The Illumination_ A Novel - Kevin Brockmeier [47]
“That must mean he wants us to beat him up.”
“Well, if that’s what he really wants,” Craig Poissant said.
Todd Rosenthal brought his palms out to push Chuck down. He leaned in so that Chuck could smell his breath. Chuck ducked and ran away as fast as he could. He could hear Todd and both the Poissants chasing him. He went tearing through the crowd of kids playing basketball. Some of them stopped and stared, some just kept shooting. Chuck curved away, sprinting behind a row of parked cars. Oscar Poissant dashed around the side to cut him off. Chuck avoided him by sliding between a pair of SUVs. He wriggled under the chunky mirrors and past the bumpers. Before he knew it, he was back on the playground. He crossed in front of the swings, dodging someone’s feet. Then he darted beneath the tower and the monkey bars. Suddenly he came face-to-face with the wooden fence.
He heard the drumbeat of sneakers landing on the foam. He barely had time to turn around before it happened. Todd lunged at him, landing a punch on his stomach. The second hit his neck, and the third his chest. The boards rattled as Todd shoved Chuck against the fence. A hard kick swept his legs out from under him. He found himself lying facedown, Todd squatting on his back. Todd didn’t say anything, just kept punching Chuck, smacking him.
The teachers came running with their strong arms and whistles.
Someone shouted, “Get off of Chuck Carter right this instant!”
Someone else shouted, “All right, break it up, you two!”
Todd Rosenthal’s cap slipped off as the teachers grabbed him. His scalp looked like a firework that had burst open. He said, “There, punk,” and gripped Chuck with his knees. “There it goes, and what do you think of that?”
Then Chuck felt himself losing a hundred pounds of weight. He was too shaken to stand up on his own. A green-shelled bug was crawling toward him, twitching its feelers. Its face was like a face from some other planet. Chuck wondered how long it would remember staring at him.
That afternoon, when he got home, he ached all over. He went to his room and took his clothes off. His bruises shone in the mouth of the bullfrog mirror. There were bunches of them, so sore that they glittered. A bruise below his ear and another on his shoulder. A bruise the size of an apple on his back. A row of small knuckle-shaped bruises above his belly button. Where he didn’t have bruises, he had cuts and scratches. He twisted his neck and listened to the joints pop. He wiggled one of his front teeth with his tongue. Falling down, he had scraped a patch from his chin. There was a crust of dried blood around the edges. The school nurse had put a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid on it. When he peeled it loose, it tugged at his skin. For a few seconds, the light poured out like water. It hurt just a little too much to be beautiful.
His body felt uncomfortable and strange, like someone else’s clothing. It seemed too small around him, or maybe too big. He collapsed in bed with his elephant and his bears. On TV, cops and detectives didn’t mind getting beaten up. They just brushed themselves off and began smoking a cigarette. In real life, getting punched made you tired and queasy. Chuck only wanted to lie there staring at the ceiling. Unfortunately, he had chores to do and homework to finish. His mom made him get dressed and sweep the driveway. The concrete was still wet from the hard morning rain. The water foamed and bubbled beneath the broom like soda. After he finished sweeping, he threw away the soggy leaves. He hauled the big green trash can to the curb. Then he went to his desk and did math problems. He read chapter nineteen from The Story of America. He studied the next ten words for his vocabulary quiz. Exasperation, paradise, fraying, infected, temporary, candid, camouflage, indignant, animated, cuticle. He knew the last word already, but not its spelling. The quizzes were actually working, he thought, improving his vocabulary. He wouldn’t have guessed they would work, but they did.
That evening, after dinner, his pretend dad called him outside.