David looked up at him, eyebrows arched, perfectly at ease. “Why?”
Apparently, Muscles wasn’t prepared for anyone to ask a reasonable question. “Because I said so,” he blurted back, and then pulled his face into a frown that looked very odd on a grown man’s face. “Because you’re in our spot, asswipe. Get your punk ass up.”
Here’s the problem with being supernaturally gifted: you really can’t go around blowing away every goofball idiot who tries to make himself your problem, no matter how convenient it might be. Muscles might think he was badass, but he wasn’t up to going one round with me, never mind David. It’s always difficult to break that fact to them gently, without wounding their sensitive, macho feelings of inadequacy.
David was already moving forwards on that. “There’s plenty of beach,” he pointed out.
“I said this is our spot. Now get up and leave before we bury you in it.”
David looked at me, and I saw the frustrated humour in his shrug. I sighed and started to gather up my things. It wasn’t worth the fight.
At least it wasn’t until Muscles said, “Not you, bitch. You, you stay. We need us some candy.” He stuck out his tongue and fluttered it in the approved Gene Simmons manner, although he was nowhere near able to pull it off like His Rockness. Meanwhile, his friends spread out around us, trying to cut us off. I noticed that other people who’d parked their towels and coolers nearby were hustling away, sensibly thinking that maybe they had better places to be right now.
I sat up and pulled my knees together, wrapping my arms demurely around them. “Excuse me? Did you just call me ‘bitch’? Because I’ve got a name. In fact, every girl you leer at has a name. Mine’s Joanne. Hi, nice to meet you.” I let a slow, wicked smile spread over my lips. “Now take your inked-up posse of posers and find another spot.”
“Oh, here we go,” David murmured. He flopped down on his back, hands crossed peacefully on his chest.
Muscles stared at me like I’d grown another set of breasts. “What? Bitch, did you just tell me to move on?”
“Wait, let me go to the instant replay - the judges say ‘yes’, And congratulations on mastering listening for comprehension. Your mom must be so proud.”
I lost him on that one, so he took the shortcut straight to the point. “Shut the fuck up, or I’ll fuck you up, bitch!”
Muscles was waiting for David to leap to my defence. He kept glancing down at him. David responded by moving his hands from their resting position atop his chest to a more comfortable behind-the-head pillow.
“Don’t look at him, look at me,” I said, and shook my hair back from my face. “This is between the two of us, right?”
“Bullshit.” Muscles decided to get proactive, since he really wasn’t into fighting girls, at least as a first choice. He raised one massive foot and brought it down on David’s stomach. Well. He tried.
David didn’t bother to so much as flinch, but then, he didn’t need to.
I reacted for him.
Muscles let out a raw yelp of surprise, and his back foot disappeared into the sand to the depth of about three feet as I instantly pulverized and dried the sand underneath him, making it as fine as powder. He flailed, fell backwards, and poof, disappeared in a puff of dust. I let him drop about two more feet beneath the surface before I hardened the sand again, added a little water for thickness, and helpfully raised him until his mouth and nose were in the air, gasping for breath. I left him there, buried to the chin.
His friends stared down at him, dumbstruck. Muscles let out an inarticulate yell of rage and fear. Under the coating of dust, his big domed head was turning brick red with fury. Well, he
could flail all he wanted, he wasn’t getting out of there. Not on his own. Amazing how heavy a little damp sand can be.
A couple of his friends looked at me and David, and at least one of them looked willing to take up Muscles’ cause. I softened the sand under their feet just enough to let them sink in about a foot. “Whoops,” I said. “Quicksand. Who knew that kind of thing was a beach hazard in Florida? Hey, dude, how you doing down there?”
Muscles yelled. I didn’t listen. His lungs were fine.
“What do you think?” I asked David. “Maybe we should go get him some help? You know, eventually?”
“You mean now you want to go?”
“Well, he’s very loud. It’s harshing my calm.”
David shook his head, but I could tell he was more amused than annoyed. I took my time gathering up my stuff, folding my towel, packing the lotion and water. Muscles continued to howl, mostly inarticulately, but sometimes treating me to whole new vistas of insults. His buddies had prudently backed off and were watching from a distance.
“What if they’d been armed?” David asked me, very quietly, as he leaned over me to pick up the picnic basket. I gave him a one-shoulder shrug.
“We’d handle it. But honestly, it’s pretty tough to hide a gun in your swim trunks without getting rousted for lewd behaviour. Not that much of a risk.”
“You were just looking for a fight.”
“No, they brought me one. I just didn’t walk away from it.”