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edited by: DecipleoftheForest & Aenae Enjoy the journey of a young man lost through life |
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The moonlight reflected brightly off of the whites of my widely opened eyes. The fear was evident in my face. The pain was etched into my forehead. Sweat was drenching me from head to toe. And blood was freely flowing from my nose and mouth where I'd been struck numerous times. I knew that I was about to die. And all I could do is lay on my stomach here on the ground as stiffly as I could as the ten men dressed in deep burgundy red surround me. So I prayed. I am not religious by any means. But I prayed to anything and anyone I could pray to. I prayed to God, I prayed to Buddha. Hell, I even prayed to the devil himself.
One of the men dressed in red stepped closer to me. I recognized who it was. He was the lieutenant of the south side Red Badge. He was known as the Scorpion. He always carried a bamboo switch with him. Although he wasn't the smartest lieutenant to any of the Badge sects, he was by far the cruelest. He once blinded a man's entire bloodline because the man made the mistake of looking directly into his face. He took his bamboo switch and poked out each and every one of the man's family member's eyes. Right down to the furthest of cousins.
When the Scorpion got right next to me, he picked up his right foot and firmly stepped on the left side of my face. As he looked down on me, he said, "So, this is what's become of the great and powerful one. Looks more like a little pussy to me. Walking the streets alone can be dangerous." He laughed grimly. "Even if it is in your own turf." He laughed again. "You guys aren't what they used to be. It's time for us to take the position of power."
Then he turned to the others in the circle. "So what do you think boys? Shall we end his miserable existence now? Or do you guys want to have some more fun?" The little crowd yelled for more fun. So the Scorpion turned to me. "Well I guess majority rules. We're going to have to torture you some more." As he said this, he grabbed my left arm, lifted it up as he took his foot off of my head. He then brought his foot down hard across my left shoulder blade, while pulling up on my left arm. I felt the snap of my arm, and pain seared through my whole body. I felt my consciousness fading away. The last thing I heard before I fainted was the high-pitched whine of motorcycles rumbling towards us.
I hate walking to school. But soon enough I wouldn't have to. I only had another week to go until I could drive myself. Sure, I would be driving that piece of shit 1986 Toyota minivan. But at least I wouldn't have to walk anymore.
I'm Christopher Liu. I'm what you might call a first generation Asian American. At 5'7", I'm fairly short for an American. But I'm average for being Chinese. I am however, fairly large for my height. I'm 160 lbs. I wouldn't necessarily call myself fat, as some of it is muscle from wrestling. But the words skinny and my name have never been synonymous. And as with most Asians, I have black hair and black eyes. Obviously we as a race don't have too much variance in our gene pool.
This is my junior year in high school. My 16th birthday was in a week. Finally I will be able to drive my own sorry ass to school. I received my driver's permit little less than a year ago. But I could only drive with an adult in the car. But turning 16 would allow me to finally drive myself. Sure I had friends who already had their licenses, but none of them could afford a car. And the friends that I hung around were nice, but didn't have wealthy parents. Out of my circle of friends, I probably had the richest parents. And that's not saying all that much. We weren't poor, mind you. But Robin Leach wasn't going to drop by my front door anytime soon. I would be the first to drive a car. And that meant driving all my friends to school with me.
But alas, today, I was still fifteen. It was the first day of school and I was waiting on my porch talking with Rick Hau. Rick was my best friend. I met him when he moved next door to me in fourth grade. But I really didn't become friends with him until the fifth grade when we all got stuck in the same homeroom class. Rick was always the quiet one. He wasn't necessarily shy. It was just this mysterious quality in him. Girls loved it. He was already tall, dark and handsome. Add mysterious to that and you got a chick magnet.
We were waiting for Danny Fo and Dyl Dang to get to my house. They lived up the street from me. And the routine was for them to come to my house and meet up with Rick and me and then we would all continue on down the road. Danny and Dyl were cousins. Dyl (short for Dylan) was here from Hong Kong living with his aunt and uncle (Danny's parents). Dyl was a year older than us. He was a senior already. I felt sorry for him because even as a senior, his family wasn't financially able to support him to have a car. And while his aunt might have been willing to help him, his uncle always felt that Dyl was a burden and a responsibility he didn't want. So obviously that family wasn't going to be supporting Dyl with anything other than the bare necessities.
Danny on the other hand was a fuck up. He was always getting himself in trouble, so much so that his parents always had to pay for his mistakes. Whether it was broken windows, stolen goods, or anything like that, his parents paid for it. So even though Danny had already turned 16, they were not ready to give Danny that responsibility yet.
Finally Danny and Dyl got to my place and after a little bit of good natured grumbling about the start of school again, we headed out down the street. The next house in line was Gil's. Gil Chang was well... what we called a F.O.B. What's a F.O.B.? That's our acronym for 'fresh off the boat'. It's a derogatory term we use for people (especially Asians) that are new to America. And thus don't speak English all that well and excessively exhibit the culture from where they came from. He's better now than he used to be in the eighth grade when I first met him. But he will always 'have a little F.O.B. in him.'
So we picked him up and continued down Electric Ave to our final destination before school, Ernie's place. Ernie Shen was the brains of all of us. He was not your typical nerd, but he was close to it. He wasn't anti-social, nor was he extremely shy. So that helped him out. But he was definitely one of the top 15 of our class. That means a lot considering we have a junior class of 1,948.
In the early 90's, our high school was the seventh largest in the United States. We had a total student population that year of 8,178. So being 15th in the junior class was quite an accomplishment.
The 6 of us walked down Electric Ave until we reached Main St. There we would take a left and go another half mile until we got to school. Mansor High School besides being big was predominantly Asian. After all, we lived in the Granada Valley, which was filled to the brim with Asians. So as we got to school, we of course saw the plethora of rice rockets across the parking lot.
A rice rocket (for those of you who don't know) is what we call import cars that have been fixed up. In the late 90's the boom for import racing was just beginning. So the cars at that time that were considered fixed up would consist of an aftermarket exhaust and air intake, 500-watt stereo system and possibly aftermarket rims and wheels, with lowering springs. Although that was the craze, it really didn't appeal to Nick, Gil or Ernie. It did appeal to Danny, Dyl and I, however, we were just trying to get any car, much less a fixed up one.
The first day of school was a typical bore. It was good to see some other friends at school. But there really wasn't much more to it than that. You got to see some of the classes that you were going to be in. And meet some new people in school. The day pretty much dragged from class to class.
Lunchtime was the only real reprieve. And even that seemed dull compared to summer. But we all had to get used to classes again. So here we were, enjoying our wonderful delicious pizza and nutritious snacks. Yeah right! Who am I kidding? The pizza was as hard as cardboard. The fruit was bordering on rotten. And the milk was frozen. We couldn't wait until next year when we could finally go off campus to eat.
The only real highlight of the day was seeing Cynthia Lee again. Talk about a boy's wet dream. She reeked of sexuality. Every girl in the school was jealous of her. And every guy in the school wanted to fuck her. She was really something. She had dyed her hair a deep dark red. And it flowed in soft curls all the way down to the small of her back. She had very large breasts and a fine heart shaped ass. She was a goddess. She was on the swim team. And half of the guys on the swim team admitted to joining up only because she was there. She was also a cheerleader. Watching her jump up and down in her short skirt caused many a stiff dick around school.
I shared my 5th period class with her. We both happened to be in AP Art History. What's the AP for? Advanced Placement. Yup, this was a class which we could get college credit. As long as you got a 3 or above on your AP test at the end of the year. So you guessed it, Cynthia was smart as well as beautiful.
This was the first time I've seen this teacher before. Her name was Joan Calkins. And this was her first year teaching at Mansor High. She graduated from Duke. And just in case you didn't know that, she made sure to mention Duke every five minutes. It was Duke this, and Duke that. It was pretty sickening. We didn't even crack open the book in the first day. She just talked about Duke for 50 minutes. It was ok, because all I ended up doing was talking to Cynthia the whole time.
She's always been friendly towards me. Actually she was always pretty friendly towards everyone. So we had a good talk about her summer in Taiwan. I didn't really talk about myself. I never do. It's not that I had anything to be afraid of. It's just that I always thought of myself as pretty boring. So I always talked about everything else but myself. Before we knew it, the bell rang.
Day after day, week after week, this occurred. And I fell more in lust with Cynthia. We had conversations all the time because Ms. Calkins didn't teach us anything. Well, let me rephrase that. She didn't teach us anything that wasn't about Duke. By the end of the year, we would probably all know more about Duke than some of the freshmen who actually went to Duke. That's ok by me though. I knew Art History fairly well. That was actually my passion. I planned to be an artist. And so it was natural that I like art history. And I would help Cynthia with it. She really didn't care too much about this class. She wasn't going to need an art history credit. She just took this class because it would help her GPA weight. AP classes were weighted. So if you got an A, you would actually be getting a 5.0 in this class as opposed to just a 4.0. She figured even if she got a B in the class, she would be getting a 4.0 anyway. So we just talked all through 5th period each and every day.
A few months later I was walking out of the locker rooms after wrestling practice. I had my car keys in my hand as I grabbed my gym bag. Yes, I finally was driving to school. It was a good feeling even though it was only the piece of shit minivan. I thought I was the last one to leave because it was almost seven o'clock. The reason I was there so late is because we have a tournament in Reno, Nevada coming up and I was actually a couple of pounds over the limit for my weight class. I guess I just didn't exercise enough over the summer. So I put in a few extra hours to bring down my weight. I put on a plastic suit and sweated away the two pounds running. After a good hard sweat and a hot shower, I walked along the corridor towards the exit. As I was walking out, I heard a soft moan coming from the girl's locker room.
Our lockers shared an entrance. There was one main entrance that led to both locker rooms. To the left was the boy's locker room and to the right was the girl's because it was almost seven o'clock, there was no one else around so it was pretty quiet. If it hadn't been so quiet I don't think I would have heard the sound. At first I couldn't tell what kind of moan it was. Because although my first thought turned sexual. There was a lot of frustration in the moan. So it almost sounded like someone might have been hurt. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity trying to make up my mind whether to go in and investigate or not. Finally, I decided to go in.
I walked to the right side and started down the corridor that led to the girl's locker room. The moans got louder and louder as I got closer. I rounded the corner and came to a dead stop. What I saw stopped my heart.
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