Jeremy Wilson and Matt Carver are about as different as two grade-nine boys can be. Jeremy has little supervision, little regard for others, and no rules. He does no homework; he creates havoc in his classes and he participates in activities that land him in trouble with the law. Matt has little confidence and few friends. He takes school seriously; he does nothing to draw attention to himself and he spends much of his time reading and expanding his interest in all things military. Jeremy is a school terrorist, a bully. Matt is his favourite target. With one fateful decision, however, Jeremy suddenly becomes the target of a much more sophisticated terrorist, a drug dealer who not only threatens him but also uses his sister to demand compliance in a serious world of drugs, blackmail, and crime. In the course of one day, a bizarre set of circumstances forces Jeremy and Matt together. They rather reluctantly join forces to expose the egocentric, vicious Tim Halliday who uses his charm, his looks, and his status as a star athlete to hide his involvement in the lucrative drug trade that has infiltrated Madison Collegiate. Through the voices of Matt and Jeremy, and that of a narrator, the author weaves the threads of threats and lies, trust and deceit, empowerment and growth, as Jeremy and Matt enlist the help of an odd assortment of fellow students in this action-filled adventure. The pace is fast, the events are often unexpected, and the suspense is palpable. Together, they make "When PUSH Comes to Shove Back" a riveting read with details and situations that ring true in the lives of young adults.

When Push Comes To Shove Back

By Janet M. Irvine

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Janet M. Irvine
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-3278-2

Chapter One

PUSH

Monday 8:45 a.m.

Terrorism: the calculated use of, or threat of, violence to inculcate fear, to coerce, or to intimidate

Four boys quickly made their way down the crowded hallway, laughing and talking, just like everyone else on route to Monday morning classes. But they were on a different mission. It had to be timed right. It had to be fast and accurate. They had done it before.

They rounded the corner and moved into their final lap.... fifty lockers away from their target. Change formation.... forty lockers. Pick up speed.... thirty lockers. Check for teachers.... twenty. Get out of the way girl.... ten. One on his right, one on his left, two at his back. Aaaaaand PUSH. Slam the door. Keep moving. Don't look back. A direct hit.

They continued down the hall, high on the adrenaline of combat, trying to keep the bursts of laughter bottled up until they hit the stairwell, where they collapsed in fits of hysterics.

Inside the locker, Matt Carver waited. It was dark and he couldn't breathe. His arm hurt and his leg was turned at a weird angle. He wished he could just disappear. Instead, he kicked at the door. On the third try, it flew open. The homework assignment he had been about to hand in was ripped and scrunched up on the floor. As he crawled out of his locker, he could hear girls giggling. Someone from across the hall yelled, "Slam Dunk," and the laughter that followed told him that, as usual, there had been spectators.

His arm was scraped. He pulled his sweatshirt down over the blood oozing out. He picked his books up off the floor and retrieved what was left of his assignment. Without meeting anyone's gaze, he slammed the misshapen locker door shut, forced his lock through the opening, and went to class.

Chapter Two

GARBAGE

Earlier Monday 6:00 a.m.

The Man of the House

MATT

I wake up most mornings at exactly the same time, whether I set my alarm clock or not. No one wakes me up. I like it that way. This morning is the same as all the others. The only difference is that it is Monday morning and a whole week of school is starting all over again.

My sister gets up earlier than I do so she can get to the bathroom first. I can hear her running the shower, drying her hair, brushing her teeth, doing whatever it is that she does for over an hour every morning. My mornings start with a bursting bladder while my sister puts on her makeup and pops zits.

I keep to myself at home. It's not that I don't like my family. It's just that my mom likes to believe that everything is fine all the time, that we're happy, that life is great. There's no point in spoiling that.

I think my mom misses my dad. She would say that she doesn't, but she has changed. She sleeps in until after we go to school. She watches TV all the time. She doesn't volunteer at the animal shelter anymore and I don't hear her talking with her friends on the phone the way she used to. I'll bet she doesn't spend over an hour in the bathroom like Cynthia. She doesn't get dressed up and I don't think she ever wears makeup. Maybe she just used to do that for my dad. Anyway, she looks and acts a lot older than she used to and she always looks sad. I try not to bother her.

I don't miss my dad much anymore. I sure missed him when he left. He said that he would keep in touch and that we would always do things together, but we don't. Now he has moved to another city and he has another wife and a baby. We don't fit in his new life. I will always be his son, I guess, but we're part of his past. We're the part of his past that he wants to forget. This year, he didn't even call me on my birthday.

My mom says I'm the man of the house now. In our house, that means that I get to take care of the garbage. It sucks. I have become the garbage man, my sister has become a working girl with a job to make extra money, and my mom has become ... I don't know what she has become. I sometimes think she has become a ghost. She's not really here. She lives in the house and she cooks for Cynthia and me, and we pretend to enjoy family dinners to get her almost every night, but momis somewhere else. She picks me up when I need a ride, she goes to parent-teacher interviews, and she asks how I'm doing in school, but it's like she doesn't really hear the answers. It's kind of creepy. She never gets angry, never raises her voice. She never laughs. I don't know if she cries.

I know it should be different, but I don't know how to change it. Maybe she doesn't want to change it. Or maybe she doesn't know how to change it either. Sometimes I wonder if the man of the house is supposed to be taking care of her too. But I end up just bagging the garbage.

Chapter Three

WHAM

Earlier Monday 6:00 a.m.

The Accident

JEREMY

I wake up most mornings all wound up in the mess of blankets and sheets that I crawl into the night before. No one touches my room. I like it that way. This morning is no exception. The only problem is that I just crawled in a couple of hours ago.

My dad gets up early. I can hear him clattering in the kitchen, making coffee, banging cupboard doors, angry because no one cleaned up dishes and food from last night. Mom makes dinner so she expects us to clean up. Tanya and David argue about it until they have to get homework done or go out somewhere. I just stay away. No one does anything to change it. It's been going on forever. It's kind of funny though, to hear my dad so pissed off about dirty dishes every morning before he goes off to protect the public from crime.

I don't eat with my family any more. They don't miss me. They haven't once asked why I stopped coming home for dinner.

I think my parents are probably happier without me there. I know my sister is. Her disgust for me always made her look like a ferret with her mouth all scrunched up and her eyebrows pulled together. None of them liked having me at the table, but with Tanya, it was obvious.

Dad was never happy. He complained about what my mother did or didn't do every day, and eventually, he would get around to cursing everything from the government to the dog, including me. He let me know that I didn't measure up. I was a disappointment.

My parents were annoyed with me before I even said a word, like they were trying to start a fight with me or something. I was a nuisance. I didn't fit in. I didn't know about politics or sports or what was in the news. And I sure didn't want to discuss all the things I was supposed to have learned at school. Their questions were like a frigging inquisition. They would never have spoken to anyone else the sarcastic way they did to me. I stopped saying anything.

The whole thing was an invasion of my privacy. They thought they had the right to know every little thing about my life, which they didn't. There are things happening in my life that are nobody's business—especially not my parents'.

They work. They go to Tanya's concerts and David's games. They volunteer. They go to church. They entertain. They're tired. They used to try to force me into this image of what they thought our family should be. They've given up. In our family portrait, I'm the invisible one. No doubt, if they could magically photo shop a better specimen into the portrait, they would.

My parents didn't count on a third kid. I know I was an accident because I heard them joking about it with their friends. They had a boy and a girl. They decided that was it. Then WHAM, Jeremy arrived ten months later. The accident. The troublemaker. The one that buggered up their plans. They have never said that, but they don't have to. I know. I have known for as long as I can remember.

They talk about Tanya's good marks, her solos in the band. They boast about David's basketball scholarship. They don't say a word about me being bumped into high school without really passing grade eight or about my scrapes with the law. They forget about a squad car driving their son home in the middle of the night.

They don't talk about my not coming home for dinner.

I'm like a drifter, a transient. I spend time at the pool hall, at the arena, in the coffee shops. I hook up with friends at the park or behind the laundromat. I crash at Joe's or Nick's and grab something to eat when I can. I stow my backpack wherever I land. Sometimes I forget where it is and go to school for days without it. It doesn't matter.

I do go to school. I never miss a day. I go home at some point every night too—to get clothes and grab some sleep in a bed. That keeps my mom and dad quiet. There's a routine. The school doesn't bug them. They know I'm not missing.... or dead.

That's pretty much how it goes. I act like I don't care because I don't. I tell my friends it doesn't matter because it doesn't. I'm independent. I do what I want. I say what I want. I go where I want. I don't take crap from anyone. And I don't need help from anyone. My life, my rules. So far, things have worked out pretty good.

My parents think it should be different, but they don't know how to change it or maybe they don't want to. I don't know how to change it either—even if I wanted to, which I don't.

No family dinner? No problem. Fine by me.

Chapter Four

T-GENE

Monday 9:10 a.m.

Terrorist: anyone who uses violence, terror, and intimidation to achieve a result

Target: an object of planned or immediate attack

MATT

I wish the day were over instead of just beginning. I don't want to be here. I don't want to listen to Ms. McNally. Who cares that whatever you do to one side of an equation has to be done to the other? Who cares? I don't want to be told what to do. I don't want to be pushed into my locker. I don't want to be anything. I want to be able to do something to one side of an equation and leave the other side alone. I want to be left alone.

Jeremy is sitting behind me. I know that he and his friends pushed me. I didn't have to see them. I just know. Right now, he's sitting behind me, laughing. Laughing while blood still seeps through the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

For as long as I can remember, I've been a target. I don't know why. I guess it's just me being me—not a good thing. I try to stay out of the way, especially from Jeremy and his terrorist friends. I'm not very good at it. I should be by now, but I'm not. I take different routes to school. I find out-of-the-way places where I can spend time when I don't have to be in class. It's like military strategy, really—reduce exposure, blend in, avoid enemy contact. But my enemies don't play by military rules. Bullies are like hidden IEDs—they're always there, just beneath the surface. They're embedded. You can't avoid triggering them. They explode just because you're where they are.

I know a lot about military strategy. I've read every book on the subject in our school library, which is one of my hiding places, and I spend a lot of time on my computer. I have a program that lets me set up different battles and become part of them. I can put myself in charge of forces around the world. I can strategize, deploy troops, stage battles, and win wars. My notebooks are filled with military sketches and drawings. I do a lot of fighting in my head.

My military expertise doesn't help me much in the real world. Most days, the terrorists find me—a locker hit, a foot stuck out, a shove on the stairs—sick comments and threats, loud enough for me and others close by to hear, but not loud enough for teachers to notice. And punches—fast and hard, and in just the right places to hurt like hell. Sometimes I get cornered and the jokes and comments turn into an attack. I used to fight back, but there was always one of me and more than one of them. Now, I'm less entertaining.

I act like I don't care, but I do. I pretend that it doesn't matter, but it does. It makes me jealous of the kids who walk through the halls, somehow immune. Most of all, it makes me angry.

I think we are all born with a T-gene in our DNA. It stays dormant in most people, but in some, it mutates into either a T-terrorist gene or a T-target gene. I was born with a T-target gene that radiates `target' like a bad smell. I don't think you can change it. Some days, it makes me wish I hadn't been born at all.

Jeremy Wilson has the T-terrorist gene. He is my arch terrorist. I'm his personal harassment project. When we started high school this fall, I prayed all summer that he would go to a different school. But that would not have fit with how my life goes.

On the first day of high school, there he was. I think he may have even asked to be in the same homeroom as me. Paranoid? Oh, yeah. I was such a source of entertainment for him in elementary school that I know he was thrilled about being in the same homeroom, even if he didn't ask for it. When he sat down behind me, I felt like a prisoner sentenced to four more years on death row.

It doesn't help that I have always been sort of smart about school. I can't help it; I just find the stuff easy. Jeremy is smart too. He hides it. Or maybe he doesn't even know it, but he is. I've spent a lot of time analyzing terrorists and he's one of the smartest. The terrorist profile is to keep smarts well hidden. Jeremy does a really good job.

Jeremy's always in trouble. He never does homework, and half the time, he doesn't even bother to hand in assignments. He mouths off, refuses to answer, or says he doesn't know the answers. I know some of the other kids think he's annoying. He doesn't care. A few think he's kind of a hero. He does what no one else has the guts to do. He's entertaining. I'm pretty sure that teachers are happiest when he's not saying or doing anything at all.

Jeremy is particularly obnoxious in Ms. McNally's class, our homeroom. He doesn't even try to pay attention, so I think Ms. McNally must be getting used to Jeremy ruining her lessons. If I weren't his favourite target, I might just find him annoying, like the others.

Ms McNally spends most of her time saying, "Pleeeeease sit down," or "One more time and you have a detention." Most days, Jeremy performs around and through Ms. McNally's lessons and her attempts at discipline. He pretty much does what he wants until he gets bored and puts his head on his desk. Jeremy is really rude to Ms. McNally. It's too bad because she seems like a nice lady, even if sometimes she pretends not to see when he punches me. I think it's just easier to ignore what he does if she can. Ms. McNally has the T-target gene too, even though she pretends to be all nice and professional and in charge. Jeremy can smell it.

Mr. Brown has the T-terrorist gene. He centres me out. He jokes about me being smart. He likes to make me write on the board, which I hate. Sometimes he laughs at the way I react to Jeremy or at how I get embarrassed when everyone looks at me. Mostly, he makes me feel like a loser, which I guess I am. Mr. Brown would say that it's all in fun, but that's not true. When Jeremy harasses me in geography, Mr. Brown laughs along with everyone else. Mr. Brown seems to be the only teacher who likes Jeremy. I heard him tell Jeremy once that he had "potential." The problem is that Jeremy is only interested in his potential to make other people's lives miserable. Mr. Brown is my teacher and he's a nice, funny guy most of the time, but with the T-terrorist gene, he can't stop his instinct to go for the scent of a target.

Most people with a dormant T-gene are watchers, like the rest of the kids in the hall this morning. They either enjoy what the terrorists do, but they won't do it or they hate what they do, but they won't do anything about it. They watch and thank God they're not targets. Most of my teachers are watchers. They don't want to get involved in students' personal issues or maybe they are just oblivious to them. They're busy. As long as students don't interfere too much with what they have to do, they're happy. We file in. They teach. We leave. As far as I can see, teachers don't pay much attention to what else may be happening to kids like me.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from When Push Comes To Shove Backby Janet M. Irvine Copyright © 2011 by Janet M. Irvine. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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