Valentine Vengeance

We have a saying in the area where I grew up and still live; if you don't like the weather, hang on a minute.

The people giving the weather on the news are viewed as something of a joke, through no fault of their own really. The fact is that if a wind whips down out of the North Pole or up from the gulf, there is just nothing to stop it or even slow it down.

In my lifetime, all spent right here, I've seen it snow on Christmas and I've seen it eighty degrees. I've seen it a sweltering hundred and ten in the shade in August, and I've seen people wearing jackets and hailstones the size of basketballs. I've seen the sun shining then dirt blowing on seventy mile an hour winds then rain then snow then a seventy-eight degree heatwave all within an afternoon. I've seen snow accompanied by thunder and lightening and I've seen mud falling like rain.

But, no one around here had ever seen anything like what happened one Valentine weekend before or since. It made the record books twice. Once for the lowest temperature ever recorded in the area. And once for the most precipitation in a twenty-four hour period when it dumped thirty-six inches of snow over night. We didn't normally get fifteen inches of precipitation in three months!

No one had anticipated anything of the sort as the entire town, and several surrounding ones, looked forward to celebrating the entire weekend. Friday the thirteenth would see a "Darlings Dance" in the school gym for all of the school aged kids from elementary on up to high school. Saturday, Valentine's Day, there would be a "Square Dance on the Town Square". And Sunday, just about every church would have mixers for couples and singles.

I wasn't planning on going to any of them.

And if I had my way, neither would the two beautiful bitches who had cost me everything and gotten away with it. But, not for much longer.

That sounds melodramatic now, but I was only just turned eighteen at the time. The way I figured it, those two getting in a fight and catching me in the scuffle and breaking my leg in early October had ruined more than just the football season. It had derailed my entire life.

It would have been my third year starting for the varsity and the smart money was that the team would win State and that I was probably looking at a full ride to the college of my choice. The only question anyone had was which side of the ball I would be recruited on.

I was walking to class one day in October through crowded hallways in my letter jacket festooned with both team and personal award patches from the previous two years and just about to turn the corner by the science lab when someone yelled out my name and I turned to wave when I saw it about to happen.

Amber Brighton was strolling down the hall on the wrong side, flipping her flame colored hair as she mouthed off to one of her minions who was swinging wide like we were all supposed to.

Bianca Perez was walking on the correct side, but so close to the wall that she couldn't have seen around the corner even if she hadn't been looking at the ground just ahead of her feet with her dark hair curtaining her face and books clutched to her chest.

Both girls were as infamous for their tempers, especially with each other, as they were famous for their looks. I froze, twisted around with my arm half up in the air, and couldn't look away from the horrible train wreck that I could feel coming.

Bianca's books crashed to the floor as the two collided. Amber fell back a pace and looked to see who she had run into.

"Watch where you're going, bitch." Amber snarled and made as if to walk around Bianca.

"Puta!" Bianca screamed and lashed out to knock Amber's books from her hands.

I was standing right there, looking right at them. I can remember as clear as day how Amber's red hair and Bianca's raven dark swung and the flashes of hate in green eyes and brown. But I could not say just who's hand wrapped in who's hair first. Although I think Bianca's fist landed just a hair faster than Amber's.

I was used to the violent crush and pop of pads on the football field. And, I'd been in my share of fights and seen a fair few besides. Nothing had prepared me for the sheer ferocity as those two laid into each other.

And then it happened.

Amber's blue blouse had just popped a button and I was frankly staring at the creamy forbidden flesh, revealed since she wasn't wearing a bra, when their bodies toppled, each with one hand entangled in the other's hair while the free hand was doing double time at any part of the other they could reach. I felt their combined weight hit my leg and my foot slipped almost an inch before it stuck fast.

My next clear memory was of teachers coming from everywhere and telling me to stop and tearing them loose from my grip. Although I didn't realize it until afterwards, they thought I was attacking the girls in those confused moments.

Amber and Bianca set them straight by promptly getting away from the teachers who held each of them and laying into each other again. Cued in to where the problem really was, everyone let go of me and left me lying there as they separated the two hellcats once more.

Although I wasn't there, I understand they went after each other a third time right in the principal's office. I missed that part being a little busy holding my busted leg with the broken ends of bone sticking through my shin while Coach and the school nurse hovered over me.

I also understand they went at it yet a fourth time in the back of our town's lone police car as they drove them away. I didn't see it since I was being wheeled out the back door and into an ambulance.

My season was over almost before it began. The team didn't even make the playoffs. The scouts didn't get to see me play and no one was making the anticipated noises about scholarships.

But, at least those bitches were paying the price.

In December, however, I learned a little known fact about the justice system in my country, or at least the part where I live. Apparently somebody back a few years ago decided it probably wasn't a good idea to put teenage shoplifters in with adult murderers and rapists. I guess on the whole that was probably a good thing.

But, it developed two separate systems. One for kids from ten to seventeen and the adult system that picked up when people turned eighteen.

The two bitches who had done this to me turned eighteen within a week of each other late in November. It shouldn't have been any problem. Just kick them over to the adult system, right?

Wrong.

Apparently when a child turns eighteen and becomes an adult, they don't just automatically skip over to the adult jail without passing "Go" and collecting their two hundred dollars. Instead, they have another trial to see if they will be transferred to the adult system.

As the "victim of record of an assault with aggravated circumstances", I was notified by letter during Christmas break that "because it was the first offense and the injury sustained, while serious, was accidental, the charges of aggravated assault as held by the juvenile court have been dropped to a class-c mutual combat normally punishable by fine, but as the plaintiff(s) had been detained for just over a month, the court will waive the fine in lieu of time served."

The bitches were turned loose without probation or anything! And because they had been juveniles at the time, the records were sealed. No one who wasn't there would even know what the cunts had done to me!

It was probably a good thing I found out by letter and at a time when school was on break. As I had turned eighteen also, I would have been charged as an adult without a handy get out of jail free card.

I can't take credit for realizing that one on my own. Dad had to point it out to me. Repeatedly. At one point holding me by the letter jacket against the wall with my feet a foot off the ground.

And on the first day back at school after New Years, Coach and the principal went over it again. And pointed out that although the school had to allow them back for our last four months, they would be confined to two cubicles in the library normally used for in-school suspension for the duration, so it shouldn't be a problem for me to stay away from them.

And it wasn't. I couldn't even catch a glimpse of them. I know because I tried and there was always a teacher, or a coach, or the Principal himself, nearby to guide me gently on my way.

My girlfriend broke up with me in January.

She said it was because I had changed. But I knew it was because I wasn't the star I should have been. I wasn't going to get the scholarship I should have gotten. I wouldn't be leaving town after all, but would probably work my family's farm like my father and his father and his father all the way back to my great-great-great grandfather.

I didn't hold it against her though. Jen was the perfect cheerleader and trophy wife material, but she wouldn't have made a good farm wife and we both knew it. One more thing to lay at those bitches feet.

So, it was with hate festering in my heart that I leaned against the wall and watched Jen and the other cheerleaders hanging those stupid signs festooned with hearts and a winged baby wearing a diaper and carrying a bow with heart tipped arrows while flanked by my two best friends.

"I don't know," Cory said. "I'm just not feeling it. You know?"

"Me either." Jack said. "Hey, Brandon. Why don't we get some liquor from the bootlegger and spend the weekend getting fucked up out at the love shack?"

I blinked and my cheeks ached with the all but forgotten sensation of a smile.

"Jack," I said. "You, my man, are a fucking certified genius. I don't care if you are flunking Algebra again."

"Dude, that is so not my fault." Jack grumbled. "If the old bat wouldn't assign a hundred and fifty fucking problems..."

But, I wasn't listening.

My great-great-great grandfather had homesteaded the land my family still farmed. Which meant, at the time, that he was required to build a house out there. More of a shack really by more modern standards. It was small, just one room I couldn't stand up straight in, and was half below ground and half above. I could stand just outside the front door and easily look over the roof at the land behind it.

By my great grandfather's time, the laws had changed. Farmers didn't neccessarily have to live on the acreage anymore. Nagged by his wife, family legend goes, Great-grandpa had moved the five miles into town where the rest of the generations had continued to commute.

But, we had kept up the old shack and even made some improvements and used it to clean up and eat and even sometimes catch a nap during the long hours of spring planting and fall harvest.

Or, for teenage kids to have somewhere to go to drink a couple of beers and blow off some steam without bothering the adults or the police getting involved, so long as we didn't get back behind the wheel and try to drive back into town until the next day.

It was five miles from town to reach the half mile dirt road that led up to the little one room shanty. And the nearest neighbor was two miles in the wrong direction. While we had put in plumbing from the well, replaced the old outhouse with a commode, and even added a shower with a first generation in-line tankless propane water heater, we hadn't bothered to put in electricity or, more importantly, phone lines.

I still couldn't drive, not until I got the damn walking cast off, but the plan that was taking shape would work better if I couldn't.

"Guys, let's go check out the love shack after class." I said.

"Sounds cool." Jack said as the pair hustled away to our last class.

When I sat them down at the old farmhouse and started telling them my plan however, to my surprise they weren't immediately on board.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Cory blurted. "No way, man. No fucking way."

"Dude, think this through." Jack said. "We don't need to go to jail over a couple of bitches."

"No one is going to jail," I said. "Except maybe one or both of those two. Just listen."

I spent three hours talking about what was in essence a very simple plan. Or would have been if I hadn't had to assure them again and again that none of us were going to so much as lay a finger on the girls.

All we were going to do was make sure they had dates for Valentine's.

Jack was going to ask Amber to go out with him on Friday and Cory was going to ask Bianca. Only, instead of taking them to the Darling's Dance, they were going to bring them out to the farm where I would be waiting. Then they were going to drop the girls off and go back to town and, if at all possible, try to get as many people as they could gathered on the edge of town where the road ran in from the direction of our farm.

Neither was I going to be involved in what would happen. The girls would fight again, I was certain of it. I, afraid that I would be hurt again if I intervened, would take shelter in the house when the fight broke out.

Once the fight was finished, they would most likely walk back to town, looking like they had been in a fight. And with any luck with their pretty dresses torn in places that would show a little more skin than they wanted to anyone who happened to be hanging around the edge of town.

"All right, fine." Cory finally said. "But, how the hell are we supposed to get them to agree to go out with us? They know we're your friends. And they know that none of us has forgiven them."

"Hell, Brandon," Jack cut in. "No one in town has forgiven them for what they did and they damn well know it. I doubt they would be willing to show their faces even if someone else asked them."

"Yeah," Cory interrupted in turn. "And I heard Amber's dad sold her car while she was locked up and that he drives her to school ever day and walks her into the library and doesn't even let her talk to anybody until he hands her off to the librarians. Can you see him letting her go out to a dance?"

"Come to think of it," Jack said thoughtfully. "I don't remember ever seeing Bianca outside of school hours. I don't think she even does the social thing."

I felt my chest squeeze my heart. It was all so simple and elegant. Hell, it might even get one or both of them arrested again and put back in jail where they belonged. But, if my friends were right, there was no way it would ever happen.

"Won't you guys at least try?" I asked. "We've got two weeks until the dance."

They both sat there for a moment looking anywhere but at me as I stared pleadingly at them.

"Fine." Jack said, finally. "But, if either of them can't go, we three bring a bottle or five and get commode hanging drunk together and forget about those bitches."

I turned my appeal to Cory who was staring at Jack then finally turned his face to mine.

"All right, man." Cory sighed. "I'll do it. But, if we go to jail for this shit, you two better have my fucking back out in the yard. That's all I'm saying."

"You're my brother from another mother." I clapped Cory's shoulder. "Of course, I've got your back. Any time, anywhere."

Of course, my simple plan needed some refinements almost immediately. Amber and Bianca were almost as difficult for Cory and Jack to get near as they had been for me. Teachers and parents combined to form a wall between us and them.

I also decided that what the patch of dirt in front of the small farmhouse really needed was to be turned into mud, just in case, and turned the water on to seep into that patch. Each afternoon we drove out to move the water and plot how to circumvent the inpenetrable wall around our quarry.

We were into the final countdown when Jack managed to smuggle a note to Amber on Monday of Valentine's week by way of one of the girls that took her assignments from the teachers and picked up her completed work to bring back.

"Fuck off." She had scrawled across it.

Meanwhile, Cory hadn't had even that much luck with Bianca.

"I don't know, man." Jack said as he showed me the note. "I just don't see this happening."

"Switch it up." Cory said cryptically.

"Do what?" I blinked at him.

"Switch." Cory said. "I'll send a note in to Amber asking her to go with me instead of playboy over here. And he can use his skills to get Bianca instead."

"Bait and switch." Jack said. "I like it."

I suspected Cory was just being lazy since he said he would give a note to Jack for him to pass through the same route, but I didn't care. As long as they got them both there and they fought and did a walk of shame back into town, I would be happy.

Cory took his sweet time with the note and I was wondering if he had punked out on me before I saw the spiral notebook he handed Jack on Wednesday.

"Jesus, man." Jack said, flipping through page after page of writing. "A note is supposed to be something small so it can be slipped to them without anyone noticing. What the fuck is all this?"

"You want her to go, or don't you?" Cory asked, taking the spiral and closing it. "Just have Beth put it with the usual stack of assignments. No one will even think to check it. You just focus on Bianca."

"I already did, man." Jack grinned. "She is going."

Other than that cryptic reply, Jack wouldn't tell us how he had managed it, but just buffed his nails on his letter jacket and smiled.

Amber sent back a note to Cory explaining that she would have to sneak out as she was grounded until graduation. But, that she would.

Cory wouldn't tell us what was in the almanac he had sent to get her to agree either. But, he wasn't smiling at all.

My plans were on track. We just needed to pick up our tuxedos, along with some things that I had ordered, in the city thirty miles away.

Jack and Cory gave me a little grief over the tuxedos and corsages, but it was good natured since I was footing the bill for the flowers. However, the next stop almost caused a revolt.

"Oh, man." Jack shook his head when he saw what I had pre-ordered. "I don't know about this. That's pretty fucked up."

"A dog collar?" Cory said, turning it in his hand. "With 'Bitch' engraved on the tag?"

"And this one says 'Puta'." Jack said flatly, holding up the other one. "Man, this is getting into some pretty fucked up shit."

"Don't worry about it." I said. "I'm just going to let them know without a doubt what I think of them. Okay, one more stop."

"Oh, fuck no!" Jack blurted when I told him where. "No fucking way! That's going just too damn far."

"Guys, you know me." I said. "Do you really think I'm going to do anything to either of them?"

"I don't know, man." Cory said. "If you had asked me a year ago, then sure. But, lately, you've been..."

"I've been what?" I prompted.

"Obsessed." Cory said. "You've been obsessed with these two. Man, it's our senior year. We're supposed to be having the time of our lives. One last big bang before we put on our hats and go to work. But, what are we doing? We're fucking up Valentine's Day for revenge. And okay, maybe they deserve something for what they did. But, come on."

In the end, I had to get out of the truck at a stoplight and start walking.

I almost thought they weren't going to give even then and had started wondering just how I was going to get the thirty miles back to our home town. I somehow just couldn't see calling Mom to come pick me up at a triple-x adult store. I remembered there was a bus that ran through town from the city and wondered how much a ticket would cost, or where the bus station even was, when Jack pulled up beside me.

"Get in, you crazy son of a bitch." Jack said. "But, I'm telling you now. If there is any, and I do mean any, accusation of rape or anything, we are both going to kick the ever loving shit out of you."

"There won't be." I said confidently. At least not accusations at any of us.