Zef and Nate fell into conversation, but Joey had stopped listening. He stared at his now-empty hand. Zef had thrown it aside like an incriminating murder weapon. He would never change, would he? No. He wouldn’t. Joey wiped his palm on his jeans and reached for his door handle, debating whether to walk home or call his mom to pick him up.
“So you’re not with Kate anymore?” Nate said, leaning in through the window. He noticed Joey finally. “Oh, hey.”
“Hey,” Joey whispered.
“Kate and I broke up,” said Zef.
“That sucks. I’m here with Sally. Come sit with us. We’re with the band. First set of risers. We’ll hook you up with one of her friends.”
Zef glanced at Joey.
Joey shrugged. “Don’t let me stop you.”
Zef frowned and turned back to Nate. “Actually, I’ve got a date, but thanks.”
“You got a new girl?”
“No.” Zef took Joey’s hand and waited.
Nate’s face shifted from amusement to confusion to skepticism to annoyance and back to amusement again. “No shit,” he managed, finally. “Uh, that’s cool. So—you guys come sit with us. We got the best seats.”
“You sure?” said Zef, puzzled.
“Yeah. Jeez. We’ve missed you, man. You left us without a mascot. Just between us, Puleo can’t ride to save his life. Do him a favor and get back in the gear?”
“No way. I don’t wear that thing anymore.”
Nate looked to Joey. “Talk some sense into him? We need our Horseman.” He drummed the roof. “Okay. You sitting with us?”
Zef nodded.
“Cool. We’ll save you seats. Later.” Nate thumped “Shave and a Haircut” on the roof and walked away, leaving “Two Bits” hanging over their heads, unplayed.
Zef stared out the empty window. “He didn’t care.”
“Why would he?” said Joey.
“He just looked at us like—whatever.”
“What did you expect? Spontaneous combustion?”
“No. But—”
“Hey. You’ve built this ‘coming out’ thing into too big a deal. It’s like monsters in the closet when you’re a kid. They’re just in your head.”
“They’re not just in my head. There’s plenty of people who think that we’re… bad.”
“So? Don’t be one of them. Most of the world won’t give a damn. They’ve got their own shit, and frankly, we’re not all that interesting.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“We’re not. The novelty’s worn off. ‘Look! There go two gay guys! Yawn.’ No one’s going to beat us up, or vote us homecoming kings either. We’ll get some looks and some jokes and we’ll find out who our friends are. That’s it.”
“So we’ll just… bore them to death?”
“Exactly. Two more boring gay guys. Dull as dirt.”
“And if we hold hands?”
“They won’t even notice.”
Zef stroked his chin. “If that’s the case, I guess we’ve got no other option.”
“What?”
“We’ll have to have sex on the fifty-yard line.”
Joey’s face went hot. “Uh… what?”
“Just kidding!” said Zef, laughing. “Oh my God.” He turned on the cab light. “You’re red as a beet.”
“Shut up! I am not.” Joey killed the light.
Zef hopped out, circled the car, and opened Joey’s door. “Come on.” He offered a hand. “Let’s bore the hell out of this school.”
Joey climbed out and linked fingers with Zef, turning briefly to drum “Two Bits” on the roof, just for the symmetry.
They headed uphill, following a sidewalk path marked with horseshoes. The path ran past the school, between parked buses, and all the way up to the football field.
On the way, they bored Kelly Fiore and Rob Wall, Pam Holcomb and Kent Williams. They bored Grace Galusha and Matt Ford and Vickie White. They walked past the auditorium—its red brick scrawled with arcane graffiti—and bored the Horseman football team, a lumpen knot of red spandex and testosterone merrily squabbling on the school sidewalk. They bored the visiting team next. Sleepy Hollow’s hated rivals to the north, the Ossining O’s—formerly the Ossining Indians in a less PC era and now known colloquially as the Ossining Zeroes. The boys sat inside their short buses with family and friends, waiting for show time.
Joey and Zef then bored the various concession stands. They bored the girls who sold brownies and the merchandise moms and the sundry grill-master dads. Jennifer from the Horseman Restaurant stood in a fluttering white tent, slinging curly fries and pulled pork. Her hair sported bright streaks of red and white. School colors. She saw their hands joined, winked, and didn’t charge them for their Cokes.
Near the concession stands stood an enormous paint-splattered boulder. The word SENIORS shouted from it in letters four feet high. Two kids sat cross-legged on top: Doug Boyd, the class clown, and Jack Starnes, the affable comic book collector. They pointed at Joey and Zef and wolf-whistled through their megaphones, but they too got bored and went back to heckling the crowd.
Zef walked without his usual slouch, Joey noticed. He held his shoulders back and his chin up, for once. He looked like a grown man, not a sullen teen. They’d forgotten their fears. They could ignore the crowd. They were smiling, flirting a little, enjoying the bustle and the electricity and the expectation of a magic night. This would be a homecoming to remember. They passed through the puddled glare of overhead lights—like the explosion of a flashbulb capturing the moment. They’d run the gauntlet, reached the end zone. Now they could be bored, too. Bored of fear and doubt. They could be ready for some football, like everyone else. Horsemen football was the business of the night, after all. Not all this… angsty gay teenager crap.
They reached a bottleneck at the gates of the field—dozens of people in a cattle chute, the traffic made worse by concession tents, open grills, and freshmen taking selfies. Joey held tight to Zef so they wouldn’t be separated, and the current carried them through the narrow gate and onto the field itself.
The field of the Sleepy Hollow Horsemen perched above the high school on a flat plateau, a little seat of land with a stunning view of the town and the river. The enormous mole-furrow of the Old Croton Aqueduct tunnel passed right alongside it, a wooded slope, overgrown and too steep to climb, abrupt as the back of a chair. One set of corrugated metal risers leaned against this slope, facing west, but there were no matching risers mirroring it on the other side of the field, since that would spoil the view.
A tall and sturdy chain-link fence completely encircled the field, with one narrow gate at the southern end, where the crowd entered and exited, and a gap at the northern end where a grassy slope and path disappeared up into the trees, joining the aqueduct trail, which ran above, atop the tunnel.
Joey had never attended a game before. He’d sung at some pep rallies, and his band, Hollow Praise, had performed at the Spirit Dance and at other Horsemen-related gigs. But he’d always felt unreasonably unwelcome in the straight jock universe, so he’d avoided any actual sports.
About a hundred parents and students packed the single set of risers. The woods hung just over their heads. A wall of blighted trees on the steep hillside behind the stands shaded the crowd from starlight and occasionally showered it with dead leaves. An announcer’s box also hung above the crowd. Two men in red windbreakers yammered over the loudspeakers, urging the crowd to buy raffle tickets (“Two-buck entry wins half the pot!”) and welcome the cheerleaders (“Put your hands together for the Wolfpack!”).
Nate called down to Zef from the stands. Zef and Joey climbed up and joined Nate and Sally Blatt, the redheaded star trombonist of the school orchestra and band. The great diva received them with weary indulgence and sat blowing scales on her white trombone, like a pufferfish making out with a length of PVC pipe. Other instruments filed in: black clarinets and silver flutes, golden cymbals and saxophones. Joey welcomed the appearance of band geek
s. His people. Their section of the risers sprouted brambles of thorny music, everybody blatting and whumping and warbling to each other.
“So this is your first date?” Nate shouted at Joey, over the din. “I got to apologize for my man Zef! Next time, make him spend money!”
“I will!” said Joey. “Trust me! I’m a gold-digger!”
“Oh shit!” said Zef, with mock horror. “I thought you said gravedigger!”
“I did! I’m a grave-digging gold-digger! Respect my choices!”
Zef threw an arm around Joey’s back and laughed. Joey smiled, glad that the cool wind had changed so he could smell Zef’s cologne.
The cheerleaders assembled on the running track and began their routine. A few boys leaned over the chest-high strip of chain link that separated the stands from the track, admiring the fit of the tight red and white. The girls shook metallic pom-poms and smiled back.
“Boom dynamite! We’re dynamite! Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick! We’re dynamite!”
“Let’s go, Hollow, let’s go! Let’s go, Hollow, let’s go!”
“Let’s get a little bit rowdy! R-O-W-D-Y!”
The crowd favorite was an SHHS junior named Jenny Bale, chubby but un-self-conscious. She wore a rhinestone tiara and shook her pom-poms with the best of them. She was surprisingly light on her feet and could kick like an MMA brawler.
The band blew flourishes as the flatbed homecoming float drove by, Coach Konat at the wheel. It was one of the same trucks the town used for the Haunted Hayride and it still had plenty of spirit. It wore ribbons and ruffles and rosebuds of red and white crepe. A fit throne for the Homecoming Court—ten kids sporting scepters and sashes and goofy grins. Cody McBride, the new quarterback, wore the crown of Homecoming King, perched on his head like a red velvet cupcake.
“He’s way better than Eddie,” Nate said. “Faster. Not as bulky.”
Joey was strangely fascinated by the rituals. Parents escorted the players to the field. The crowd bowed with solemnity as the announcers read a list of alumni who had passed on. It was… meaningful. Joey hadn’t expected it to be. He wondered what other high school experiences he’d missed, for fear of not fitting in.
“Joey!” someone called. He scanned the crowd and saw Erica Davis below, leaning over the chain link and waving. Erica was an alto from Joey’s choir. What the hell was she so frantic about? Joey excused himself and climbed down to her.
“Can you sing?” she said. Her voice was unnaturally rough and plummy, even for a member of the Low E-flat Club.
“People say so.”
“Like, right now?”
“Uh… I’m kind of on a date.”
“I saw. Oh my God. You two are so cute and I am totally on board with your diversity, but I need a favor. I promised to sing the anthem, but—” She tapped her throat. “Mono. But we’re calling it flu, okay? Can you sub in for me?”
“I’m not warmed up.”
“I can’t find any takers.”
“Okay… fine. When?”
“Now!” She grabbed Joey’s elbow, guided him to a gap in the chain link, and pulled him across the running track and onto the field. The sounds of the crowd faded behind them as they crossed the grass. Joey’s brain began racing. What were the words to the national anthem again?
Erica left him at the microphone. He turned around and blinked at the floodlights.
“Please rise for the Stars and Stripes,” said an announcer, and, as one, Sleepy Hollow High School quieted, stood, and laid hands and ball caps to their hearts.
Joey made sure the microphone was on and level. He lowballed the key, just in case, and opened his mouth.
“O-oh, say can you sEE—” His voice cracked. And not a small crack, either. It broke down the middle like the Titanic and killed all the Irish down in steerage.
He stopped. The crowd murmured. Some giggled.
Had he lost his voice? His gift? He’d neglected his singing for months now. He’d assumed his voice would just be there, whenever he needed it. But talent takes practice. You can’t leave it to rust. And now he would make an ass of himself. He glanced down at a discarded mouth guard lying in the brown grass by the fifty-yard line. He looked for Zef, who stood with his hand to his heart, urging Joey on with his eyes. Joey put a hand to his own heart and began again, reaching deep.
“O-oh, say can you see… by the dawn’s early light…” His voice was rough, but it gained confidence as he sang. It bounced back at him from the distant speakers, slightly out of sync. But he sounded good. In fact, he sounded great. Tears of relief welled in his eyes, of relief and… something else he couldn’t explain. There was real beauty in this moment: a pool of light, a patchwork of windbreakers and balloons and solemn, glowing faces, the town of Sleepy Hollow glittering down below. The anthem echoed off the hills. The Tappan Zee Bridge twinkled in the distance. Joey thought of Jason and the Fourth of July. The rockets’ red glare gave proof through the night that his friend was still there, actually still out there, maybe, somehow. Imprisoned probably, but hopefully alive and coming home soon. He found the word “free” and lifted it to the stars. The crowd cheered. He held the note, as long as he could. He concentrated on Zef. “And the home of the bra-a-a-ve!”
The crowd slapped their hands together and stomped the risers.
Joey took a bow.
Then the Horseman came.
Sinister music blared from the speakers. The title theme to the movie Halloween, driving and jittery, with swelling brass chords and a staccato syncopated piano. A horse galloped onto the field. The headless rider in black raised a grinning pumpkin. The crowd went nuts, whistling and hooting. Joey stumbled backward, startled, as the horse thundered past. But this was only the mascot, Jimmy Puleo riding in Zef’s place, as he’d done once at Horseman’s Hollow.
Jimmy’s costume was crap. Not half as good as Zef’s. A mere black sheet. He didn’t ride Kate’s grey horse, Gunsmoke, either, as Zef had done, but a brown shaggy thing, rented or donated. And Nate was right. Puleo couldn’t ride for shit. His horse threw dirt as it turned, and Jimmy lost his balance. He slipped sideways in the saddle. The crowd gasped as Puleo fell off the horse, hitting the ground hard and rolling.
Joey reached Puleo first and helped him stand. Puleo pulled the costume up, revealing a sweaty red face. He swore and said, “I can’t see a damn thing in this. Tell your boyfriend he’s riding at halftime. ’Cause I quit.”
Puleo looked for his pumpkin, which had bounced down the field. A little kid in a baggy red team jersey snatched it up and carried it back, leaving it in the grass at the Horseman’s feet and backing away, awestruck as an imp serving lemonade to the Devil. Puleo collected it and loped off the field, leading his horse. The crowd cheered him on, halfheartedly.
Then the other Horsemen arrived and the crowd exploded. The varsity team sprinted in, bursting through a paper banner. The words DEFEAT and OSSINING broke to either side. A row of red devils flashed past, with horseshoes on their helmets instead of horns. Joey got out of their way and returned to his seat.
He told Zef what Puleo had said.
”I can’t wear that costume,” said Zef.
“I’m just the messenger.”
“I’ll think about it.” Zef gave Joey a peck on the cheek. “You were great.”
“Get a room!” giggled Nate.
Zef shrugged. “Don’t be jealous.”
Joey felt himself blushing. Above their heads, two tied-off balloons, a red and a white, circled and kissed in the cool evening breeze.
Sally raised her trombone. The Horsemen were on the move. She blew a long slurping note to accompany the kickoff. Someone clapped cymbals as the ball landed in the arms of one of the silver-and-black Ossining players, and the game began.
Joey couldn’t see much of it. The actual football game was too far off. Just a distant crush of silver against red, like a gang fight on the next block. Cheerleaders threw red footballs to the crowd. The risers shivered with the stomp of feet. A middle-a
ged man, possibly a parent, stood and started screaming at the top of his lungs. “Take the ball to the house, boys! Let’s go! Let’s go!” He had a face like a viper. The woman in front of him wiped venom off her neck and glared.
Middle schoolers ran up and down the chain-link fence, imitating the throws and hero-worshiping. Occasionally some player would run to the sidelines and stomp his feet on a spiked mat, clearing dirt from his cleats, like a horse counting to four. The band played “The Imperial March” and thundered through “Louie, Louie,” forcing Joey and Zef to sway along. The cowbell alone was deafening. In a rare quiet moment, a clarinetist with scads of pimples stared into the shadows and played Peer Gynt, wistfully. The night grew overcast, and one by one the stars went out.
The viper-faced parent began screaming again, standing on his riser and beating his ball cap against his leg. “Murder them! Murder them! Murder them!”
Some buzzer went off, like a nuclear-powered egg timer, making Joey jump. The Horsemen—behind 14 to 7 with two quarters left—loped from the field with attitudes of surly frustration, falling onto a grassy slope at the northern end, sharing sports drinks and backslaps.
“It’s intermission,” said Joey. “Did you decide? About Puleo?”
“It’s called halftime,” said Zef. “You are so damn cute. I’ll–go give him some pointers.”
“I’ll save your seat.”
Zef rose and descended the risers. Joey watched him go. A leaf fluttered down from the trees behind. He slipped it into his pocket when no one was looking, as a souvenir. I am so damn cute, he thought.
Well, if the man says so it must be true.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Halftime”
Zef braced himself as he climbed up the grassy slope to where the team sat, in a clearing obscured from view by the trees. He wondered if he’d take shit from them. He’d been one of their number for so long, hanging out right here every halftime, they in their uniforms and he in his—the flowing black cape, the leather gloves, the fake pumpkin tied to his right hand and the reins of Gunsmoke in his left.
SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3) Page 17
