“What I will not stand”—and now Coach’s face turns crimson—“is being lied to and told you were sick with the flu. I will not allow that type of deceit and disrespect, you understand? We are a team. We are a family. The whole community looks up to us and what kind of example are we providing when our own family is lying to its coach? Huh? Look at me! You boys aren’t even smart enough to come up with a good goddamn lie!”
“Coach, we—” Scott starts, but Coach cuts him off.
“Don’t you start jawing that oily mouth, boy!” Coach pounds the top of his desk. “You may be the quarterback—for now—but I’m the coach, you understand? You want me to keep talking nice to those recruiters—telling them all how you’re such a great kid and asking your teachers to bump up your sorry-ass grades—then you better shut your mouth and listen up. I don’t want to ever have another game where my four stars are out. We got a chance at going all the way to state this year and winning the whole shebang! The whole enchilada! You understand that? I don’t want anything standing in the way of our team forming into a cohesive unit, like soldiers under fire.” Coach lifts a hand and drags it across his mouth before planting it back on his desk.
“I will not tolerate your lying to me,” he says. “Do you understand?!”
We nod our heads yes.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Yes, Coach,” we say.
“Good,” he says, taking his hands off his desk, standing taller. “And you better hope, for your sakes, that you heal real quick. I don’t want to hear a single excuse about you getting hurt on the field and it turns out it’s one of these injuries that came from goofing off when you should’ve been in bed.”
We nod again in unison.
“Now get out of here,” Coach growls.
I stay sitting in my chair while the other three get up to leave. I can tell Coach what really happened. Tell him Ronnie wasn’t soft. That he was destroyed by Coach’s captains, tortured in that storage room without mercy until they broke him. There was no car accident. Just a fight to stop them. Stop evil. And I lost.
I sit there, mind scrambling, trying to come up with a way to get my mouth to talk fast and smooth, form the first words that’ll lead down that path. Maybe if I was wearing my helmet, I could get the words out.
“Cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-Coach?” I start. Tom and Mike have already stepped out of the office. Scott waits, though, like he knows what I’m thinking.
“You coming, Brodsky?” Scott asks, interrupting me. I glare up at him, then glance desperately at Coach, hoping he’ll read my eyes, see I need to confess. “You heard the man,” Scott drones like a radio ad, filling every moment with his voice. “He said get out of here and leave him alone.” Forced laughter pummels the small office space, leaving no room for my voice. “We’ve given him a big enough headache for one day. He’s sprouting gray hair even as we speak.”
“You’re a real comedian, Scott.” Coach grunts, then waves the back of his hand at us. “Yeah, all of you, git!”
I feel my chance evaporate while Scott stands in the doorway, ready to keep talking, if need be, waiting for me to exit. When I do, he pulls Coach’s door shut behind us. I move to get away from him but he stays in step with me.
“You better rest that head of yours, Kurt. We need you ready for Friday. Ashville won’t be easy. They got a monster defensive linebacker, Jackson. He’s going to try and eat all of us for dinner. We need to pull together, not let anything get between us.”
“Uh-huh.”
“There’s no going solo on this team, Kurt. We got your back. You need to have ours.”
“I’ve guh-guh-guh-got to guh-guh-go.”
“You want a lift?” he asks. “I’m giving Tommy and Mike a ride home.”
“No.”
“All right.” Scott shrugs, then dusts my shoulder like I might have dandruff, which I don’t. “Now don’t go making up stories about us, okay?”
I’m unable to speak, betrayed by my mouth, again, hating myself, hating my weakness, more than Scott, wishing Lamar, just for ten seconds, could come back and speak for me.
“’Cause you know me, Mike, and Tommy would never, ever lie to Coach or anyone else about what happened,” Scott murmurs in my ear. “Tommy’s car got banged up when all of us went drinking. Coach is too smart to trick. He saw right through us. Saw that we tried to cover up a car accident by pretending we had the flu.”
Then Scott walks away, leaving me stalled there like a fool.
29
DANNY
That first Monday back in school since Ronnie’s suicide, I’ve just sparked the Bunson burner in first period chemistry—pretty much the coolest part of the class is getting to play with fire—when the PA system’s angry squawk interrupts my brilliant new scheme to melt Studblatz’s face off.
“Please send Danny Meehan to the principal’s office.”
The students around me titter in unison.
“Busted!”
Any student unlucky enough to get called in front of Oregrove’s school secretary will meet a stout old woman with an Aqua Net hair dome and puffy arms swollen up like boiled bratwurst. Mrs. Doyle harrumphs at you in greeting because she knows if you’re standing before her, chances are you’ve been up to no good. Fisher brags that he’s called down so often Mrs. Doyle now lets him address her by her first name.
Today Mrs. Doyle comes around her desk and welcomes me like a long-lost relative from the old country. She lays cocktail-sausage fingers on my forearm and pulls me into her pork-roast bosom.
“Oh, Danny, such terrible news. Such terrible, terrible news,” Mrs. Doyle repeats, hugging me tightly. She stuffs me into her chest, blocking out all sound and light. She releases me and then leans down to look me in the eye as she cups my neck. Tan makeup flakes her downy jowls and fills the crinkles around her eyes and mouth like flour, like she just baked a flesh-cake. “Principal Donovan and Coach Nelson wanted to meet privately with the team and see how you’re all handling things since the announcement last week.”
Mrs. Doyle leads me into Principal Donovan’s office and then into a side room I’ve never had the honor of entering. The room contains a large circular conference table. My teammates are seated around it like morose hobbits. Coach Nelson and Principal Donovan talk in low voices at the far corner while sipping out of “I’d Rather Be Fishing” and “Is It Friday Yet?” coffee mugs. Fisher glances up at me and for once he isn’t smiling. Gradley and Menderson doodle in their notebooks while Paul tattoos the side of his sneakers with a ballpoint pen. Steve picks out thread at the knees of his jeans. Pete Delray chews off a hangnail while training his eyes on the door as if waiting patiently to be excused. Only Bruce sits stone still, head dipping forward from the neck, awaiting a hangman’s noose. The rest of the guys all seem to be pretty focused on their laps.
“You okay, kiddo?” Mrs. Doyle asks Fisher, laying a hand on his shoulder as she stands behind him.
“Yeah, Maude, thanks.” Fisher reaches up and squeezes her hand as if she were his grandma. Maybe detention isn’t so bad, I think.
After Mrs. Doyle exits, Principal Donovan begins his spiel talking about “tragic event” this and “sudden loss of life” that and how sad we all must be feeling. His speech sounds practiced and fake and I tune him out. Instead, I concentrate on Bruce and his glazed, vacant eyes sunk into bruised sockets. A squadron of pimples sets up camp in the hollows of his cheeks while an oily nose shines with the cold fluorescence of the room. Greasy bed-head mats thick, black hair against his left ear while the right side swells up into a frozen tsunami. Basically, Bruce looks like shit. He looks like he’s been awake for the last four days, hasn’t showered or slept, and is surviving on Coke, chocolate bars, and corn chips.
Like me.
Principal Donovan punctuates his speech with loud slurps of coffee. He finishes with something about “persevering in the face of adversity” and “continuing to be strong.” I glance at Fisher, half expecting and half hoping he’ll mimic Principal Dono
van under his breath, but Fisher just sits there, bobbing his head in agreement with the principal’s words.
“Guys, this is a hard, hard thing to grasp,” Coach Nelson takes up where Principal Donovan leaves off. “I encourage any and all of you to say something at the service, to let others know how special Ronnie was and how much we’ll all miss him. In fact, I think that might be something we’d like to do now, in this room, among friends and teammates.”
I look around the table at my teammates, knowing none of them—none of us—knew much about Ronnie except what he brought into the gym. He was a freshman and pretty shy and into reading quietly by himself. He’d worked hard, a lot harder than Pete, a lot harder than Fisher, and never complained about doing strength sets. He could’ve made a good gymnast in a couple years but who really cares about any of that stuff? He’s dead. I mean, he’s dead! That won’t change tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. He’s dead. Forever. No one knows him because his chance to show us is gone. And if it was me dead in his place, people would have the same problem trying to say anything special about me. What have I shown the world? Maybe Ronnie was a good friend to someone out there. His future, his promise, his potential had been taken away.
Fuck!
“Last year,” Pete Delray, our team’s other freshman, begins quietly.
“Go on,” Coach encourages.
Pete starts describing how he and Ronnie dressed as Aquaman and Superman for Halloween a few years earlier but some big kids jumped them and duct-taped them to a tree. Left them there all night. What kind of story is that? It’s basically a version of what happened to him in the storage room. Did he have “victim” stamped on his forehead? Why did everyone pick on him? He suffered enough. Without realizing it, I’ve got my hands over my ears and I’m humming to block out the rest of Pete’s memory. Gradley punches me in the arm to shut me up. When I unblock my ears, Pete’s stopped talking, but I still want to smack him in the mouth for even bringing up the Halloween duct taping.
“He was a gentle soul,” Coach says, and I can tell he isn’t very good at this type of thing because he pats Pete on the head like he’s dribbling a basketball. “Sometimes others take advantage of that. But I don’t think we should dwell on that part of him.”
He was weak, I think. ALL people will ALWAYS take advantage of that. Not just sometimes. Scott, Tom, and Mike smelled his weakness. Took advantage. Never be weak or gentle. You have to be strong to ward them off. Big and strong. Like Kurt!
“I killed him.” Bruce speaks so quietly it’s barely above a whisper. “It’s my fault.”
“No, son,” Principal Donovan corrects him as he lifts his coffee mug to his lips. “No one in this room killed that boy. That’s preposterous.” Slurrrrp.
“Feelings of guilt are normal,” Coach adds. “I keep asking myself why I didn’t spot signs in Ronnie sooner, why I didn’t see what he must’ve been going through.”
Because you didn’t stay to lock up the gym! I fume. You left us there, unprotected! Anger overtakes me as the meeting continues. I feel no sadness, not even fear, just a white-hot rage at everyone around me.
“I’ve been racking my brain over the whole thing,” Coach continues. “But I . . . and you . . . and all of us must understand that Ronnie’s death was not our fault. It’s not your fault, Bruce.”
Wrong! I think. Bruce started the whole thing the day he stood up for that stupid cross-country runner. Why’d he have to protect that dork? He wasn’t on our team. He wasn’t one of us. Let his stupid, skinny, cross-country teammates protect him.
“Funeral is set for tomorrow at noon,” Coach tells us. “You’ve all got excused absences to attend.”
By the time the meeting finishes, it’s the beginning of third period. I don’t feel much like going to algebra, so I skip. Schoolwork isn’t really a high priority at the moment. I keep thinking about how easily Ronnie and I could’ve switched places that day and now he’s dead. It could be me dead and not him. Just dumb luck separates us.
Those three still roam the hallways, laughing and shoving others around like nothing’s happened. They know they’re invincible. They can do anything they want. How am I supposed to go back into that gym? How am I supposed to ever go near that storage room again? Those three came in and they destroyed the one good place in school.
I skip practice that Monday. I find out later, so did Bruce.
30
KURT
Crud Bucket first said Lamar’s death was an accident. Then he tried blaming me. Everyone believed him in the beginning, just like he threatened they would. That’s why Sergeant Schmidt, the same officer who pulled me out of Meadow’s House soon as the ambulance left with Lamar’s body, escorted me to his funeral with a firm grip on my elbow while I remained “under suspicion.” Because of the hype, Lamar’s funeral was packed with people neither of us ever met. TV news vans with roof-mounted satellite dishes double-parked in front of the church steps. It took a real pretty coffin, but Lamar finally got people’s attention.
So did I.
Men with big bellies aimed shoulder-mounted cameras and fired blinding beams of light at me. As I went up the church steps, my legs tangled with Sergeant Schmidt’s and he yanked on me like a dog on a leash to keep the both of us from tumbling.
Orphan Killer Attends Victim’s Funeral.
That was the headline sticks most in my brain, but there were others almost as juicy.
After the service, Sergeant Schmidt escorted me over to my next residence—the Lake Ondarro Residence—a boys’ reformatory where the windows had gates on them; large, unfriendly men in green uniforms patrolled the hallways; and at night our room doors locked us in from the outside. Sergeant Schmidt visited me once a week, bringing sprinkled doughnut holes to share with the other boys on my floor to help me make friends. I was the youngest one in there and under special protection. Sergeant Schmidt told me he believed in me, knew I didn’t do nothing wrong. By then Crud Bucket was on trial and Sergeant Schmidt had driven me twice to a courtroom to testify what all Crud Bucket had done to me and Lamar. I used to hope maybe Sergeant Schmidt would take me home, let me live with his family. They transferred me to my next group home after three months, one without gates and guards. Sergeant Schmidt had stopped coming around by then. When they finally found Crud Bucket guilty, the news-people lost interest. No one wrote a headline stating Orphan Kid Didn’t Do It!
Ronnie Gunderson’s funeral ain’t much by Lamar’s standards. Oregrove has almost three thousand students but I see, maybe, forty people at the service. That morning, when I go to the school office to get an excused absence, the same secretary that dumped me in algebra narrows her eyes at me, sure I’m using Ronnie’s funeral as an easy chance to skip class. Eventually, she hands over the pass, speaking extra slow and loud as she gives me directions to the church. I start to understand her suspicion when I see all the empty pews. Suicide’s not okay, I guess.
Short boys in suits—the gymnastics team—sit up front just behind what must be Ronnie’s family. I stay in the back, unsure if I should even be here. The long scar tightens like a zipper up my cheek. Sitting alone at a funeral gives you lots of time to think. The thing I keep thinking is that Scott would’ve never bothered Ronnie, never even thought to come to the gym, if I had kept my mouth shut about meeting the gymnasts there that Saturday.
A line forms to file past Ronnie’s open casket. I’m at the end of it, trying hard not to scratch the bubble skin on my jaw. The closer I get, the more it prickles. Inside the casket, someone’s posed a wax-museum boy to make him look like he’s asleep. Just like at Lamar’s funeral. It’s stupid. They aren’t fooling anyone.
“I didn’t know they’d follow me,” I whisper to him. “Didn’t know you were hurting that bad. I swear. I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
Scott should be here. Mike and Tom, too. I’d shove them in the coffin with Ronnie, shut the lid and bury them, ask them how they felt now.
“Sorry,” I whisper again. I
go back down the aisle, fiddling with the funeral program I rolled up into a tube during the minister’s speech. I drum it against my thigh, let my hair fall over my face, and watch my shoes until I reach my seat. I see little Danny walking up the aisle toward me and stopping at my row. He signals me to slide over for him. The two of us sit quietly while an old woman with a cane stiffly hobbles up to the podium. She speaks but the microphone doesn’t reach down to her mouth, so it sounds like soft owl hoots. Her free hand comes up to her old face and covers her eyes as her shoulders shake with grief.
Danny reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out my lost phone and hands it to me. “I meant to return this to you sooner, but . . .” Danny, speaking quietly, lets his voice trail off.
“Thu-thanks.”
A recording of “Amazing Grace” begins playing and we both sit listening to the hymn.
“It’s good you came,” Danny says, speaking only after the song finishes. “What you did, how you tried to protect Ronnie,” he says, “you should be proud. I wish ... I wish I had done something like that, at least tried.”
Danny starts nibbling his lower lip while fiddling with the Bible in the pew pocket at our knees. “I was there,” he says out the side of his mouth while his face aims up toward the big stained-glass window bleeding deep violets, blues, and reds. “In the corner, behind the mat, scared they’d do the same to me if they found me,” he says. He switches lips, biting his top one now, as he starts sniffling. “I didn’t do anything to stop them. I didn’t even try.” Danny wipes at his nose with the back of his wrist. “But you came in and you didn’t even think twice.”
“You suh-suh-saw what happened?” I ask, astonished. “All of it?”
“Yeah,” he says. “What they did to him . . . they deserved everything you gave ’em. And more. I wish they were dead, right now. Up in that casket. I’d spit on them and laugh. I swear I would. I swear.” His nose is leaking good and he wipes it again with his wrist, then pulls the Bible out of the pew pocket and starts flipping through it. He dips his head and a teardrop or snot drop hits the thin paper, staining the Bible page before Danny can turn it. “Ronnie didn’t even pee on their uniforms. He didn’t water-balloon them. He wasn’t part of Coach’s trick in the weight room. He didn’t do any of it. But even if he did ... what those guys did back ... was. . . .” Danny brings the cuff of his suit coat up to his face and wipes quickly across his nose and eyes.
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