Bill’s nostrils flared like he was a bull getting ready to charge. The top corner of his lip pulled up in a snarl. His mad bloodshot eyes throbbed.

“S-sorry, Bill…” I said, wringing my hands, temporarily forgetting that I had powers. “I didn’t realise Sam was your girlfriend… I didn’t mean anything by it…” I was already on the back foot because of my embarrassment at having just given Sam the dud birthday present.

Around us at the bottom of the garden a ring of eyes watched in the light from the house, waiting to see what would happen next: Sam, Bill’s friends Donny, Duke, and Rob, the people Sam had been talking to, the new folks who had come over. Still no Ali though, as far as I could see. Everyone had stopped talking. We had an audience—again.

“Give me that,” said Bill calmly, holding out his hand to Sam who was not saying anything either and had gone even whiter than usual. She took the CD-gift I had just given her from the top of the beer keg and handed it to him obediently.

Bill looked down at the case in his hands, an ape examining a newly discovered object, trying to identify whether it was a threat. I could almost see the cogs grinding in his tiny brain. I noticed that his hands had healed quite well. There were no bandages on them and the bruising had mostly gone down, though there was still some scarring and evidence of stitches around his knuckles.

After a moment, he dropped the CD on the grass, lifted his sports trainer, and stamped on it. The plastic case broke with a crunch and little fragments of it pinged off to the sides as he stamped again and again, driving it further into the soil below, putting his full weight into it. I heard the CD itself snapping too.

“Oooooooo,” went up the familiar sound from the audience, eerily quieter than usual.

Bill drew up close to me, sticking his thick-set jaw right in my face. I could smell the beer on his breath like some kind of Neanderthal perfume.

Remember you have powers! my brain finally came to my aid to remind me.

He spoke first in a low growl out of the corner of his mouth so that only I could hear him. “You ever pull anything like this again with my girl, any of my girls, and I’m going to kill you. You got that, weakling? I will kill you. Kill you dead.”

Well, that’s what ‘kill’ means, isn’t it? I wanted to say. ‘Kill you dead’ is just unnecessary repetition. But I didn’t. Instead, I tensed the muscles in my upper arms and legs, bracing myself for what was coming next.

Bill raised his voice now, speaking so that all of the assembled onlookers could hear. “You’re lucky I don’t just pound you into a paste right now, weakling. Coach says if I get in another fight with you I’m off the team. So unfortunately I can’t beat the shit out of you right now like you deserve.”

I exhaled. Phew. He must be scared after what happened last time in school. This crowd was even bigger than it had been then—he must want to save face. That was a relief. The doctor had said I wasn’t supposed to use my powers until I got the call from the government. At least this way I would avoid making a scene and getting into any further trouble. I didn’t want to jeopardise my standing with whatever department was meant to be getting in touch with me, and my future college tuition.

Bill turned his back on me, showing me the school logo on the back of his jacket, a half-diamond shield with stars and stripes on it, then went and stood next to Sam, wrapping his arm around her.

“‘Course,” he said, “just because I’m banned from kicking the shit out of you, doesn’t mean my boys are.”

What?

“’s’right,” said Donny Vickers, stepping forward out of the ring of eyes and smiling wickedly. “I think you’re in need of a good pounding, weakling.” Why wasn’t he scared of me? He had been there on that day when my powers first manifested; he had seen what happened to Bill when he tried to attack me. Maybe he had tricked himself into thinking it had been some kind of prank. Maybe he thought I had just gotten lucky somehow.

“Yeah, I’m a-thinking so too,” said Rob Packer with his Southern twang, and also stepped out of the circle, taking off his own sports jacket and leaving it in a heap on the grass.

Duke Samson and three more whose names I didn’t know stepped forward into the arena and grunted their assent as well, rolling up their sleeves and warming up their fists in their opposite hands. Click, click, went their knuckles as they cracked them in ritual preparation.

Ah, that’s why Donny doesn’t’ think he needs to be scared. It wasn’t just him who was going to try to whale on me. It was the whole frigging football team.

Everyone around went quiet for a moment. The only sound was the pulsing bass beat of the music coming from inside the house. Or is that my heartbeat? A fight outside of school. This was serious. This would have consequences.

“Bill, don’t!” said a desperate female voice. I was surprised that it came from Sam. “Please! He was only trying to be nice! He didn’t mean anything by it! I met him at the hospital and thought it might be fun if he came to the party!” She tried to step forward, but Bill held her back, restraining her with his tree-trunk arms.

“Heh, fun,” he said to her. “You were right, it will be fun—for us. Don’t worry, babe, this’ll be over soon. It’s a good thing he knows where the hospital is, ’cause he’s going to be spending a lot more time there.”

“I dunno, Bill...” said one of the generic high school teenagers from the audience. “I don’t think this is such a good idea... You guys could get in serious trouble…” He and a couple of others began to walk off.

“Aw, shuddup, Jamie,” said Bill to the objector. “This weakling disrepsected me, you heard him. He deserves everything that’s coming to him. That’s just the law of the jungle. Hey guys, where are you going? Stay and watch! This’ll be fun!” Bill began shaking his fists and chanting the refrain that was used in school whenever something like this happened—although nothing quite like this had ever happened before in school, as far as I knew. “Fight, fight, fight…”

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The other kids picked it up and the chant got louder and louder: “Fight, fight, FIGHT!” Apparently the blood-thirst in the audience was stronger than whatever reservations people might have.

Rob was the first to approach, a sadistic smile spreading on his dumb face under his military kid crew-cut. I don’t think he had been there on the day that my powers had shown up.

I had to think quickly. I thought about running, but the jocks would get to me first, and that would mean having to use my powers at least once to get past them. I didn’t have super speed, after all… Plus, even though I wasn’t meant to use my powers, a little part of me still wanted to stand up to them, not run and hide like a pathetic weakling coward…

Rob lunged towards me. I tried my hardest not to flinch, but old habits die hard even with powers, and I instinctively shut my eyes tight behind my glasses and put my arms up to cover my face.

Instead of taking a swing at me, though, Rob swung himself round behind me and hooked both of his hands under my armpits, locking his fingers behind my head, holding my arms up from behind me in a full-nelson hold.

I struggled on reflex and for a moment I broke the hold as easily as I might have shrugged myself out of a sweater, but then I remembered that I wasn’t meant to be using my powers so I let him get me back in his grip. I had to concentrate quite hard to stay limp and not draw on my strength to resist him. I didn’t want to hurt him.

Government call. College place. Don’t use your powers.

Donny stepped up next. He had decided to leave his football team jacket on. I guess he didn’t think I was worth the trouble. There was a deranged glint in his eyes above his crooked nose, broken-and-healed from football injuries. Was that just sadism, or was there the tiniest little hint of apprehension in there too?

“Let’s see you get out of this one, weakling,” he spat.

He drew back a fist and socked me hard in the stomach while Rob held me. I assumed the punch was hard—but I was only assuming; I couldn’t really tell. I sucked in my gut just at the instant he made contact, trying to take the force out of the blow so he wouldn’t hurt himself. At the same time, I made a grunting noise, trying to remember what sounds I would normally have made when I was being beaten up.

“Oof!” I pretended, and made my face twist up then go limp and open-mouthed, like I was reeling from pain.

“Oooo!” the audience responded, delighting in the violence. Sam gave a little whimper.

Donny grimaced and shook his hand. “Tough li’l bastard, aren’t you, weakling?”

Damn, misjudged it, I thought.

The other members of the football team stepped up and took turns punching me in the stomach. Each time I sucked it in, even more than I had the first time, and tried to make appropriate noises like the wind was being knocked out of me and my internal organs were being tenderised. The crowd continued to croon.

“Please, stop it!” called Sam, trapped in Bill’s grip. I don’t think they had been going out very long. Bill tended to change his girlfriends quite frequently.

I was trying my best to fake being beaten up, but I could see a growing puzzlement rippling in the foreheads of the football players. Even though I was absorbing the impact of each blow as much as possible by inhaling so they wouldn’t break their hands on me, they could still tell something was off.

Donny’s turn came round again and I sucked in my stomach once more, but this time I forgot to make a noise.

He frowned at me. I needed to change tactic: I had to do something to make this look more convincing.

The next guy came up and punched me, a big one, the team’s offensive lineman, and this time I not only sucked in my gut but made it look like he had punched me so hard that he knocked me backwards. I kicked away from the ground and broke out of Rob’s hold on me, then fell on the floor and rolled over several times.

I deserve an Oscar for that.

“Woah, easy there Brett,” said Rob, “you knocked him right out of my hands!”

“Give him hell, boys,” commanded Bill’s voice over the sound of Sam’s sobs and the audience making their stupid “Oooo” noises and cheering. “Nobody comes onto my girl right in front of me in her own house!”

The football boys threw themselves at me. I lost track of who was who as they all piled in at once now, throwing kicks at my torso, my arms, my legs, even my head.

Now the real acting began. I tried to keep an eye out for whichever blow was coming next and then move with it, with the direction of the strike, throwing myself around on the ground so that the football boys wouldn’t hurt themselves too badly. I threw in some louder grunts and “Arrghs!” for good measure, the sounds I remembered all too well coming out of my mouth when they used to beat me up in the past. I literally rolled with the punches.

I thought I was doing quite a good job of it, actually. At least, between Sam’s crying and the crowd’s yelling I seemed to have everyone fooled. It was like stage fighting, really. I had done that once in junior high when I had been in a production of Romeo and Juliet as Unnamed Montague Number Four. All I was worried about was that they weren’t drawing any blood—I couldn’t fake that and I didn’t want them to notice. I tried to make sure as many of the blows landed on places where my clothes covered me, so I wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

It worked. The boys only seemed to grow more manic and intense in their beating as I dived and leapt around on the grass, making it and myself muddy. Good—that would mask the lack of blood. Their punches and kicks came thicker and faster, and it became harder and harder to keep up with where they were coming from to make sure I dived in the appropriate direction. I managed it, though, and I made it look good, like they really were kicking the proverbial shit out of me.

“Please, stop it!” Sam gasped again.

“Fight fight FIGHT!” chanted the crowd.

“STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!” shouted a new voice over them all, louder than all the rest of them. It was female and full of fury and authority.

Everyone stopped. The crowd’s chanting subsided. Sam stopped calling out. The football jocks and I froze suspended in freeze-frame, me lying mock-cowering on the ground with my hands in the air preparing to throw myself in another direction, Rob with his leg drawn back next to me preparing to deliver his next kick, and the others arranged in half a dozen poses of violent intent. All of our heads swivelled to see who had shouted so loudly for us to stop.

Ali.

She had appeared on the lawn between us and the house. She stood there in silhouette, the light from the house behind pouring around her outline, her long hair flowing down her neck, two fists clenched tight, like an avenging shadow.

“What do you mean, ‘stop’?!” Bill was the first to break the spell. “Butt out, darkie, this is none of your business. Hey, look guys, the weakling darkie’s made a friend! Figures your kind would need to stick together.”

I stood up at once, forgetting my facade in an instant. “Hey,” I said, “don’t talk to her like that, Bill.” The football team’s jaws dropped as they gawked at me. They must be wondering how I was able to stand.

Bill opened his mouth to say something but before he could Ali spoke again. “He’s not my friend.”

Ouch. ‘Not my girlfriend’ I could understand, but ‘not my friend’? I thought we had at least become friends. Even Sam had referred to us as friends.

But it was what she said next that really hurt me, more than a thousand high school football teams ever could.

“He’s just a poor little nerdy kid with mental health problems,” Ali said. “You shouldn’t be beating on him.”