Photo by Bas van Breukelen on Unsplash
I was in love with a boy named Julian, and had been ever since Monday. Monday I'd been walking home on Highland Avenue from Woodland Heights Elementary. My head was down. I had been scanning for round rocks, as always. Julian had sauntered up alongside me and asked what I was looking for. I told him. He helped look. Then he wooed me by asking about the rest of my walk home. It was 1989. I was ten.
By ten, a fraction of girls were wearing bras, Jordache jeans, and suede fashion boots with fringe at the top. The rest of us were rocking tank top undershirts, kids adjustable waistband jeans, velcro Stride Rites. Regardless, I felt charmed. I described to Julian about the rest of my route down Highland Avenue, past Lakes Region General Hospital, then left onto Pine Street Extension, up and down the little hill, to the house I'd lived in since I was born. And then, buoyed by Julian's interest, I explained about Ronald Ferris, the sixth-grade bully who lived further down Pine Street Extension, and always threatened to beat me up.
"You should take Karate!" Julian said, kicking the air. “That's what I do. Then you can beat him up!" He went on to demonstrate a flurry of jabs and impossible blocks, battling an invisible enemy, until we got to the intersection of Highland Avenue and Spring Street, where he had to turn off to go home.
It should have ended there. I was not brave enough to pursue friendships, let alone cute boys. I did not have an interest in martial arts. But that Sunday afternoon, in the car after picking me up from a weekend with my dad, Mom dropped something on my lap. It was a book of coupons.
“The band needs uniforms,” she shrugged. My mom could pinch a penny like nobody else, but would reliably put money down to support her beloved high school students. “Find something. It’s a fundraiser.”
I flipped past a steakhouse BOGO. Free horseback riding lessons. Fratello’s wind-instrument tryouts.
“Karate!” I screamed.
“Really? Since when are you interested in Karate?”
The thought of afternoons with Julian made me feel glowy. Too glowy to answer. “Ka! Ra! Taay!”
"I'll call as soon as we get home," Mom said as we turned onto Pine Hill.
By bed I have a class: Tuesday and Thursday, and a teacher's name: Sensei Jim. That night I couldn't sleep.
Julian had been new that year at Woodland Heights Elementary, a place where new kids were rare birds. Our little town of Laconia, New Hampshire had been a mill town in the early days, harnessing the local hardwoods plus the power of the Winnipesaukee River to pump out turned wood products such as candlesticks and chair legs, which were sold all over the country. But by 1989, the mills had become museums and wedding reception venues, and Laconia had been hemorrhaging citizens for a century. Against all odds, Julian had been transplanted to us all the way from southern California. His tan had faded, but he retained his blond hair and bouncy Golden State gait.
Before I fell in love with Julian, I'd known him only as the kid who'd been sent home for wearing a T-shirt that said Sex Wax. Sex Wax, Julian had tried to explain to our fifth grade teacher Ms. Reed, was a brand of surfboard wax. But Ms. Reed, that stupid dinosaur, had informed Julian that a board made to travel across water does not require wax, and accused Julian of making the whole thing up. Julian had disagreed vehemently, but nevertheless had been sent home for dress code violation, and made to change.
After that, I had considered Julian something of a dangerous character, and struggled with how friendly he was to me. But after I found him waiting for me Tuesday morning on the corner of Spring Street and Highland Avenue, juggling a fist-size round rock to add to my collection, it was easy to fall for him.
"You signed up for Tuesday/Thursday? Shoot. That sucks. I’m Monday/Wednesday," Julian said as we walked to Woodland Heights. I shrugged, as if this was not a sledgehammer to our burgeoning relationship, and tried to listen as he filled me in about Sensei Jim and the ranking system of belt colors.
All the rest of that week and through the weekend, I was equal parts dread and excitement. But on Tuesday night, as Mom pulled into the LA East dojo parking lot, I popped the last Chicken McNugget, and became nothing but energy, nothing but excitement, anticipation. If I hadn’t been buckled in I would’ve tried some kicks and impossible blocks of my own. Mom’s hand was still on the shifter, moving to Park, as I shoved open the car door and ran up the dojo steps, looking for things to tell Julian about on the way to school tomorrow. Mom's voice trailed me. "Have fun! Make friends!"
Then I swung open the smoked glass door into Hell.
Ronald Ferris. First person I saw. Apparently Ronald was a Karate student in the Tuesday/Thursday class? He'd traded his camo jacket for the white Karate pajamas and was up on the mat already, bouncing around with a partner, warming up. Julian had told me about that. Sparring is the word he’d used. When he saw me, Ronald stopped bouncing. He put his fists down and stared at me. Stringy hair. Pale face. Slitty eyes. Vicious smirk. The smirk grew big, like a vampire flashing his teeth. Ronald cracked his knuckles on one hand, then the other. I froze like a deer faced with oncoming headlights. I simply forgot how to move.
Sensei Jim was on the other side of the room, looking at a clipboard.
Class began. Sensei Jim partnered me with a very short boy, (third grader maybe) and showed me two sparring moves to try. The boy blocked each, looking bored. "Do it again,” Sensei Jim said. “Keep going."
Ronald took a sparring break, grabbed a cone-shaped cup of water, and stood slurping it a few feet away. “You're going to be so easy to beat up," he said. He went to crack his knuckles again but this time they don't crack. "I know where you live," he added after my tiny partner managed to pin my arm to my back.
At the end of class we sat in a circle. Sensei Jim went over the mistakes he was still seeing people make.
Ronald leaned toward me, about to whisper something. Another threat? I will never know, because two things happened simultaneously. One, Sensei Jim said "Well, that'll have to be about it for this time. But when I see you again Thursday--" Two, my mom's Caprice pulls in. The wood paneling is unmistakable.
I did not wait to hear what Sensei Jim thinks about Thursday. When Thursday comes, I will be Anywhere But Here. I sprang to my feet, grabbed my sneakers, shouldered the door, and tore barefoot down the steps, across the cold parking lot and into my seat in the front. I did not care how stupid I look. I just ran.
Mom's face was all concern and confusion.
"Do not make me go back." I shook my head. "It was… I don't want to go Thursday." Mom wants details, but I just shook my head again and sucked hard on my soda, which was all watery because the ice melted.
I never see Ronald in the morning, as middle school starts earlier than elementary, but I spent the next day riddled with anxiety over the walk home."I could beat him up if you want," Julian said as we walked.
"He's in grade six."
Julian shrugged. “Don’t matter.”
It’s a gracious offer, but impractical. If Julian isn’t home by 3:45, his brother has to call their mom at the post office. Then, big trouble. He turned off at Spring Street, looking regretful. “See you tomorrow.”
I didn’t say it, but I thought it. Tomorrow I might be dead. Walking alone along Highland Avenue, I thought about Ronald. Ronald and his mom lived far down our dead-end road in a pink house. Bubble gum pink. They kept their big, mean dog chained up out front. A few times, years ago, way back when neither one of us was old enough to know better, Ronald’s mother would walk him over, and the two of us would play on the playset in my backyard. Preschool, I must have been, at most Kindergarten. I remember my mom pushing me and Ronald on the swings. I remember Ronald and I sharing peanut butter sandwiches cut into fourths. I remember Ronald's mom smoking cigarettes, saying curse words my own mom did not say.
Nowadays, whenever I saw Ronald on his bike, he had a pickle jammed onto one of his handlebars.
There is a tiny, triangle-shaped park at the intersection of Highland Avenue and Pine Street Extension, with a short trail that cuts the corner. It isn't even a park. It's just a grassy place where Highland curves and the sidewalk widens enough for a wedge of grass and a couple of pine trees. On the morning of school picture day, I'd stepped in dog poop there.
But today, just as I came around the corner, there was Ronald Ferris pedaling his bike the other way.
"Cynthia," Ronald braked. "You're dead meat.”
I walked toward Ronald. I'd already been walking, and so I just continued. But the trail wasn't wide enough for both of us. A fat wedge of pricker bushes cut off the street. On the other side is the chain link fence marking someone’s property. Ronald had his butt on his bike and one foot out to the side.
It occurred to me that I've surprised Ronald by not turning around and running. Maybe he was thinking I was dumb enough to try Karate moves on him. Yes, I decided, he did think that. I took my fists out of my pockets and held them up.
Ronald dropped his gaze long enough to swing his leg up and push the bike away. You can’t do Karate with a bicycle between your legs.
That moment was all I needed. I took another step, close enough to smell pickles. Julian's round rock was my fist. I hadn’t stopped carrying it since he gave it to me. I took aim at Ronald's greasy head and threw.
The rock cracked loudly against Ronald's skull. He screamed and stumbled and I took off. Leaped over the space between bush and bike. And then I was running past the tiny park, left onto Pine Street Extension, down the hill and up the hill. I just ran, ran, ran back home.
Alice Kinerk earned an MFA in English and then spent several years raising babies and not writing much. Now that she’s changed her last dirty diaper, she’s back to hitting that keyboard! Her short stories have been published in Oyster River Pages, Johnny America, Rock Salt Journal, and elsewhere.
