Cataindar

CHAPTER ONE

Oliver's face was a mask of bravery, his chin was tipped up, looking down his nose at Terry, but Luisa could see his eyes flinch at Terry's words. He knows he's going to lose, no-one in our year has ever beaten Terry in a fight.

There must be over a hundred students, pulled together in a circle around the fighters. Luisa was jostled from side to side, but her place at the front of the ring was set. Faces on all sides, alight with the promise of a spectacle, were screaming encouragement at the fighters. "Smash him in Terry!" "Come on Oliver bruv, let's see what you got!" Hands held phones high, capturing video. The fight, like all, would live on for eternity, slipped to fellow youths from phone to phone.

Terry continued psyching himself up. "I'm gonna smash your face in!"

From each S-sound spittle flew through his teeth.

The chant of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" grew louder. Luisa saw Stacey on the other side of the ring, jumping up and down with the beat of the chant, swept up in the blood-lust, screaming at the fighters, veins protruding from her delicate neck as the words reached a crescendo.

The feeling of fear stuck Luisa's side like a stab from a knife.

I need to get away from this. She tried to turn and push her way back into the crowd, but the circle, packed tight, pushed back. No escape.

She turned back to see spit fly into Oliver's face. Oliver shoved Terry away.

Terry let his fist fly, and landed a thundering punch to the side of Oliver's head. The crowd erupted. Oliver was knocked to the dust and scrambled in the dirt to get back up, but a kick from Terry snapped his head back.

Terry threw his hands up to a roar of the crowd, like a bare-knuckle prize-fighter. He grabbed a fistful of Oliver's hair and punched him repeatedly in the face with a smack-smack-smack. Oliver's face whipped back and forth from the blows, blood splattering from his nose and out his mouth. Terry's knuckles glistened a blackish-red. Terry had no off-switch. He is going to kill him.

Luisa was frozen, her hands pressed tight to her mouth, as if trying to keep in a scream of horror while the crowd around her went berserk.

Three of Terry's friends finally leapt in, ripping Terry off Oliver and ending the violence. Terry was hoisted to their shoulders and as he was being paraded away, Luisa saw him lift a tuft of Oliver's hair to his lips, blowing them away like they were the spores of a dandelion.

Luisa stood by helplessly as Oliver struggled to stand. His movements confused, like a pigeon hit by a car. Blood dripped from his mouth and mixed with the clay-like dust of the Mound.

Walking home with Stacey, Luisa listened to her friend's analysis of the fight. "I don't give a toss about neither of 'em, best thing that could 'appen is that they both ended up dead. Terry's sick in the head, y'know he brocked up Joe Parker's dad outside the front of his own house? Knocked 'im out cold girl. Like blatt! Sparko."

Stacey continued, tipping her head from side to side, pontificating with a gently cupped hand and talking out the side of her mouth in the typical White Manor style. "So listen yeah, Terry's dad is like a proper pikee, 'is mum is an alcoholic, that's why 'ee 'is a psycho. An' anyway Oliver had it comin', he is a proper perv ya know..."

Luisa's mind wandered as Stacey went into a long diatribe on how each of the fighters had wronged her over the past two years. They reached the point in their journey home at which they went their separate ways. Stacey reached in and gave Luisa a hug, as had recently became a custom. Luisa hugged back a little awkwardly, inhaling the full power of Stacey's rich flowers-on-steroids body spray.