The Big Game

by Tim Green

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Nerves.” She gave him a weak smile.

  “I know, right? Junior high. All of a sudden we’re not kids anymore.”

  “So they say.” Janey brushed a loose strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “I liked being a kid.”

  “You’ll like this too. You look great.” He offered an honest smile.

  “To you.”

  “Hey, I’m a big deal. Just you wait till we play Froston. Sitting next to me will be worth something. You might have to get a ticket.” He laughed at himself.

  “Ticket? I’m on the team, buddy, and don’t forget it.”

  “True, true.”

  They got off the bus and fell into the flow of students streaming across the circle, past its flagpole, and into the main entrance.

  That’s where they were waiting for him.

  Coach Kinen was an eighth-grade math teacher, and he dressed the part with a short-sleeved shirt, a thin tie, and his bristly hair kind of uneven and dorky. The principal—Danny was pretty sure his name was Mr. Trufant—wore a light gray suit and brown suede shoes. His head was entirely bald and his steel-framed glasses gave him a villainous look. Then there was someone Danny didn’t recognize, a thin man with a scruffy goatee wearing battered jeans and a plaid shirt open at the collar.

  Mr. Trufant spoke first. “Danny? We need you to come with us.”

  Danny glanced at Janey. She looked shocked and even frightened.

  When Danny hesitated, Coach Kinen took him by the arm. “It’s going to be fine, Danny. We want to help.”

  Danny let his coach lead him away through the sea of gawking students with Mr. Trufant and the unknown man trailing behind. The four of them went into a conference room and the principal closed the door. He pointed to the long table. “Have a seat.”

  Danny and Coach Kinen sat on one side of the table. Taking a seat on the opposite side with the other man, Mr. Trufant said, “Danny, I want you to know that these two men are entirely on your side. As principal, I have to look at things from a wider viewpoint. So, where I see a serious assault on another student on school grounds, these two gentlemen see someone crying out for help.”

  “Hi, Danny,” said the scruffy man, who looked young enough to be a student himself. “I’m Bob Crenshaw, the school counselor. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Apparently that was all the counselor had to say. He folded his hands on the table and turned toward the principal.

  Mr. Trufant cleared his throat. “You had a study hall third period, but I switched your schedule so that you now have your study hall first period. For now, you’ll report to Mr. Crenshaw for that study hall. He’ll determine which days you go to the library and which days you’ll be spending first period with him.”

  Despite the serious looks on the three men’s faces, Danny chuckled and looked the principal in the eye, offering a humble but charming smile, just like he’d been taught. “I’m not sure what this is about, sir. I’m fine. Markle insulted my family—my dad, actually—and we got into it. That’s all.”

  Danny looked at his coach. His lips were squeezed together tight, eyes glued to the principal, giving Danny no hope of rescue.

  “That’s not all, Danny.” Mr. Trufant had a folder Danny hadn’t noticed. He laid it on the table and removed a color copy of a photo. It showed John Markle’s battered face. Aside from the long blond hair, and knowing that he had taken a beating yesterday, Danny would not have recognized the boy. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  The principal glared at Coach Kinen as if he’d done something wrong. “Do I need to spell this out, Dave?”

  “No.” Coach Kinen shook his head.

  “Did you contact the mother?” asked the principal.

  “She didn’t answer, but I left a message and I’m sure she’ll call me back.” The coach turned to Danny. “Look, Danny, this is serious. You need to trust me and go along with whatever Mr. Trufant says. He is our friend in all this. You understand?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Okay,” said his coach, taking a deep breath. “I’ll spell it out. There are people, including Markle’s mom, who would like to see you suspended from school and banned from the football team for the entire season.”

  Danny swallowed and nodded that he understood. “But he started it.”

  Coach Kinen banged his palm on the table and everyone jumped. “That’s irrelevant. Get that through your head. You need to get in line here. Or you definitely won’t be playing football. And we need you to play ball. The team needs you.”

  “Okay.” Danny kept his chin up.

  “Is your mom at work or something? She’s not away, is she?” the coach asked.

  Danny thought about last night’s strawberry vodkas. “She’s probably asleep. She wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Make sure she gives me a call.” The coach looked at the principal, who nodded with approval. “You’re gonna like Mr. Crenshaw. He’s going to help you, Danny—and you’re not going to fight us on this, are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “See?” Coach Kinen said to the other two men. “This’ll all work out. Danny, you go with Mr. Crenshaw, and I’ll see you at practice.”

  “Good, then.” The principal patted the table like it was a horse’s rump, stood, and went off to begin the announcements.

  Coach Kinen gave Danny’s shoulder a squeeze, and then he left.

  Crenshaw sat looking at Danny with a curious smile.

  Danny couldn’t help frowning back at him and asking, “So, what now?”

  Crenshaw had blue eyes and a short haircut styled with gel. He stroked his goatee, which was no more than the thin beginnings of a bird nest. “Now we get to know each other.”

  “You’re not gonna make me lay down on a couch and have me tell you about my mother?” Danny had seen shrinks on TV.

  Crenshaw’s face became serious. “Do you want to tell me anything about your mother?”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” Crenshaw leaned toward him. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

  Danny snorted softly. “I’m fine, so . . .”

  Danny made a zero with his thumb and forefinger and looked through the hole at the counselor.

  Crenshaw was unfazed by Danny’s refusal. He leaned back and sat watching and smiling. Danny put down his zero and smiled back until he got annoyed. “This is what you do? You sit and stare?”

  “I’m happy to do whatever you’d like to do. This is your time. Would you like to go to my office?”

  “Why?”

  Crenshaw shrugged and looked around. “It’s a little less sterile. I’ve got some games.”

  “Games?” Danny wrinkled his face. “What, like Chutes and Ladders? Hungry Hungry Hippos?”

  “No, but I could get those if that’s what you want.” Crenshaw said it with a straight face.

  “I bloodied someone’s face,” Danny said, wanting to provoke him. “You think I play baby games?”

  “I prefer Rummikub or Yahtzee, but I’m happy to do whatever.”

  “Great.” Danny stood up. “Whatever is I go to the library and you play . . . What’d you say? Rummy Cube? Or Kamikaze? Whatever floats your boat. Sound good?”

  Crenshaw stood up too. He walked past Danny and opened the door as the principal began the announcements. “Come on. We’ll go to my office.”

  “I thought you said ‘whatever’?” Danny followed him into the hall, feeling free already.

  “Whatever, together.” They didn’t go far before Crenshaw used a key to open a faded wooden door with no lettering. “Come on in.”

  Crenshaw’s office was cool from the AC. It had one shaded window and a fish tank on top of the bookshelf. Along one wall was that couch Danny expected, but in the corner opposite Crenshaw’s desk was a table with two chairs. A plastic chess set showed a game at its midpoint. On the shelves beside it were other games Danny didn’t recognize. Board games were for
kids. “No Xbox?”

  Crenshaw took the chair behind his desk and put up his feet. “No electronics. School rules, not mine.”

  “Otherwise you’d have, what? A computer chess game?” It bothered Danny that the school counselor was so calm and comfortable. “Some lame TV show? Family Feud?”

  “Nah, I’m an Xbox guy. Assassin’s Creed, some NBA2K. Halo if I’m on with my brother. He lives in Seattle.” Crenshaw pointed at the shelves. “But here it’s all chess and Rummikub.”

  Danny flopped down on the couch. “No thanks. I’ll just sit.”

  “You can read.” Crenshaw pointed at the books.

  Danny laughed out loud.

  “No?” Crenshaw looked at him sharply. “That’s not something you do?”

  Danny felt his spine stiffen.

  “We could talk,” Crenshaw said.

  Danny scowled. “I’ll read.”

  “Have at it.” Crenshaw held out an open palm toward the books.

  Danny saw a purple cover. He pulled it out. A knight on horseback with his sword drawn surveyed a distant castle where a dragon sailed among the clouds. Danny opened the book, studying the words.

  Crenshaw sighed and took out a book of his own.

  Every so often, Danny would turn a page. In between he thought about what happened to Markle, how it was just a fight, how he felt fine and didn’t get the big deal. He thought first period would never end.

  Finally the bell rang and Danny scrambled for the door.

  “You’ll need to check into the office to get your locker.” Crenshaw lowered his book, but otherwise sat unmoving behind the desk. “And I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Danny broke free and put distance between him and the counselor’s office because no way did he want people thinking he was a mental case. His teeth were clenched and he hammered a random locker with the soft part of his fist. It produced a satisfying crash, drawing stares from students entering the hallway. Danny warned them with a glare. He knew how quickly word of his thrashing Markle had spread. It would get out even quicker about Crenshaw.

  He stomped toward the main office. He’d get his locker, dump his stuff, then find Janey as soon as he could. Janey was smart. She was clever. She’d know how to help him, because he was pretty determined that he was not going back to Crenshaw’s.

  Even if it meant doing something extreme.

  “You can’t run away.” Janey stood with Danny in the hallway as a sea of kids foamed around them. “Your team needs you. Your mom needs you.”

  “But I can’t do Crenshaw,” Danny said, shifting his eyes. “Everyone will think I’m a nutter.”

  “Stop.” She shooed away the idea with the back of her hand. “People go to counseling all the time. Smart people. You should at least talk to him.”

  Danny huffed. He didn’t like when Janey had her mind made up. She’d never change now.

  “Speaking of smart, do you have Ms. Rait third period for English?” he asked.

  “I do.” She removed the schedule from her bag and they compared classes. They were together for English, history, lunch, and gym.

  “I heard she’s got a crutch.”

  Janey shrugged. “So.”

  Danny shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s different.”

  “I like different.” She bumped him with her shoulder. “That’s why I like you.”

  “I’m not so different,” Danny muttered, but his chest swelled with pride.

  Her face turned serious. “Talk to the counselor. It might be good. No one will think anything. Everyone knows about your dad, and the fight.”

  “You think they know Mr. Trufant is making me do this?”

  “Yes, but maybe it will help.”

  “Help what?” Danny felt his nostrils flare. “I don’t need any stupid help.”

  “Danny,” she said softly. She studied him with a sad look. Then the first bell rang and she looked toward the tall ceiling of the grand old school that had been built nearly a hundred years ago. “Okay, see you in English.”

  Danny had math with Cupcake. Danny liked math. When it was just numbers, he crushed math, and it made him feel smart. Their teacher, Mr. Doan, was a scarecrow with thick eyebrows and glasses. He was squeaking his marker on the board like a hungry baby bird when Cupcake ripped through the silence with a fart.

  A few random titters were quickly gulped back, not because Mr. Doan froze at the board, but because no one was going to dare laugh at Cupcake. Cupcake’s big round face turned bright red, but only Danny would even look at him, and Danny’s shrug and the look on his face said, Things happen.

  Mr. Doan must have seen Danny because he had turned around and he now said, “Mr. Owens, do you need to use the bathroom?”

  That got everyone laughing, even Cupcake, especially when Danny went along with a straight face. “No, sir.”

  That sent people off their seats because the students all knew it was Cupcake’s bomb. Mr. Doan sniffed the air. “Good night!”

  The teacher scrambled for the window and flung it open so he could breathe. Danny sat like a scolded angel, staring straight ahead and biting his cheek to avoid grinning amid the roar of laughter.

  Things finally settled down and Mr. Doan got back to the board. When he asked Danny to come up and demonstrate the division of fractions he’d been teaching, it seemed like a punishment, but Danny turned it into a show by jotting the answers on the board as fast as Mr. Doan could write the numbers. When the bell rang, Danny wasn’t surprised to hear the teacher call his name.

  Cupcake gave Danny a look of apology on his way out the door. Danny stood at attention beside the teacher’s desk.

  Mr. Doan pushed the glasses up on his nose. “You know your math, Mr. Owens; now, if we can get you to exhibit the same proficiency with your manners, you and I might have a fine time this year.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Doan, but it wasn’t me,” Danny said, flashing a smile. “I just didn’t want to rat someone out.”

  “Ahh . . . I see.” Mr. Doan stared at Danny, looking for the truth and finding it. “Well, do me a favor then and tell whoever did do it to excuse themselves to the bathroom next time so I don’t have to make a federal case of it.”

  “I will, sir.” The first bell rang and kids began streaming into the class from the hallway. Danny looked up at the sound. “Can I go?”

  “Yes, of course. And that was a good job at the board, Mr. Owens.”

  Danny hurried to English class. It was on the opposite side of the school. He was three doors down when the second bell rang. He took off and nearly knocked over the teacher as he hustled through the door. She staggered sideways and caught herself with the metal crutch fastened to her left arm.

  “I’m . . . oh my gosh, I’m sorry.” Danny couldn’t keep his eyes from drinking in the teacher’s crooked leg in her skintight jeans. When he met her eyes, they were aflame.

  Ms. Rait was dark haired and pretty, with big dark brown eyes. Her shoulders were square and strong beneath a black silk blouse.

  “You’re late, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Owens, ma’am, Danny Owens.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Owens.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The teacher turned her back on him and delivered the rest of her papers to Janey, who sat in the last seat of the front row. Janey had saved the seat behind her for Danny. He slipped into the desk, took a stapled group of papers from Janey, and passed the rest back.

  Ms. Rait stood beside her desk now with her back as straight as her leg was crooked. “There are fifty questions, multiple choice. You have twenty minutes to answer them.”

  Danny’s hand went up. “Wait. What?”

  “A pretest, Mr. Owens.” Ms. Rait spoke with the authority of a football coach. “To glean what you know and don’t know. You’d know that if you’d been on time, but we can talk more after school . . .”

  “After?”

  “Yes, in detention for being late. We have a lot of material to cover this year and being la
te won’t get it done.” The teacher scowled at her wristwatch. “Ready? Go.”

  Danny sat blinking at her, but she paid him no mind. Instead, she took a seat at her desk and opened a book.

  Danny swallowed the lump in his throat and glanced around. He had that awful twist in his gut as he looked down at the page. The room was silent, with twenty-six kids bent over their desks, quickly circling their answers.

  Danny took a deep breath and gently poked Janey’s back with his pencil. He sighed with relief as she pushed her test to the upper left corner of her desk where he could clearly see the answers.

  His eyes worked like little rodents, scurrying here and there for morsels of information, but never stopping to rest and always checking to see that Ms. Rait was well occupied by her book.

  It wasn’t until the final two answers, both B, when Danny looked up and saw Ms. Rait staring directly at him.

  Danny looked away.

  He furrowed his brow and pretended to be grinding on his test. When he tried to sneak a peek at the teacher she was still staring, unmoved. Danny had that sinking feeling in his gut. He circled B for the next answer and then D for the last answer to throw her off.

  It seemed like forever before Ms. Rait called, “Time.”

  She struggled up from her desk without expression. “Please pass your tests to the front.”

  Secretly, Danny watched her collecting the tests. When she took the stack from Janey, she paid him no mind, and he thought maybe the whole thing was going to blow over. He felt like that was pretty decent of her—to give him a break on the first day even though she’d given him detention for being late. He understood that. It was like a football coach. Ms. Rait was making him an example so everyone knew she was serious, but when it came to something only she and he knew about, well, she let that slide.

  When she began to lecture them on the importance of reading, Danny felt his eyelids sagging. He opened his notebook and drew up some football plays to make it look like he was with the program. Ms. Rait illustrated charts for them on the board that sketched out plotlines, story arcs, and what she called “essential characters,” but her point was that reading was supposed to be fun. Danny snorted softly at that one.