- DISCLAIMER - The following story, novel, or chapter contains homosexual themes and is not intended for anyone under the legal viewing age - If depictions of homosexual activities disturb you - Do Not Continue To Read This Story - Feedback appreciated Copyright - 2005 - Max Williams (Kollegekid54321@hotmail.com
Chapter 12
That was fucked up, Jason thought as he entered the school. Swear to God if Richiazzi gets in ten feet of me I'll pound his little, puny, skinny, hairless body into the wall -
"What the fuck is up?" A vivid voice came from behind Jason. Shit. He turned around and found Meghan there, arms crossed, face so contorted into a scowl that it was clear she was more fighting back tears than being angry. "What the fuck is up, Jay", she repeated. He knew enough not to play dumb, but it wasn't like he could say anything until he knew what she was getting at.
"Hey bunny. How're you doing", he started cautiously. She said nothing but looked fractionally closer to crying, so he timidly reached toward her. She violently pulled away even though he was two feet from touching her.
"Don't you fucking touch me, asshole." Her voice was loud and tense and the few seconds that passed until she spoke again were impossible to bear. Jason had no idea what to do. "What . . . the fuck . . . is up . . . with you," she said again, slowly, angrily, agonizingly. He decided to go for broke - the truth was the truth.
"This . . . is about Saturday night?" She nodded dumbly, not helping him at all. "What . . . what do you want to know . . . ?" She was close to crying again.
"Did," she gasped, "did . . . you . . . kiss anyone?" Jason was dumbstruck. "Anyone," she repeated, "because everyone's laughing at me, and, and pointing, and, and saying you made out with someone at the party and no one is telling me who but they're all laughing and, and, and fuck you Jay for doing this to me, and what the fuck did you do?" Her pleading face was almost too much for him to bear; the corners of her eyes wet; her bottom lip chewed to shreds; her blonde complexion splotched with humiliating red as her face contorted in anguish from the eyes outward.
Jason felt a pang in his heart - he never really realized before now, but he didn't love her. And as he looked at her tortured face, he saw exactly how much he really cared, and that he enjoyed their time together hanging out, but as for a passion, or a desire to save her, to rescue her, to make love to her and worship her happiness . . . it wasn't in him. It just wasn't there. Hmm, he thought, that explains the sex.
With this realization in mind, he looked her deep in her eyes, and suddenly, desperately, began to pray. Please, God, let her understand. Oh God, please let her not torture herself like this. He looked into the crystal circles of blue pleading up at him, and thought, futilely; please don't make a big deal out of this. And suddenly, she smiled.
"Oh God, I'm sorry, "she said amicably, wiping her eyes. She was smiling at him now, pleasantly, as though they were having a pleasant chat. "Oh God, my eyes are going like crazy! Oh, I'm sorry Jay, I shouldn't have gotten so worked up; I didn't mean to yell at you like that. It just . . . well, I mean . . . I don't know; I guess it took me by surprise - I don't remember why I was so mad. Did you have a good time?"
Jason was dumbstruck. Meghan was mildly fixing her face now, calmly checking her hair with a little mirror fro her purse and clearly confused as to why she'd been so upset only a moment before. She wasn't the only one; Jason had no idea what had just happened and neither did the two or three people that had been surreptitiously watching their argument.
"Meghan," he slowly asked.
"Yeah?"
"Do you still want to know about . . . what happened . . . ?"
"Well sure. Did you have fun?" Jason was stymied again. Why should she care if he'd had fun? She was his girlfriend and should still be pissed that apparently half the school knew he'd macked with some guy when she didn't have a clue, and now she was asking how it was?
"Um, yeah, it was fine."
"That's cool. Do the Bellgraphs really have a hot tub that looks over the lake?"
"Um . . . not sure . . . I think so, but I never really made it outside -" Jason was interrupted by the first period bell. He and Meghan looked around and realized that the hallway was completely empty and that classes had already started.
"Oh shit," she said. She grabbed Jason's face and gave him her customary peck on the lips, before turning to run down the hall. "Sorry I got so pissed babe - call me later, like usual?" He numbly shook his head and she was off, dashing down the hall. He was still standing there with his bags and his coat, amazed that the first major transgression of the day was over. And it wasn't even all that bad. Fucking sweet.
With a glimmer of hope, he climbed the stairs to his third floor locker and calmly put his gear away, found his textbooks and made his way to his Spanish class where he got reamed out for being 15 minutes late. Can't win `em all, he thought.
William finished throwing the piles of blackened wood in his arms out the side window of his spacious bedroom. There was a little lawn out there that was kept intact by the low brick wall that ran around the length of his manse's small yard. The grass was dead, of course, and some snakelike trees had tangled together along the border of his property, but there was a clear open spot next to the house and it was here that William was disposing of the rotted garbage and ruined furniture that filled his home. He breathed deeply and looked around the bedroom.
The big bed was still centered against the back wall of the room, but gone were the mildewed curtains and sheets and in their place was a thoroughly dry mess of blankets and clothes. But the dresser was gone, the blackened chair frames were gone, the shutters and the curtains had been gone for a while, the loose, wet wallpaper had been torn off, and the sodden carpet had been pealed up and the floorboards scrubbed. The whole room was considerably lighter, brighter, and getting drier by the day, despite the trace amounts of mildew that remained in the corners. Darkness stuck in the crevices and cracks of the house like tar, William found, and he'd been doing his best to throw out everything that was rotten, which was, well, everything. He wanted the house to be livable so that he and Jeremy . . . well . . . where, after all, would he and Jeremy be living?
But there was another pressure inside William's heart, and that was to find Jeremy. He had the vague sense that cleaning out the old house was all well and good, but only for so long and in the mean time Jeremy was out there, somewhere. William had stumbled onto him one night, encouraged to walk around the lake by some strange urge that had completely overtaken him; obviously a product of the bizarre, inconstant magic at hand. And until he got another strong magical urge, he wouldn't know where to go or what to do, but there must still be something he could do in the meantime. If only to help his own cause, and find the animal-flesh bound book that the old Signor had used to put William to sleep, so many years ago. He remembered nothing about it, except that it was a sketchbook of sorts, filled with the cramped, uneven black writing of the old Signor. Nothing was labeled, nothing was described, nothing was written in any language other than the wizened man's native Italian, and nothing, nothing was meant for anyone to use but the man that had written it, so perhaps it had even been destroyed. Had the Signor had children? William shook his head. Had the Signor stayed in Buffalo? William didn't know.
William was starting to get upset, and his spirits dampened as he stood in the bay window and saw the stormtorn world outside his house. There was a thick kind of grey light in the air - the type that comes when a thick storm cloud diffuses a strong sun - and it chilled William despite the early hour. He had to do something - there was nothing to do at the house except clean anyway, so he had to do something. He blindly decided to go back to the lake. It was a bitch of a walk, but it was the only clue he had right now, and who knew when another clue from the supernatural would decide to influence him?
In desperation, he grabbed the only coat he'd been able to find in the deep cedar closets of the fourth floor storage rooms. It was long, black, and archaic, but in good shape for its age and not moth-eaten. William didn't like wearing it, for even during the few run-ins he'd had with modern people during his nocturnal food-runs, he'd realized that styles had changed. The long black coat with the black piping, his button down collarless shirt, his button pants they were all clean and dry now, but archaic and as such, conspicuous.
So, be inconspicuous, William told himself as he put on the old coat. Stay low - don't talk. Stay low - don't talk. William threw on the coat and descended his stairs. He'd picked up all the stained glass and taken it out to the side yard as well. The hall floor was irreparable with his means, but he'd managed to take two of the fallen ceiling beams and lay them over the hole - the thick top of the wide marble table straddled the beams and made a sort of makeshift floor. It wasn't very stable, but at the very least cut out the sight, and smell, of the subterranean mausoleum. William carefully circumvented the whole mess, and then came to the front doors. He'd only opened them a few times since he'd been back, considering it more inconspicuous and therefore prudent to leave by the back, but now drew the heavy bolt, turned the thick, stiff brass knob, and opened the massive walnut door to the morning air. He hit the night-lock button off and shut the door again, made his away around the rotted floorboards of his faulty porch, and took off down the steps and through the parking lot that still perplexed him so, up onto the hill, and walked along the old railroad tracks that followed the curve of the water to every industrial operation in Buffalo. He knew he had three or four good hours of walking before him, so he set a comfortable pace and plodded along, intent to work his way from his home in the west side of Buffalo, through the south of the city, and then into the northern suburbs of Cape City, where Jeremy had twice leapt into Lake Erie, by mid- afternoon. He started humming a pleasant tune as he took in the morning air.
Jason found it thoroughly bizarre that he'd been through four classes so far and no one had mentioned anything. Then again, he'd also done exactly as he'd meant to and kept his head down and stayed inconspicuous. He hadn't seen anyone from the party, which was unusual, but it worked out for him. He was leaning against the hood of his car, parked on the shoulder of Montgomery Ave halfway between Cape City and Capetown; right on one of his favorite promontories where a bridge crossed the medium sized Cape River that separated the two municipalities. Chewing contentedly on a sandwich, the handsome young man's warm brown eyes were flickering over the savage scenery of freezing water and jagged rocks and the little white caps that flew up where the two met. He felt just as jagged as the rocks and his stomach was churning like the water, making him unable to eat much of the lunch his mother insisted on making. Of course that could also have been because he was allergic to the pimento loaf she habitually packed for him because it was her favorite. Realizing that, he flung the rest of the sandwich over the bridge and watched it become a speck before it disappeared in the rushing waters below.
He suddenly felt very alone. He suddenly felt very childish for feeling alone, and suddenly very selfish for being such a baby . . . but all the same, he felt alone. There was no one he could turn to. Maybe Sean, in a few weeks or something, but there was no one else around. Jason's eyes were a little wet, but he put it down to the massive spray that had just come from the rocks below. He got off the car and walked to the railing and looked straight down into the clear, rushing stuff. It was beautiful. It was just as beautiful as the way the grey, hazy sky formed a solid wall of wet greyness with distant surface of Lake Erie, which Cape River emptied into in the distance; the horizon was lost. Jason felt a sudden, incontrollable urge to go there, to get out there, to be by the lake - he almost jumped back into his car to go when he remembered the music course he had to get back to school for. Remembering school, he felt alone again, and on feeling alone, that wild urge hinted at his gut again, to go out to the lake. Why was he always attracted to water when he felt that way? Jason gave the mysterious and hazy distance one last look and then headed back to his car. Why did he have to have so many questions?
Mr. Broad sat behind his desk, polo shirt too tight, pants too tight, thinning hair fluffed up in front and pasted down in back, mustache fluffed, and glasses slightly dirty. Next to him sat Fredo Richiazzi, with his dirty clothes and uncombed curly hair making him look like a wino. Fredo was furtively sneaking glances at the incoming students, trying to hide his book under the pile of music theory quizzes he was supposed to be grading, but really just preparing himself again to read another page's worth of Italian incantation when Jason came in.
Mr. Broad was giving Fredo furtive looks and halfsmiles when he could catch his eye, but most of them Fredo turned away from. Mr. Broad did not, however, put up with falling behind schedule, and found an excuse to tap Fredo's hand and return him to grading quizzes many times. Fredo meanwhile simply wanted to know if he finally had the right page. That last one hadn't been it - as far as he could tell nothing had even happened to Jason. Not that he'd seen him all day - not that anyone had, and it was getting to worry both Sean and Dave when Fredo had eavesdropped on their conversation at lunch. But now Fredo had it - the chant that vaguely (Fredo only knew fractured Italian from his mother) sounded like the right one - the chant that would make someone fall in love with you. Or with the first person they saw. Or maybe not - Fredo couldn't decipher everything to figure out exactly how it worked. But if you put Jason, and me, and a something-to-do-with-love spell in the same room, something good's bound to happen, Fredo reasoned. I just wish I knew what the fuck I was doing. I just wish I knew if this worked.
Finally the bell rang, and the last girl took her place in the bleachers. Fredo's hopes took a nosedive until Mr. Broad went to close the door and one last student ran in with an excuse about traffic being bad - Jason. Mr. Broad's eyes ran up and down the boy's frame as he got seated and then the glammed up old man said, "Well, I'm glad every body could make it here, especially yours, Jason. Now -" And class began.
Fredo still sat alongside Mr. Broad's desk in the corner, vaguely out of view of most of the class on the semi circular bleachers, but saw Jason's profile on the top in the back on the end clearly, and with that in mind, gave Mr. Broad a glance - he was fucking around at the piano and probably would be for a good twenty minutes - and began reading the new page.
The familiar sensation of growing tension began immediately. Fredo had a bad habit of silently mouthing the words of anything he was reading, and did so now as the poor reader stumbled through the difficult, yet familiar, foreign words and began slowing more and more prominently as the ache in his head mounted. He looked up to and took a slight break, and the handsome profile of Jason's brown - well, not so brown anymore, in fact, kind of pale - face reminded Fredo of his efforts. Fredo redoubled himself and the pressure mounted, mounted, more and more as he neared the end of scribbled, cramped black writing. His eyes dilated as his vision and focus increased and regained their eagleeye ability, and as Fredo stumbled over the last word, his head was full of tension and aches that almost stung, and he looked up at the side of Jason's head.
Fredo, excited and happy, prepared himself for a second, and then concentrated on the sexy sideburn of the man he'd wanted for almost four years, this amazing, buff, sexual young man that had been his best friend, and even made love to him - once - oh so long ago. Fredo prepared himself and thought, look at m-
"Fredo, look at me," came another voice, interrupting Fredo's concentration. He started, looked away from Jason, who had just turned his way, and crazily looked around until he locked eyes with Mr. Broad.
"I'm not keeping you here to drift off, Fredo, would you like to help me explain these tendency tones - Fredo? Are you alright? Fredo?" Fredo felt the world stop as the locked expression with Mr. Broad got more and more intense for a moment, and then the familiar slackening of the pressure in his head as the tension forced his eyes open and the aches to disappear. After a moment, Fredo was fine, and, blinking his watering eyes, looked quizzically at Mr. Broad, who was watching him back. A quick glance at the rest of the class showed that no one else was paying attention, or even aware anything had happened. Jason was staring straight ahead, looking very bored, and Mr. Broad was telling Margaret Simpson to calm down; apparently just as oblivious as everyone else. Had it worked? Had it gone to . . . to Mr. Broad?! What the fuck keep happening, Fredo thought frantically.
"Fredo? Can you help me with this?" Fredo sheepishly looked around again, and quietly started to get up until he became painfully aware that casting the second spell had made him come again in his pants, apparently just as much as the first time. With a quick, small, nervous smile, he grabbed a music book to hold in front of him, nervously nodded to Mr. Broad, to the rest of the class, and finally got up to explain about the voiceleading. ***********************************
Standing at his locker after music, Jason decided he was having a pretty good day. Nothing much had happened; he hadn't bumped into anyone from the party, or in fact anyone at all. A little pang accompanied that thought and he was briefly reminded of his loneliness over lunch, and the appealing mystery of the water, but he dissolved that with a quick swallow and went back to moving his jumbled books around on the high shelf. He was hunting for his gym stuff for his next class, and he kept dwelling on what a good day it had been mostly because there was no avoiding Sean or Greg or some of the other guys once they were all in the locker room, changing at the same set of lockers. This is gonna be weird, Jason thought, that I'm getting naked with a guy I kissed last Saturday. Whatever, I've seen him change a million times.
He gave a half-hearted shove to an errant stack of papers - fucking Spanish project - and tugged at his gym bag, which was stuck in the narrow opening of his locker. It came out with the unforgiving sound of nylon scratching metal, and then Jason dropped it on the floor when his nerves were jarred by sudden shouting from down the hall.
"No, no, I - God - no, I wont," came the terrified voice of Fredo, who suddenly burst into view. His baggy old shirt was askew, revealing the wife beater he habitually wore under everything, this one black, and he held his right arm as though it had just been twisted. His voice was shrill with exasperation, and as he looked horribly down the short little hall to the music room, he whimpered a little. "Get away!"
Mr. Broad strode into view, looking as ridiculous he always did, except with a few hairs out of place and his baggy face bright red. "No, you come back here! I need to speak with you!" Mr. Broad approached Fredo again, one hand clearly aiming to grab him about the neck and the other considerably lower, looking to grab something intimate enough that Jason suddenly understood Fredo's intense revolt. Fredo was shaking his head and frantically trying to rifle through the pages of some book he was carrying in the crook of his lame arm. He kept stopping and mouthing a few words, and then shaking his head and flipping to another page. Mr. Broad meanwhile was slowly creeping up on the meek boy, clearly sizing up the best way to seize him.
Jason felt something tug in his stomach, and felt utter repulsion at the thought of going to Fredo's aid, but the young man had learned long ago the value of good and truth, and slammed his locker shut as he began to jog the length of the hallway to where ten people or so had started to form a circle around the bizarre scene. Some of them were whispering to each other that Fredo must've done something shitty to be in so much trouble, but that theory was starting to falter as people realized that Mr. Broad had specks of spit on his own chin, and the merest traces of a deep purple bruise was starting to form at his right eye. His eyes were wide and dilated, and his breathing, for all his relative lack of movement, was getting more and more hoarse and choked, as though the man couldn't breathe for his own fury. What could he possibly have wanted so much?
"Fredo - you're coming with me! Oh, Fredo. Oh Fredo!" The crazy man had backed Fredo up against a wall now, and the boy was alternating between reading more words and squeezing his eyes shut, waiting for the impact.
The impact was a gym bag that flew out of nowhere and hit Mr. Broad square in the side of the face. The man's eyes grew as he stumbled and almost fell, his outstretched hands redirected to keep him from hitting the terrazzo floor of the hallway. Fredo suddenly saw a blur of tan muscular man jump out of nowhere and tackle Mr. Broad to the ground, and as Jason tumbled with the stout older man, Fredo quickly read the rest of the page.
Jason was losing the fight. Broad was seized with a primal fury, and was kicking and thrashing in such a way that his feet had twice connected with Jason's side. Hardened though he was from his sports, Jason still lost his breath as he stumbled, and in that moment Broad was able to grab him by the t-shirt, which tore up the seam on the right side, and then grab his right arm and twist it behind him, forcing Jason to double over. Jason, breathing hard, was trying to force out words in his captive position, but was only making a string of hoarse vowels that left the mounting crowd confused and scared. "Hel . . . " he finally forced out, trying vaguely to look up at someone; anyone. "Help me," he repeated, "help me! Help me!" He finally managed to force himself up for a split second and looked Amy Wilcox right in the face. She turned slightly inward to her group of friends. "You," he cried, pleading from his eyes to hers, "help me!" He fully expected her to do so by running and getting another teacher, but instead he did something that would've dumbfounded him, had he been in any position to waste a moment being dumbfounded.
Her round, honest face immediately tautened from the scared, tense expression she'd just worn, to an ebullient, determined one that Jason had seen now and again on her during test time. She walked purposefully forward and threw down her plaid purse, and then stuck a fist right in the middle of the flurry of struggling that was Jason and Mr. Broad. It connected with Broad's stomach and winded him for a second, his red face turned maroon for a second as he lost his breath and fell to his knees, and Jason twisted away from under him and stood, panting, next to Amy. Broad was only down for a moment, but Amy was already on his back and efficiently twisting up one arm behind his back, forcing him down like he'd just done to Jason. Her face was determined and thick veins stood out on her arms from the effort, but clearly the stocky older man was managing to overpower the medium sized girl, and Jason looked around the crowd again.
"Come on," he shouted at Brian Sutton and Jerry Grey, "do something!" They looked at him as he said it, and then immediately strode forward and helped Amy hold Broad down. "Hey," Jason yelled, getting an idea, "will someone help me for a second?" He was still looking at the fight, and no one responded. He looked around the semi-circle of people, now thick with bystanders, and tried to look at someone. Everyone dropped their eyes and turned away; no one else wanted to get involved. "Hey," Jason tried again, "someone help me with this." No one responded. He moved forward to just grab someone, but winced as his right side started on fire from the movement. He looked down and saw through the shreds of his shirt a large red mark and also a little blood on his side, from where Broad's wingtips had connected with his taut obliques. "Someone," he asked.
An uneasy murmer started through the crowd and then someone in the back yelled "FAG." Jason started for a second, thinking that was a fucking scummy thing to call Fredo . . . until he realized that the speaker was talking about him. "No one's gonna help a fag, Colby . . ." came the thick, stupid voice again.
"A . . . a what . . ." said Jason softly; painfully. "What?" He spent a minute looking over the crowd again; some of the guys were smirking, some of the girls were looking away, but no one was making eye contact and no one was stepping forward. The fight was basically over, there was nothing more to really see. Brian, Jerry, and Amy were holding down Mr. Broad, who was wheezing into the floor and had apparently completely given up. The three students were looking at Jason, as if waiting for the next command. Fredo was still against the wall, slid down to the floor now and totally engrossed in his tears and in slowly reading something. And the crowd was slowly starting to calm down as well; some laughs here and there, people sidling up and softly murmuring as everyone gradually realized that the bell had rung several minutes beforehand and everyone was wondering how long they could milk the disruption. And everyone else was staring at Jason.
His face was red, he was breathing hard, and his torn short revealed the defined brown muscle that swelled and moved with his deep gasping breaths. He was holding his right side and trying to stop the blood from the medium cut with the torn hem of his shirt, but that didn't stop the outpouring of his confidence as that three letter word was publicly applied to Jason, Jason Colby, jock extraordinaire of Cape City High, and long time considered a great fuck by all the prettier girls at school. "What . . ." he repeated to himself, finding it hard to believe.
"Ill help you." The girl's voice was polite and familiar, and Jason thanked Meghan more than she knew for coming unseen through the middle of the crowd and showing up right when he needed her the most.
"Babe - I love you," he said, staggering forward and putting his muscular arms around her. She went to return his hug but then he twisted away when she almost touched his bloody, sensitive side. She let him go with an inquisitive smile that thoroughly puzzled him. It was the second time that day that, whether he meant to or not, he'd rebuffed her, and she'd just taken it like a polite stranger. What was going on? He looked at the struggling prone form of Mr. Broad again and wondered that question aloud.
"What," Meghan asked, politely leaning forward to hear.
"What," Jason repeated, a little louder, "is going on here? Okay, you grab these shirts from my bag, tie his legs together; Ill take this one and tie his hands." They worked in relative noise now, for the crowd of people was dispersing slightly and everyone left had begun to tell the story to the new arrivals, until it became such a din that teachers were coming out to see what was going on, and one by one, each one of them got the story and then immediately went to call the police and interrupt the principal, who was soon too busy trying to ward off the local news stations to talk to them.
Jason, meanwhile, finished tying Broad's hand together and then leaned down to hear what the flushed man was whispering so violently to the ground.
"I want it," Broad was wheezing in a jumble of hot breath and stuttering, "so bad . . . Fredo you fucker you ass- fucker you ass-fucking mother fucker I want it I need it you don't know . . . you don't fucking know you . . . shit . . . goddamnit . . . you fucking shitfuck assfuck I hate you fucker . . . give it to me . . . give it to me . . . I need it, I fucking need it . . . oh my ass . . . oh my ass wants it you fucker . . . give it to my fucking ass . . . give it to me up the fucking ass . . . oh God oh God . . . oh God yeah . . . oh God . . . oh Fredo oh God . . ." Jason peered around and saw how involved the crowd was with their own conversations; too much so to have heard any of the horny rants issuing from Broad's mouth. Jason sighed a prayer of relief and took the last shirt from his gym bag. He leaned in close to Mr. Broad's ear, unaware if the man was even perceiving the outside world anymore.
"Look you old fucker," Jason began softly, licking his lips and looking around, "you're a lecher and a fag and you hurt my friend, but I'm still gonna save you your dignity, and for that, you're gonna owe me." The hardened edge in Jason's voice softened a very, very little bit. "No one needs to know how bad you're doing." Jason took the rolled up shirt and put it in the prostrate teacher's open mouth, muffling the perverted whispers. He gave the man a sharp slap on the cheek and stood up just in time to see Fredo, who seemed to be struggling with it, finish reading something out of the book, and then look up. They would've made eye contact again for the second time that day if it hadn't been for Meghan suddenly appearing out of nowhere at Jason's side and saying his name, looking up at his eyes. Jason leaned his stubbled face over to gently peck her on the lips, his brown hair messed and hanging in locks over his forehead, when a barely audible gasp pulled her attention from him. It took Jason a moment longer to register the noise as a choke of sadness, and when he looked up at Fredo, standing six feet away against the hallway wall, staring intensely at Meghan, he realized that Fredo had tears in his eyes.
Something happened to Fredo, he shuddered a little and his wide eyes seemed to widen even more, if it was possible, and then close again. Meghan blinked and looked quizzically at Jason, and then they both looked back at Fredo, who had his head down and was slowly blinking. He slowly looked up at Jason, and then at Meghan, and then his sad face went a little red as he looked horrified for a moment, but was then distracted by an incredible growing wet spot on the front of his pants, and he started to cry. "You see what you made me do," he shouted angrily as he flew up off the ground, and without thanks or explanation, bodily forced his way through the crowd, using the book he'd been reading to cover the front of his pants.