Free Brutal Youth by Anthony Breznican Page B

started a recess ritual of capturing freshman guys and swinging them by their ankles around the parking lot. They liked to make the human pinwheels slam into each other.
    Anxiety had overtaken the newcomers. Everyone knew about the hazing, but no one was sure what to do about it, or how bad it would get. “Mr. Zimmer said if we just go along with it, they’ll get bored,” Green said. “And it won’t last long.”
    “Nuh-uh, it lasts all year,” said another kid, J. R. Picklin, a self-professed graffiti artist who bragged that he spelled his name JayArr when he tagged objects around town. “And at the end of the year, there’s this big gathering where they put you on a stage and really fuck you up.”
    “What do they make you do?” said a small voice. It was a girl, the only one at an empty table next to the one jammed with boys. The girl was tiny and abnormally thin, with a narrow wedge-shaped face that almost put her eyes on opposite sides of her head, like a fish. Her whitish blond hair fell in short, straight lines and she breathed through drooped lips. A small gold cross dangled from her neck, like the bell you’d attach to a cat.
    JayArr shrugged at her. “It’s some end-of-the-year picnic thing. I heard from my older brother that they march you out in front of the crowd, and everybody’s chanting and yelling shit at you, and throwing stuff. And you’re, like, the entertainment.”
    Stein asked, “So what? You sing a song or tootle on a kazoo, or something?”
    “That’s not scary. Just sounds lame,” Davidek said.
    “Yeah, but then they pull down your pants or make you wear girl’s underwear or put ants down your shirt while you’re doing it,” JayArr emphasized. “My brother says there’s no mercy.”
    “They can’t do any of that,” Davidek said. “The teachers wouldn’t let them do that.”
    The fish-faced girl spoke softly again. “They did it to Jesus on the crucifixion.…” But the weird religious invocation just made everybody squirm.
    “All seniors got their asses decapitated when they were freshmen, and it boils in them for years. Now they’re gonna give it back, ” JayArr said. “My brother and his friends got stomped all year long. Then came the big finale—this picnic, which is so bad, they need to have it at a park away from school grounds, just so St. Mike’s can’t get sued, or something. The teachers pretend they don’t even know about it.”
    “So what exactly did your brother say happened?” Davidek asked, wondering what his own brother, the marine deserter, could have told him about all this—if he were around.
    “My brother and some other guys got covered in chocolate sauce and whip cream and had cherries dumped on their head. The sicko seniors turned them into a damned banana split! I’m not joking. All the people in the audience were pelting them with fruit and nuts and shit.”
    JayArr crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair. “And when my brother got to be a senior, you better believe he and his friends did the exact same thing to their freshmen. It’s called revenge, dudes.”
    “Except the guys your brother squirted chocolate sauce on weren’t the guys who did anything to him,” Stein pointed out. “Sounds to me like he got his just desserts. ” He leaned back, smiling proudly, awaiting accolades from the table for his cleverness—but nobody got it.
    “I think you’re getting hung up on the banna split thing,” JayArr said.
    Stein rolled his eyes. “No, I mean, what your brother did to those freshmen is not revenge. It just means your brother is a dickhead, same as the guys who did it to him for no good reason. Karma just happened to catch up with him ahead of time.”
    JayArr squinted. “What the hell’s karma ?”
    Stein considered explaining, then shrugged. “You’ll know it when you see it, pal.”
    At the head of the table, the large blue-eyed boy who always sat in the back row of class exhaled a loud, bored sigh. He was