He was determined to find Jesse during lunch. The moment the bell rang, he beelined it from his chemistry class, through the crowds of students rushing to temporary freedom. He frantically searched for the tall, lean figure clad in a dark blue tracksuit, russet brown hair tied into a messy braid, but after a full lap around the building came up empty-handed. Only then did he realise where his feet had carried him. The boys' locker room loomed ahead, familiar and instinctive, the route worn into muscle memory after years of pep talks and peeling himself out of sweat-soaked football gear. He slowed, half-turning back, then stopped. Jesse was clearly avoiding him like the plague, and knowing her, he wouldn't put it past her to hide out in the last place anyone else would look. Might as well check.
Adam was carefully navigating the maze of lockers when he heard a sharp slam that he immediately attributed to someone being shoved into a metal locker door. Snippets of conversation reached him as he approached with a growing sense of irritation. He had no time to deal with this classic case of bullying, something he'd thought was a relic of the 90s.
"Who do you think you are, talking to me like that in public, you pansy fuck!" Marty Spencer's low, furious tone stopped Adam cold. The linebacker on his football team was known to be impulsive and prone to displays of machismo, but this was the first time Adam had heard him sound so vitriolic.
"Oh, come on, Spencer. Really? Harassing the new students during orientation on the first day of the semester? Aren't you busy enough as a senior to still do this shit?" Adam suppressed a gasp because that was unmistakably the signature sarcastic lilt of Dylan.
"What, you theatre freaks forgot how the school works over the summer? Just because you have Saint Adam's protection doesn't mean you can open your mouth whenever you want." Adam heard a distinct loud clap as Marty continued, "Besides, I hear he got himself a hot cheerleader babe, and I am confident he is gonna drop you like a sack of shit anytime now. And when he does…"
Shaking himself out of the momentary stupor, Adam turned the corner and rounded on Marty and other members of the defensive line, Kyle and Andy, huddling around Dylan, whose cheek and lips were beginning to swell from what seemed like a hard slap to the face. Making good use of his six-foot height, Adam placed a hand on Marty's shoulder and roughly turned the boy around to face him. The entire group froze in place, and Adam saw out of the corner of his eye that the other two were nervously exchanging glances. Marty seemed surprised to see him, but didn't back down. Adam needed to teach him a lesson once and for all.
"Marty, I am very disappointed in you," he began, and when the boy puffed up his chest to begin talking back, Adam squeezed his shoulder hard enough for him to wince in surprise. "I think I told you at the end of last year that as your captain, I will not tolerate any unseemly behaviour from any member of the team. Isn't that right, guys?" He directed the last towards Kyle and Andy, who immediately began to fervently nod their heads and back away.
He felt Marty shake under his palm as he was whispering something incoherent but undeniably vile through his teeth. "What was that, Marty? It is impolite to mumble…" Adam began when he was interrupted by his hand being slapped away.
"I said, FUCK YOU!" Marty roared in his face, making the other boys jump back.
"The both of you are fucking SOPHOMORES! By all rights, you should be grovelling, and begging at the seniors' feet and you DARE to raise your damn heads to us!?" he hissed while closing in on Adam.
"I have tolerated you long enough, Saint Adam. Your holier-than-thou act in front of the coach and the other kids may fool them into giving you the captain's position, but I KNOW who you REALLY are!" Marty spouted into Adam's face while poking him in the chest with his finger and looking more feral by the minute.
"You pretend to be better than everyone else, while in reality you want power and bitches, just like the rest of us!" He spread his arms and backed off, making a smug expression. "I ain't afraid of you. Never really was. I was keeping it civil until now because the team was winning and I didn't want to make waves, but you and your fucking little boyfriend over here have been getting way too brazen lately and needed to be put in your place."
The locker room fell into an uneasy silence. Dylan was looking between Adam and Marty with a concerned, amused and slightly horrified look. Surprisingly, Adam didn't feel threatened. Maybe it was the realisation that after this summer, he had about an inch on the well-built boy before him, or that he could almost see a thin veil of fear and insecurity behind the mask of rage, manifesting as a light green hue around Marty's head. Probably a trick of the bad fluorescent lighting. Or the chemicals in his frosted tips reacting with the fumes of bullshit coming off of him. Adam blinked, and the hue was gone.
Adam really wasn't one for confrontation. He didn't want the captain's spot, but being an excellent quarterback and generally quite calm and friendly, he was unanimously voted in by the other kids, even while being a sophomore. Unanimously, except for Marty, apparently.
He usually dissolved conflicts by giving way, patting shoulders, and smiling amicably. But looking at the blooming red bruise on Dylan's face, he felt a strange burning sensation at the base of his spine. A new feeling reared its nascent head and flowed through his bones. The constant friendly smile that was permanently stamped on his face peeled away, replaced by a simmering calm. He turned towards Marty impassively.
"Did I hear correctly that you failed your Physics final last year?"
Everyone in the room startled at that, and Adam had to hold himself back from breaking character and smiling at Dylan's what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about expression.
Marty looked around at his two lackeys and then back at Adam. "What the fuck does that have to do with anything…."
"I believe you are aware that while the school gives concessions to sports teams with regard to attendance and grades, there is a bare minimum requirement of passing all of your classes, so that you are not benched for the next season. Now I know that Mr. Elskin has given you the entire summer to prepare for the exam you are taking later this week, but let's both be honest here. You haven't studied for it, and I am pretty sure you won't pass it once again." He paused for dramatic effect, hoping that Dylan would appreciate the showmanship. And to give himself time to revel in the strange pleasure of the brutal truth.
"Now, while that alone may not do much, I happen to know that this is not a one-off for you, Marty, and that you have been a recipient of preferential treatment for some time now. What do you think would happen when I bring these concerns of unfairness, the erosion of our moral values and other such sentiments to the rest of the team? All for one singular player. Who could easily be replaced by, oh, I don't know, Peterson?"
"THE FUCK!? PETERSON is a talentless, weaselly SHIT…"
"A shit with a solid 3.5 GPA and not a single misdemeanor to his name." Adam felt the thrill of cutting off Marty mid-sentence once again, like a matador flipping the red cloth right from out of the bull's charging horns. The power of just standing there, appearing perfectly calm while Marty looked like he had been slapped around verbally, was exhilarating. "While he may not have your talent, he is a team player and causes no problems."
"I am literally right here…" A tiny voice from Andy barely made its presence known before Marty grabbed Adam by the shirt collar, creasing his immaculate ironing.
"You wouldn't DARE…" Marty hissed, spit peppering Adam's chin as he got right up in his face. "You are throwing this whole season if you manage to fool the coach into benching me!"
"You may be right," Adam responded, unsurprised at tiny gasps from the peanut gallery, and continued, "However, I advise you to use that single brain cell you seem to possess and think about this. If we lose this season, it will be very disappointing, but most of us on the team have another year to regain our glory. You, on the other hand, have only one hope to ever go to college, and that is if the recruiters see you play."
Marty suddenly released him and began to back away, an expression of horror plastered on his face. " You… you have no proof! Fucking line up the entire school and ask them to testify! Not ONE of them will squeal!"
Adam continued while closing the distance between them, the slithering burning thing inside his spine slowly crawling its way up. "That's the thing, Marty. If anyone else brought these concerns to the school, you might have gotten away with it. But if it was Saint Adam, moral role model, academic achiever, and overall a good Christian boy, well…"
He let the silence drag for emphasis, still staring deep into Marty's eyes, letting the tension cook. He felt like a king cobra made of molten metal had used his backbone to rear its head, watching the prey before him through his own eyes. He didn't want to think about what he would do if Marty made any sudden movements. And it appeared that some primal instinct in Marty feared the same. After a few seconds of a heated internal battle, Marty spat in his direction and began to back away, still maintaining eye contact. "This isn't over, Penhalyn!"
When it was just the two of them left in the locker room and the door slammed on the other end, Dylan dog whistled after Marty and said, "Saint Adam, more like Inquisitor Penhalyn to me!"
"Are you ok?" Adam immediately turned Dylan's face to see the growing bruise. He could still feel the primal tension keeping a hold of his body, now tinged with an undercurrent of anger. "I am sorry, I should have intervened sooner, before he…"
"I'm fine, man." Dylan gently patted his hand away looking at him with an odd expression. "It'll heal by the end of the day. For a linebacker, he has very soft hands. I should ask him for the brand of his moisturiser."
"How are you laughing at this?" Adam was startled at the rise in his own voice, which in turn caused Dylan's smile to dim a bit. "Do you have any idea what they would have done to you if I didn't wander in here?"
"Let's see… probably slapped me around a bit more, a few kicks here and there, and the piece de resistance would have been an even chance of a swirlie or a purple nurple. You know, the TV classics." Dylan was mock-ruminating while straightening his outfit. "But knowing Marty, it would probably be the latter. Which would have been a bitch in this shirt. It's a denim blend."
Something in Dylan's flippant tone didn't sit right with Adam. After that last comment, it suddenly dawned on him.
"Wait… has he done this before?"
Dylan hesitated almost imperceptibly briefly in the middle of picking up his satchel from the floor. The damn cobra in his throat began vibrating and spilling something that felt like molten gold into his gut, melting him from the inside out. This feeling of indignation and rage at the unfairness of this world. This putrefying world, where the powerful harassed those weaker simply because they could. Where those in power protected their own, rather than mete out justice. Where rotten people got to live long, and wealthy lives, and purely good were taken before their time by an incurable disease. Where men like him simply walked on by and let the river take its course.
A frown of concern crept into Dylan's expressive face and Adam had no idea what he looked like at that moment, but it was enough for his friend to place his hands on Adam's biceps and rub gently, like calming a spooked horse.
"Hey, it's ok. I'm fine. I honestly don't think he will bother me or anyone else again. You truly put the fear of God into him. Well, more like fear for his future, but you know what I mean."
Adam nodded, feeling the weird burning sensation retreat from his throat back to its apparent lair at the bottom of his spine. He was feeling unmoored and unlike himself, but standing here with Dylan made everything settle down and smooth over like it always did. He was still angry, but no longer in that primal, dangerous way.
He was feeling bereft when Dylan finally released his hold. "Why are you here, by the way? The locker rooms aren't open yet. Marty had magicked a key from somewhere so…"
"Oh, shoot!" Adam exclaimed. "I was looking for Jesse. Did you see her today?"
Dylan averted his eyes subtly, but years of close-knit friendship made Adam read that tell instantly.
"Is she avoiding me? I just want to talk?"
Those two didn't usually hang out on their own. Sometimes, Adam thought that Jesse was almost hostile to Dylan, more so than she was to everyone else on the planet except for Adam. Something had clearly happened in Burkittsville when he was away for the summer, and it had to be big enough to warrant this level of secrecy. Or maybe…
"Did I do something?"
Dylan whipped towards him, flabbergasted, "Wait, wait. Why do you think you did something?"
"Why else would she ghost me?" Adam replied a little petulantly.
After a pause of confused silence, Dylan suddenly appeared to realise something.
"Holy crap, you don't know!"
"Don't know what?"
"Dude, do you even check your phone? Or the news? Or literally talk to anyone in town?"
This amplified Adam's concern tenfold. "The news? What is this about?"
Dylan shifted in place and rubbed the back of his head. He looked extremely uncomfortable.
"Listen." Adam continued, "I was on the road all summer and then at camp. They don't let us have internet there for some reason, and after that, I was so preoccupied with the first day of school I…"
"It's ok, man, I get it. You are a Mormon." Dylan joked as he looked in the direction of the doors leading to the football field. He sighed.
"It figures that out of everyone at this school, you would be the last one to know. Saint Adam indeed."
He shifted from one foot to another, rubbing his palms, considering his options. "Ok. I don't want to talk about it, because I think you should hear this from Jesse herself. While I don't particularly like her, and am low-key scared of her twisting my neck one of these days, if I make another joke she does not like…" He paused, his unique eyes – one hazel, one grey – staring deep into Adam's soul. "She is a good friend to you." Dylan said while leading Adam to the doors.
"Last time I saw her, she was heading to the equipment shed outside. It's private enough for this conversation."
Adam pushed the doors open and caught a glimpse of a navy blue-striped tracksuit in the distance.
"Thanks, Dylan!"
"What are friends for?"