follows Never Stop Winning
It wasn't anything specific. More of the same of course, Val Timson bearing fresh bruises on top of old ones. The look in her eyes was a little more vacant. She was quieter, yeah, but the words coming out were always shitty, like maybe spreading out her hurt would ease it for her. But it ********' didn't. It just made people hate her more, even the soft hearted girls trying to pull some empathy s**t and bring her to light with hugs or whatever. Even soft girls had a threshold.
America wasn't a soft girl and <********> empathy for anyone that wronged her or those she held close. The level of contempt had grown and grown and knowing more hadn't changed anything.
She'd started following Val outside of school over a month ago. Not like, constantly, she had her own life and business after all. It was easy to figure out the source of the issue and it wasn't street fights with other girls, or working for a drug dealer, or running from cops or any of the other rumors. It was just...the usual sort of s**t.
Squatting under the living room window at the Timson house, head leaning tiredly against the dirty yellow siding, America had listened to their Saturday dinner. The calm, reasonable voice of the brother (dishonorable discharge, according to Mimsy's research) that switched on a dime, followed by crashing plates. The quiet grunts followed by the dying rat whine of Val. Mrs. Timson's tired plea, to Val, to try not to upset him like that. He's having a hard time. Maybe she shouldn't come back on weekends anymore. The quiet annoyance in the woman's voice echoing the teachers at school.
If she was Val, she'd run away. Maybe burn the ******** house down first. But Val wasn't as good as America, was she? She was weak and stupid, she stayed in place like a sad cow and just took everything. Instead of feeling bad for her, America just hated her even more.
So she went from following Val to following him, instead. Because someone had to do something, right? And nobody was. Except America. She knew she was strong in the ways that mattered. She was a do'er, not a crier or an ignore'er. She was stronger than Val, she was better than the ******** adults in their lives, and she was smarter than a system dictated by policy rather than common ******** sense.
It was an easy tail. Hearing he'd been military, she'd been a little worried at first, imagining special forces and the like. Real movie s**t. But he was just some a*****e, and drunk or high most of the time as wandered between his burnout friends' places and whatever bars were in walking distance. (There were a lot of bars in walking distance.)
His personality probably wasn't much better in those places than it was at home. He'd nearly always left alone, no one calling out to get home safe, to contact them when he got back. No bar pick-ups. Just a series of quiet slogs with the occasional stop to puke in a gutter or piss in an alley. His was a gross and pathetic existence, a living death that nobody but his mother would cry over.
Last week she'd nearly done it, bat at the ready behind his stumbling form, about to take that swing. But something felt off, probably just nerves, Possibly something else about that moment. In the end she'd silently lowered the bat, went home, and threw up.
America looked at herself in the 7Eleven bathroom, sickly pale under the lighting but...ready. She felt perfectly calm in this moment, no more nerves. There hadn't been a threshold, a point taken too far to tolerate any longer. This week had been much the same as the last, and she didn't feel any angrier or more frustrated today. It was simply...time. Slipping the Halloween mask over her head, a smiling Barbie face gazed back at her.
If the clerk noticed that the teen who'd spent a little too long in the bathroom emerged in different clothes, with a different backpack, and a ******** mask weeks after Halloween, she clearly didn't care. That attitude and the notoriously broken cameras in the store made it the perfect stop for tonight's preparations.
She nearly missed him though, he was leaving his favored bar before the match was even over. But that also meant nobody else was outside and she could hear the raucous yells from inside. Loud. Good. He took the little shortcut too, the one that squeezed him between the barely there gap between two empty buildings. He didn't always take it, but maybe tonight he was in a hurry. The shortcut meant a quick run to circle around, which was fine, because she was fast. And the stoop right at the exit gave her a couple feet of height to swing from.
Watching him emerge from that higher vantage point felt good. An advantage always felt good, but as he walked ahead, not noticing her beside and then behind him, there was a certain satisfaction on a technical level. A swing perfectly lined up.
The bat met the back of his head with a dull thwock and he dropped like a bag of rotten potatoes. She froze a moment, everything stuttering to a stop, and then he stirred a bit and she was back in motion, as if there'd never been any hesitation this time. Scanning the empty street, silent but for her breathing and his quiet groan, America hopped down from the stoop and grabbed up the man's limp hands.
He was heavy, but she only had to drag him a couple feet to the end of the walk. there was some more stirring when she dropped the arms, then rolled him over onto his back. Looking down at him, this guy who'd created a problem she'd been forced to involve herself in, this piece of s**t she'd followed for weeks now, America still just couldn't see the people in him. The parts that made him loved by some, that made him smart or unique or a little special. People had a lot going on, right? A little of this, a little of that, good to go with bad, some dirt to keep them from being too perfect to be real.
But he was just a problem. Even this low and vulnerable, his was an existence to solve rather than sympathize or appreciate.
Placing her foot on one of his forearms, she eyed the wrist dangling over the gutter and lined up her swing with that continued calm. She didn't feel angry anymore, something was being done after all. That was the important thing. It was what America had been wanting all this time.
He woke up fully and screaming as the bat connected, but not in time to save his other one from the same. The girl was efficient in the moment. Ordinarily, when it came to fights or anything similarly physical, America was loud in her victory, mouthy and exultant. But here she was silent. She didn't give the man any sort of warning or admonishment.
She just looked at him cradling his mangled hands to his chest, crying out in painful confusion. Then turned and left.
The problem was fixed. At least for now
