The Trigger Effect
© 2005 By Ken Glassmeyer
© 2005 By Ken Glassmeyer
CHAPTER TWO
Kit-Kat rode his silver Mongoose across the grass, tearing up the sod in huge chunks. He hit the pavement and did a few helio-axles with the front wheel and jumped the curve. The upper school parking lot was virtually empty with the exception of the custodian’s old Dodge Dart. Coach Grabowski’s SUV was probably around back on the field. If it had been here, he would have carved some vocabulary words into the fender with the box knife in the pocket of his FUBU jacket.Kit-Kat paused and heard his grandma admonishing him in his thoughts. “Kellen, you’re the only child in this family with half a lick of sense, so don’t be wasting it with mischief. You just listen to me young man and keep studying your arithmetic like I taught you and one day you will grow into a fine young king this family can be proud of.”
“Yadda-yadda-rickety-rack, go peddle your “I have a dream” speech at church, grams. I’m out!” The fantasy voice in his head answered for him just before successfully ducking the spatula or ladle that would have been chucked at him from the kitchen stove that served as both lectern and appliance for his grandmother. Then he would have dashed out the side door of her Section Eight townhouse, jumped on his bike, and escaped before the real wrath came.
In reality, Kellen Kinslow, would have been afraid to even think those words for fear his grandmother’s radar would have sniffed his thoughts out and made target lock on his head for at least three kitchen missiles before he could even plan to duck. There was nothing like a spatula to the forehead to increase wisdom. Truth be told, he also thought his grandma was pretty cool and even though he didn’t always follow her advice, he had to respect her, because she really didn’t nag him like his silly mother, and besides she could whip his butt at Playstation, hence her deadly aim. Grandma would let him make his own mistakes, but try to help him learn from them. He was probably about to make another one, but the voice in his head, Kit-Kat, was gaining more control every day, and today, Kit-Kat wanted to do some damage.
He looked around the corner and saw Mrs. Long’s raggedy minivan and smiled. He was just about to scratch a few prime numbers into the hatch when he realized she wouldn’t even get the joke—probably wouldn’t even realize the figures were prime, much less be able to decipher the code of his name; his new name.
Kit-Kat stopped and put the box knife back in his coat pocket. He looked in the windows of the school. He loved and hated this place. He wasn’t supposed to be here right now and that gave his body a little thrill. Ms. Kurtz, his biology teacher had once said it was something called adrenal release and that it was caused by something called fight/flight response. Ms. Kurtz was the only teacher in the place he really liked, even if she did give him a C last quarter. Not that the grade mattered because the principal, old man Harris, has changed all his grades to an F after he got suspended the fourth time in the quarter. Grades didn’t matter to him, but he liked learning things, especially if it made him smarter than the rest of the people he knew on the streets. Kit-Kat smiled at the thought of that science lecture. He liked to fly on his Mongoose and he loved to fight, so what part of the animal kingdom did that make him? Kit-Kat scratched the sign for Pi in her tailgate. He liked the frosty feel in his nerves. He felt crisp and alive. He was a beast.
He spun the tires one more time and did a few more tricks on the bike in the parking lot then made a straight bead up the hill in the front of the red-bricked building that was covered with browning ivy. As he rode past the shiny new Sally Ride Middle School sign he did a donut in the mud that splashed dirt and gravel all over the sign. Those stupid white people on the school board thought it would make the kids that went to this school enjoy classes better if they renamed the building after some astronaut. What a joke. The roof still leaked, the books were either dusty or musty, and the teachers were all either whacked or washed up has-beens. Changing the name didn’t fix anything. Besides, Kit-Kat hated this school, and nobody was going to change that. This school was good for one thing—making money.
That fat slob Mr. Grabowski had gotten him suspended and that hurt his business. Now he had to ride his bike around the neighborhood to hook up with his regular customers. Thinking of Grabowski made him sick. He cleared phlegm from his throat, sloshed it around in is mouth forming a snot bullet, and then launched it at the silver letters that spelled school. The honker dripped all over the two letter O’s. Kit-Kat whistled at his artistry and rode further on just in case the janitor looked out the window.
Kit-Kat heard the sounds of football practice going on behind the building on the open field. The open field was actually part of the Greenspring Township Park, and not technically school grounds, so his suspension didn’t really apply. He was a practiced street lawyer knowing exactly what school officials and cops could and could not do to him—it came with the turf of being a corporal in the local chapter of the G’D’s.
While each member of the gang liked to let people think they were a recognized set of the Gangsta Disciples, G.D. really stood for Greenspring Dale, the name of their subdivision. Just because they lived in the suburbs, didn’t make them wannabes—several of the founding members were serving real hard time up state. Kit-Kat’s brother Mikail was in for aggravated assault. For that matter so was his so-called father and his uncle, of course who his real dad was is still a matter of debate in his family. The truth was, either man could have been his father, or for that matter maybe neither one of them was. Kellen didn’t care. He didn’t need no daddy.
If those two lames were his dad, at least the DNA was selective. At least he didn’t inherit their brains. He didn’t mind their brawn, even if back in elementary a few kids called him gorilla, because people learned to respect muscles and the pain they could inflict. Matched with his brains, he was a force to be reckoned with even when a small child. When he decided he didn’t like the gorilla metaphor anymore he mashed one little kid so hard into the playground fence that it left a waffle bruise on the kid’s face for two weeks. He knew even as the kid begged to be let go that he wanted to make a dramatic example—and it was a sound street strategy. No one ever messed with him again.
His relatives had been caught because they were stupid. Kit-Kat could have even offered them a better plan that would have allowed them to not only score a bigger grab of cash, but would have prevented their mistakes. Instead he remained coolly silent, letting them set their own trap. That was how Kit-Kat moved up. Soon he would be one of the youngest leaders in the set, and he was ready. One day, he would even get the teardrop tattoo that meant he had made a kill for his set. As soon as the leaders agreed, Kit-Kat would be allowed to carry heat. Every night since being promoted, he dreamt of killing Grawbowski with his new burner right during silent reading time—which was when Kit-Kat was always getting in trouble. In fact, it was telling Grabowski off that had gotten him the six-day vacation.
At first it had been fun, until Kit-Kat realized how much harder it would be to sell drugs around the neighborhood rather than at school. The new Mongoose made it easier to swing through the streets and avoid the blue boyz, but now it was getting to be a real drag. It now took three times as long to make the same amount of money he could make right around his locker between bells. That was the whole reason for his being here now—half of his best customers were on Grabowski’s team and he just wanted to let them know the store would be open after practice.
Kit-Kat’s face filled with a sly grin and pedaled hard toward the field. Grabowski would have a stroke when Kit-Kat let the Mongoose tear up his precious football field. It would sting even harder when he realized it was his former star football slicing up the turf. He ignored the whistling and shouting and rode right through the makeshift end zone tearing up the newly painted NASA logo with the Sally Ride Middle School Rockets design replacing the old, huge and menacing green serpent mascot. He hated the new team name, and missed the old days when they had been the Greenspring Serpents. He had even burned a version of the old logo on his left pectoral with a heated coat hanger, then the stupid school board switched things. That was before he began running with the GD’s. He had already decided that the scar tattoo he had would be a part of the beat-in once he ran things, in what he believed would be a few months—not years.
He looked over his shoulder before dashing down the dirt path in the wood toward the stream. Grabowski was waddling his fat butt after him screaming his name. His shiny bald head went from it’s usual rosy pink to flaring red. Grabowski stopped at the twenty-yard line heaving and clutching his chest. He hoped that dude dropped dead right on the field, but didn’t stick around to watch; just in case somebody whipped out a cell phone and dialed 911.
