New “Send” Opening

Posted Mar 24 2010, 12:11 am in Miscellany

New opening scene for Send:

God must have been bullied as a kid.
Only a supreme being with a deep appreciation for irony would put me, a former bully, front row to a varsity football player built like some Cro-Magnon neanderthal about to pummel a skinny freshman.
I searched the empty parking lot. I had more important things to worry about than two kids throwing punches. Things like staying invisible, flying under the radar, getting through senior year unrecognized. Today was my first day at another new school – my fourth in as many years, though the first under my new name. All I had to do was make it through the next ten months without giving anybody a reason to go skipping through Google for the thing I’d done that landed me in juvey and forced my family to keep moving. If I’d left a minute later or gotten stuck at one more light, I’d have been just another face in the crowd hearing the buzz, “Hey, did you see the fight in the parking lot this morning?” Instead, at seven-ten in the morning, I was the only witness to what promised to be a blood bath.
I cursed my perverted, twisted luck.
“Ignore it.” Kenny said and I frowned at him.
Sure. No problem. I already had one kid’s blood on my hands; what’s one more?
I watched the senior grab the freshman by his shirt and my hands clenched around my steering wheel.  “Stay invisible,” Kenny warned me. “Do not get involved.”
Cro shoved the kid against a car and I flinched.
“Who are you saving?” Kenny asked. “The senior, the freshman, or yourself?”
Deep in my chest, the sharp pain flared again. “All of the above.” I answered, too loud, and got out of my car.
“Let him go.” I said.
The senior turned, appraised me, but didn’t release the skinny boy. He wasn’t as tall as me; I knew he was considering his chances. He didn’t know they weren’t very good.
“Who the hell are you?”
I shrugged. “Does it matter? Just leave the kid alone and I’ll leave you alone.”
He taunted me with lips curled into a smirk and a bring-it-on wiggle of his fingers. “Oh, I’m not worried about you.”

He should have been worried. If he had a brain, he’d have been terrified. The kid I’d bullied was dead now.
Yeah, I thought when his fist connected. God has a hell of a sense of humor.

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