Part One
Restoration
Chapter
One
Justice
Trapped
1
I
don’t like to run. It’s not something I
enjoy, nor am I particularly good at it. I have zero stamina, and even the
shortest sprint can leave me panting desperately for air. Artie loved to do cross country, but not me. I tried out for the football team during my
Freshman year, and when I found out the first practices were all running, I
quickly switched to acting, trying out for a play that the Drama Department was
casting.
Nevertheless,
Doctor Duncan, I ran. I had no
choice. My life was at stake, as
hopeless as it seemed. Because chasing
me down was the state track champion, Mark Granite.
I
raced to the door leading out of the equipment room, the one that would lead me
to the hall separating the gym and the locker rooms. I flung it open and felt myself being pulled
back. Mark had grabbed the back of my
shirt, pulling me towards him.
My
heart pounding, my blood surging, I didn’t think. I reacted with pure instinct. As I was pulled toward him, I came in faster
than he was expecting. He had his bloodied
knife held high, ready to plunge into me, and I reared my elbow up, smashing
into his nose with all the force I could muster.
He
screamed in pain. “You Martian freak! I’m
gonna make you suffer!” He said this while
grabbing his nose, blood spurting, reddening his left hand. He started to shriek more, but I didn’t
stay. I took off into the gym hall,
screaming, “Help! Help!”
Before
I could make it to the student lobby, where even if no one was up, I might make
enough noise to attract attention in the nearby sleeping rooms, or some of the
night staff of our makeshift medical center, before all that, the fastest man
on campus caught up with me. He flung me
between a row of lockers.
He
loomed over me, his eyes aflame, his mouth in a sneer as blood dripped into it,
his teeth a bloody red, the corpuscles dripping from his chin. Worst of all, the knife was still in his
hand, still coated in Mrs. Forsyth’s blood.
I
did my best to crab crawl away, but my brain’s impulses were not connecting to
my legs, and I could only move inches.
“Know
this before I kill you,” said Mark Granite. “I’m going to kill your father,
just like I gutted your girlfriend. Then
I’m going to take your sister back to our party room, and we’re all going to…”
“Mark! What the heck’s going on?” From out of nowhere, it was Wilbur Jones, my
student council nemesis, our popular academic and athletic leader, standing at
the beginning of the locker row.
At
this point, had Mark Granite not lost his cool, if he had any hold on rationality,
he might have been able to squirm out of his situation. He could have somehow pinned the murder on
me, could have lied his butt off. It
might not have worked, but given how he had gotten away with Lisa’s murder,
given his connections and protection to Mr. Tate (our new principal, replacing
my father), maybe he could defy the odds again.
Instead,
he screamed out at Wilbur and slashed the knife at him, leaving a massive slash
across Wilbur’s torso.
I
looked at this awful sight in horror, still unable to move.
“Oh,
my god, Wilbur! You’re bleeding!” Three of Wilbur’s friends came up. All of them had been using the gym late at
night, trying to get in some weight lifting and resistance training (I didn't
understand this at the time, but it’s what I found out later).
Wilbur
fell back, but his friends caught him.
He pointed down the row of lockers. “He…he…cut me.”
One
of his buddies, Paul Buckman, said, “Marty Martian? Marty did this?”
Mark
tried to tame his blood lust enough to think his way out of this terrible
box. “Y-yes! It was Marty!
He did this! You know how much he
and Wilbur don’t like each other.”
They
looked at him skeptically, observing that it was Mark that was holding the knife. A light went off, and Mark realized his
error. He held up the knife. “I just took it from him! See!” He held it higher for them to notice. “Now, he can't hurt anybody else.”
One
of Wilbur’s buddies had the sense to leave.
“I’m getting help from the nurses!”
The other two stayed with Wilbur.
“N-no,”
Wilbur croaked out. “T-that’s not what…”
“Now,
are you sure, Wilbur?” He looked coldly
at him. “Think carefully before you
speak. You don’t want to say anything you’re
not sure of.”
The
implication was clear. Mark had the
connections and ability to carry out threats that could make Wilbur’s life a
living hell.
So,
we reached another make or break moment.
Wilbur held no love for me, nor I for him. It would be so easy to throw me under the bus,
become triumphant in our long-running rivalry.
Wilbur’s friends would echo whatever he said. Mark and Robert would testify against me.
What
would he say?
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