Out of the Pocket by Bill Konigsberg Page B

than thirty seconds, I felt the same emotions simmer and begin to rise to the surface. This time I turned and saw it was Carrie, behind me, grinning, the bitch. She looked a little demented with the laser pack on, very intense.
    “Dead meat,” she said, and then she turned, grabbed her gun in both hands, and hustled out of the area. At that moment she became the only possible target.
    I ran after her, actually angry. She could hear me running right behind her, and I could see her slowing and I knew what she was going to do. I beat her to the punch. She flung around at me, wildly, and tried to aim her gun, but I was too quick for her. I grabbed it from her hands and tossed it aside, and proceeded to shoot her, point-blank, in the gut.
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    It felt good.
    “Jerk,” she said. She stormed past me and picked up the gun.
    The bravado was in my chest now, the strange pride that I could feel in my lungs, coupled with an anger that at once enveloped and embarrassed me.
    “You shot me, I shot you back.”
    “No. I shot you, you chased me and threw my gun, and shot me. Bullshit,” she said, bending down and picking up her gun. A guy, maybe fourteen, with a Mohawk appeared in the doorway, and quickly set our packs ablazing.
    “Fuck you!” we both screamed at him, and he saw that there was something beyond a game going on and booked it out of there. Carrie’s face was red, and I could feel the same heat rising in me.
    We stared each other down. This was a new thing for us; we never raised our voices with each other. There was never any reason. Carrie picked up her gun, placed it against my rib cage, and pulled the trigger.
    I felt the pack and its buzz, again, and it sent unusual shock waves through me, into my pelvis. I waited a few seconds and fired back, and we stood there, taking turns shaking.
    Finally Carrie laughed. “What’s wrong with us?” she said. I wasn’t quite ready to laugh. My gut was in knots and a primal roar far beyond the game was welling up within my belly. “Maybe we should just get it over with and kiss,” she said. “Make love, not war.” She was leering at me. She didn’t get it, didn’t see that something had broken in me in the midst of a stupid game.
    I just stood there, looking at her.
    For a moment I was lost in thought, and then I saw Carrie’s lips, a dark shade of red, and plump like overripe fruit, coming toward me.
    She pressed her lips against mine.
    I searched myself—for arousal, for anything good, for proof that 95
    I’d made all this gay stuff up—and for a moment I felt a pressure on my upper groin but not the kind I’d expected. I pulled away and looked down, and saw it was her pack pressing awkwardly into mine.
    We stood there, connected by our packs and staring at each other. I imagined Carrie standing there topless, and shivered at the thought, her breasts like alien bumps on her chest where no bumps should be. A guy about our age ran by the corridor we were in and shot Carrie in the back. She laughed, softly, her eyes huge orbs of innocence and wonder, and I loved her at that moment, not sensually but emotionally, loved her and wanted to protect her from bad things. From me.
    Our midsections shook together.
    “See what you do to me?” she said, raising one eyebrow, and she tilted her head slightly once again, made her eyes into slits, and moved her overripe lips to mine.
    I jumped back.
    It was involuntary. I’d meant to stay with it, but whatever power deep within me that I couldn’t control pushed a button and I pulled away from her before she could get me.
    Carrie seemed to galvanize at that moment, her eyes registering comic disbelief and a level of injury I’d never seen before. She opened her mouth to speak, but could say nothing. She looked away, up at the ceiling, as if the answer were there, and then back to me. She shook her head in disbelief and sighed in a manner I hoped never again to hear, ever, in my life. A sigh of resignation and pent-up rage, if