A Dragon

It was the year I discovered anger.

I thought I knew all about it. Everyone gets mad, right? You stub your toe or burn your finger. You yell. Maybe you hit something. It flashes through you like lightning, then it's gone.

If that's your idea of anger, congratulations. You're one of the lucky ones.

I'm talking about a different kind of anger. This kind moves in on you. It takes root in the basement — pulsing, growing, the color of a bruise. You don't even know it's there. Then one day the floor heaves and it bursts out, pinning you to the wall, overwhelming you. And there's nothing you can do.

For me, that day came last fall. My mom and I had moved from our neighborhood outside Baltimore to an old house downtown. We didn't want to move, but my dad had had other ideas, most of them involving a woman named Gretchen, someone he worked with. Gretchen moved to New York, and so did he. Just like that. Don't get me started.

So, what do you do when you find out you'll be living on just one salary? You pack up your stuff. You say good-bye to your friends. You get in the car and drive off. You don't look back.

We moved downtown to be near my mom's work. She's a librarian at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, which is a fancy name for the Baltimore public library. She threw herself into her job. I threw myself into a new school, the way you might wad up a sheet of paper and toss it into the trash. Eighth grade with a bunch of strangers. New people to meet. New things to learn. Wake me when it's over.

The school was actually two schools. Marshall High was a big old brick building across from a row of businesses and deserted factories. Next door was my school, Marshall Middle, an even older building. Besides the name, we shared a football team, a mascot, and a band that my mom had made me join, saying it would be a good way to meet people. Even in the band, though, I mostly kept to myself. I figured I could make friends later if I felt like it.

I mostly just wandered from class to class, a short, skinny, thirteen-year-old kid with dark hair and bright eyes. If you talked to me, I might nod, or maybe I'd just keep moving.

My mom and I lived close to school, so I would walk home. That day she had asked me to stop by Lexington Market to pick up something for dinner. It was this famous old market with hundreds of stalls that had every kind of food you could imagine. Of course, my mom knew that if I was picking, there was just one choice: crab cakes from Faidley's, Baltimore's finest.

I bought the crab cakes, picked out a candy bar, and was heading home when I heard a voice.

"Hey, David!"

I turned around. It was Jake Bragg, a kid who had appointed himself mayor of eighth grade. Jake and his buddies hung around outside campus, smoking and telling stories about their latest exploits with bad cops and bad girls, stories that took place in an imaginary land where they weren't idiots. Jake had introduced himself to me on my first day of school, saying he would check in later to see how I was doing. I guess later had arrived.

I watched as he strolled up to me. He was a big, dark-haired kid with eyes that never blinked. I'm not kidding. His eyeballs must have been like sandpaper.

"What've you got?" he asked, nodding toward my shopping bag.

I shrugged. "Dinner."

"Can I see?"

I should have said no. I should have told him to take his dry, scratchy eyeballs and go bother someone else. But I didn't. I opened the bag.

At my old school, I once built a science project to demonstrate cause and effect. It was a crazy contraption with slides, traps, levers, doors, and pinwheels, connected by yards and yards of plastic tubing I had sawed in half lengthwise to form a chute. At the science fair, I set a rubber ball at the top and gave it a push. You wouldn't believe what happened. Things dropped, turned, opened, closed, cranked, and slid, until at the very bottom, a wooden stick poked out and turned over a cup of water. The water soaked a little squiggly green sponge. The sponge grew and grew, and before you knew it, you were staring at a dragon.

That's the way it was when I opened the bag. That one little push set everything in motion. Wheels turned, gears cranked, doors opened. At the bottom, waiting, was the sponge.

Who would have thought it really was a dragon?

Jake looked into the bag. "Are those crab cakes?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I love crab cakes."

I felt something stir, way down deep. "So?"

"You know," said Jake, "that school we go to, it's dangerous. You're new. I wouldn't expect you to know. Some pretty rough kids go there."

"Thanks for the information," I said.

"They'll beat you up. I've watched them do it. When someone new comes along, they jump him. I hate to see it. Of course, it doesn't have to be that way."

He took a step toward me. I could hear him breathe. Usually I would have been scared.

I'm not big or tough. At school, when other guys were wrestling on the playground, I was the one sitting on a bench, reading. Maybe Jake had spotted me there. Maybe he figured I'd be an easy target.

He said, "If they try to bother you, I could take care of them."

"What do you mean?"

"Protection," he said. "I'll make sure you're safe."

He gave me a cold, hard stare.

Go ahead, blink, I thought. Just once.

"The thing is," Jake said, "there's a price."

"What's the price?" I asked.

"Let's start with those crab cakes."

He reached into the bag. A hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. I was surprised to see that it was mine.

I heard myself say, "Don't do that."

He looked up, amazed. "You touched me. Nobody touches me."

After ripping his hand free, he snatched the bag and gave me a shove. I staggered back, tripped over the curb, and fell down. As I watched, he scooped out a handful of crab cake — my dinner — and shoved it into his mouth, grinning.

The floor heaved. Something big and dark came out. I think it had been in there a long time — before school, before we moved, ever since my dad left. It had started small and had grown day by day. Now it was huge. It came bursting out, and I couldn't stop it.

I got to my feet and strode toward him.

"These crab cakes are good," he said.

I punched him in the mouth, right where the crab cake had been.

"Hey!" he said in a muffled voice.

He dropped the bag and swung at me. I hit him in the nose, hard. There was a crunching sound. Blood spurted out.

I...