The sky is grey, the community centre is quiet and in front of me stands Basil Harmony.
Muscular body, long dirty blond hair and chistled face. He’s charming towards the popular girls and teachers, rude to everyone else; picking victims to bully who’s not part of his group and ignores the rest when they address him. Six months ago, Harmony raped his neighbor and my girlfriend Cecilia, and threaten to kill her if she went to the police. If there was one person who deserved to go to hell it was him.
Two nights ago she came to me crying, and told me everything, Cecilia says she couldn’t take it anymore but couldn’t do anything.
Every time she sees him, she shakes. At night she sees his house lights on and can’t sleep. Once she woke up and heard sounds coming from his house, she thinks he’s raping others. Sometimes when she leaves the house she would see him from the side window, watching her.
Now she’s afraid to go to school, her grades are dropping. She no longer has the same smile as before. The smile that captured my heart.
Two days ago, I bought a gun.
Yesterday, my friendly nature allowed me to partner with Basil for a project. He knows I’ll do most of the work.
He calls my name and smiles, "Yo Daren, you got the papers, I forgot mine."
He thinks I’m his friend.
Saying nothing, I put on a smile and walk up to him.
"I have everything, Basil."
Everything to end your life.
To judge an enemy’s reaction time, you need to know his speed. So I pretend to throw my bag at his face, Basil flinches, hands over his head. I smirk, I wonder if I should laugh for the times he laughed at others.
In my childish delight I fail to see his foot lurching towards mine. His movement is quick, faster then I expected. I fail to move. He stamps his heel on my foot, I let out a short scream. Losing my balance, I fall on one knee, bruising my ankle. He snarls, it scares me, then he laughs and reluctantly I laugh. Basil offers his hand, I take it and stand up. He throws a punch, I block using my hand, then I wave my hand and blow on my fingers pretending as if I were hurt. His laugh becomes louder. He drapes his shoulder around my head as if he were saying I win. We enter the library, he trots and I limp. Left foot hurt, right knee bruised.
I work hard, he doesn’t. He plops on two chairs, feet on the desk and reads comics ripping out the pages he likes and stuffing them into his pockets. But when I take a break to play robot unicorn he starts spazzing at me to work and points out how he would love to have my girlfriend using the most offensive vulgarism. The creep. I just pray I’ll be able to cleanse my mind when this is over.
We finish late, 7 o’clock. He apologizes for the incident earlier but I know he’s not sincere. He tells me he won’t beat me up if I don’t tell my sister. Can’t believe how she can date someone like this. I accept telling him I know a shortcut to my house. We take our bags and leave.
He walks fast knowing that my knee and foot hurt. In fact, since he doesn’t know the way, he comes back and tries to trip me. Sometimes it works but I catch my balance. When I wince in pain, his smile gets wider. I feel my foot, throbbing, swelling, but I had planned to do it today.
We leave the sidewalk and enter a neighborhood of old abandoned crumpled houses, some of them standing up fine, others just piles of brick and dust. The alleyways between houses are safe enough to cross so we do. We proceed over a knocked-down fence, its cracked beams lying flat over the dusty ground and I start walking into a alley where I know is a dead end. One which I created for this purpose.
