Jack Templar Monster Hunter (3 page)

“OK, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re not a huge liar.”

“That’s big of you,” I said.

“What you’re describing is basically the onset of superpowers as outlined in the origin stories of countless comic book heroes. Did you get bitten by a radioactive spider recently?” Will giggled. “Maybe injected with an experimental formula by a mad scientist?”

“I shouldn’t have even told you,” I said.

My eyes wandered, as they usually did at some point during lunch, to the table where the utterly gorgeous and most divine creature in the universe sat nibbling on her lunch. Cindy Adams. Ouch, just looking at her actually caused me pain. Something deep in my gut twisted over on itself every time I saw her.

I don’t know if it was that golden blonde hair, the sparkling green eyes, her perfect white teeth that flashed every time she smiled. Or maybe it was that, on top of being beautiful, she also had the best grades, played sports so well that the coaches for the boy’s teams were always trying to recruit her, and was an all-around cool chick.

To my horror, one of her friends caught me staring and nudged Cindy. She looked up before I had a chance to look away. Totally busted. Rookie move, staring like a stalker at the hottest girl in school. Nice.

But she just smiled and gave me a little wave. BAM, it was like ten thousand volts of electricity tore through my body. It felt so good, so utterly great, that I immediately thought I would be sick.

Just then, there was a crashing sound at the far end of the lunchroom followed by a roar of laughter. I looked up and groaned. Dirk Riggle, the biggest bully in the school, had set his sights on T-Rex.

Dirk looked like he had hit puberty right after learning to walk and started working out that same day. He wore super-tight shirts just to make sure we all remembered that he had enormous arms. And he beat one of us up every now and then so we remembered he wasn’t afraid to use them.

Normally, we were able to steer clear of Dirk and his evil band of bully henchmen, but without me there to protect him, somehow T-Rex had fallen into Dirk’s mean-spirited web.

By the time I noticed something was going on, Dirk had dumped an enormous tray of what looked like mac-n-cheese, jello and maybe some mashed potatoes down the front of T-Rex’s shirt. Even from where we were sitting, we could hear Dirk’s man-like voice.

“You’re supposed to eat your lunch, fatty, not wear it,” Dirk said, playing to the crowd who laughed nervously, thankful they weren’t in T-Rex’s shoes.

“Just walk away, T-Rex,” I whispered. “Just walk away.”

But T-Rex stood there, paralyzed with fear, gobs of food dripping off the front of his shirt onto the floor. And then it happened. The worst possible thing. His hand started to slowly move toward his nose. It was like he was fighting an internal battle to stop himself, a battle he was clearly losing.

“Oh, please,” I whispered. “Don’t do it, T-Rex.”

But he did. A pointer finger right up the left nostril, digging around like he was trying to scratch his brain.

The expression on Dirk’s face couldn’t have registered more delight. Not even if he had won a million dollars. A chance to completely demoralize another human being, in front of the entire school no less, was better than five Christmases for Dirk Riggle.

“Nose-picker! Look, everyone! Fatty’s picking his nose!” Dirk nearly screamed.

Now, most of the school, at one point or another, had seen T-Rex pick his nose. It was what T-Rex did. But the combination of the food on his shirt, the nervous energy about being one look away from being Dirk’s next victim, and just how blatant a nose pick T-Rex was performing, made the lunchroom explode into a chorus of laughter and jeers.

Poor T-Rex just stood there, finger lodged in his nose, looking helplessly around at dozens of kids pointing their fingers and laughing at him. Big tears sprang to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. This took Dirk to a whole new level of ecstasy.

“Look at that, the fatty nose-picker’s crying. Are you crying, little baby? Bwaa-waawaa,” Dirk said.

I’m no hero. I’m embarrassed to say that I had walked past Dirk and his goons picking on some poor kid dozens of times before and had done nothing. But seeing T-Rex crying, frozen in place so that the torture seemed like it would never end, was just too much for me to bear.

I climbed up on my chair and was about to yell something when I heard Will’s voice come from right next to my ear, “Shut up, you big bully! How about you pick on someone your own size?”

The lunchroom went completely silent. Every head in the room turned in our direction, including T-Rex, who was so shocked that he stopped crying. Everyone wanted to see had lost their mind and called Dirk out.

Dirk wanted to know the exact same thing. “Who’s the dead man that said that?” Dirk demanded.

“Over here, loser,” Will shouted back. “Leave him alone.”

I looked around nervously, hoping that a teacher would show up as the crowd parted and Dirk marched toward us, his little band of followers right behind him, literally licking their chops at the beat-down they were about to witness. I climbed down off my chair and stood next to Will. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

Dirk reached us and stopped inches from Will’s face, staring him down, eye-to-eye. Well, Dirk basically looked straight down because he towered over him. Dirk was so worked up that he was breathing hard like he had just run a race. His face was red and he looked like he really wanted to hit something. And that something was Will’s face.

“You’re even uglier up close,” Will said.

“OK, tough guy. Enjoy your time in the hospital,” Dirk barked.

Dirk let out a yell and swung one of his massive fists . Will ducked the first one, but the second landed with a
thud
right in his stomach. He folded over, the air knocked out of him.

I thought that would be it. But Dirk had other ideas. He stepped up to kick Will while he was down.

I grabbed two of the lunch trays off the table nearest to me, intending to use them as shields. Unfortunately, gobs of food flew off the trays and splattered all over Dirk.

The lunchroom fell into a hush. Dirk wiped the food from his face, now even redder than before.

“I was just going to hurt your little friend here,” Dirk said. “But I’m gonna kill you.”

He leapt at me and I brushed him aside using the trays in my hands. Dirk crashed into the chairs and fell to the ground in a tangle.

For the first time, the lunchroom cheered.

Dirk’s henchmen rushed to his aid and lifted him up. He pushed them away, snarling like an animal. He charged at me.

But he had learned his lesson and stopped in front of me this time, his hands up like a boxer. He swung a right hook; I bashed a lunch tray into the punch. He jabbed with his left. Again, a deflection with the trays.

Frustrated, he unloaded a barrage of punches and kicks. I parried each one with an effortless block with my lunch tray shields. I don’t know how I was doing it, but I was doing it.

Finally, Dirk took a step back to regroup, his knuckles bloody from pounding the tray.

“I bet you’re not so tough without the trays,” Dirk said.

That was when I knew I had truly lost my mind, because the second he said that, I threw the trays on the floor and said, “I’ll take that bet.”

Now, you should know that this was the first real fight I had ever been in. Sure, I had wrestled with friends and gotten into a few pushing fights during sports and stuff, but I had never once been in a real, true-blue fight before. And that wasn’t because I was such a tough guy that people ran away from me. To tell the truth, before that day in the lunchroom, I was usually the person doing the running.

But seeing T-Rex standing there, tears running down his face, being embarrassed in front of everyone along with seeing Will hurt, woke something in me that must have been there all along. I just didn’t know it was there until that moment.

Dirk swung at me and I raised my left arm and blocked it. Another punch and I brushed it off with my forearm. Then, almost like I was watching it happen in a movie, I saw my right fist shoot out and connect with Dirk’s nose.

Dirk staggered back, holding his face. Then blood gushed out from between his fingers. He lowered his hands and everyone could see it; his nose was bent crooked to the side. It wasn’t only broken, it was
really
broken.

“You broke my nose!” Dirk wailed.

I stepped up closer to him. “And if you ever pick on another kid at this school, I’ll do it again. Understand?”

For a second, it looked like Dirk might decide to keep fighting, but then he nodded, turned and walked out of the lunchroom. The other kids stood silently as he walked by, glaring at him. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when he finally cleared the cafeteria doors and left the room, the kids turned and stared at me.

They didn’t cheer. They didn’t thank me for coming to the aid of every past and future bullying victim of Dirk Riggle. They just stared. Even Cindy Adams, who I was secretly hoping would be particularly impressed with my heroics, stood with her friends, whispering quietly to them, looking at me nervously.

It was the first sense of what has now become part of my everyday life. People want help when they are in danger, but after the danger has passed, people fear you if you’re different. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just rescued them from a bully or just saved their lives by skewering a werewolf with a sword right in front of them. Fear beats appreciation. Every time.

As if on cue, two teachers walked in from the side door of the cafeteria, one of them laughing at something the other had just said. The kids, breathing a collective sigh of relief, returned to their tables and went back to eating. I looked behind me and Will was there, looking upset.

“I could have handled it myself,” he said. “I didn’t need you to jump in.”

“I was just giving you a chance to get your wind back and I got a little carried away,” I said. “I know you could have taken him.”

Will nodded but looked at me weirdly. “All that stuff you were talking about this morning was for real, wasn’t it?” he said.

So, even Will, who I had gone to pre-school with, was keeping his distance from me, looking me over like I was some kind of freak.

I shrugged. “Nah, I’ve just been watching some old kung-fu movies. You should check ‘em out.”

I walked away, leaving him scratching his head. Honestly, I was a little mad at his reaction. The other kids didn’t bother me so much, but when your best friend looks at you like you’ve got cooties, it bums you out.

The one person in the room who I figured wouldn’t treat me like I was some kind of leper was T-Rex. I walked up to him while he was dabbing the food off his t-shirt.

“You OK?” I asked.

T-Rex spun around like I had just poked him with a sharp stick in the butt. He stepped behind a chair. A small gesture but one that told me a lot. He was just as freaked out as the others.

“OK, well, I guess I’ll talk to you guys later then,” I said, turning my back. Man, I had fantasized about standing up to a bully before. I’d even thought about doing it in the lunchroom in front of the whole school. What wasn’t in my fantasy was how miserable and alone even my best friends were making me feel. Maybe the hero business wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. And that was a total bummer.

“Wait, Jack,” T-Rex said.

I turned and his face was bright red. Tears welled up in his eyes. He pushed the chair out of the way, took three quick steps to me and locked me up in a bear hug. I could feel the cold dampness of the food on his chest soaking into my shirt, but I didn’t care. A hug couldn’t have felt better than the one I got that day from T-Rex. (Well, maybe a hug from Cindy Adams could have been better. I’m just saying.)

The bell rang and the other kids stood up and filed out. But Will and T-Rex circled around me, patting me on the back and talking a mile a minute. I smiled, going from feeling totally alone to getting my crew back.

“You guys,” Will said, “we should hang out tonight and celebrate.”

“I can’t,” T-Rex said. “ My grandma hasn’t been doing so well. She’s been forgetting things a lot.”

“Maybe she’ll forget you’re supposed to do your homework and let you come out,” Will suggested.

T-Rex looked upset. I nudged Will to get him to take it easy. “Why don’t you guys come over to my house? We’re having Papagallo pizza and ice cream.”

I remembered that Aunt Sophie wanted to have a special dinner with just the two of us that night. But she was easy going and I knew that she liked both Will and T-Rex.

“That’s closer to my house. I guess I could leave her alone for a little while,” T-Rex said.

“How about you?” I asked Will.

“Are you kidding? My dad won’t even notice I’m gone,” Will said.

“Awesome. Party at my place then.”

Will and T-Rex both high-fived me then we grabbed our books and headed to class.

Even now, thinking back to that day, it’s hard to believe that one of us was going to be dead in less than twenty-four hours.

T
he rest of the day passed without any real drama. After a while, I learned to ignore the sidelong glances that kids gave me in the hallway and in my classes. Every once in a while, someone would pass me in the hall and, without making eye contact, offer up a quick, “Good job, Jack,” or “Way to go with Dirk.” But even these awkward exchanges did little to change the fact that I was now a bona fide freak. Just great. During the last period of the day ( my favorite because it was the only class I had with Cindy Adams), a call came in to Mr. Deek, my math teacher. The principal wanted to see me. Everyone in that room, except the clueless Mr. Deek, knew exactly why I was being hauled in front of the firing squad. They watched as I gathered my things and did the walk of shame down the rows of desks.

As I passed Cindy Adams, she whispered, “Good luck.”

BAM, there was that ten thousand volts of electricity again. My insides folded in on themselves as I tried to think of something so outrageously cool that she would swoon over my amazingness.