These Dreams Which Cannot Last

by Matt Flickinger

  A new group of people gathers, some of them holding their cheeks, looking down at Zain and the body draped over him. More from the Fine Arts wing jog up to join their ranks. The body is lifted off. Uncoiling the fingers from his face, Zain wipes his nose, rolling onto his back. His lungs burn like they do after mile intervals, heart thumping in his ears. Zain turns his head on the tile to look at the people in the hallway. A girl with frizzy brown double braids down her back wraps Jackson in a hug. He buries his face in her shoulder. The standing figure, the hero boy who stopped the fight, turns from the tiled hallway and looks down at Zain. He grabs Zain by the shoulders, hoisting him up to his feet. People pat Zain’s back while he and this stranger stand looking at each other. A table of rowdy boys, a hash brown flicked from a tabletop flashes through Zain’s mind. The big black kid’s face is the same as it was then. That same kind smile, those same confident eyes he had mistaken for anger now look at Zain in appreciation.

  “Thank you,” the boy says, powerful hands still holding Zain’s shoulders. “Thank you,” he says again, nodding.

  Zain wipes his sleeve across the fresh trickle dripping over his upper lip, “he’s my best friend.”

  The boy nods. “I know,” he says, “I’m Wolfgang.”

  “I figured,” Zain says, sniffing back more blood.

  The girl leads Jackson away, the two holding each other at the waist. Jackson lifts his head from her shoulder, looking back at Zain. The two stop and whisper. The girl holds his face. Jackson nods and gently removes her hands from his face. He looks back at Zain. “Thank you,” he mouths. Zain nods. Jackson’s face twists, tears falling from his eyes. Double braid girl moves his head gently to her shoulder and leads him down the hall.

  Zain wants to yell after him, scream his own thank you. But he’s shaking too much, in too much pain. The deep muscle sting of boot kicks scream between his ribs. His cheek is swelling up over his eye. Wolfgang pats his shoulder, “you ok?”

  “No,” Zain says. He walks out of the doors, through the courtyard.

  When he hits the gate separating the courtyard from the parking lot he starts to run. Through the parking lot, away from school, he doesn’t stop until he turns onto his street. Bent over, holding his ribs, Zain looks down the hill at all the quiet houses dull and still in the afternoon sun.

  In the middle of the summer before seventh grade, his mother at work, Zain’s dad took a break from looking for a new job and called him into the living room to watch a movie. It was about four kids who go on a journey. These four boys, old friends about to start high school, go on an adventure looking for a dead body. They walk down the train tracks away from their town and problems and pasts. They camp out, cooking burgers and talking about girls. After two days, the boys find the body. All of them think it will be magical, they’ll be heroes for finding this dead kid. But when they get there, it isn’t magical, just sad. At the very end of the movie, they all walk back to town in silence. When they get back, as all of his friends walk away, the main character tells what happened to each of them. One he remains friends with. But the others just turn into faces in the crowd. Eventually, they don’t even say hello to each other as they pass in the halls. None of their past mattered, not even that last adventure.

  At the end of the movie Zain cried. His dad rubbed his back and told him it was okay. It might be sad, but only because that is how life is sometimes. Sad in its truth.

  Zain has been home two hours when his phone dings. He refills the two ice bags and sits back slowly onto his bed, groaning. One of the bags he sets back on his ribs, the other on his side table. He’ll put it back on his face after he reads the text.

  Jackson’s words are kind and sad. He apologizes for the fight and for not being there as much this year. Everything just changed so fast. Zain texts back that it is okay. He’s just glad Jackson wasn’t hurt too bad. As he puts the phone down, Zain knows what it will be like for them now. Passing faces in the hallway, nods and smiles, then nothing. And, even though Zain so often tries to picture what might be, but doesn’t ever seem to get it right, this time he does. Those texted words are the last they share.

  7

  Outkicking the Coverage

  As soon as the door is open Zain starts to close it again, but the boy on the porch puts his hands up. “Wait,” he says. Zain grabs the edge of the door, looking at him. He should have used the peephole before opening the door, he thinks. The guy looks so small in the porch light, so confused. It must be a trick of the porch light. The dude is huge, a monster, Zain remembers. Remembers what it felt like to run into him, those fat sides somehow firm under his button down shirt. Zain holds the door open, considering. “What?” he says. He hopes his voice isn’t shaking.

  “I just want to talk,” the guy says.

  “About what?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, meaty hands still up in the surrender pose.

  “Who is it?” Zain’s mother yells from the back of the house.

  “Roger,” the boy says, squeezing his chubby hands into the pockets of his tight jeans.

  Zain turns, keeping an eye on the lurking figure, “someone from school.”

  “It’s late,” his mother says.

  “We’ll be quick,” Zain yells back. Roger nods to the side of the porch. He wanders over to the two patio chairs. Zain follows, leaving the door cracked. Roger collapses into the chair on the porch’s far side, Zain’s father’s old chair. He bends over, withdrawing his hands from his pockets and sets two massive forearms on his thick thighs. Rubbing thick palms together, he looks out over the dark yard. Zain takes the other chair, looking at the driveway. A new black F150 Raptor gleams brightly in the streetlight, impossibly shiny next to their dusty little car.

  Zain remembers his father pulling up in the driveway in the used Civic. Taking the “new” car out for a Sunday ride. They drove out for a family hike along the Rio Grande. Zain had gone ahead on the hike, running along the trail through the tall grass until he looked back and couldn’t see his parents. He kept running, stopping at a bend in the trail when he came up on a Mexican father holding the shoulders of his two sons, both of their heads down. The boys had been fighting. They looked up at Zain. The father didn’t though, only gripped his sons’ shoulders, staring down at their faces. Zain didn’t understand all of what he said, but from what he could make out the dad spoke of brothers and responsibility to family, the importance of keeping peace. The older brother nodded, angry, but listening. The little brother never stopped crying. The older brother never stopped looking pissed. Zain turned and jogged back. Coming around the bend, he found his parents holding hands and laughing. He didn’t tell them about the family up ahead, the two boys fighting. When they finally got back to the spot, the Mexican boys and father were gone.

  “Like I said, I’m sorry,” Roger says.

  The memory of the boys slides down the stairs and out to the yard, spilling over the grey grass like dishwater. The porch feels large and foreign. Zain can’t remember the last time he sat here.

  “You got balls, I’ll give you that,” Roger continues.

  “You were hurting my friend,” Zain says. It sounds ridiculous, he knows, young and stupid. But the words are the best ones for what he means.

  “Ya,” Roger says. “I know.” His fists clench and he leans back in the chair, the metal groaning. “He didn’t deserve that.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “He’s our captain,” Roger says.

  At first, Zain doesn’t understand. Jackson isn’t a captain of anything.

  Roger sighs as they sit together in silence. Then he nods, fast and empty and scratches the back of his head, working something out. “It’s just a lot for all of us,” Roger says. “It’s fucking weird is all.”

  Zain looks out at the yard, a few patches of grass, slumped over, weak, dot the yard like islands. He rewinds the reels, replaying the events of the fight again. He has played that particular day’s
memory a hundred times since. It always plays out in jumpy cuts and missing frames. Jackson’s shoulder slamming into the locker. His own feet flying over the floor as carpet turned to tile. Leaping and crashing into the boy’s side (Roger’s side). Tumbling. Too many faces. The brick smash of fist to face. On the ground. Feet flashing, stabbing pain into his sides. Fingers across his view, obscuring the scene. Then the heaped body lifted from Zain, tile under shaky knees, the frightened face of a boy clutching Zain’s shoulders. A thank you. Finally, the boy who jumped into stop the fight. Jackson’s boyfriend, Wolfgang.

  Holy shit, Zain thinks.

  Muscly Wolfgang is not just Jackson’s boyfriend. He is the captain of the football team. The one person who could stop the onslaught. Jackson is dating, or whatever you call it, the captain of the football team. The gay captain of the football team. Again, Zain curses himself for all he hadn’t considered. Replaying all of it just led him to more worrying. No answers, not until now.

  “There were signs, I guess. But I figured he’d keep it quiet,” Roger says. “When the guys found out, though, they looked to me.” Roger says it like a half apology, more an excuse. Like he feels half bad about the whole thing. Like feeling half bad about wanting to beat the shit out of a stranger is a thing.

  Zain keeps his eyes on the yard, the dirt has definitely taken over.

  “We got a real shot this year and we’ve been working for it. Nothing should stop us. Nothing,” Roger says. “But that doesn’t make it right.”

  Zain can’t tell if Roger means Wolfgang being gay or Jackson getting in the way.

  “I just saw red. Fucking Tommy was getting us all hyped up and I started to say something, but—” Roger stops, rubbing his thighs violently. Zain looks to the crack in the door, trying to hear the Law and Order rerun wrapping up one his mother’s TV. “You play sports,” Roger says, “you know.”

  “What?”

  “You run, right?”

  For the first time since the doorway Roger looks at Zain’s face, into his eyes. Zain nods.

  “You know how it is…” Roger stops, struggling with some thought. “We hoped to outkick our coverage. Know what I mean?”

  Zain considers nodding, pretending to know what the hell this asshole is talking about. Instead, he looks right back at him, into Roger’s dumb eyes, enjoying the frustrated and lost look on his fat face. “No,” he says, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “It’s like this,” Roger says, looking away, “on a kickoff or a punt, you have a choice. You can kick it deep into the end zone and let the kick returner down it. Or,” Roger points with two fingers like some shitty white rapper emphasizing his words, “you can kick it in play, let the dude take it. And then hit that mother fucker so hard that he drops. You know?” Roger stops, rubbing a thick hand over his mouth before he finishes. “Outkick your coverage. Take a chance and make them pay for it.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Zain asks.

  Roger looks at Zain like he is the idiot, “We were hoping to outkick our coverage here, bro. We take a chance, deal with it sooner than later. Our quarterback comes in and takes us to victory.”

  It is all becoming clear. Zain pictures River Valley’s football team in button down shirts celebrating, Roger standing over Jackson, bloody on the tile, taunting him. Rage burns in Zain’s gut like a gulp of some acid.

  Roger falters briefly when he sees Zain’s face, and looks back out to the yard, “Something like that, I guess.”

  Zain remembers last fall, studying for the eighth grade English final, when Jackson complained about “stupid sports metaphors.”

  He gets it now. The football team was worried about their winning season going up in flames because of their flaming quarterback. So they jumped his boyfriend, hoping to what? Keep Wolfgang from being gay long enough to win the district championship? Assholes, Zain thinks. What about Jackson? What if Zain hadn’t been there? He pictures Jackson lying in front of the lockers, Roger spiking a fist into Jackson’s motionless body. Celebrating with his teammates as they high five on the way back to the locker room, grunting like apes at another victory.

  Zain looks right at Roger, “fuck you.” His voice shakes, and he’s scared, but he doesn’t care. The door is only a few steps away and Roger couldn’t catch him if he tried.

  Roger turns his whole head, quickly. His eyes move down from Zain’s face down to his feet and back up again. Zain straightens in his chair, ready to bolt. But Roger rests his elbows on his thighs again and sighs through his nose. He chuckles. “You got balls,” he says again. “Look, coach called me into his office. He heard what happened.”

  Zain stiffens, grabbing the arm of the porch chair.

  “Relax, I know you didn’t say shit,” Roger says. “It was some theater kid. They didn’t say who was there. I’m scot-free, bro. I don’t have to be here. Coach told me to make it right. But that was it. I already apologized to Wolfgang…and your boy Jackson,” he says, looking over briefly. “That would’ve been enough.” Roger’s shoulders relax, “but I thought I owed you.”

  “You talked to Jackson?”

  “On the phone. I told him who I was and apologized. He said ‘fine’ and hung up.” He looks at Zain now, bouncing his knees, “you took most of the beating, though, you know?”

  Zain is aware. The swelling has gone down over the last week, the bruises on his ribs have turned from blue to green to yellow, but it still hurts.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Roger says. He pauses, sitting back, hand on the back of his head again. “I’m sorry for all of it. To both of you.” He is scratching again, “It was the wrong move.”

  Roger stands and turns toward the steps, toward his exit. Zain stands too, looking out at the sidewalk, barely visible beyond the reach of the light. Consider, he thinks.

  “Come on, man. Shake,” Roger says, extending his hand.

  Zain considers telling him to fuck off. But then what? What would that mean? More detours to dodge the football team? More fear where there might be a bit of peace in those hectic hallways? All of it just to stand up for a friend who might not do the same for Zain? His eyes burn. Light from the porch light extends all the way to the driveway, mixing with the streetlight. The Civic sits dirty and lonely. Zain turns and looks at Roger, hand still up, still hulking and confident, still mean, but maybe sorry. Finally, Zain shakes, his hand tiny in Roger’s thick paw. The two nod at each other in the dim light of the porch.

  The shocks lean a bit under Roger’s weight as he climbs back into his truck. Back down the driveway, through the streets of a town he doesn’t ever have to wonder about, just owns. Disappears into the night.

  When his heartbeat finally slows, a pride heats Zain’s chest. He might have fallen, but so did the monster. And the monster might have returned, but only to apologize. Zain walks inside.

  The light under his mother’s door is out, the house quiet. Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, Zain waits for his eyes to adjust to the dark. In the glare from the streetlight, standing in the shadows of the blinds, he sees two boys. On the banks of a river, squeezed in the grips of a father, their faces grimacing, one sadder than the other. He thinks about saying a prayer, but doesn’t. It’s been too long, too much has happened to go back to thanking or begging. He’ll take on whatever comes now by himself. Like there is any other way, he thinks. Zain rolls over and shuts his eyes, hoping for a dreamless night.

  8

  Just Like That

  Months of long runs and intervals chasing faster runners, and the sweat and panic and pain of cross country training all comes down to this. None of it and all of it matters now. Zain keeps telling himself it is “just another race.” But District is definitely not just another race, it’s the Championship. In this mostly individual sport, District is the only race that really counts as a team. Seven runners per team, the top five finishers from each score. The top three teams out of the ten competing in the Valley District
will move on to the Regional Championships. The River Valley Hornets are ranked fourth coming into the race and Zain is the sixth best on the team. If anything happens to any of the top five, all of it comes down to him. The next seventeen minutes (less, Zain hopes) determines whether or not the season ends. Zain swings his arms around his body slapping his back like a swimmer. It’s a strange ritual, but he’s done it every week since the first race way back in August.

  Looking down the line over the stretching, hopping opponents, Zain is relieved that he recognizes most of them. He’s seen almost all of them at different meets, at some point during the season. A race official barks a five minute warning through a screechy megaphone.

  Michael claps Zain on the back, “get some strides in, Meat.”

  What a strange week it’s been. Strange and good. Strange because it was good. The best week he’s had in a long time, probably since before his dad—

  But he can’t think of that right now. He won’t (even if he’s secretly hoping to win the whole thing for him, like always). Zain lines up for a fast stride and takes off from the line. He pumps his arms, driving his knees up and forward. After a hundred yards, he slows to a stop and turns back toward the start line, swinging his arms again. A big orange sun rises over the clear, cool desert sky behind seventy anxious runners. It’s a good day to race. A dark figure silhouetted against the rising sun strides toward Zain. The figure materializes from shadow. It is John Forester, in his new varsity uniform. He returns Zain’s nod with a smile before striding back to the line. Definitely a strange week.