For Air
by Mathias Nelson
I was young and dumb and hung out with the bad kids my age. My best friend was Casey.We chased a boy with asthma around the back of the elementary school until he turned blue and fell to the ground, fumbling for his inhaler. Casey jumped on him and knocked the inhaler out of the boy’s hand. I kicked the kid in the face. Casey pounded him from blue to purple. The kid was really starting to heave for air. I stopped beating on him and just held him down. I wanted it to stop. Casey didn’t stop. He started to laugh the craziest laugh I ever heard. Hysterical laughter. Blood laughter. I just kept holding the kid down, praying in my head that Casey would stop. I never was the baddest. I was more the observer.
Casey grabbed the inhaler and asked the boy, “You want this, punk? You want it? Everyday from now on you’re going to pay me for your life. Understand,” Casey slapped him.
The boy nodded, frantic.
Casey gave him the inhaler and I let the boy go. The kid looked like he was dying there in the moist morning grass. He rolled over and over trying to catch his breath while puffing at the inhaler like a crackhead’s pipe. Luckily for me the kid lived, and paid Casey with his lunch money everyday.
Casey never changed. He was always mean. Always stealing or fondling the girls or beating up on the weaker kids. When we’d talk about the kid with the inhaler he’d say, “The kid’s got no heart,” and spit.
It made me think. Was the kid a sissy and have no heart or did he just never have a chance? I mean he couldn’t fuckin’ breath for crying out loud. Casey was a heartless bastard. I had no heart either. We had no heart.
As we grew older Casey just kept getting stronger and more malicious. He had multiple victims. On the weekends he didn’t even like to go to parties. All he wanted to do was sit around, get drunk, and tell stories of all the people he had hurt. He’d take me under the bridge at night and the only time I’d see his face was when his cigarette tip crackled. He didn’t want to be around anybody else because he had too much mean pride. He knew he’d hurt them, which was fine by him, but he didn’t want to get caught.
When we turned sixteen I had enough of it all. I got my license and started hanging around normal kids. Casey started to despise me for it. I could see it in the way his mouth moved. His smiles grew crooked. He’d give me the same look he gave his victims. The laughter was bottled.
One day after school he grabbed me by the arm and said, “Come on. I got to make Heaver Beaver pay me for air.” He called the kid with asthma Heaver Beaver because he always heaved for air and never fought back.
I pulled my arm away, “Nah, I don’t think so…”
“Come on motherfucker quit acting like a fucking pansy and help your friend out!” He gave me the crooked smile. The smile that said, I’m on the verge of making you my victim.
“All right. All right…” I replied.
We walked through a few alleys and sure enough there was the kid with asthma trying to sneak his way home.
“Hey! Heaver Beaver! Stay put you fuckin’ coward.” The kid stopped. We walked up. I stood behind Casey.
“All right, bitch, where’s my money?”
The kid was shaking. His face turned red. “I…I don’t got no money,” his lips quivered. I had never seen him this terrified. Poor kid. Poor kid with fuckin’ asthma…
Casey slapped him, “Where’s the money bitch? You’re breathing all that air, gotta’ pay for it!”
“No money, Casey, I swear…please just leave me alone.”
“You got no fuckin’ heart,” Casey reached back and walloped him. The kid fell. Blood trickled from his nose and he started to heave through his mouth. Casey mashed the kid’s face into the concrete. I grabbed Casey’s arm.
“That’s enough, man…”
“What?” He gave me the crooked smile. “What? Are you kidding me? You really are a bitch. I knew it. I fuckin’ knew it. You got bitch written all over you.”
“Listen man, just let him go. He’s been paying you since we were little kids.”
“Fuck that. Fuck you,” he laughed, “Actually you know what? I see what’s going on here. You really are a bitch. You’re his bitch. You two are a couple of fags!”
“Go to hell,” I started to walk away.
“Stop!” He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, “You ain’t going no where,” he pointed a small pistol at me.
“Shit, man, take it easy! Are you nuts? Put the fuckin’ gun away!”
“Nah, ha ha, nah…I want to see something first.”
“What?”
“I want to see you fags kiss.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck who?” He cocked the pistol and grabbed the kid by the hood, “Stand up bitch,” he picked him up, “Give your boy-toy a french-kiss.” The kid staggered to my side. He was crying and his face was smeared with dirt and blood. Casey looked at me. “Now I will fucking kill you both right now if I have to. Do you doubt me?”
No. No I didn’t doubt him. I didn’t say anything though. I was in shock. He grabbed the kid by the back of the head and pushed our faces together. I could taste the concrete on the kid’s tongue. The little pebbles rolled around my mouth. I would never live this down. But what could I do? Let that crazy son of a bitch shoot me? Hell no. I’d get him back one day. At least, that’s what I thought.
Then I heard Casey grunt. I thought the sick son of a bitch was getting off on this. His hand eased up on my head. I stepped back.
The kid wasn’t crying anymore. His face was twitching all over though. He was beat red. He looked sick, mad, psychotic.
Then I saw it. The kid had stabbed Casey in the chest.
Casey dropped the gun and fell. He stared off into the sky. A rain cloud passed over the sun. Casey kept starring, but he wasn’t looking at anything, anymore. The blood soaked the shirt over his chest.
The kid got heart, after all.
I ran. I ran faster than I ever ran. Farther than I ever ran. I just kept running. I remember looking over my shoulder and seeing the kid kicking Casey’s dead body. I ran. I ran and I didn’t stop.
