“Balls?” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t see any balls. Snow balls?”
Jesus. I was in for it now. “Hey, it’s your turn,” I said with relief, letting go of her hand and giving her a light shove. “Remember to hold still for the picture or Mom’ll kill me.”
She moved up beside and tip-toed up to whisper in his ear. The camera flashed and even though it was a little early it did make a cute picture. Then Tessa leaned back and bounced happily in shiny patent leather shoes that went with her best red velvet dress.
The fake Santa blinked at her, twitched a forced a smile and hurried her off with a candy cane. As we waited for the picture to pop out, I asked, “What’d you ask for?”
I let her take my hand again as she said solemnly, “You know.”
We all wanted something we weren’t going to get. This was Tessa’s year for disappointment. The one thing she wanted and the one thing she’d never get. Feeling more guiltythan I wanted to, I said, “You want to get a milkshake before we go home?”
Of course she did, and we went to the drug store. They had an old fashioned malt shop there. I didn’t much know or care what an old-fashioned malt shop, like the sign said, was, but they served milkshakes and that was enough for me. I had chocolate, she had strawberry and things were fine until Jed walked in. His parents had named him Jedidiah and he had a punch for anyone who called him that. It was supposed to be Biblical. I guessed it didn’t take.
I slid him a careful sideways look. Cold blue eyes stared back, then he gave a half snarl, half hateful grin. Jed was fourteen, big, and a bully. Christmas might suck, but so did bullies.
And Jed was of the worst kind. The worst in the school, that’s for sure. He picked on kids who were smaller and younger. He thought that made him a badass. It didn’t. It just made him a coward. He hadn’t messed with me yet, but it was only a matter of time. I was close to his size, but not close enough for him to pass over me. Not by a good three inches. I was husky for my age, but a little short. Yeah, he was working his way up to me. He was a coward, but he was stupid too. It wouldn’t be long before he’d get over being careful of someone almost as heavy as him if not as tall. Between mean and stupid, stupid wins every time.
Tessa and I slurped up the last of our shakes and we left. She used both hands to try and peel the plastic off her candy cane. “You’re smart,” she announced.
“Oh yeah? What makes you think that?” The sidewalk was clear of snow, shoveled clean.
“That mean guy doesn’t bother you.” She popped the top loop of the cane in her mouth. “Wi-ly.” She’d just learned the word when I’d been practicing for my spelling test and loved using it although half the time she didn’t know what it meant.
Wily? Nah. I was about as wily as a Pop-tart. This was just luck. And luck?
It only lasts so long.
*
“Nicky, are you paying attention or are you shooting for extra homework?”
I looked up from the history book I was only pretending to read. I was hungry. I didn’t concentrate so well when I was hungry. My stomach growled as I lied, “Yes, Mrs. Gibbs, I’m paying attention.”
She didn’t believe me, but the bell rang saving me and my stomach. I bolted for the cafeteria. It was burger day. Most of the kids were all about pizza day, but not me. I liked burgers and I paid for three meals to get three of them. When Mom had handed me my lunch money for the week, she’d ruffled my hair and said I was a growing boy. I might be three inches short of Jed, but I had shot up two inches in the past month. The boys in my family might hit their growth spurts late, but when we hit them, we hit them.
I was thinking that when he slammed his tray across from mine on the cafeteria table, his shaggy silver blond hair hanging in his eyes. “I hear you’re in the Russian club, geek.”
I was, not that I cared much about it, but Dad insisted. Our grandparents had come from Russia. Roots and all that crap. Nicky was short for Nikolai and I made damn sure no one in school knew that.
“Yeah, so?” I started on my first burger.
“That makes you a geek. A loser.” Those eyes, pale as a snow-filled sky, stared at me. They were like the eyes of a husky, a wild one used to living on its own. Catching its own food. Killing because it could. Jeb was twisted inside, wrong. The teachers didn’t see it. They just saw parents who didn’t care, maybe some sort of learning disorder, they didn’t see what he really was, because they didn’t want to. But I saw.
He was a monster. He was just a kid now maybe, but you could bet he was some kind of serial killer just waiting to grow up. But wouldn’t that be a lot of paperwork for the guidance counselor? Why not just pass him on? Let him be someone else’s problem.