out of another dazzlingly blue sky. I could smell the bitter tang of brackish water somewhere in the distance. Somewhere off in that distance, a bird called. My senses drawn to my hearing, I picked up on how loud our footsteps were now that the landscape was empty of the murmur of traffic that had masked them near the school. There was no way right now that she couldn’t hear someone following her, but -- ah, no, there were earbuds in her ears and her steps had a barely noticeable dancing quality to them. Probably listening to an iPod or something.

            She swung her denim clad legs over a ridiculously short fence and started into the field. Confident again that we’d make it off the road far enough to not be noticed by any passing drivers, I followed. When I judged we’d gotten far enough off the angle of any motorist’s straight-ahead gaze, I lengthened and quickened my stride to close the distance. She remained oblivious.

            Despite my slightly longer legs, she was somehow managing to stay just out of reach, bopping across the uneven field apparently in time with the music I could just barely hear tinny traces of through the earbuds. We were slowly approaching the opposite end of the field and a larger road -- not good. Not only would the odds that I’d be interfered with increasing, my sense of direction has never been anywhere near infallible and this was unfamiliar territory -- I had no intention of getting myself lost in an unfamiliar town where I knew, so far, exactly one person other than my immediate family. It was time to get this done and over with and get back to the school and familiar surroundings.

            “Hey!” I tried. No dice. I raised my voice and tried again, “Hey!” Still nothing, and this time I knew for a fact the bitch had to have heard me, because when I project, I really project, and I know I was more than loud enough to have overpowered her music. Which meant that she was fully aware I was following her -- and maybe she had been for a good long while. And that thought just pissed me off all over again. I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder --

            -- and that was a mistake. I guess that had been just what she’d been waiting for. She spun like a scalded cat and I never saw the low gut punch coming, just felt it slam into my stomach hard enough to double me over coughing. I swear to God, it felt like what people say getting kicked by a mule feels like.

            I forced myself upright and put up my hands -- this wasn’t the way I had wanted this to go -- she had suckered me into putting a hand on her to force her to turn and face me, and I’d been stupid enough to fall for it, but the most I had intended was to chew her out. Okay, maybe intimidate her just a little, but that obviously wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do at this point -- even at 16, I knew it wouldn’t matter who started the fight, as the guy I’d be the one who’d catch all the shit for it, even for just defending myself.

            She saw the look of indecision and hesitation on my face, then laughed and lifted one leg. Before I could react, she pivoted her hips and shot her leg out straight, catching me squarely in the diaphragm. Now even at 16, I was a pretty stout kid; it wasn’t enough to knock me down, but it knocked the wind clean out of me and staggered me on my feet. Before I could catch my breath, or even start to, she gave a little grunt and caught me again, this time in the ribs. I thought I heard something crack but I wasn’t sure -- it sure as hell felt like something had, though -- it felt more like getting kicked by a soccer player in cleats than by a junior high school girl in Reeboks it hurt so damn bad!

            I was pretty close to down but not all the way, which was apparently where she wanted me. While I gasped in a fight to get some air back in my lungs, she stepped forward and gave me a good one-handed shove. My ass hit the uneven grass with a thud. I couldn’t believe it. I stared up at her with as much hate as there’d ever been in my eyes while looking at a girl. She just laughed contemptuously.

            “You pathetic little worm!” she giggled, tossing her hair back out of her eyes. “I could break you in half! Maybe I should!” Then what I’d been afraid of while following her actually saved me -- a car passed behind her, slowing then stopping as the driver caught sight of us. The window slid down and a matronly woman’s doughy face faded into view.

            “Hey! You kids!” she screeched. “Can’t you read?!” a pudgy hand shot from the window and shook in the direction of a sign we could not, in fact, read from where we were. “No trespassing in Thorsen’s Field! No trespassing!” The car idled there as the woman watched us impatiently.

            Sheri turned and called back at her, “We’re sorry, Missus Thorsen! Johnny’s new in town, I was showing him a shortcut home from school!” She looked back at me icily, daring me to say anything contradicting her story.

            “You stay out of the field from now on!” she started to pull away again -- but slowly, still watching.

            Sheri gave an exasperated growl, then turned back to find me back on my feet. “See you at school tomorrow, worm...” she said darkly, then started off toward the fence. I followed for a moment until Mrs. Thorsen’s old Chevy Nova faded into the distance, then turned and headed back to the school, then home.

 

            I didn’t tell my parents or Mindy about what happened in the field, just made up a story about wanting to walk home to learn my way through the town. It wasn’t a long walk anyway, only about fifteen minutes by mare’s shank from the school to our front door. I checked my ribs on the way, running my fingers over them under my shirt, then pressing gingerly. None broken that I could tell, but when I lifted my shirt a little further and eyed the tender spot, I could see a nice yellow and purple bruise forming. Now I had a pretty good suspicion about where Nicky’s black eye had come from and why he’d been quick to warn us about Sheri.

            Mindy didn’t say anything to Mom and Dad about Sheri, either. We both kept quiet about it; we figured the last thing they needed to deal with on top of the stress of new jobs in a new town was to hear about a school bully, at least not now. On weekdays after school and on the weekend, we hung out with Nicky and his sister Megan, who was in high school, a pretty giantess of a cheerleader, blonde and blue eyed like her brother and I’m pretty sure at least a few inches taller than Dad, who at 6’4” was about the tallest person we’d ever seen until we spotted her wrestling Nicky in their backyard.

            Things at school were tense for a few days after the run-in in Thorsen’s Field, but I didn’t see Sheri in the halls and Mindy told me the girl had been unusually quiet in the Science class they shared. No figuring it, maybe somebody else she’d victimized had gotten something done. No way to know, as school policy would no doubt keep it quiet and there’s no way any bully’s going to advertise his -- or in this case, her -- own comeuppance.

            Still, anybody knows when an aggressor goes down in a fight, that’s not the time to let up but instead really hammer the lesson home. I decided now was the right time to pay a visit to Mr. Villanueva. Ten minutes later and cutting into my Biology class, he waved me into his office with the “professionally friendly” look common to any bureaucrat. I already felt a twinge of regret at having bothered, but it was a little late to just say, “Aw, forget it.”

            “What can we do for you, young man?” he asked, humphing into the high backed leather executive chair behind his desk. I sighed inwardly.

            “Mr. Villanueva, I need to let you know about a problem I’m having with another student...” I told him about the confrontation between Mindy and Sheri, then -- very reluctantly -- about the confrontation in Thorsen’s Field later, my heart sinking a little lower in my chest with each nod, “Mmhm” and “I hear ya.”

            Finally, he looked up, folding his hands together, and announced, “See, Andy --“

            “Billy.” I corrected.

            He continued on as if he hadn’t heard a thing. “--here’s the problem... From what you’re telling me, you didn’t actually see this girl hit your sister. And the second thing, well... I think we know better than to follow 11 year old girls home from school, don’t we.”

            “Are you kidding?!” I blurted, stunned. “She attacked my sister!”

            “Now... now...” he shook his head stubbornly. “As I said, we didn’t actually see this happen --”

            “Are you calling my sister a liar?” My composure was most definitely slipping, and it took just about everything I had to reign myself in. I pushed the plastic chair under me back and stood up. “You know what? Forget it. Just forget it.” I headed for the door and was almost there when something occurred to me. I turned back and fixed my new Principal with a suspicious glare. “You know what’s funny?”

            He sighed patiently. “What’s funny, young man?”

            “That you knew her age right off the top of your head like that. You knew exactly who I was talking about without having to look it up. How many other kids have been in here and heard this routine?” He just sat staring at me. I shook my head. “Never mind,” I let myself out.

            The thought that kept running through my mind on the way home, even more than my outrage at a school official so openly refusing to do his job in the face of political pressure from a student’s parents, was... 11 years old? This little terror of a girl was only 11? I’d never in my life seen such a... well, I had to admit it, she was a gorgeous girl.

            A face like an angel with the mind of a cold, almost inhuman sadist and the vicious, brutal power of a lioness, and only 11... My parents told me that at their age, kids didn’t start developing into adults physically until their mid-teens. Dad’s favorite suspect was fast food, with mom agreeing, something about all the growth hormone fed to the livestock that goes into meat nowdays, and how when kids eat that stuff from an early age it accelerates and enhances their growth. We told them about Nicky’s sister Megan and they just nodded their heads in that infuriating way adults do, as if to say, “Mmmhmm, and you doubted us?”

 

            We sat around the table in Nicky’s kitchen, the three of us. His sister was still out somewhere, and their parents were in the living room watching some stupid reality tv show, so we kept our voices down.

            “Y’know, I hate to say I told y’all so --” Nicky plucked an Oreo from a heaping bowl that sat between us as Mindy waited for her chance at them.

            “Then don’t.” I replied without thinking. I looked up immediately and caught a mildly wounded expression on my friend’s face. “I’m sorry, man, you didn’t have that coming.” I took an Oreo for myself and bit into it, looking away.

            “Yeah,” he looked back mildly, “Actually, I did. I don’t blame you for not believin’ me, though, I didn’t believe it either ‘til I ran into it like a brick wall.”

            “So what do we do now?” Mindy asked. “Tell mom and dad?”

            “Psht.” I snorted dismissively. “What are they going to do, Amanda? Talk to her parents? If Villanueva’s a sign of the way things are, those people have damn near everybody who matters in their pockets, and I got the impression she does this -- and gets away with it -- all the time.”

            I looked at Nicky as an idea struck me. “Nicky, what about Megan?” I allowed myself a moment of hope. “I mean, no offense, man, but she puts the ‘big’ in ‘big sister’...”

            That moment of hope faded like summer rain, though, when he shook his head. “Six foot seven and two sixty. Lemme put it this way: for her to get mad about some girl bruisin’ me up, she’d have to pick her own out of the collection. You get what I mean?”

            Mindy and I both stared at him slack-jawed with shock and pity. “Holy...” I stopped myself.

            Mindy didn’t. “Holy shit, Nicky!”

            He shook his head hurriedly, “Oh, no, it ain’t like that, there’s a difference. Megan don’t mean to do it -- in fact, she tries real hard not to. We just been wrasslin’ around since I was little and she gets carried away. I tell you what, compared to Sheri, my sis ain’t nothin’. Mostly we don’t even play fight much anymore, it’s usually our ol’ man that gets it, and man does he get it, from her and mama both.”

            I let my mind rove over that thought for a minute and had  to adjust how I sat in the chair to keep things from getting too tight, then cleared my throat. “So okay, what do we do?” We all sat in a long silence, none of us having the slightest idea. Eventually, Mindy and I said our goodbyes to the Hollerans for the evening and drifted home to dinner.

 

            We were both fairly certain we’d gotten past the worst of it that Friday afternoon and were chatting about our respective homework assignments. We’d pretty much abandoned taking the bus home since we lived close enough to walk anyway and were both pretty physically active even if we weren’t in any sports. We’d been pretty nervous about it the first couple times, but we hadn’t messed with by Sheri or anybody else, so we figured it was pretty safe. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

            “Hey!” we hadn’t noticed her sidling up to us. She was wearing a variation on the outfit she’d had on the last time I’d seen her, her blonde hair in a ponytail. I gave Mindy a warning look that said to follow my lead, and turned my eyes back toward home. Cars were passing us on this street, and that was good. I intended to keep it that way. I had a feeling -- or at least a fleeting hope -- that Sheri wouldn’t dare try anything where it would be seen by the public. Maybe being seen openly behaving like a bully by the public at large wouldn’t be good for her no matter who her parents were or who they could buy off. She tried again, of course, “Hey!” Sorry, bitch, not playing your game. We kept walking. I could barely pick up a growl from behind us, but ignored that, too.

            “I need twenty five bucks!” she called after us. “Hey!”

            “Get a job!” Mindy broke our silence and I sighed. Oh, God dammit... I increased my stride, putting my hand in the small of Mindy’s back to nudge her up to my speed. Thankfully, she actually followed that prompting at least.

            “What did you say to me?” Sheri barked. Ohhh, now that was it -- I could feel my own temper rising again.

            “Did she stutter?” I asked over my shoulder.

            “Yeah!

            “Then you fuckin’ heard her twice, didn’tcha!” I didn’t bother to look to see if she was giving up, I could still hear her footsteps keeping pace behind us. Another car passed; Garrity Road was thick with traffic. My curiosity got the better of me, so I asked, “What the hell do you need money for, anyway? I thought your mommy and daddy were Rockefellers or something.”

            She laughed bitterly. “Yeah, for all the good that does. They’ll spend seventy thousand dollars on a sports car for themselves but they won’t pop for a CD for me!”

            “You know, most kids figure out that the world isn’t all about them by your age.” I noted dryly. “Anyway, our parents aren’t cheap, but they bust their asses for every dime and so do we. We’re not giving it to charity -- we pretty much are charity. So why don’t you just get lost.”

            Unbelievably, I heard her footsteps stop. After a second, we heard something more unbelievable still. “I’m sorry!” she called after us. Mindy stopped, and I kind of had no choice but to stop, too. We looked back at her standing there, and one surprise today on top of another, she was standing there with her face in her hands crying. Mindy and I shared a look of amazement, both of us blinking like spotlighted owls, then looked back in a classic double-take, not sure we were actually seeing this.

            “Okay, what’s the deal?” I asked, motioning for Mindy to stay where she was and taking a couple of tentative steps forward. “One minute you’re Attila the Bitch, and now you’re... well... a human being? How does that work?”

            She shook her head, her face still in her hands as she sobbed, then choked out. “Nobody likes me!”

            I actually felt bad about it when I gave an amused kind of snort. “Yeah, going around beating the shit out of people kind of has that effect on them, you know?” I started to get the lose my initial feeling that this might be some kind of a ploy when I got right up in front of her and she didn’t do anything aggressive. “Why do you do that, anyway? You could have lots of friends if you wanted, people that would hang out with you and share... I mean, I don’t really know you, but you’re pretty enough. Not that I mean it like that, you’re just a kid, but... you know...”

            “Yeah, I know what you mean.” her voice was softer. “I just... my parents used to move around, like, a lot. So I would make lots of friends and then wham, off we go again and I have to...” she started to cry again, “...have to leave everybody behind... over and over...”

            Well, now here I stood feeling bad. I tried to offer her a hug but she backed away. I turned to look for Mindy but of course she hadn’t stayed put, she’d come up next to me and was looking at Sheri with a kind of crestfallen sympathy that I guess probably showed on my face, too. More traffic passed us, but I wasn’t really so worried about that anymore. “Hey,” I offered, flickering a glance at Mindy while I spoke to see how she’d take this suggestion, “Why don’t you come hang out with us for awhile? We probably don’t have the kind of cool stuff at home that you do, but we have an Xbox and a pretty cool back yard we set up a little target in for archery.”

            “Archery?” she looked up with a slightly confused expression.

            “Yeah, it’s pretty cool!” Mindy nodded, going with the suggestion. “Billy’s really good. You should come see.” Mindy turned and showed me a smile. I smiled back; maybe things here wouldn’t be so bad after all.

            “Well... huh.” Sheri wiped at her eyes. “Are you sure your parents won’t mind?” We started walking again, this time with Mindy ahead of me and Sheri beside me.

            “Nah, my dad has to work two jobs and my Mom works all the way over in Wichita. They usually aren’t home until at least 7.” Something at the back of my mind pinged a warning, but not until after I’d said it. I soothed the alarm; it was okay, this was going to work out fine. I was only 16, what did I know.

            After a few more minutes of amiable chatting -- how dumb our teachers were, a live concert in the park tomorrow, how to get music for free provided your parents didn’t catch you, how to keep your parents from catching you downloading music -- we rounded the corner onto North Kansas Avenue, our house standing as tall and green as ever as it came gradually into view through the branches of the junipers. The world had turned a pale, dull gray. I looked up to see that the sky had overcast since we’d begun our walk. Something in that unsettled me, like a metaphor I wasn’t quite grasping, or maybe didn’t want to because it was now far too late to do anything about it.

            Again I shrugged it off.  I ventured a glance to the side of the house to see if I could spot Nicky in his backyard. Neither hide nor hair of our fair-haired boy in sight. Well, that figured, it looked like it might rain any minute. I took the short stack of front porch steps two at a time following Mindy, who held it open for me. Last chance for doubt, but I in turn held it open for Sheri. Mindy stepped aside as I took the house key from the pocket of my jacket, unlocking the door, and we stepped inside.

            Mindy shut the door behind her. And then I heard something that brought that alarm bell out of the shadows of my mind and back to the forefront screaming good and loud. Sheri laughing and locking the door behind her.

            I turned just in time to catch a smashing uppercut to the stomach, and before I could even double over, the breath blasted out of me and my lunch threatening to blast from my mouth like a gooey freight train, her little right fist caught me in the jaw like a thrown brick. I went down in a heap, gasping and gagging and cradling my face.

            Mindy was still in mid-stride toward the kitchen when she heard it. She turned back to see Sheri leaping over me as I lay moaning on the floor. I looked back and up, rolling to my stomach, as Sheri unleashed a wide right that sailed in on Mindy and sent her stumbling across our small living room to slam hard into Dad’s bookshelf, toppling a trio of ceramic figurines off the top shelf to explode as they hit the hardwood floor at my sister’s feet.

            Then I saw Mindy do something I never thought I would. My little sister, instead of cowering, roared like a damn lion and swung a haymaker of her own, hard enough to rock Sheri’s head up and back. I staggered back to my feet as Sheri stood there obviously stunned.

            Then she put her hands on the hips of her designer jeans, cocked her head like a dog that’s just been shown a card trick and politely inquired, “Is that the best you’ve got, little girl? Come on -- hit me!”

            Mindy had learned how to hit from me, and I was pretty decent at it, but neither one of us was a habitual brawler, of course. Still, she did it exactly like I showed her, coiling her arm like a Major League baseball pitcher, turning her hips as her fist slammed out to catch Sheri square in the gut. It actually drove Sheri back a couple of steps... and that was about it.

            Sheri just shrugged, “My turn!” and stepped back in with a vicious right hook that landed with a horrifying crack and bounced little Mindy off the bookshelf to land in a sobbing heap on the floor. I could see blood pooling from between her hands. Probably a broken nose to go with the black eye I suspected would be coming along from that first punch.

            Sheri turned to find me standing, trembling with righteous fury, just behind her. “Oh, you want a try, worm?”

            I barely kept myself in check. “That was a neat trick you pulled in Thorsen’s Field.” I felt my fingers folding despite my resistance. “But now you’re in my house and you just attacked my sister again. You’re all out of excuses.”

            She just laughed and folded her arms over her chest, the white floral print blouse crinkling a little. “You won’t hit a girl. You’re a pathetic worm and you haven’t got the -- uuuunngh!!!”

            I cut her off with a jackhammer uppercut to her gut -- Christ, it was like hitting a brick wall! But it shut her up... and that was all the satisfaction I was going to get, because even at only 5’3” she somehow did not go down! I followed it up with another, my knuckles screaming bloody murder about it, and although my second punch staggered her another step backward, neither my second -- nor my third, which probably hurt me more than it did her -- was having any more effect than a kitten’s breath on this girl except to royally piss her off.

            She caught my next punch in her little hand, wrapping her fingers around and between mine in an iron grip as if we were about to play a game of “Mercy.” But she had no mercy. She tightened her grip on my hand, and I winced -- but she kept right on tightening her grip, harder and harder. I began to groan aloud, feeling as if she was going to grind the bones of my hand until they snapped. Then her other hand came up in a whistling slap that set my cheek on fire and rocked my head to the side.

            She crushed down harder still on my hand, her open palm whistling in again -- and again -- and again -- I was literally left screaming now in time with each jaw-rattling, head-jarring slap. Then the pressure on my hand was gone.

            I saw her punch coming like watching a car wreck happen in slow motion. it sailed in wide, then dived straight in at my left cheek like a dive bomber. White light and a sound like a gunshot exploded in my head and I felt my feet leave the floor for a fraction of a second before I landed hard on my back.

            I heard a wild banshee-like howl and looked up just in time to see something with loose, wild dark hair and blood on its face, a face dominated by wide gleaming eyes, fling itself on Sheri as the girl took a step toward me, only to stagger under Mindy’s weight before regaining her footing and slamming a sharp elbow back into my sister’s gut.

            Gasping for breath, Mindy lost her hold on Sheri, who flung her unceremoniously to land in a half-stumble, half-crouch. Sheri turned and shot a sneaker-clad foot out to catch Mindy square in her bloodied and bruised face, eliciting another howl, this one of pure agony. Then Sheri straddled her and hit her again with a trio of sharp jabs. That was it for Mindy, she’d had enough. I watched her roll to her side, howling and cradling her face, her little body tightening into a fetal position and rocking gently on the floor.

            I tried to push myself back to my feet, but the vision in my left eye was badly blurred, the eye already beginning to swell shut. Sheri turned away from my beaten sister with a nasty smirk on her face, standing over me. “Pathetic, both of you. Nothing but little worms! How do you like my housewarming so far? Huh? How do you like the neighborhood?” She glared at me, her nostrils flaring. “Look at you, laying there on the floor!” she taunted. I thought I could see her fingers moving over the buttons of her blouse. I knew I had been right when she shrugged out of it to reveal a grey workout bra underneath, though my vision wasn’t quite focusing. “You know what else crawls around on the floor? Huh?” Her hands worked her jeans open, then down her legs and over her sneakers.

            “Bugs!” she continued, stepping up as I pushed myself to a sitting position, then putting one of her now bare feet on my sternum and slamming me down onto my back again. I looked up at this little 11 year old girl who stood staring down her nose at me with the haughtiest look I’ve ever seen on a human face. My good eye widened.

            “And do you know what we do with bugs?” she demanded. I couldn’t answer; my vision had begun to clear and I was staring in shock and, I admit it, in fear. Beneath the long-sleeved floral print blouse and blue jeans, she had been hiding the hardest female body I had ever seen.

            “Well?” she demanded, then noticed my terrified, awestruck expression. “What’s the matter, you little bug? Haven’t you ever seen a strong girl before? Not bad for a ‘kid’, huh?” She lifted her right arm, curling it up and flexing hard to turn her bicep into something with the size and hardness of a baseball, the muscles in her forearms focusing into hard cords. Her chest was startlingly developed for her age, small but firm round breasts pushing out proudly as she brought both arms down to flex again, the faintly horseshoe shaped triceps flaring to relief beneath shoulders visibly capped with hard muscle.

            “Go ahead, take a look!” she ordered as she straightened fully, turning her sneaker outward before planting it hard onto my chest again, flexing her leg. “You want to feel my muscles? I think they’re gonna feel you!” I looked down past her abs, which formed an impossibly hard six pack, to her white panties where I spotted... no, that was impossible! Oh, my god, that explained it all and yet... I closed my good eye to try to force the thought away.

            “Look!” she barked. “Look at my leg, you fucking worm! Look at it or I’ll kill you!” She forced her foot harder against my chest until I groaned under the weight and opened my eyes again. On a girl of only 5’3” her thighs looked much bigger than they actually were, the thick steely ropes of her adductors shockingly visible, trailing from her slim hip down to her knee, a larger muscle I didn’t know the name of forming a granite-hard teardrop of muscle framing her knee above it, her outer thigh flaring slightly on the other side. Her calf was just as hard, a slightly tapered ball of solid muscle bulging just above her white socks. I gulped.

            “Now answer my question!” She put her hands on her hips again. I tried to see past her to see if Mindy was okay. I didn’t see her where she had been laying. She shoved her foot downward. “Pay attention!” I couldn’t believe how this girl of only 11 was so dominant, so brutal and so... unbelievably gorgeous! She was right -- other than Nicky’s sister, the only other muscular girl I’d ever seen in my life and truthfully so gigantic she scared the living crap out of me which kept me from really looking at her, Sheri was the first strong girl I’d ever seen. If she hadn’t beaten me half to death, I would have been hard as a rock looking up at that tanned, sculpted body, that exquisite face, her long blonde hair. As it was, the fight or flight instinct had taken over and I didn’t have the time or inclination to think about any of that while it was happening.

            “I don’t know!” I gasped out hoarsely. “What the fuck do you want?!”

            “When I see a bug...” she purred, her eyes half-lidded, “I squash it!” I didn’t know what she meant. I didn’t want to find out. I was about to find out. If she could be stopped, I couldn’t do it. I was no longer in any shape to even try. As she crouched, the light from Dad’s end table lamp moved across the surface of her gray workout bra.

            That’s when a sound burst across our living room and made us both jump. My heart leapt for joy in my chest -- it was the sound of our front door flying open. A voice rang out “What the hell do you think you’re doin’?!” Oh, damn it... my heart sunk again. It wasn’t mom or dad, it was Nicky.

            “Nicky!” I croaked out as best I could. “Nicky, go get help!”

            Sheri squatted over my chest, grabbing my shirt front and lifting me partially off the floor. Then she leaned to one side and scooted her leg under my back. I could feel the warmth radiating from her flushed skin, the unreal hardness of the muscle under my shoulder blades, and I actually felt and heard a whimper fall from my mouth. I heard her giggle as she lowered her other leg over my chest. “You move one inch and I’ll kill him!” Sheri promised.

            “Shit...” he breathed. She meant it. He and I both knew that she did, and from the solid muscle that had locked in around my torso like warm, fleshy steel bars I knew that, moreover, she probably could do exactly what she said. She grabbed my chin and turned my face toward hers in time to see her lick her lips and close her eyes. In that moment, I was certain I was going to die.

            “Billy, what do I do, man?”

            I couldn’t answer -- I was too petrified with terror and holding the biggest breath I’d ever taken in my life, sure that the moment I said anything she’d squeeze it out of me like flattening a tube of toothpaste. She answered instead, “You stand there and watch, worm! And if you do anything other than that, I promise I’ll kill him and then you’re next!”

            She twisted one ankle around the other, and whispered breathlessly, “Told you I’d fucking break you in half... mmmmm...” She straightened her legs, leaning up on one elbow to watch my face as the muscles in her legs stretched, then bunched as her thigh powered down into me. I held my breath as best I could, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough. The air was crushed out of my lungs in a low, gutteral howl as I felt my ribs begin to bend in her tightening hold.

            “Oh yeah...” she murmured, taking her cheek from her hand and laying it on the floor. Her lips parted as her eyes closed. My lungs, deprived of oxygen, began a low, insistent burn in my chest. I heard and felt my back popping like a prizefighter’s knuckles, and although I used to pop my back a lot -- it freaked Mindy out and made her run away yelling, “Ew!” -- it wasn’t funny this time. This time, it scared the shit out of me. It had an entirely different effect, apparently, for Sheri, who giggled as if this were just a girlish bit of fun.

            “Holy shit!” Nick breathed. “Holy fucking shit, oh my fuckin’ God...”

            Her thighs clamped down so hard, from out of nowhere that both my eyes bulged from my head, a red haze clouding my vision as a hollow ringing filled my ears along with the sound of a monster giggling I prayed in that instant of redness for it to end, but it only got worse.

            As her giggle faded away, Sheri straightened her entire body, a low growl of concentration replacing the mirth. Then I felt three sharp, hot explosions in my chest and she was literally snarling with exertion now. A fourth, fifth and sixth rib snapped like wet kindling before her thighs began to quiver from the strain and she was no longer able to maintain the hold,

            “Oh, my God!” she laughed, “Aaaah hahahahahaha! That was amazing!” She tried to retighten the hold, staring into my pleading good eye with icy superiority, but mercifully she didn’t seem to have it in her anymore.

            “You sick little bitch!” Nick fumed. “I’m callin’ the cops!” I lay on the floor struggling to breathe, fighting the instinct to cry out against the raging fire every breath set off in my chest.

            Sheri quickly unwound herself from me and stood on shaky legs, a sultry, predatory growl coming from somewhere within the depths of her compact but rock solid and defined body as her icy gray eyes swept over to drill into Nick. The muscles in those thighs of hers flexed again in a ripple of renewed energy that flowed up and into her abs, chest, shoulders, biceps... whatever window of opportunity he’d had to run for help had just slammed shut.

            Without a word, she leapt at him, throwing a barrage of punches and kicks.

            Her first jab smashed into his ribs, driving him back into the front door. The next one slammed into his gut, lifting him off his feet and into the heavy hardwood door itself with a crash. A third jab nailed his breastbone dead center, bouncing him off the door again. He hadn’t even had a fraction of a second to get his hands up to guard himself.

            He finally got them up, stunned and wide eyed with disbelief, but she was still two steps ahead. Her sharp knee pistoned up into his balls like a jackhammer, doubling him over with a breathless scream. She wrapped her left arm over and around his neck, the back of his head nestled in her armpit, and used the other fist now to throw punch after titanic punch into his balls again and again and again, bouncing his blue-jeaned butt off the door in what seemed like an endless and brutal train of destruction.

            And what was perhaps worse even than the beating... what had at first sounded like exertion from the 11 year old monster of feminine brutality... wasn't. She was giggling.

            Nicky sagged in her grip, limp from the insane beating that had taken less than a minute, when she released her hold on him just long enough to let him fall to his knees.

            He looked up at his pre-teen tormentress with tears rolling down his cheeks, his lips trembling, whatever fight he’d had in him already long gone in only a few seconds. If she could see the pleading in his eyes, it only pushed her on -- I heard her giggle again as she wrapped both arms around his head and hauled his face into her rippling abs, smothering him. She stepped forward to brace his body between her thighs, pinning him helpless between them and against our front door. Her small but well-rounded and powerful ass cheeks began to rise and fall rhythmically as she brutally slammed his back against the hard wooden door.

            He began to struggle in her grip -- bad call. She opened her thighs wider, scooting her sneakers forward and around him. Her body seemed to elongate slightly as she locked her ankles and stretched onto her tiptoes, taking him in a standing bodyscissor.

            I could hear his agonized screams barely escape the muffling clamp of her abs, driven out by the mind-bending power of her crushing thighs. To his credit, he managed to snake his arms free. His fists hammered frantically at her thighs, the blows bouncing off with no more effect than the feeble, angry thrashing of a newborn. Sheri just laughed at his attempts.

            Nick was viciously body-slammed into the unyielding hardwood door again and again and again, and Sheri was once more laughing in sadistic animal joy. By the time she released Nick, his body sliding to the floor in a lifeless heap, he had already passed out.

            She continued to stand over him, smirking and enjoying the view of his beaten form on the floor.

            Nick lay unmoving, and the feeling that she might have actually killed him chilled me to the core. She squatted down and reached out with two fingers to feel his throat. “You’re faking, sissy.” I heard her mutter. She reached back and slapped him hard, her flat palm resounding off his cheek like the sound of a cracked whip; for a slap, the result looked more like a normal person's punch.

            She repeated the stinging slap, not because the first one hadn’t had any effect -- he’d stirred, crying in pain -- but simply because she apparently just wanted to. She laughed as he came round fully and began to cry. She murmured something to him, “Did I break your ribs, little worm? Did I?”

            He shook his head feebly, not looking at her. He didn’t see her kick coming, the ball of her foot crashing into his side. He curled into a ball; she cocked her head to one side and kicked his hands, hard enough to make him straighten out again, wailing, then took a full step back, drawing her right foot back further still, and stepped into the next kick; I heard a sickening crunch when she landed it precisely where she’d put the first one, snapping a few of his bones with a satisfied shriek of effort.

            She laughed again. “There you go, worm!” This was a nightmare, I decided. Fuck Elm Street, this was a nightmare worse than anything in a movie theater, and it was here in north Kansas, in our living room, and it wasn’t some supernatural freak from beyond the grave but a little 5 foot 3 inch 11 year old girl with a body of steel and the mind of a serial killer.

            I looked up through one bleary, tear-filled eye as she stood over me again, staring down, swinging one foot over me to stand on either side of my broken body, smiling. “Do you know how much trouble you would be in if you try to tell anybody what I did? Huh? I bet I could tell my parents your sniveling little twat of a sister lured me over here and you two boys tried to rob me, you know what would happen then? Do you think anybody would believe you if you tell?”

            I had a pretty good idea nobody would. No one would believe us, and if they did it would be even worse. I closed my good eye. I couldn’t hold it back anymore. Mindy and I were hurt real bad, both of us, and there was nothing I could do about it. Not one single thing. I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I started to cry.

            “Awwww, poor babies!” Sheri taunted. “Did the little girl hurt you? Did the little girl break baby’s little bones? Give baby and his baby buddy some black eyes? A bloody nose for little baby sissy? Aw...” I wasn’t looking at her anymore, or anything else. I didn’t see her lean over me again, just felt it, then felt her hand grab my sore and swollen jaw, felt fingers force my lips open in a sick puppeteer’s manipulation as she lowered her voice, mockingly, as if imitating mine, “Oh yes it was howwible, oh pwease make the big mean girl stop!” She laughed again, a lunatic sound.

            I heard her fingers moving over cloth. I heard a zipper. I was barely conscious enough to see her follow spots of blood into the kitchen, then heard her laugh, saw her come back out with Mindy’s purse as my vision began to fade. When she took my wallet from my back pocket, I barely felt it. She went through Nick’s pockets and found nothing, so snarled and kicked him hard in the jaw -- he didn’t move or even make a sound.

            The last thing I remember before waking up in the hospital in a bed between Mindy’s and Nick’s, with mom and dad and the Hollerans hovering worriedly over us, Megan included, was hearing her humming.