Excerpt: Cry Wolf

Dirt doesn’t taste so bad I realized, as Wade Gibson smashed my face against a gopher hole while he sat on me, pummeling my back and shoulders with poorly placed punches. I’d always thought dirt would taste nasty, like puke or something equally revolting, but my taste buds disagreed.

Wade shoved a hand against my face and more dirt filled my mouth. Even in the puny town of Remus, Wyoming, gophers still found places to colonize. Mounds of freshly dug dirt littered the vacant lot at the end of Pine Street, and my open mouth was smashed smack-dab up against one of those gopher holes. The taste was bearable, but the grit wasn’t.

“Max the Ass. Stand up and fight like a man, not like some wussy.” Wade growled out his words but his voice caught at the end of the sentence, and he squeaked the word “wussy.” I would have rolled my eyes and let out a sarcastic snort except for the fact that my face was shoved against a dirt mound and I had a 150 pound gorilla on my back.

I figured if I didn’t give much resistance, Wade would eventually get off me before much damage had been done. So far my clothes and face were a bit dirty, but the dust was nothing I couldn’t explain away to my mom. That she might crawl out of bed this time of day and notice me was doubtful, but she could surprise me, and I didn’t want to come home all bruised and bloody and set her off. Not in her current state.

Wade threw another punch, this time slamming his fist hard against the side of my face. The earthy flavor of dirt was replaced by copper: blood. Christ. He’d split my lip. No way could I hide the fact that I’d been in a fight from my mom now. My eyes narrowed, and the pile of earth in front of me went from a rich brown to a smoky grey as the rage hit.

Anger whipped through me, churning my brain up into mush. I yelled some guttural sound, loud and deep, and bucked Wade off my back. I was free.

Whoever came up with the cliché “blinded by anger” did a good job of describing rage. Even with Wade off me, I still couldn’t see, couldn’t think, but I came up swinging anyway. I knew at my core that once I removed Wade from my back, I should run like an Olympic sprinter, but that logical thought was overridden by the instinctive drive to fight, to attack. So instead, I threw out punches right and left until I heard a resounding crack and felt warm flesh and hard bone give way under my clenched fist. An arc of blood spurted to the ground. My vision widened and I followed the blood trail.

Not my blood. Wade’s.

That’s how Sheriff Whitman found us, covered in dirt and blood and rolling over gopher mounds swinging punches in the empty lot at the end of Pine Street.