by R. T. Lowe
“It wasn’t a dream!” Felix shouted at Caitlin. “It wasn’t. I swear.”
“Damn! They grow them big in Coos Bridge.” Harper’s eyes wandered over Felix’s body.
“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Lucas said with laughter in his voice.
“That’s not what I meant!” Harper dropped her head and brought her hands to her lap as if a teacher had scolded her for talking in class. Then her cheeks flushed pink and she turned to Lucas and shouted: “Do you always have your head in the gutter?”
Lucas nodded. “Pretty much.”
“Nobody tried to kill you, Felix,” Allison said softly, getting up to take a closer look at him.
“The hell they didn’t!” Felix’s throat hitched and he struggled to keep his voice calm. “The wire thing nearly took my head off.” He touched his neck, running his fingers over the skin where the wire had dug in.
“What’s he talking about?” Harper whispered to Caitlin, who gave her a confused shrug in return.
Allison tilted up Felix’s chin and regarded his throat intently for a long time. “I don’t see anything. You’re fine. Caitlin’s right. It must’ve been a nightmare.”
“That’s impossible!”
“Have a look.” Allison pointed at the wall mirror next to her closet.
Felix stepped over to it and stared at a reflection of his mouth drifting open as he realized his neck was unmarked. There wasn’t a scratch on it—not even a hint of redness. But that isn’t possible, he thought hollowly. The woman had tried to strangle him—twice. The wire had cut into his neck. He’d felt it. He could still feel it. The cord tightening around his throat. His lungs screaming for air. The pain. The terrible pain.
“I don’t understand,” Felix said quietly. “I couldn’t have dreamed it. It was too… real.”
“So that’s what this is all about,” Harper said. “I’ve had some crazy dreams like that. Sometimes I’m so sure they’re real that even after I wake up it bothers me. I had a dream once where my old boyfriend cheated on me and I was mad at him for like a week. But then it turned out he really did cheat on me.”
“Are you sure that’s the point you want to make?” Lucas said to Harper, laughing.
“You’re a jerk,” she said sourly.
“This was different,” Felix muttered, half talking to himself, trying to work out the implications in his frazzled head. “But if… so… if it didn’t happen. If they didn’t try to kill me. Then what did happen? I don’t… I don’t remember anything. What—”
“I got them,” Allison said. “Thirty-nine dollars. As advertised.” She flapped a hand at the wall to his back.
“What?” Felix twisted his head around. There were skis—matte black with yellow tips and a big “R” set within a yellow circle—propped up in a corner. “But… how? How’d they get here?”
“You carried them,” Allison said simply, a crease appearing between her eyebrows.
“I what?” He stared at the skis, feeling confused—and panicked.
“You don’t… remember?” Allison asked.
Felix shook his head. “I remember two people trying to kill me in the back yard. A man and a woman. That’s it.”
“Well, we did go to the back yard,” Allison said in a light voice as if she was afraid loud noises might send Felix over the edge. “But Martha was there with the skis. I gave her the money. And we left. She was nice. Said she was moving out today to be with her husband in Denver. Something about a job transfer.”
“So nobody… tried to…?”
Allison shook her head.
“Then what happened?” Felix asked, the panic swelling inside him. “After we got them?”
“You were hungry. You wanted pizza. We found a little place on Tenth. You ate a medium all by yourself. And they didn’t card us so you drank like three pitchers of beer.”
“Dude!” Lucas bellowed and laughed. “That totally explains it. You got wasted drunk and blacked out. And you had some weird hallucinations. That’s new. And weird. But maybe the beer was bad… or something. Right?”
A girl passing by stopped outside the door and shouted into the room, “Take it all off!” Then she whistled and moved on.
Felix looked down at himself. He was only wearing boxer briefs. But he didn’t care. He felt clouded and heavy, like he was moving in water; he was far too confused for anything to embarrass him.
“Felix!” Another voice from out in the hall. A booming voice. Felix glanced up to see Larry. He was looking down at his watch. “You’re gonna be late. Pre-game meal’s in ten minutes. See ya there?”
“Uh, yeah.” Felix dragged a hand through his hair. He didn’t understand what Larry—or anyone else—was talking about. Nobody was making any sense.
“Are you okay?” Harper got up from Caitlin’s bed and smiled at him. He noticed for the first time that she only had on a tiny pair of shorts and a tight T-shirt. But not even the vision of Harper’s perfect body could penetrate the confusion that had darkened his mind.
“I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “That’s never happened before. I mean, I’ve had nightmares. But not like that. It just seems too real.”
“But Allison got the skis,” Caitlin pointed out. “And you guys had dinner and everything. It was just a dream. What else could it be?”
Allison came over to him and rubbed his arm. “It’ll be okay. Now get the hell out of here and go play some football. If you don’t score a touchdown I’m gonna be pissed.”
Chapter 13
The Game
Coach Bowman had gathered the team in the locker room. He was rasping about something, but Felix couldn’t focus on the pot-bellied, bull-necked man with the irreparably damaged vocal cords. He figured it was the pre-game speech, although the words didn’t mean anything to him. He was completely disconnected from everything around him. His mind was stuck at Martha’s house (Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play…). But it wasn’t like recalling an ordinary memory. It felt like it was still happening to him: the wire cutting into his neck; the pressure of the woman’s legs coiling around him, her hot breath whispering across his face; the sense of complete helplessness as he watched the man mounting him; and the stark realization that he couldn’t protect himself, that he was weak, that they were going to kill him and that he was going to let them.
He couldn’t make it stop. (Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play…). He wanted to scream.
But those things didn’t even happen. Nobody had tried to kill him. It was just a dream—a very, very vivid dream. And as weird as that was, he couldn’t remember what had really happened. He didn’t remember having pizza and drinking three pitchers of beer with Allison. He didn’t remember carrying her skis back to the dorm. It didn’t make any sense. He was going to go crazy if he couldn’t get a handle on what was real and what wasn’t. He tried to focus on the words coming out of the coach’s mouth, hoping it might yank him back to reality.
“…as a school,” Coach Bowman was saying, “we’ve struggled on the field. We’ve yet to capture the Rain Cup, and we haven’t had many seasons to be proud of. But you should know that playing for PC—and wearing the orange and green—is an honor. I know that you’ve been told before why we don’t play road games. But it’s worth repeating. It’s because we have Stubbins Stadium. Stubbins Stadium is ours. Walter Stubbins didn’t just build a stadium. Walter Stubbins built his vision.
“He wanted PC football to be special. And that’s why he built an exact replica of Chicago’s old Soldier Field right here on our campus. It may be smaller, but it looks just like the greatest stadium ever built. Stubbins Stadium is so special that every school in our league demanded they play here every year. It’s a special experience for everyone. And we’re damn lucky to have the privilege to play our games here. So when you go out and take that field today, remember you have a wonderful stadium. And give thanks to Walter Stubbins.”
Felix followed his teammates out onto the field, thinking that had to be the
worst pre-game speech in the history of organized sports. As Brant trotted beside him, he whispered to Felix, laughing: “Do it for Walter Stubbins.”
“Hey Brant,” Felix said as quietly as he could. “Who are we playing?”
“Seriously?” Brant’s eyebrows twitched together for a moment. “Bradline. The Cougars. You okay?”
Felix couldn’t tell him that he was losing his mind, so he kept his mouth shut. He jogged over to the north side of the field and huddled up with the rest of the team. Someone slapped the top of his helmet and hopped on his back. He spun around to see who it was and got smacked on the helmet again. He didn’t know what was going on. Felix had played football his whole life. But this didn’t feel like a football game. It had all the trappings of football: coaches barking orders; players shouting at each other, pumping each other up; referees in zebra-patterned shirts; and an off key horn section and overzealous percussionists with Little Drummer Boy envy rat-tat-tatting on their snare drums every ten seconds. It all felt totally surreal, more dreamlike than the dream he’d had about almost getting killed in no-man’s-land. Somebody pounded on his shoulder pads and yelled in his face like they were going off to war. He couldn’t wrap his head around any of it.
He went off by himself and tried to concentrate on something other than scar-faced women and swarthy men with black dead eyes. He found a cottony white cloud hanging high above the goal post on the east side of the field. It didn’t seem to be moving. The sun was beating down on the stadium. It was hot. That’s it, he told himself. Focus on the weather. Then he looked up at the stands. The students were already getting rowdy in their section behind the team benches. I have to get it together. Just stop thinking. It’s just a game. I can do this. It’s just football.
It wasn’t quite that easy. The first half passed by in a confusing blur of violent collisions, shouting, and whistles. It took everything he had, every bit of concentration, just to run the right plays. The world seemed to be moving in super fast forward. Bodies were zooming in and out of his field of vision so quickly he couldn’t keep track of where everyone was. It was like he was stuck in a video game and his settings (and only his settings) were set to ‘slow and disoriented’.
Before he’d even adjusted to the idea that he was playing in his first college football game, he was back in the locker room. It was halftime. He hadn’t realized the horn had sounded. Everyone was angry. Jimmy Clay put a fist into his locker, denting it, and upended the Gatorade table. The seniors screamed at the freshmen. The defense screamed at the offense. Coach Bowman directed his ire at everyone, tantruming for a good while, screaming at the entire team for “playing with their heads up their asses.” Felix let it wash over him; he didn’t even know the score.
When they went back out onto the field, the first thing Felix did was check the scoreboard. From the halftime hysterics, he expected to be losing by thirty, but they were only down 7-3. He doused his face with ice-cold water from the cooler, trying to shock himself back to reality. The sense of being trapped in some strange limbo diminished by a fraction, but it wasn’t until Felix’s touchdown catch at the end of the third quarter that things started getting back on track. The catch itself was a minor miracle. He was somewhat conscious of running by the defender and sticking out his arms. Then the ball stuck to his fingers. Touchdown. It all felt entirely accidental, like stumbling upon a hundred dollar bill in the parking lot. But it wasn’t the touchdown that did the trick. It was Salty. During the touchdown celebration, Salty became a little too exuberant and clubbed Felix on the helmet, hard. He knocked Felix off his feet, and Felix sat there in the end zone for a full minute seeing stars, an entire galaxy of tiny blinking lights.
Salty’s blow cleared his sinuses—and his head. The ground beneath Felix’s cleats began to feel firmer, the heat on his neck warmer, the sweat in his nostrils sweeter. Yesterday’s events lost their cohesion, the images in his head disaggregating like a jigsaw puzzle still in its box.
The fourth quarter got under way with the Sturgeons in front 10-7. The two teams went back and forth for most of the period with no points to show for it. As the clock ticked down, Felix could feel the crowd’s anticipation building. The fans were sensing—daring to believe despite so many years of futility—that the Sturgeons might be able to pull off an upset over the heavily favored visitors. But with time running out, the Cougars drove the length of the field for a touchdown. And just like that, the Sturgeons were trailing 14-10. All the excitement and energy in the stadium broke like a raw egg smashing against a rock.
The Sturgeons took over on offense with just nine seconds left and no timeouts. The outcome seemed certain. Another loss for the Sturgeons. Fifteen in a row on opening day. Brant gathered the offense and called the play, a quick pass to the running back. Felix couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The play was good for five yards at most.
“Why don’t we just give up?” Felix blurted out, suddenly angry over the play calling equivalent of raising the white flag. “Throw me the ball!”
The huddle went silent. Larry, Salty, Jonas and everyone else looked at Felix like they thought he was crazy. The coaches signaled in the plays and if the players changed them, there would be hell to pay. Everyone knew that.
Brant cocked his head and chuckled. “You can’t be serious, August.”
“Just throw me the damn ball!”
“Alright,” Brant said. “But you better catch it or this’ll be the last game we ever play. Give me some time to throw, guys.” He broke the huddle.
Brant took the snap from center as Felix sprinted toward the end zone seventy yards away. The offensive line didn’t give Brant the time he’d asked for; the Cougars broke through and flushed Brant from the pocket. Brant rolled to his right and heaved the ball just as a Cougar planted his shoulder into his rib cage and slammed him into the grass.
Felix turned his head and caught a glimpse of the ball leaving Brant’s hand. Instinctively, he knew that Brant didn’t throw it far enough. He stopped and turned back, running toward the line of scrimmage. The ball wobbled and fluttered in the air, then it fell out of the sky at the forty-yard line—right into Felix’s hands.
Two Cougars stood between Felix and the goal line. He ran directly at the closest defender, faked a cut to his right, then cut sharply back the other way, leaving him grasping at air. Felix sprinted along the sideline, juking hard to his left and quickly accelerating back to his right. The second defender barely got a hand on his leg as he flew past him.
Felix tore across the turf at full speed. He could see the end zone through his facemask just twenty yards away. He could hear the opponents closing in on him from behind and the roar of the crowd growing louder and louder with each stride. At the four-yard line he dove toward the goal line with the ball in his outstretched hands.
The clock went to 00:00.
He rolled to his feet as the referee raised his arms to signal a touchdown. Stubbins Stadium seemed to go quiet for a moment as if the crowd believed they were witnessing a mass hallucination, and then all at once, pandemonium ensued. Felix stood in the end zone and watched the students scrambling over the railing like a colony of ants descending on a picnic. They swarmed onto the field, hugging the players, the coaches, each other, and anyone else they could find, even the other team.
Transfixed by the scene unfolding before him, Felix made the mistake of not running for cover. Now the horde was coming at him like an invading army. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. No escape. So he did the only thing he could do. He dropped to the ground and curled up in a ball as the surging mob jumped on him, burying him alive—but he didn’t really mind.
The weight crushing down on him didn’t feel nearly as immediate as the swirling emotions rising up inside him: he was overjoyed and ecstatic they’d won the game; relieved that he hadn’t let his teammates down; and amazed and bewildered at how quickly things could change. Felix’s first game felt like someone had pushed him out of an airplane without a par
achute and he expected to crash to earth in a bloody Rorschach blotch only to find that he’d landed gracefully on center stage with an audience on its feet applauding his good fortune.
When he finally managed to squirm out from under the pile, they mobbed him again, but at least this time, the students and his teammates let him stay on his feet. He checked the scoreboard, looking over the top of a hundred cell phones taking pictures of the 16-14 final score.
Through all the commotion, Felix heard someone behind him shout: “Hey! Get away from my roommate, you animals!”
He turned to see Lucas, Allison, Harper and Caitlin pushing their way through the crowd. When they reached him, they smothered him in a fierce group hug. Harper lingered the longest, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist. But before he could really enjoy the moment—and he was enjoying the moment—his teammates ripped him away and hoisted him off the ground. Then they carried him across the field on their shoulders through a sea of ecstatic adoring fans, a victory procession worthy of a hero.
Chapter 14
The Groundskeeper’s Other Job
Bill’s new client was hiding something from him. “Michael,” he said after a lengthy chat about the lovely mid-September weather, “anyone who saw what you saw would be having difficulties. What you’re going through is normal. Perfectly normal.”
Michael’s watery eyes stared back at him from across the desk. He was sitting in the guest chair, silent and brooding, his hands in his lap, folded, his shoulders rigid as if he was cold.
“Would you like to talk about it?” Bill prompted.
“I’m fine,” Michael said curtly and glanced down at his watch. He clearly wasn’t fine; dark patches smoldered under his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping. Probably not eating well either.
“You don’t have to talk to me,” Bill said in his pleasant therapist’s voice. “But if you do, I can promise you two things. First—you’ll feel better. And second—whatever you say within these four walls stays here. I’m not an AshCorp employee. I’m a consultant. I’ve been doing this for a very long time. Long enough for the folks here to give me a place to hang my hardware.” Bill swiveled his chair a quarter turn and cocked his thumb at the wall to his back. Along with a pair of generic water-color prints were framed degrees (bachelor’s and master’s) and three counselor certifications issued by the state of Oregon. “I take my job very seriously. And I’m very good at it.”
