Free Lemon by Cordelia Strube Page A

wall. Her father
shows up just as she’s fitting in the door. She doesn’t see him because she’s busy constructing. He stands watching her, his white T-shirt and pants smeared with paint. He’s pretty stoic so I can only imagine what’s going on in there. When she sees him, she lights up like a firefly and flits toward him. He lifts her up and holds her to him, hard. They don’t move. I can see her knuckles whitening where she’s clinging to him. Both of them have their eyes closed tight, shutting out the pain.

9
    A nother sparrow has been mauled by the cats. Drew was holding it in her hands to keep it warm because she’d read somewhere that you have to keep them warm after they’ve been traumatized. This meant Drew couldn’t do anything but sit around holding the oiseau for a few hours. She told me to mash banana for it, and offer it sunflower seeds. It wouldn’t eat anything. I put water in a bottle cap but it wouldn’t drink. It just stared at us with tiny tortured eyes. At one point it chirped and even hopped around the kitchen for two seconds but it was obvious it couldn’t fly. I read somewhere that you’re not supposed to handle birds because their bones are so fragile they break. I didn’t mention this because Drew had already handled it and I didn’t want her thinking she’d hastened its demise. I started thinking about what I wanted to do to the cats, burn them or club them to death or shove them in a box and drop them in the lake. Drew kept holding her finger against her lips to remind me that we had to be quiet around the bird. That’s when I left. I couldn’t stand watching it die.
    For this reason I am up a tree minding my own beeswax. To my dismay, Larry Bone and a few other cretins have shown up for a fist fight. Ever since they saw some movie with Brad or somebody forming a club where guys go at it bare-knuckled, Bone and company have been doing it. The more blood the better. They video the squirmishes and post them on YouTube with Bonehead giving a play-by-play like some sportscaster. The school knows about it but there’s nothing they can do because it’s off the school premises. Normally I wouldn’t sweat witnessing the dullards playing gladiators. But it’s a little different now that I’ve kicked Bone in the face. If he sees the ‘fucking freak’ he might just haul me down by my boots and swing at me. So I do my stick-insect impression while some kind of cyclone is whipping around inside me. Slade the blow-job freak seems to be top dog at the moment, dancing around, flashing his paws. I don’t know how long these dolts can keep at it. A couple of them already have bleeding faces. The majority clutch their hands after a few jabs, no doubt trying to compute why it hurts when it looks like such a blast in the movie. My mind’s not actually scared of these halfwits but my body’s telling a different story. Some kind of animal thing. It wants to take off but my mind advises it that they’ll swarm me on sight. And of course I need to whiz.
    A wannabe steps into the action. I’ve seen him before, genuflecting in front of King Jake - the rap-addicted future insurance salesman - who is not actually fighting himself but allowing his majestic presence to heighten the stakes. ‘You can do it, man,’ he tells the wannabe, I think his name is Walter, who looks ready to crap his pants. He hops around Slade who lets him flail for a few minutes before he starts slugging him. The actual sound of flesh hitting flesh is different from the movies, messier with more tone modulation depending on which part of the anatomy’s getting pounded. Obviously the head sounds sharper, bone to bone, but the torso, particularly the gut, sounds dull. In movies they slam baseball bats into sides of beef for the fight effects. Most of these boys are more flab than meat.
    Walter buckles and Slade slams the