The Burning Man by Christa Faust

the night before. Kieran cursed his own compulsive neatness, but the only empty container he could find was an aspirin bottle.
    That just wasn’t going to cut it.
    He was going to have to leave the room sooner or later or he was going to burst.
    Listening by the door, he decided that the next time he heard a group of voices in the hallway, he was going to run for it in the hope that his archenemies would be reluctant to really whale on him in front of an audience. Maybe he could get away with just a quick shove, or being tripped. Though if Brent punched him in the stomach right now, his jeans would be soaked instantly.
    He waited as long as he could, and ten minutes more. Then, when he heard a rowdy crowd of boys clatter down the hallway toward the exit, he made a desperate break for it, shoving his door open and running for the bathroom.
    Brent and Tyler were gone.
    He only had a split second to register this fact as he ran past their door, but his sense of relief was overwhelming.
    That was nothing, however, compared to the relief he felt when he ducked into the bathroom and hit the urinal. For a long drawn out moment, nothing else mattered.
    He had just zipped up and was about to go wash his hands when he heard that loathsome voice behind him.
    Brent.
    “We were starting to think you were avoiding us.”
    Before he could turn to face his tormentors, Brent grabbed Kieran’s hair and smashed his face into the top of the urinal, splitting his lip and sending fiery pinwheels across his vision.
    “What part of ‘keep your retard mouth’ shut did you not understand?” Brent hissed into his ear. He kept his grip on Kieran’s hair and used his other hand to grab the back of the waistband of Kieran’s jeans. He used this twohanded grip to give Kieran a bum’s rush, dragging him the length of the narrow bathroom and throwing him into the shower stalls.
    Kieran banged his head against the tap and everything went red and woozy for a moment. He crumpled in a heap on the cold tile, and when his vision cleared, he saw something that filled him with icy terror.
    Tyler was dragging the heavy steel garbage can over to the door and wedging it under the knob. Which meant this wasn’t going to be a quick drive-by beating with a wedgie thrown in for good measure. They were settling in for a long, leisurely torture session.
    Kieran was trapped. No chance of Mr. H. or other students interrupting the bullies before they had their fill.
    He really was dead.
    He got his wobbly legs under him and ran to the single, small frosted window, knowing that it wouldn’t open, that it had been stuck since he was a freshman and wasn’t going to magically cooperate now. But he had to try something.
    Brent and Tyler exchanged amused glances while he scrabbled around the window frame and pushed as hard as he could. Of course it didn’t budge.
    He considered making a run for one of the toilet stalls and trying to lock himself inside, but Brent anticipated that move and stepped to the left so that he was squarely in the way. Backing away, Kieran’s eyes darted around, as he desperately searched every inch of the bathroom for anything that could be used as a weapon.
    A forgotten, nearly empty bottle of dandruff shampoo.
    An extra roll of toilet paper.
    That was it.
    At that point, Kieran knew that he would just have to resign himself to the abuse. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. All he could do was try to go away in his head, make himself as small as possible, and try to survive until it was over.
    Still, that first punch to the face was always the worst. No matter how ready for it he thought he was, it was always way worse than he remembered. First there was the bright shock of it, water filling his eyes and blood welling up inside his nose. The roaring red pain kicked in, eclipsing any kind of rational thought.
    Then the raging emotion, the fear and the fury. The hate, the anger and the shame at his own weakness.
    He