Chapter 1


There were six people in the Gang.
There was Morty to start with. He had long greasy hair that no one ever thought about running their fingers through, and always wore a beat up jean jacket that had been a hand-me-down from his older brother. Along with Morty had come his younger brother Bobby, who was really just a brat, pure and simple.
But Bobby would tell Chief if Morty ever picked on him, and nobody crossed Chief, so Bobby stayed in the Gang and relatively safe from bullying. Since protecting people from bullying was all the Gang was really created to do, Bobby reaped the benefits of its existence, but could be counted on to run for the hills once the fights started.
Hooker usually started the fights.
It wasn’t that he’d been brought up badly; it was that no one had ever taught him there were ways around fighting. When you started talking about negotiation and diplomacy, you may as well have been discussing quantum mechanics and the average wind-speed velocity of a European swallow. Hooker wouldn’t get it, and he would stare at you with the blank look he always gave people who spoke over his head.
Strategy was left in the much more capable hands of Pigmy.
Pigmy had obtained his nickname at the hands of schoolyard bullies, who were like Hooker, but bigger and less proficient in moving, and unlike Hooker, if you used big words, they would stop moving entirely to think over the quandary before finally venturing a tentative guess like ‘four?’.
Hooker would just pummel you into submission.
Pigmy was the planner. He wasn’t big or strong or good with girls, but he could plan and he could dance.
Not that the latter was known by anyone else in the Gang except Morty, but Morty couldn’t tell anyone unless he wanted everyone to know that he secretly wanted to be a model on the front of the harlequin romance novels. It was knowledge like this that had distinguished Pigmy as the established blackmailer of the Gang. There wasn’t anybody Pigmy didn’t have something on.
Well, except Chief.
Chief was pretty much invulnerable. That was why he was Chief after all. There had been a bit of an argument about who got capitals in their titles in the Gang, but once Chief made a decision, they stuck with it. Chief got a capital.
His second-in-command, a virtually mute boy who stayed constantly at Chief’s side named Com-rade, got hyphens, even though he didn’t really need them. It was the principle of the thing anyway.
Pigmy got a ‘y’ on the second Saturday of every month and on holidays. The rest of the Gang didn’t care what they got (which, truth be told, wasn’t much), so long as they all ended up with membership headbands.
Those had been Chief’s idea, since headbands served the universal purpose of looking cool, keeping you from getting sweaty during fights, and identified everyone from across a crowded schoolyard. Chief’s headband was gold, Com-rade’s was silver, Pigmy’s was orange, Morty’s was magenta (‘a passionate color’, he secretly prided), Bobby’s was blue, and Hooker’s was red.
The Dog’s, no one could agree on, so Hooker just tied a black string around the mongrel’s neck and they called it good. The dog was Hooker’s anyway and would let everyone within a three foot radius know it if they tried to approach him or his master when the latter was in a foul mood.
--Which was usually just before a fight would break out. The very purpose of the Gang was to fight, but Hooker tended to do it solo more often than not.
The Gang existed to fight with the bullies of the school. Like a defense team (but without weapons, code names, or even cool outfits), the Gang identified, isolated and occasionally attacked the larger and more violence-prone members of the school. When Chief had transferred as a sophomore, he had noticed a large amount of bullying going on. For a year he ignored it, until several incidents with the football team’s more gorilla-like members and the men’s room toilet made it impossible to ignore.
Visiting the interior of a toilet bowl has a way of sharpening resolve until something must be done. Chief had gone directly to Com-rade, blonde hair still dripping from his recent swirlie, and demanded that something had to be done.
Com-rade responded with just a nod and waited for Chief to come up with a plan.
The solemn boy usually replied to very little, listened very much and acted only after long periods of intense thought. Why the two were friends at all would have been a complete mystery if it weren’t for the rumor that darted around school when the pair transferred at the same time.
They apparently had a partnership that went all the way back to daycare, starting with a business merger between their fathers’ companies. The pair were expected to be friends and, not-so-coincidentally, also every class together up to and though high school.
After taking a shower, Chief had stalked downstairs and announced that he would create a group to combat the bullies of the school. They would be a group of protectors, who kept the bullies from abusing them or other people too weak to defend themselves. They would be like riot police, vigilantes, superheroes even.
Com-rade, who had grown up sparring with a personal self-defense tutor hired by his father, said nothing. Chief flopped back on the couch and nodded with satisfaction at his idea.
The idea hung there for a year, hopeful but unfulfilled as a promise, in the air, until Chief noticed Hooker sitting alone at a cafeteria table and sat down.
Soon after their meeting, Pigmy, Morty and Bobby had surfaced, like skyhopping whales. Chief enticed them all, different as they were, to join the Gang. They joined, but for that first year, caution reigned supreme.
The only reason the group hadn’t turned on Hooker for being too violent was because he could beat most of them into submission, excepting Chief.
Chief wasn’t the kind of person you messed with. Though they hadn’t known him long, the newly-formed Gang had gotten the impression that, while he was just an average high-schooler like they were, there was something different.
It wasn’t just the fact that he was a senior and they were in the freshmen class. Something transient and illusory, none of them could quite put their fingers on it, haunted Chief. It was tempting and enigmatic as cigarette smoke coming from the table in the back of the bar in a black and white film. None of them knew why it was so mysterious, only that it was so thrilling to be around Chief.
Except Hooker, who had figured out quickly what it was.
Danger excited people.
Chief wore a brand of cologne called Danger.
These two sentences made any further observation on the subject silly.

Slumped lazily against the gym building’s concrete wall, Hooker stared across the schoolyard at the chain-link fence dividing the school grounds from the real world.
It stood there, like Gandalf against the Balrog.
Of course, Hooker didn’t know that from the books, he’d just watched part of the movie three weeks ago at Morty’s. Gandalf was one of the few characters Hooker liked, which was why the old geezer came to mind now. Hooker felt sorry for him.
Here this poor guy was, trapped in a mine with stupid little midgets and a ring and a prissy blonde guy and some other idiots, and a Balrog shows up to keep them from leaving. Of course he’d fight him, just for a change of pace.
Just for some hint of a thrill in that amazingly dull quest they had going over a piece of jewelry that they weren’t allowed to wear.
Gandalf had just picked too big a bully when he yelled at the Balrog; a mouse squeaking at a tiger with tiny, indignant fury over its tail being trod on.
After doing something like that, it was understandable that the old geezer would die; honorably, in battle. It was a death most soldiers dreamed about, but it bothered Hooker.
It wasn’t that Gandalf died; it was that he was trapped in death. That Balrog thing’s whip thing had, well, whipped around Gandalf’s ankle and dragged him down into that giant hole.
What a stupid reason to die -- miserably, for people you didn’t even like that much.
“Oh please! Please, please!”
The voice Hooker had been half-heartedly been listening to rose to a shriek on the other side of the wall.
“Give that back! I have to have that for my next class!”
Hooker thought about moving away from the increasingly noisy area. But it was in the Code to help those who needed it.
“If I don’t have that for class, my teacher’s going to--!”
But they didn’t always follow the Code. Sometimes the Code of the Gang was more a suggestion than a law.
And Chief would never know if he skipped out on helping some faceless nobody, just once…
“Ow! You’re hurting me, let go of my arm. Help, somebody, please! Help!”
But Chief had a way of learning these things and he got pretty irritated when they didn’t follow the Code.
“Please?”
But then Chief got irritated when Hooker got into fights on his own as well. There was just no pleasing him.
“Hey,” said Hooker.
The shrieking and sounds of kicking gave a polite pause, as if to say ‘yes, can I help you?’.
“McKlosky’s coming around the corner.” Hooker said, as the bad-tempered Teacher stalked into view, stabbing his cane into the pavement like a deadly weapon as he made his way towards, his voice, like a fire truck running up its siren.
“Hooooookerrrr…”
Immediately, there was a yelp, followed by running feet as the bully on the other side of the wall took off. A few seconds later, the rabbity-looking victim came around the corner of the building, poking his head around the corner of the building to tentatively check for other bullies. He spotted the confrontation between McKlosky and Hooker, and dashed off going the other way.
No one wanted to voluntarily deal with McKlosky, even to get their rescuer off the hooker. Hooker didn’t blame him. The Teacher was standing over him, glaring, cane planted in the ground only a few inches from Hooker’s sneaker.
One lazy green eye glanced up through the curly black bangs and Hooker tilted his head only slightly to look up, as if McKlosky wasn’t worth the effort.
And he wasn’t, not really.
“What are you doing?” The Teacher demanded.
“Jus’ sitting here.” Hooker replied, unmoving.
“And what were those shrieks?”
A smile that was more of a smirk glided onto Hooker’s face. A shark would have been proud.
“If you heard, why didn’t you stop ‘em?”
Sputter sputter.
A droplet landed on Hooker’s head and the smirk turned into a scowl.
It was disgusting the way these people got mad. McKlosky was spouting something now, something about detention and better use of time and parents and blah de blah de blah de…
Hooker wished Chief didn’t frown quite so much on hitting Teachers. That was how Chief always said it: Teachers, with a capital T that you could hear and gasp over.
‘How full of wisdom they are!’ crowed Chief.
A little less ‘wisdom’ falling on my head would be nice, thought Hooker.
The veins in the Teacher’s neck started to settle down. The tirade was finishing. Hooker started listening again, simply so he would know whether to finish with a ‘yes sir’ or ‘no sir’.
“—and if your parents were here, I’m sure they’d—“
“They’re not. What are you going to do about it?”
Surprising how fast that pulsing vein in McKlosky’s neck could leap back into action. Hooker watched it absently, vaguely annoyed by the way the man’s chin kept obstructing his line of vision to the vein, moving up and down.  
“DO about it? Young man, I will call the principal over that kind of backtalk—“
Throb throb throb.
The bell rang.
The vein throbbed all the more.
“Furthermore—!”
“Is there a problem sir?”
Hooker looked up. Ah, there was Chief, one hand tucked in his perfectly-pressed jacket pocket, innocent smile on his face, his peaceable blue eyes glowing loving and kind beneath his fluffy blonde hair.
A cherub fallen from heaven to bless Loongrace High School with its presence.
The vein disappeared and McKlosky’s attention wavered. Hooker could see the man’s mind dithering between himself and the opportunity to talk to an excellent student like Chief.
Chief won easily.
“Oh, it’s you Davids. I was just lecturing Hooker about beating on the younger students.” McKlosky said.
“Oh, Michel, not again,” Chief said. Hooker could hear his superior’s words dripping with sincere worry, sprinkled lightly with a topping of condescending pity, as if Hooker were truly beyond help.
Chief was the best actor on the planet.
He could talk a starved zombie out of a shopping mall, a crying kid into Santa’s lap, or an enraged teacher out of a random detention. It was part of the reason Hooker agreed to work under him.
“Oh, yes, yes, Michel. I tend to forget his given name,” McKlosky said. He investigated Hooker as if the boy had been stuck under his shoe.
“Namely because the roughness of Hooker seems vastly more appropriate to his attitude. You know he was beating someone up when I came by? I heard the pleading from across the school grounds. Every time I see him, he’s dragging the school’s name into the muck.”
Most of the school knew that McKlosky had had quite enough of slogging through muck. The only thing that kept him at the high school was the money and not his moronic students, as he was quite fond of reminding his classes. ‘I don’t expect you to do anything with what you learn here,’ the teacher was frequently heard growling. ‘Just pass the class.’
“Really, Michel?” Chief said. “Were you being abusive of the younger scholars of our fair institution of learning?”
The blonde gave Hooker a look of uncertain disapproval, one blonde eyebrow cocked as he inclined his head to the side. Hooker merely stared incredulously at his superior, portraying the attitude of a child asking his mother whether she thought he really would do something so stupid as to take cookies before dinner.
As if he’d be beating someone in broad daylight. When Hooker beat people up, they weren’t the type that would shriek.
Cry, maybe.
Swear, definitely.
But shriek? Not on your life.
Hooker was certain that Chief knew he’d done nothing. The only issue now was getting him off the hook for it.
“Did you see him beat up the person?” Chief asked innocently, turning from Hooker to McKlosky. Hooker could swear that, though he couldn’t see what look Chief was beaming at the Teacher, it would be brimming with honest student curiosity and a naïve belief in all other scholars’ good intent.
The Teacher wobbled his cane uncertainly.
“There were shrieks, as I said. And he always does this sort of thing. Bad breeding… some people are just that way. You wouldn’t understand Davids. You’re the kind of person who doesn’t interact with These Kinds of People.”
Ironic how Hooker could stand capitalization from Chief, but from a Teacher it made him want to puke.
“No sir, I could have no possible idea what it’s like,” Chief replied. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I should be getting to class. It’s getting late you know, and I’m sure Michel has classes to get to as well.”
That was his cue. Hooker swaggered to his feet, shoved his hands in his pockets and strode off to class, feeling McKlosky’s hopeless stormcloud of retribution hovering over his head, but not daring to pour.
As if that were intimidating.
He was Hooker and well nigh invincible.
Freedom was clenched tightly in his fist and no one and nothing could ever get him to loosen his grip.
No one and nothing that he knew of.