Take Away the Saints

Milk Money: A Joseph Tugger Short || Mike Marsbergen

1

"Gimme your milk money, kid, or you'll be eating knuckle sandwiches for weeks," the bully said, his head bent way back in his attempt to stare fear into my eyes.

But I wasn't afraid. "Who's gonna make me? You?" I asked him, sarcastically, because I already knew the answer.

The bully jammed his thumb into the centre of his chest. "Me. Now hand it over unless you wanna die a virgin for the rest of your life."

"Maybe I do," I told him, digging into my pockets and rattling around the change. "I've got enough coins in here to buy milk for everybody. Except you." I heard the oooohs of approval.

"Beat him up, Henry!" one of the bully's friends shouted from the sidelines. He punched at the air.

Henry, the bully, put his fists up and took the stance.

I saw fear in his eyes as he stared up at me, all six-foot-five of me. "Try it and you'll be breathing through a straw in your chest. I'm warning you. Don't do it."

"Get him, Tugger!" my older brother Jack said from behind me.

"I'll get him if tries anything. I'll get him if he's a fool."

Suddenly Henry charged at me, screaming his head off, shaking it from side to side, windmilling his fists every which way but hitting nothing but air.

Big mistake.

I'd take him down in two seconds. Two seconds. Two moves.

First, I rocketed my arm out and, timed perfectly, collided it with his wrist as it flew past my rock-hard stomach. His wrist shattered and one half of the broken bone ripped through his skin, shining white and bloody. One move. One second.

Then, as he shrieked and bled everywhere, staring in awe at the state of his now-useless arm, I grabbed him by the hair and swung him around in circles. I let go at the precise moment and sent him flying, knowing the laws of physics would work in my favour. He went spinning through the air and landed, exactly as I intended, headfirst in a garbage bin. Two moves. Two seconds.

Everybody laughed at Henry as he tried to free himself, his legs kicking back and forth, shouting for help, crying. Everybody laughed. But I didn't. It wasn't funny to me. I'd warned him. "You just wouldn't listen, Henry," I said, shaking my head. I turned and walked away, ignoring the held-high high-fives.

I went and bought myself a carton of milk. Drank it at the corner table, where all the other nerds sat.

2

After school, Mom really chewed me out about standing up for myself.

"Tugger," she said, looking up at me as I did my afterschool bicep curls, "you're only eight years old! You can't go around breaking the wrists of other kids and tossing them into the trash!"

I finished my fifty curls and set the hundred-pound weights on the floor. "I warned him, Mom. He wouldn't listen."

"Tugger's right, Mom," Jack said from the doorway. He'd been listening the whole time. "Henry, the bully— He had it coming. He's an asshole."

"Jack, don't use that language!" Mom shouted. "What was this even about, Tugger?"

"He tried to steal my milk money, Mom," I said, laying myself down on the bench-press bench. I slotted in three hundred pounds and got to work. "You know..." I grunted between lifts, "I like... my milk..."

"Hmm, okay... He isn't younger than you, is he, Tugger?"

"Not... in my... grade..."

"He's three years older than Tugger, Mom," Jack said. "My grade."