VERY MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR A FOX OF STORMS AND STARLIGHT. It’s a minor explanatory thing that comes out in chapter 9 of Fox Book, which provides motivation for a major plot point that happens in chapter 12 (there are 49 chapters).
CONTENT NOTIFICATION: Kevin’s point-of-view scenes have a lot of swearing. Sorry-not-sorry. But maybe don’t read if the f-word offends you.
Also, this is an unedited draft. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you spot typos etc, but yo: unedited draft, so read accordingly.
Catch up on Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6.
7: Kevin
Tuesday. The school looms in front of me, all pretentious red brick and white window frames; you can practically hear it fucken screaming about how permanent it is, about how this is what a real building should look like. Fucken British.
I kick a stone on the pavement as I stare at the building, grey clouds still muttering overhead, another storm passing over on the heels of the one last night. The air’s sharp with ozone and wet dirt and I know it’s stupid to want to run through a bunch of tall trees when there’s lightning around but fuck, I want to run through the bush more than anything right now. Wind on my face, eucalypts in my lungs, land beneath my feet…
I inhale deeply, and walk into school. I’m Snake House, doncha know, and you could cut teeth on the ambition that burns deep inside my slithery soul.
My nails bite at my palms as I stride down the hallway, dodging students left and right, jaw set, shoulders tight.
Just make it through the day.
Just make it through the day.
It never use to be like this, not so bad. Yeah, there were always the dickheads that’d try to fuck with you and all, but mostly I coped with school okay.
Until last year.
Dad left.
Nan died.
Mum lost her job for a bit.
You wouldn’t fucken read about it.
And, I don’t know, it throws everything into relief, you know? Fuck. Messes with your priorities.
I still can’t tell if that’s good or bad.
I know one thing, though: the stink of the corridor where the Year 10 lockers are is bad today. Seventy or so of us crammed into a regular-sized hallway, back to back as we jostle and elbow to get to the wooden lockers that line the walls, the poor fuckers with the bottom lockers crouching down and practically being shoved in with their bags and books by the privileged ones with the top lockers. Stinks of sweat and cheap deodorant, wet clothes and mud, musty and mouldy and festering, and what the fuck am I doing here really?
I slam my locker door shut—“Hey, watch it, dickhead,” the kid next to me says as I nearly jam his fingers. “Fuck off,” I say without feeling as I extricate myself from the scrum.—and breathe.
Breathing’s fucken good.
I like air.
And there, down the hallway, hair done up in two lil tails that trail in plaits down to her shoulders, there’s the Sun.
I want to run to her. Just fucken kick everyone else out of the way and run to her, put my head on her shoulder and hold her tight.
I’ve never wanted that before.
A couple of kids in my peripheral vision are shoving and bunting.
I’d like to shove them, right out of the way so they can stop being a distraction from the one thing I really want right now, the one thing I need more than air…
“Stop!” The high-pitched squeak is barely audible in the hubbub of everyone getting ready for class. It’s only because I was already pissed off at that particular knot of kids for distracting me from Sunny that I notice it.
Ah, fuck. It’s Dickwater and his mate Jimmy, and fuck if they ain’t got a Year 7 midget there and are tryna stuff him into one of the bottom lockers. The fuck?
I actually shake my head, because if you’re gonna be a dick about things, I feel like you should at least have the courtesy to be a clever dick, you know? But these fuckers wouldn’t understand subtlety if it hit them on the head with a fucken rock.
“Hey,” I said, stepping closer. “He said stop.”
Dickwater straightens, six-two already and lanky as fuck but covered in lean muscle, staring down his straight, white, middle-class nose at me and raising an eyebrow. “What’s it to you?”
I shrug. My pulse speeds. Fifty-fifty this’s gonna get ugly, and already the kids on either side are shifting away, studiously not looking.
Whole fucken world seems to have majored in Studiously Not Looking, know what I’m saying. Shit.
Anyway, I fold my arms, cock an eyebrow back at Dickwater, and jerk my chin up. Tall and muscled he may be, but he’s never really had to fight. Honestly, I could take him with my eyes closed. “What’s it to me?” I say, repeating his question with a lil lilt on the word me. I smile through narrow eyes. “Justice.”
The Year 7 kid—name might be Ethan, I dunno for sure—is staring up at us with brown eyes so round and wide they look like they’re gonna pop right fucken out. Kid has no chill, which is probably why Dickwater & Co. targeted him in the first place.
For a split instant I consider walking away, because no joke the kid needs a lesson in chilling the fuck out.
But I can’t do it.
I was absent the day they offered the Studiously Not Looking class, apparently.
Meanwhile, all this is going on and a crowd is gathering around us. Or, not so much gathering, as the crowd that was here for their lockers is subtly rearranging themselves to maximise their view and minimise their involvement—or the likelihood of collateral damage, whatever form that may come in.
Jimmy, with his mouse-brown hair and his stupid pretty eyes, still has a hand twisted up in the collar of maybe-Ethan’s polo collar, and the other hand clenched around the kid’s wrist.
I purse my lips. He’s got better technique than Dickwater, and even though he weighs half as much, he’d be the one to watch for in a fight.
Dickwater narrows his scummy eyes at me. “You’d better keep your nose out from where it’s not wanted,” he says in a low voice that I guess he thinks is fucken threatening or something.
I roll my eyes.
I’m so done with bad drama.
(I should know, I’ve caused enough of it myself.)
“How’s this, then,” I said, mild as you fucken like. “Let the kid go, and we’ll pretend I never stuck my nose in. Cool?”
Dickwater shifts, body tensing, telegraphing his desire to hit me loudly enough he might as well have fucken shouted, “Come here and let me hit you!”
I mean, hold on, he might shout that yet, he’s fucken dumb enough. Amateur.
I let a lazy smile unfurl across my face. “Aw, big boy’s afraid to hit me, is hit? Afraid you’re gonna get hurt?”
“Rick, careful,” Jimmy intones from where he still has the Year 7 pinned against the door of the bottom locker. He’s staring at Dickwater intently; he knows as well as I do that good ol’ Dickie has a temper problem, enough that if he’d been marginally less white, marginally less connected, he’d’ve had his folks called in to discuss mandatory counselling long before now.
Obviously, I have no problem using his fucken issues to my own advantage.
“Cat got your tongue?” Cliche, but unless you spend hours practising, you gotta just take what your subconscious serves up in the middle of a hot situation, right?
“Rick.” Jimmy again, starting to sound tense.
“Ohhhh,” I drawl. “Jimmy’s got your tongue. Hope he does good things with it, keeps you up at night.”
Bam. Dickwater’s lost it and comes swinging at me. He’s full of blind rage, though, not thinking clearly.
I duck easily. Give him a love tap on the chin as he stumbles past.
Jimmy’s leaping up. Launching himself past me at Dickie.
I laugh.
Dickwater gets in a right hook.
I rock back on my heels and feel the wind as it swings past.
Fucken moron.
The maybe-Ethan is still on the floor behind me, frozen, bug-eyed. “Get up, kid,” I snarl. “Get out of here.”
He stares at me for a sec while Jimmy tries to wrestle Dickwater back, then jackrabbits to his feet.
And, stupid kid that he is, he tries to flee right past where Jimmy’s still fighting to restrain his mate.
Dickwater lashes out at him. Catches him on the ear. The kid goes down.
The whole corridor freezes, collective breath held, and even Dickwater stills in Jimmy’s grip.
I step up to Dickie. Not nose-to-nose, because he’s got a good half a foot of height on me, but near’s I can. “That,” I say, “was crossing a line.”
And staring right into his big green eyes, telegraphing nothing because I know fucken better than that, I drive a solid left hook right into his jaw.
And of course, it’s at that fucken moment that Mr Reiger appears in the crowd.
Fuck me. Another week of fucken detention.
Keep reading: Chapter 8