from my perspective, it didn’t really matter whether they were enjoying themselves or not. They had me surrounded just the same. I was trapped.
Wait. No. That’s an excuse, and I don’t lie to myself. I could have pushed my way out of there if I’d wanted to. But now all eyes were on me. I had an audience. And I am a showman.
Yasmany stretched his fingers wide before he made two fists. “Time to die, little man. Stand up.”
I stood all right. Got right in his face. “Time to die?” I asked.
“Time. To. Die,” he repeated.
“Like the dead chicken in your locker?” I asked.
“What?”
See, that’s the real secret of dealing with bullies: Change the game. You thought we were going to fistfight, Mr. Tough Guy, but—surprise!—suddenly we’re talking about murdered poultry.
“The dead chicken in your locker,” I said, explaining it to the crowd. “That’s the real reason you didn’t want to open it. You didn’t want anybody to see your dead chicken so they wouldn’t know you keep dead chickens in your locker. Because,” I said, turning to face Yasmany again, “what kind of weirdo keeps dead chickens in his locker?”
“Stop saying ‘dead chicken’!”
Everybody laughed. That probably would have sent Yasmany into a berserker rage if some girl hadn’t shrieked, “Blood!” She was pointing at Yasmany’s locker.
“What?” Yasmany asked again. He and everybody else looked at his locker, and yeah, there was watery pink blood leaking from it, the kind you find at the bottom of Styrofoam meat packages. Not a lot, but enough to drip from the bottom of the locker door and pool on the floor. And it only takes a tiny bit of blood to freak people all the way out.
Not me, though. I mean, I didn’t know SANGRE DE POLLO was going to come dripping out of his locker, but it wasn’t exactly a surprise, either. I could work with it.
“Open it,” I said to Yasmany. “Unless you’re too…chicken.”
If he hadn’t been completely bewildered by what was happening, he would have gorilla-rushed me for sure. Instead, he walked over to his locker and tried to undo the lock. Two, four, seven yanks on it, each angrier than the last. Then he punched his locker door again and said, “I can’t open the stupid thing! I keep trying, but I can’t.”
“Here. Let me.”
He took a step back to let me through. But not without asking, “What? How you know my combo?”
His “combo” was still taped to the back of the lock. About as sharp as a bowling ball, this Yasmany.
I looked at him over my shoulder with spooky eyes and replied, “Fool! I am a magician. I can read your mind.” Then I spun the dial with fast fingers, clock-, then counter-, then clockwise again. I tugged the lock open dramatically and, with a flourish, removed it.
“You want the honors?” I asked him, stepping aside with a gracious magician’s bow.
Yasmany—bro had gone full autopilot by now—stepped forward and opened the locker door, every kid behind him on tiptoe, watching, waiting.
A whole raw chicken, like you get at the grocery store, with bumpy yellow skin and no head, flipped out of his locker, landed on its chicken butt, and went splat.
Kids scattered, screaming. Adults would be here any second. Yasmany did a 180 and looked around wildly. He didn’t have eyes anymore: just fear. “I didn’t put no dead chicken in my locker!” he yelled. “You gotta believe me!”
“I believe you,” I said.
Of course I did. It was I who had put it in there, after all.
Abracadabra, chicken plucker.
Keep reading for a sneak peek at Tristan Strong Breaks a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia!
THERE WAS A RHYTHM IN my fists.
Pop pop
It told a story.
Pop pop
Everybody thought they knew the story. They’d seen it before. He’ll get over it. It’s a phase. Give him space. But they only knew fragments. They didn’t want to hear the rest….
Oh, you do?
Hmm.
Well, what if I told you that I went to war over my dead best friend’s glowing journal? Or that I battled monsters big and small, with powers I didn’t know I had, with gods I didn’t know existed. Would you believe me?
Nah, you wouldn’t. You got your own problems. You don’t wanna hear about my struggles. Right?
Oh, you do? Well, I gotta warn you, it’s a wild ride, so buckle up, champ.
Let me give you some truth, and I hope it returns back to me.
“Tristan! They’re here.”
Pop
Mom’s shout interrupted my groove. I stopped pummeling the small punching bag