Gawkers were already crowding around, eager for loosened teeth, bloody noses, cut flesh, swollen eye sockets. In no time they had formed an impenetrable ring. Sheer adrenaline pumped cheers and animal cries out of their throats. All was uproar and pounding hearts…You couldn’t hear the crunk singer anymore…The ring didn’t leave Harrison room to use speed to any real advantage…Now Mac had Harrison backing up toward the truck with no place to retreat. Mac began closing in for the kill…from about twenty feet away. Fuck that! Harrison stopped retreating…He ran straight at Mac. Mac hesitated…Harrison dove…left his feet completely…hit the giant’s knees from the side with the full momentum of his body. Mac fell like a tree. Both hit the asphalt.

“What the fuck’s going on over there?” said Vance, who was standing on the truck bed of Julian’s pickup. Not only could he hear all the giddy yammering and shouting of a crowd, but he could also just make out their heads, many of which were popping up in excited attempts to see better.

Hoyt, who was sitting on the floor of the truck bed with his back propped up against a side wall, drinking his fourth—or was it his fifth, and did it matter?—beer, said, “Beats the shit outta me. Sounds like a fight. Same old shit show.”

Must have been his fifth beer, because he was trying to convince himself that it would be a more productive use of time to remain in this comfortable, contented position and get wasted than to go watch somebody fight.

Just then a huge collective groan welled up from over there in the midst of all the shouting. Another mass groan, louder yammering and cheering. Hoyt struggled to his feet, which was harder than it would have been if he could’ve used both hands. Right now he couldn’t. Getting wasted, even in defeat, still had a grip on the big cup of beer.

“I’m gonna go see,” said Vance. His blue eyes were flashing with anticipation. Boo-man, who had been diligently manning the keg for ten or eleven Saint Rays and their girlfriends, had stopped pumping and was craning his neck to try to spot the action. Even the Saint Rays and the girls down on the asphalt, who couldn’t see a thing, were looking in the direction of the ruckus.

Hoyt was dizzy from drink and from standing up while drunk. But curiosity soon revved up his blissfully demolished willpower, and he clambered down from the truck bed with Vance and Boo-man.

The three of them were far from being the only students tramping through the beer and cups and converging on the fight scene. Once they got there, they could see that penetrating the crush of gawkers would be a tactical nightmare. But Hoyt, especially while drunk, saw no reason in the world why a Saint Ray should obey the rules of the mob, such as first come, first served. He began knifing through the gawkers with his most imperious, superior self on display. “Coming through…coming through…Hey! Coming through! Move! I said coming through!” In the case of the occasional jerk who wanted it known that he couldn’t be fucked with, Hoyt would give the guy a certain accusing stare he had mastered, a veritable laser beaming undiluted blame, and say, “Don’t dick around! I got the plasma!”

In no time he was in the first row of the ring. Holy shit…No wonder such a mob…Out in the middle of the ring were Mac Bolka and Harrison Vorheese…Mac Bolka and Harrison Vorheese! They were pumped, pumped!—and fighting for real. Right now they were both crouched, circling each other…breathing hard, pouring sweat…Their hides were covered in friction burns, cuts, and dirt. A stripe of bright red blood ran from Harrison’s nose straight down to his mouth…He kept trying to block the flow with his lower lip…Mac Bolka’s eyes looked like flashlight bulbs down in dark craters. They were both on their last legs, if Hoyt knew anything about it…

He leaned in close to the ear of some skinny dork who was standing right next to him. “What’s all this about?”

“It’s over some girl,” the dork said without taking his eyes off the contest.

“What girl?”

“That girl over there on the edge.” He gestured vaguely, eyes still pinned on the action. “The one in the dress.”

There was only one girl in a dress amid the wall of gawkers. It was hard to make out her face, because she stood there hunched over, her hands pressed flat against her cheeks, her lips parted, her brow contorted, her eyes terrified, her cheekbones wet and glistening…Wait a minute. It was her, that girl—what the fuck was her name?—that little freshman, the one who gave him a hard time that night…But it was only that, a blip of random thought. Only one person was on his mind—Harrison, who was a brother. A brother! A Saint Ray! Not only that, but a lacrosse player…although he didn’t actually think that thought in so many words. He felt it, that thought, as if he were wired to a circuit. And Saint Rays were those who take no shit. That thought he did think in so many words. If Harrison needed any help, any help, against that big ugly bear, he was going to get it. He, Hoyt Thorpe, was a warrior!—and took no shit where Saint Rays were concerned.

Harrison confronted Bolka in a crouch, his body heaving in search of oxygen. His eyes were glassy. He looked as if at any moment he would black out and collapse from sheer exhaustion. Bolka edged closer. With a cry barely louder than a whimper, Harrison charged, throwing his hands upward as if to force Bolka’s arms apart and get a clean shot at him. In the next moment they were rolling in the dirt, and Harrison wound up on all fours with Bolka on his back. Bolka forced the smaller man’s head onto the ground so that the left side of his face was mashed into the pavement. With some sort of wrestler’s hold he clasped his huge hands behind Harrison’s neck. The neck was bent at a frightening angle. Bango!—the very life seemed to depart Harrison. He was an inert piece of meat. Sure that his adversary was now, indeed, finished, Bolka rose upright on his knees in a fumidbeer slick, his legs still straddling his adversary’s body. He threw his shoulders back and looked about at the crowd and lifted his fists to chest level. Hoyt expected him at any moment to start pounding his chest and cut loose with a yodel. Still lying on his side between Bolka’s legs, Harrison slowly rolled onto his back. His eyes were closed. His chest rose up and down in fast, shallow breaths. Bolka had a serious, almost sad look on his face, as if to say, “I didn’t want to have to hurt him, but he insisted on picking a fight.” Here at the perfect point on the graph of intoxication, Hoyt treated himself to a wave of sheer malignant hatred. He loathed the dumb fuck. Who was he? What was this Balkan mongrel diversoid doing at Dupont in the first place? The gale was blowing nicely. It was exhilarating. Just perfect. He was a Dupont man and a Saint Ray, and he knew. Loathing became something loftier and more refined: contempt.

Now the contemptible subhuman was rising to its feet. Bolka looked down at Harrison and shook his head as if he was sorry it had had to happen. Then he turned his back on the vanquished foe and began surveying the crowd. He had such a black scowl on his face, it seemed that at any moment he was likely to pick out someone else to slaughter. He stood stock-still and stared at someone. The scowl dissolved into a faint smile. “There’s my girl…” He said it with a slow, sugary, cretinish drawl. Theh’s muh gul…He began to move forward. It was her, the little freshman…He was heading straight for her.

He started to say it again: “Theh’s muh gul—”

“Stay away from me!” It was a shout, a command, rather than a cry.

“Uhh—”

“I SAID STAY AWAY FROM ME!”

She was furious! Her face was stricken with fear and twisted with a flood of tears—but she was furious! She stood her ground!

Bolka, looking bigger and more gorged with muscle than ever, was now but a few steps away from her. He looked more rank, more frothy with sweat, more of a big ugly bear, more contemptible than ever. The gawkers were dumbstruck, paralyzed…tiny worthless creatures—