New Beginning 241

Me and my temper didn’t like boys who stood across the street and shot at me with a pea-shooter and hit me on the tender skin between my fingers with a goddamned hard pea.

I didn’t know or care anything about pea velocity, but I did care a lot about pain. When I was in physical pain, I wanted to share it. With the giver of it.

It was a reflex more than a response. I don’t even remember running across the street that day; it was something like magic. I just remember a sudden, stabbing pain between my fingers, a look across the street at the tall skinny asshole who I could see had inflicted my pain, standing there laughing at me, and then there I was, across the street, feeling the hard bone feeling of my knees on the bones of his hips after I jumped on him. Looking at him eye to eye, I felt the hardness of his belt dig into the skin of my thighs and my knees, but I didn’t care. Then there was the feeling of slick, stringy rope in my hand as I reared his head back with his own hair and punched him right in the middle of his long bony face. Hard.

It wasn't long before a noisy circle formed around us, drawn by the wails of this hooligan with the blood and snot pouring out of his broken nose. It was Jimmy Simmons, the scourge of our town. Everyone hated him, and with good reason: it was Jimmy Simmons who farted in the library and cut through people's backyards and sang out of tune in Sunday choir. And now, the pea shooter. The final straw.

I gave the bastard one last hard kick in the ribs, sending him slumping back to the ground with a grunt. He lay there, sobbing. I wiped my hands on his shirt.

An old woman shuffled forward. It was Mrs. Nelson, whose flower garden had been walked through. “Bless you, Sister,” she said.

“Peace be with you,” I replied, and continued on my way to the convent.


Opening: Robin Sinnott.....Continuation: ril