BECOMING SUPRA

Chapter 6

RAË

The next evening, while eating dinner, we heard a chorus of shouts, "Fight, fight, fight!"

Sakura and Shazia abruptly left their food trays and followed the noise. Steered by the chorus, I followed them outside to the basketball courts.

It was Greg, he had his hand tightly gripped around Æsh's neck.

Neel appeared from the crowd of spectators and whispered, "Æsh accidently tripped Greg during the basketball game and now Greg has got him in a choke hold." Greg jerked Æsh's neck. Æsh brought up his hand and clasped onto Greg's wrist. Greg pushed him back. Æsh didn't react.

That's the first time I noticed Æsh's skin-coloured wrist band around his left wrist.

"Greg has to pick on the new kid," said Shazia.

"He always does this," said Lydia.

Greg suddenly grabbed Æsh's shoulder and tried throwing him onto the floor. A punch was thrown, a scuffle broke out. Æsh's t-shirt was torn apart. His torso now bare for all to see.

Wide-eyed, Sakura nudged me, "Prison scars," she whispered.

A jagged scar cut across from his liver to his spine. It was evident. He'd been knifed.

Someone shouted from the crowd, "Punch him, Æsh."

"B'literate him!"

Greg threw a punch, Æsh got hit beneath his eye.

"Why doesn't he give it back?" asked Sakura.

"One blow is all it'll take," said Neel. "Æsh is so much bigger than him."

I looked at Æsh, his eyes were ablaze, his muscles shaking, his hands curled in tight fists. He was heaving - at first I thought, angrily, but it seemed more like he was trying to reign himself in. I watched him waver from incensed to indifferent, enraged to calm, till he became absolutely inert as though on a fulcrum, orienting a decision.

Greg pushed Æsh with force. As he stumbled back, Æsh's legs buckled but he quickly recovered his balance. Then he straightened up, turned and walked away.

"Loozzaa!" yelled Greg. "Candy-ass!" he yelled over that. "Paper tiger!" taunts that fell deaf on Æsh's ears.

"The almost of almosts," said Neel, watching Æsh leave.

"The brink of brinks," sighed Shazia.

Æsh had an intelligence of violence, as though he knew that blueprint well. Would he strike later or circumvent the conflict all together? His scarred torso. His measured response. Were they prison lessons after all?