“You think I’m a nut,” Alan said. “It’s okay, that’s natural.”
Kurt smiled sheepishly. “If it’s any consolation, I think you’re a harmless nut, okay? I like you.”
“You don’t have to believe me, so long as you don’t get in my way,” Alan said. “But it’s easier if you believe me.”
“Easier to do what?”
“Oh, to get along,” Alan said.
Davey leapt down from a rock outcropping as Alan made his way home that night, landing on his back. Alan stumbled and dropped his school bag. He grabbed at the choking arm around his neck, then dropped to his knees as Davey bounced a fist-sized stone off his head, right over his ear.
He slammed himself back, pinning Davey between himself and the sharp stones on the walkway up to the cave entrance, then mashed backward with his elbows, his head ringing like a gong from the stone’s blow. His left elbow connected with Davey’s solar plexus and the arm around his throat went slack.
He climbed to his knees and looked Davey in the face. He was blue and gasping, but Alan couldn’t work up a lot of sympathy for him as he reached up to the side of his head and felt the goose egg welling there. His fingertips came back with a few strands of hair blood-glued to them.
He’d been in a few schoolyard scraps and this was always the moment when a teacher intervened—one combatant pinned, the other atop him. What could you do after this? Was he going to take the rock from Davey’s hand and smash him in the face with it, knocking out his teeth, breaking his nose, blacking his eyes? Could he get off of Davey without getting back into the fight?