At that moment Hoyt felt it. That point! That point on the graph—the two lines met at that moment. The limbic and the rational were perfectly poised, in equilibrium. He loved himself as he watched himself detach himself from the ring of useless gawkers and enter the arena, a fellow warrior come to save and avenge a Saint Ray. And in that same moment a strategy came to him.

“Hey, dickhead!” Both hims loved himself as they heard the challenge, the note of unremitting contempt in his voice.

The giant turned about incredulously.

“Stay away from her, dickhead! She’s my sister!”

Bolka cocked his head and produced a small sneer of a smile and said, “And who the fuck do you think you are?”

“If she’s my sister, then I’m her brother, is what the fuck even a moron like you should be able to figure out, and what I’m telling you is, stay away from my sister!”

You could see the giant’s scorn and fury dim down all at once, as if it were on a rheostat. Obviously he was beginning to process the implications in terms of public opinion, gawker opinion, if this was in fact the girl’s brother. Hoyt and the giant were barely four feet apart. The graph! The point! He was there!

“I said…stay…away…from my sister!”

Hoyt could see the giant’s rheostat dim a little further still. “How do I know she’s your sister?”

Bolka had reduced things from the level of primal combat to the level of credibility. Hoyt knew he had him. With the steel of authority in his voice he said, “How do you know? Because it’s documented. I have it right here.”

With that, he lowered his gaze and dug into the left cargo pocket of his shorts and walked to within two feet of the giant. He produced a piece of paper from his pocket—in fact, a receipt for a DVD he’d rented at Mehr & Bohm Music Video—and said, “Here.”

The giant took it in his hand and looked down at it.

Hoyt smashed him in the nose with his right forearm. Blood fairly exploded out of the big man’s nostrils, but he didn’t fall back. He scarcely budged. Amid the red flood down his face, his lips formed a savage leer. Before Hoyt knew what was happening—since he had no backup strategy—had never needed one—the giant had his arm around his neck and was squeezing with all his might. Hoyt became eminently aware of the fact that he could no longer breathe. Yet that wasn’t as terrifying as the fact that he had now run into—this was—the dreaded hundredth man his dad had warned him about. He was all at once at the mercy of one of those babies. He felt no terror, not yet, only remorse over his own bad judgment, over his failure as a Dupont man and a Saint Ray.

Cries of rage! Shitfire! Flailing limbs! An avalanche! An incredible massive weight drove his whole body into the asphalt. He was buried beneath meat and rage. The other lacrosse players had come pummeling down from the flatbed. He was aware of the blows and the horrible pressure and the way the skin tore off his elbow and the horrible weight and smothering darkness of it all—but the pain hadn’t registered. All he knew—felt—was that the giant’s grip on his neck was gone. He might get beaten to death, but he could die breathing. He tried to curl up in a ball. He still couldn’t feel the blows. He merely knew he was being hit. He didn’t feel his left arm. He merely knew it was being bent the wrong way. He didn’t feel the elbow that came smashing down on his skull. He merely thought it was lights-out. But in fact it wasn’t. He could feel the beer all over his head because he could smell it. He could hear an old voice, a crude voice:

“Yo, laddy-buck, ’at’s enough a that, you dumb shit!” Laddy-buck. That meant Bruce and the campus police had arrived. Bruce was a big old fat man who called guys “laddy-buck.” It was as good as over. Hoyt didn’t feel pain yet, not at this moment, not yet. He felt failure. He was a warrior cut down in the prime of youth. Hadn’t done a thing wrong. Smashed the beast flush on the beak with his forearm, in the classic way. Shit! One of those babies: the hundredth man.

“Videotape the white apes with the badges and the blackjacks whacking a blood my blood yo’ blood it’s time you niggas get up off yo’ ghetto asses shove the blackjacks up the Mister Brown back alleys of the po-lice thugs videotape the bloods my blood yo’ blood the brothers getting bigger crack some white apes upside they own haids videotape the suckers laid out daid eliminated by the bloods my blood yo’ blood videotape it motherfuckers”—until Jojo wanted to climb the locker-room walls and demolish the speakers and then crawl through the wires until he found Doctor Dis and twisted his head off for him. Why had Charles inflicted this rap so-called music on the entire team? All it was was ghetto noise. Why did he, Jojo, have to have Doctor Dis hammering his skull every second of every minute while he got dressed for practice?

As for Charles, he was sitting in front of his locker, four lockers down from Jojo’s, changing clothes and enjoying his other favorite sport, which was giving Congers a hard time.

“Hey, Vernon,” Charles was saying in a loud voice no one in the room could miss, “I see you got yourself a new whip.” Whip was ghettospeak for automobile.

Congers, whose locker was opposite Charles’s, said, “Yeah…” warily. He had long since learned that very little Charles had to say to him could be taken at face value, starting with the fact that Charles only spoke ghetto when he was being ironic.

“Whattaya call a whip like that?”

“A Viper,” Congers said tonelessly.

“A Vipuhhh,” said Charles. “Unnnhhhh unnh! You gon’ be a playa now, baby! Whenja get it?”

Congers said nothing at first. Then, “A coupla days ago.”

“A Vi-puhhh. How much it setchoo back?”

Another pause…“Somebody give it to me.”

“Somebody give it to you?” said Charles. “Somebody sure loves you, bro. One a yo’ peeps?”

“No.”

“Then I hope the motherfucker’s straight. That whip’s worth fifty or sixty large. Don’t you let the dude pat you on the ass or invitechoo in for a Slurpee when you say good night.”

“A Slurpee,” said Treyshawn. “Hegghh Hegghhh hegghhh.” He liked that one.

Congers’s face clouded. He wasn’t happy about the insinuation. “What the fuck you talking about?” he said to Charles. “I don’t even know who give it to me.”

“Don’t even know? Some dude give me a whip like that, I’d remember his fucking name. Whatchoo mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t know, man!” said Congers. “I’m getting dressed after practice, and I’m putting my pants on, and there’s a set a car keys inna fucking pocket, and hanging off of it is this little thing”—he made a shape with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand—“about like this. Know’m saying? And on one side of it, it says Vernon Congers, and on the other side of it there’s a number, a license plate number. Know’m saying? And so I be walking outta here, and right there at the curb’s this car, and it’s the one. Got the same number. Know’m saying? The doors was open, so I get in, and I be looking around…and there’s the registration and this title thing, and both’m’s got my mama’s name on it. So—”

“Shhhhh!” said Charles with an exaggerated look of alarm on his face. “Don’tchoo be telling anybody about this—”

Jojo didn’t listen to any more of it—Charles making fun of Congers… What he had heard was already too much to take. Congers, a freshman—hadn’t even played for Dupont yet, and the boosters had already given him a car…a hot car, no less…a Viper…Obviously the word was out everywhere, even among the alumni groupies. The ascension of the freshman phenom…the descent into oblivion of Jojo Johanssen…He had never felt lower in his life. His own teammates avoided looking at him, his oblivion was so embarrassing. Or was he being paranoid? He still couldn’t believe it, but it had happened. His entire purpose for being on this earth was to play in the League. Jojo Johanssen’s purpose had just been deleted. And yeah, yeah, don’t give up, just play harder, suck up your guts, and the tough get going, and so forth and so on.