Crazy in Love

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  That’s actually how Alicia and I first got to be friends. It was all because of Sandy. Alicia was in fourth grade, I was in third, and Sandy was mainstreamed to fifth grade, although she spent most of her time in the special class.

  It was close to the beginning of the year, I think.I was waiting for Sandy at the school’s main door so I could walk her home. When she was late, I backtracked to her last class, an adapted history class that was still way over her head. It was her semi-mainstream class and the only class she didn’t like.

  She wasn’t in the history room, so I figured she had to be back in her special classroom. I stormed back for her, hacked off that she was making me late. But she wasn’t there.

  I remember the panic starting to take over. I ran down the hall, calling, “Sandy! Sandy!”

  Then I heard somebody shouting. Only it wasn’t Sandy’s voice. Somebody was screaming, “Leave her alone! Stop it! I mean it. You leave her alone!”

  I ran toward the voice, knowing Sandy was in the middle of something horrible.

  I rounded the corner and can still picture the scene. Three of the bigger boys, who were probably from Sandy’s history class, were circling her like hungry wolves. Sandy stood in the middle, her books and coat at her feet, her hands covering her ears.

  “Come on, retard!” the biggest boy was saying. “Just one little kiss and we’ll let you go home to your mommy.”

  The other two boys laughed and kept moving in circles around Sandy.

  And there, standing up to them, even though she wasn’t half their size, was Alicia. “Stop it, you idiots!” she screamed. “Or you’ll be sorry!” She ran at the biggest boy, Mark Something, and rammed her head into his stomach.

  He grabbed his belly, which was fat, and doubled over.

  The other two boys stopped circling.

  I guess I was so shocked that I hadn’t moved. But I snapped out of it and ran to stand next to this blonde girl, who was a little shorter than I was. “Get out of here!” I shouted at them. I raised my fist. I’d never hit anyone in my whole life, but I would have. “Leave my sister alone!”

  Alicia and I stood there, a tiny wall against boys twice our size.

  “Back off!” The wiry kid I knew was in fifth grade, Blake, stepped toward us. “Unless you little girls want to give us a kiss, too?”

  “You try to kiss any of us,” Alicia said, “and I’ll break your face.”

  Blake didn’t laugh. I think he believed her. I know I did.

  I stepped past them, grabbed Sandy, and pulled her behind us. I could hear her sobbing.

  “Get ’em!” Mark hollered, still holding his belly.

  “You do,” I promised, “and I’ll tell the principal, who just happens to be my dad’s best friend.” That part was a lie, a quick-on-your-feet lie Alicia admired later.

  It was a standoff that seemed to last forever. I remember thinking how weird it was that nobody else was around. Like where did principals and teachers go when you needed them for anything bigger than yelling at you for running in the halls?

  Then the kid who hadn’t said anything did. “Come on, you guys. Let’s get out of here.”

  Blake took a couple of steps backward. “Yeah. Okay. This is stupid.”

  Mark’s face was bright red. “Where are you going?” he screamed after his buddies, who were running down the hall now. When he turned back to us, he didn’t look so brave. “Go on! Get her out of here. Who wants to kiss a retard anyway?”

  “You’re right, you idiot,” Alicia said. “Nobody will ever want to kiss you!”

  That was Alicia. That’s why I’ve missed her so much.

  And as I make my way to the Roy Dale gym, I’ve got a feeling that sooner or later, I’m going to wish I had her standing by me again, facing off the bullies.

  8

  The Dragons

  "Marwyjan! Sandy cries her own special version of my name and leaves the basketball court when she sees me walk in. They haven’t started the real game yet, although my sister would have left the court to greet me even if they had.

  I hold out my arms, and she barrels into me for a hug, as if it’s been years since we’ve seen each other, instead of hours. The voices in my head shout, Hug her back! and I do. Loving Sandy is one of the few things my voices agree on.

  “Purple!” she shouts, stepping back and holding out the sides of her basketball shorts like they’re her ballet skirt. Her thin brown hair falls carelessly to her shoulders. She has the face of an angel.

  “Very purple,” I say. Purple is and always has been Sandy’s favorite color. “New uniforms? They look great, Sandy!” I spin her around so I can see the back of her uniform, where it says DRAGONS and 55. “Go, Dragons!” I shout. “Oh, and I talked to Alicia, and she said to tell you good luck and go, Dragons.”

  Sandy jumps twice and looks toward the door. “Is she coming? Is ’Licia coming?”

  “No. She’s away at school. Remember? But she’s coming home for Thanksgiving, and she wants to see you play.”

  Michelle, the new coach for the Dragons, keeps glaring over at us. Our last coach, Jeff, was all about the kids. This one’s all about winning.

  “You better go back with your team,” I tell Sandy.

  But I barely get the words out when I hear thundering tennis shoes. I look up to see Sandy’s buddies stampeding over to us.

  “Mary Jane! Mary Jane!” Leslie cries in her soft voice.

  Brent, Eric, Chris, and John are way taller than I am. They’re all trying to tell me different things at the same time: “Watch me!” “I made a basket last time!” “I shoot!”

  We’re having our own unofficial team huddle on the sidelines. Jerry, the shortest player, never talks. He just whispers things I can’t understand, whispers intently at me, then pats me on the head.

  I pretend to fall backward and tumble to the floor, taking Sandy with me. She laughs—loud and without a trace of self-consciousness. Her laugh reminds me of geese honking. It’s impossible to hear it and not laugh, too. I’d do almost anything for that laugh . . . and have.

  Jerry and Eric fall on top of Sandy and me. The rest of them follow suit until we’re in a football pileup on the basketball floor. I laugh so hard I can’t stop.

  I haven’t even felt like laughing since . . . since . . . since the last time I came to one of Sandy’s games.

  There are no arguments in my head. Nobody’s shouting. I could stay like this, wrapped in a cocoon of Sandy-ness, forever.

  “Back to the free throw line!” Michelle stands frowning over us. “Come on! Game starts in fifteen.” She points to the free-throw line to make sure the kids know exactly which line she wants them to go to. Here, the free-throw line goes by many names. Sandy calls it “the mistake spot.”

  Sandy gets up and hugs Michelle before shuffle-trotting off. You can tell Michelle isn’t the huggy type. The others pile off of me and follow Sandy. Chris, the Dragons’ star player, hustles up to walk next to my sister, and not for the first time I wonder if he likes her, as in like likes her. I uncurl and get to my feet. “Hey, Michelle. Great uniforms.”

  “We’re two short,” she says. “We better get them by the Richmond game.”

  “That the big game this year?” I ask.

  “It’s the only game I think we could have trouble with,” Michelle confides. “We could win district this year. If we can beat Richmond, we could play at ISU.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m sure the kids will come through.” I can see how desperately she wants this. “So when’s the big game?”

  “The day after Thanksgiving. Pretty foul timing. I think Carl had something to do with it. He’s the coach at Richmond. He’s so arrogant. They’ve won the last three years, and he thinks it will go on forever. Well, not this year.”

  The visiting team’s coach blows a whistle, and the players on that side of the court file back to their benches.

  Michelle runs back to our team and herds them to the sidelines.

  Alex James
is standing by to help get the Dragons settled onto the home team benches. Alex is Red’s boyfriend. She’s the one who signed the three-way-virgin pact with Alicia and me right before they started high school. Red dubbed us Abstinence in Action, which was pretty funny, since the whole point was no action. She and Alex started dating three weeks later.

  I watch Alex with Chris, Red’s brother and the Dragons’ ace scorer. Alex is so good with the kids. “Hey, Alex!” I call.

  He pats Chris on the back, then jogs over to me. “Thought you might be here,” he says. “Sandy looks good. She been healthy?”

  I nod. “How about Chris?”

  He grins. “I’d say Chris thinks Sandy looks good, too.”

  I punch his arm. I do not want to think of Sandy ever going through what I’m going through. “So where’s Red?” Red is the Dragons’ biggest, or at least most vocal, fan. She almost refused to take a scholarship to a great private school upstate, just because she never wanted to miss any of Chris’s games. That, and the fact that she and Alex are mad crazy in love, and he’s staying in town and getting an engineering degree from Tri-Community College.

  “Red couldn’t get home. I had to promise to call her every time Chris scores. She’ll be here for the Galion game, though.”

  “Cool.”

  “Mary Jane!” Mom’s calling me from the top of the six-row bleachers.

  I wave up at her. “I better get a seat. Later.” Then I start climbing the bleachers. I would never acknowledge my parents at an Attila game, much less sit with them. But the rules of high school don’t apply here. This life, these kids, it’s all a world inside a world, set apart from everything else. We sit with moms at Roy Dale, and nobody cares.

  “Where’s Dad?” I ask as I settle next to Mom. She’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that advertises her real estate company. The main office gave HOUSE HUNTERS shirts away at open houses last year. Oddly enough, we have a dozen of them in every color.

  “He’s running late, but he said he’ll get here as soon as he can.”

  We watch as the green and purple starting teams gather in the middle of the court. And the game is on.

  Nobody scores until the last minute of the first period, when Chris puts one in from the side. Cheers break out—on both sides. Everybody on the court congratulates Chris, even a couple of guys from the green team. I see Alex holding up his cell to catch the crowd noise, and I know Red’s on the other end, screaming just as loud. There is something very right about those two.

  Jeff, our last coach, used to make sure everybody on the team got a chance to play and usually in the first period. Not Michelle. She keeps the good players in as long as possible.

  Sandy gets to play in the second period, and Dad shows up just as she’s walking onto the court. Her eyes are searching the gym for him as she strolls out. When she spots him, she waves and yells, “Hi, Daddy! I get to play!” Then she holds her shorts like she did for me and shouts, “Purple!”

  Dad waves and shouts back, “Go, Dragons!” because Sandy has told us we can’t say “Go, Sandy,” only “Go, Dragons!” Then he bounds up in the stands and sits with Mom and me.

  “So we’re winning,” he says, grinning at our 2-0 rout.

  Michelle yells at Sandy to move on the court. For the next ten minutes, Sandy thunders back and forth with her team, but she never touches the ball. Nobody passes it to her. And she’s too polite to fight for it.

  One of the green players, number 11, a skeleton of a boy, with knees as knobby as baseballs and a shaved head, keeps watching Sandy. Whenever he catches her attention, he breaks into a big smile. Sandy smiles back, and it’s almost more than the kid can handle. It’s like he can’t take his eyes off her.

  But Sandy is focused on that ball. She runs up and down the court with everybody else and holds out her arms. The two best Dragon players, Chris and Matt, hog the ball, as usual, passing it back and forth, both of them shooting. Our old coach used to make them pass it to other team members, even though they were the only ones who ever scored.

  I feel so bad for Sandy. Her arms are outstretched. Her face is filled with hope that they’ll throw her the ball. She gets wide open under the basket, and still the boys act like they only see each other.

  Then something happens. The ball skids out of Chris’s hands and rolls toward Sandy. She dives for the ball, but the knobby-kneed number 11 green player gets there first. He grabs the ball, dribbles, then stops. His teammates keep running down the court, followed by Dragon defenders, leaving him and Sandy alone on that end.

  He grins at Sandy.

  She grins back.

  Both coaches are screaming.

  His teammates are calling for the ball.

  Then Green Number 11 kind of hands the ball to Sandy and smiles, as if he’s giving her flowers.

  Sandy gives him a smile of thanks as she takes the basketball from him. Then she turns and looks up into the bleachers until her gaze settles on me. Her eyes are big, questioning, as if asking permission. I nod. She shrugs. Then she dribbles once, shoots, and scores.

  The fans go wild. We’re all on our feet, cheering and laughing. Everybody loves it, even the green team parents and fans. And nobody looks happier than the skinny kid with a crush on my sister.

  Michelle leaves Sandy in for another five minutes, but Sandy’s focus is gone. She tries to follow the ball, moving down the court and up the court as soon as she realizes everybody else is on the move. But she keeps smiling up into the stands at us. And we smile back because you can’t help yourself. Everybody’s smiling at a Special Olympics game. They should make it a law that every human has to attend one once a month. There would be no more road rage, no NBA basketball brawls.

  Sandy goes back to the bench, where she stays until the end of the fourth period. The score has risen to 14 to 2, our lead, but Michelle still hasn’t played all the kids. Dad won’t let me go down there and have a little talk with her about this. But I think somebody does because all at once she puts in the last four kids, plus Sandy.

  Both purple and green teams cheer for the new players. One of the Dragons, Isaac, has only one arm, but he’s a good shot. I’ve seen him sink layups before. Two of the new Dragon players are girls who are still in middle school. They hold hands and look pretty scared. The fourth, Larry, won’t come out onto the court. He’s autistic. Most of the time we can’t get him to leave the bench. He’s usually okay in practice. In fact, if he can be on the court all by himself, he’s a deadeye shot. I watched him sink eleven three-pointers in a row one day.

  Michelle tries to coax him inbounds, but he groans at her and starts rocking back and forth, getting louder, so she leaves him alone.

  There’s a jump ball. Everybody misses, and the ball rolls right to Sandy’s feet.

  Dad jumps up and yells, “Honey! Pick it up!”

  Sandy smiles up into the stands. Then she bends down and picks up the ball.

  “Dribble!” Michelle screams.

  Sandy smiles. Then she dribbles once and hugs the ball, still grinning. She says something we can’t hear. Then she bounces the ball to Larry, who’s still out of bounds.

  Larry catches the ball and stops swaying. He smiles at Sandy, who’s clapping like crazy. Several of her teammates are clapping, too. So is one from the green team.

  The whistle blows. The ball, of course, is out of bounds. Larry allows the referee to take the basketball. Then he starts swaying again.

  “You’re good, Larry!” Sandy shouts.

  “One of these days before too long,” Mom says, “we’re going to get that boy all the way inbounds. You just wait and see.”

  We win 14 to 4. But when the game’s over both teams hug each other as if they’ve all won and were all on the same team. And I guess, in a way, we are.

  The rents are taking Sandy out for hamburgers, but I pass on the invitation to join them. I walk out the main doors of Roy Dale and head for my car. I’m not ten feet away when the voices are back at it:Plain Jane: What’s
wrong with you? Couldn’t you spare one night to have dinner with your family? Of course you wouldn’t want to actually eat a hamburger, since you could stand to lose a couple pounds, you know. But couldn’t you at least spend time with them?

  M.J.: Don’t waste another minute thinking about stupid hamburgers! You know exactly what you want to do. Go directly home. Do not pass Go.

  Call Jackson House.

  9

  Durling Phones

  I lie on my bed, cell in hand, and stare at the black ceiling. Black, because in a fit of angst right before the start of my senior year, I redecorated my room, starting with the ceiling. M.J. had always wanted a totally black room. Fortunately, Plain Jane’s voice kicked in before I had a chance to extend my black motif to the walls and floor.

  I was halfway through blackening my ceiling and had decided it was a huge mistake when Mom walked in.

  “Mary Jane!” she cried. “What is wrong with you? Only sick, sick, sick people paint their ceilings black. Are you taking drugs?”

  Her reaction pretty much sealed my fate. “I love the black ceiling, Mom. And you said I could decorate any way I wanted to. It’s my room. And no. Not taking drugs. But thanks so much for asking.”

  She left, but she sent Dad.

  He stood in the doorway, staring in. “Your mother wants me to tell you that your room is still part of my house,” he said evenly. “Our house. Just tell me you’re not planning to paint the whole room black.”

  I managed a nervous laugh. “Of course not, Dad.”

  He nodded and backed away.

  Alicia hadn’t left for college yet, so I made her come over. She’d seen in a magazine how some college kids had painted their dorm rooms with sponges, so the walls looked like marble, or cement, depending on the sponge. All I had was black paint, so she hijacked a gallon of white from her stepdad’s garage. He was too lazy to paint, so he’d never miss it. Then we mixed black and white and dipped sponges and turned my bedroom walls into gray marble cement. It all turned out okay, but I won’t miss my room when I’m off to ISU.

  For the tenth time, I punch in Jackson’s phone number, which I’ve looked up and now memorized. But for the tenth time, I click END, instead of SEND. What would I say if he answered?