Read Online Rivals by David Wellington - Free Book Online

work. He
was supposed to protect the defenseless. Stand up for those who couldn’t stand
up for themselves. Nothing had ever looked so pure, or so easy.
    He dug his
feet into the ground and jumped. He could hear Lucy cheering as he dropped
through the air, down the side of the hill, to land not more than ten feet away
from Perkins.
    The bully
jumped in place as if he’d seen a ghost. “What—?” he had time to ask,
before Brent grabbed him and lifted him off the ground with one hand.
    Perkins
struggled, kicking at Brent’s face and shoulders while his hands grabbed on to
Brent’s shirt and pulled. It was easy for Brent to fend him off, though.
Perkins wasn’t even particularly strong, just massive, and his weight meant
nothing to Brent’s new muscles.
    He looked down
at the freshman, who had fallen over backwards and landed sitting on the
sidewalk.
    “What’s your
name?” he asked.
    “Ryan,” the
freshman said. “I mean, Ryan Digby.”
    “This guy
giving you a hard time?” Brent asked.
    The freshman
just nodded. He looked like he couldn’t believe this was happening.
    “You want me
to teach him a lesson?”
    Ryan Digby got
up slowly and shrugged. “I—I don’t know, I just want him—I want
him to stop. Every day he’s here. I live just over there,” he said, pointing
at some houses on the other side of a chainlink fence. “This is the fastest
way for me to get home. I tried taking the long way but he was just waiting
for me there, too. He kept telling me he was going to kill me. He said if I
gave him money he would let me live a little longer. I tried telling my Dad
but he just said I should learn to stick up for myself. I tried that, and
he—Matt—beat me up pretty bad.”
    “Okay,” Brent
said. “I’ll take it from here. Why don’t you go home, now? I don’t think
he’ll be here tomorrow.”
    The freshman
nodded and ran off. He looked terrified—but maybe that was just the
shock of seeing the tables turned on the bully.
    “You’re dead,”
Perkins said, up in the air. “When you put me down, you’re going to be dead.”
    “Interesting,”
Brent said. He put Perkins gently back down on his feet. “You going to kill
me now?”
    The bully
roared like an animal and came charging at Brent. He was faster than Brent had
expected for someone so heavy and Brent had no doubt he could have seriously
hurt a normal freshman. To Brent it felt like he was being attacked by a
chipmunk. As Perkins punched and kicked at him, Brent just picked the bully up
again and then walked over to a patch of grass and dropped him on it.
    Perkins
collapsed with an unpleasant “Oof,” as the wind sagged out of him.
    “Are you going
to leave Ryan alone, now?” Brent asked.
    The bully’s
eyes were burning with hatred as he propped himself up on his elbows. “That
depends. Are you going to be here tomorrow? Are you going to walk him home
every day?”
    Brent dropped
to one knee and made a fist. He raised it high and prepared to bring it down.
He would have to judge this carefully—he needed to hurt Perkins, but not
permanently. He thought about what Maggie had said the night before. We
can kill people pretty easily. Way too easily.
    If he hit him just hard enough, though—
    “Go on,”
Perkins said.
    “What?”
Brent’s concentration faltered.
    “Just do it.
I want you to.”
    Brent shook
his head. “I don’t understand. You want me to hit you?”
    “You think
you’re the first person to ever hit me? I can take a punch like a man. That’s
what my dad says. It’s important, taking a punch like a man. You don’t cry.
You don’t whine about how it wasn’t fair. The bigger the guy, the stronger the
guy who hits you, that just makes you tougher ‘cause you took it like a man.
So go ahead. Whatever you got, I’ll take it.”
    “Your dad…
hits you?” Brent asked, horrified.
    “Just when I
deserve it. I’m not telling you my life story.”
    Was it
possible? Brent had been to an assembly on