“I don’t know,” I tell her. I’ve never been in her room. I’ve never been in her house. I don’t even know where she lives.
“How much do you think a roll of wallpaper costs?”
“I have no idea.” I’m thinking how things start to happen—like one day you accidentally make eye contact with somebody who’s not in your group—and then suddenly everything’s out of your control and months later here you are stuck sitting around listening to some slut talk about wallpaper and you can’t even hang up.
Finally Dori gets down to it, down to the subject she really called about. Just like she always does. “So,” she asks, breathless all of a sudden, “you talked to Jordan lately?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Just saw him in sixth.”
I guess I have to admit I feel kind of sorry for Dori. Being in love with this guy who’s completely forgotten she even exists.
Still, I make one last try. I tell myself I’m a sap, an ass, that I can’t sit here and listen to this girl, that she’s a nobody. I remind myself that it’s not my problem that she’s in love with a guy who used her, then dumped her forever. I remind myself that I’m never even going to be in the same room with her, much less get close and private enough to sample the goods. I remind myself I am not going to get one single thing out of this conversation but lost time.
I tell myself it’s time to reach down deep for those balls of steel and tell this loserette to take a hike.
“I guess he’s doing okay?” Dori asks.
It’s just so fucking sad.
What’s saddest of all is that all the stuff she asks about that asshole Palmer is the same stuff I always want to know about when Grace is out of my life.
I know how Dori feels. I don’t like this girl, don’t need her, don’t want anything to do with her—but I know how she feels. And I’d pour melted lead down my own throat before I’d talk to her in the halls, but I’m also not going to be the one to tell her that the guy she loves is out doing a million other girls, every one of which he forgets—just the way he’s forgotten her.
So I settle in—just for today, just one more time—for what I know is going to be a long, boring, one-sided conversation. Next time I’ll tell her to take a hike. But today I tell Dori, “Yeah, Jordan’s doing fine.”
WEEK THREE
CHAPTER FIVE
Cold, Cold Paws
Waiting is not one of my strong points.
It’s been two weeks since I agreed to let Grace be the boss of our sex life. The Super Gentleman thing is already getting old. I open doors, pull out chairs, and nod wisely. I don’t take her parking, and I only kiss her when I’m saying good-bye.
I also keep my hands off her. No joke—we’ve been out twice, and both times I did some strumming on my old banjo, if you catch my drift, at home before I left to pick her up. That way I wasn’t—well, pawing at her is what she calls it.
Don’t ask me why it’s making love when it’s in a movie, and it’s pawing when it’s just us in a car.
God, I’d take either one.
Another thing I’m having to wait for is the stupid test grades from biology and English. Now, I understand Mr. Hammond insists on writing little notes on everybody’s paper. I don’t mind waiting for that, because it’ll be nice to get a bunch of good comments in red ink for a change.
But Ms. Keller is just plain lazy. She’s sitting on her ass letting my muscle test gather dust. She gets off work at three thirty, for cripe’s sake! She could have given me my A the same day I took the test.
With all the waiting I’ve had to do lately, I spend as much time outside as I can. For one thing, I eat lunch outside a lot at school. The weather’s been nice, and even just being out there in the sun and wind clears my brain. Any worries I have get vacuumed right out.
Today Eric, Patrick, Stu, and I are sitting near the top of the bleachers. The guys are eating sandwiches from Carshon’s. I’ve already finished mine. I’m stretched out across three rows, my equipment bag on the footboard under me while I wait for the guys to be done so we can hit a few balls, or toss a few back and forth, or whatever.
I love days like this—out-the-classroom-window kind of days. The sun is out, but it’s fall so it’s not too hot, and the breeze feels like it’s going to lift you off the bleachers, just pick you up and float you away.
The other guys are eating really slow, and Eric’s going on about his grandma, or maybe it’s his sister, I’m not really sure. It’s always whoever’s fucking up his family the most at the moment. Whatever. If I’m not worried about my worries, I’m sure not worried about Eric’s.
“Either my parents’ve got to give up their room,” Eric’s saying, “or they’re going to have to build a bathroom next to the family room and put in doors and everything.”
I only halfway listen. I’m noticing that the old backstop way back by the farthest fence is completely gone now. It was mostly gone before—there were just a couple of steel posts sticking out of the ground. But now there’s not even that. Now nobody would even know that used to be a field.
Too bad; that’s where my coach called practices when I was a little kid, on my first team. That’s where I learned that there are places where nobody cares if you can sound out words or not.
“I don’t see why they can’t put her in Christine’s room.” Eric takes another bite of his sandwich. “I mean, Grandma could make it up the stairs if she really tried,” he adds with his mouth full. “And we could take her meals up to her. That way she’d be guaranteed a visitor at least three times a day. And why would she ever have to come back down? It’s not like she’s got a life.”
Patrick and I nod agreement, although I haven’t really been listening and I’m sure Patrick hasn’t either. Stu opens his mouth to say something, but then he shuts it real quick, because here comes Max Gutterson, the senior, walking around the corner of the refreshment stand. Max is carrying an equipment bag. Only the bag’s moving, and it’s making these ungodly yowling sounds.
There’s a cat in there.
We all stare at the bag. Eric’s been talking nonstop since we sat down out here—but looking at that bag, he doesn’t have much to say all of a sudden.
“That the cat that’s been hanging around all the time?” I ask Gutterson. Because I heard some of the cheerleader girls saying how they’ve been feeding this cute kitty that lives under the concession stand. I’ve also heard some of the guys complain how some stray cat’s been shitting in the dirt around home plate.
“Right now it is,” says Gutterson.
The bag twists and quivers and yowls. You got to wonder how it can breathe in there.
“We’ve all cleaned crap out of our cleats for the last time,” Gutterson adds. “Gimme a bat, Trammel.” He doesn’t say please. He just reaches toward the bag at my feet.
“Fuck, no.” I put my foot on the bag. Eric, Patrick, and Stu say nothing. Patrick, I know, likes cats. But he’s stuck between liking cats and having one very big, very mean senior on his ass for the rest of the year.
Me, I don’t care about cats one way or the other. There’s just no way Gutterson can order me around like that.
“Come on, Trammel,” says Gutterson. “Don’t be a—”
“Put it in the freezer,” I say. “In the concession stand. Let ’em find it in the spring.”
I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t even really think it—it just popped into my head. I’m actually a little shocked, that it came out of my mouth like that. Fortunately, I’m still sitting there with just the right amount of coolness, like Hey, whatever.
Gutterson grins. He never thought of that. The concession stand’s locked up. But rumor has it there’s a key. Rumor has it that more than one girl’s buffed the concession stand floor with her back, courtesy of certain members of the varsity team.
Gutterson’s staring at me. “You are one sick little bastard,” he tells me with approval.
I shrug. I don’t figure Gutterson’ll really do it. I don’t figure he’s
one of the guys with a key. Now Palmer, I’m sure, has one. But Gutterson would have been bragging about it all the time if he had one.
Gutterson disappears to the back of the concession stand. I can hear the sound of a key in the padlock, and then a bang! as the door swings all the way open against the wall.
Eric and Patrick and Stu are just sitting there, suddenly silent. Eric and Stu are very interested in their shoes, but Patrick’s staring at the concession stand, and he looks really miserable. Of course, he’s not going to do anything about it. None of them are. That’s my crew for you. They’re afraid to help the cat, but still they’ve got to make me stop and think about what I just started.
All of them, Patrick especially, are sitting there ruining my peace of mind, rubbing it in that I was the one who said to put the cat in there. And the thing is, they’ll probably all be moping around for days when all one of us has got to do is take a beating for the cat. Or maybe get put into the freezer himself for a little while. If he’d fit. I don’t know how big it is, I just know they got room for hot dogs back there.
Finally we hear the sound of the door closing, and the scrabble and click of the lock, and Gutterson appears again.
“Great idea, Trammel,” Gutterson says. “You may turn out not to be a total waste of space after all.”
Then he’s walking back up toward the school with an empty equipment bag.
One frozen kitty, coming up.
“How long do you think it’ll live?” Patrick mutters to me.
“What am I, a vet?” I’m leaning back with my elbows on the bench behind me. It’s a nice day for October. Not too breezy. Warm in the sun.
Out here, that is.
Okay, now I’m actually thinking about the stupid cat. About what it’d be like to freeze to death. Little paws on the cold, cold ice. Little meows in the dark. With nobody to hear.
“Hey,” I tell the guys. “Freezing to death beats getting your skull bashed in with a baseball bat.”
Nobody says anything.
“Freezing’s just like falling asleep,” I insist. I really think I heard that somewhere. Although I don’t know how anybody would know—if you froze to death, you wouldn’t be able to tell anybody how it felt because you’d be dead.
“It’s too late now,” Eric says, almost to himself. “There’s no way to get in there anyway. Not without a key.”
Not without a key.
“There might be,” I point out.
“What do you mean?”
“We could beat the lock off with one of my bats.”
None of them look relieved. They were trying to talk themselves into not feeling guilty, and now I ruined it for them.
“Gutterson thinks he’s such hot shit,” I say, because now my thoughts are bounding off in a completely different direction. “He needs to be taught a lesson.”
Stu twists around and peers back up toward the building. The back of the concession stand’s within clear view of two classrooms. “It’ll be too loud,” he says, but I’m already slipping off the bleachers onto the ground. I was starting to feel bad about mouthing off, but now I can ruin Gutterson’s stupid plan. Ha ha.
But I’ll have to hurry, because I don’t know how much time we have till the bell rings and people start flooding out of the building for second lunch.
I unzip my bag and look over my bats. I select my oldest, cheapest bat, an Easton aluminum, to do the job. Nobody else moves. “Let me know if anybody’s coming,” I say, and walk around to the back of the concession stand to get to work.
Beating a padlock is not the same as hitting baseballs. A couple of minutes later my hands are hurting and my shoulders are sore from absorbing the shock. If the cat’s still alive, it’s probably shit all over the hot dogs from the racket.
I stop and check the padlock. Not even dented. I lower my bat.
“No go,” I call to the guys, although I can’t see them. “Sayonara, Kitty,” I say lightly, like it doesn’t matter, but then all of a sudden I’m swinging the bat around for one last really vicious whack to the lock.
And with that last whack, the screws that hold the hinge onto the door pop halfway out.
I act like I meant for that to happen. I put the bat down, pry the screws out with my fingers, and pull the door open.
It’s dark in the concession stand. I make my way into the back, where they keep the boxes of food. I give my eyes a minute to adjust, and when they do, I see there’s a huge triple sink and a refrigerator. A freezer.
I reach for the handle and pull the freezer door open.
Rrrow! A cold taffy-colored blur bursts into my face, slices across my right upper lip, and shoots out the door.
I’ve just released Freddy Krueger’s cat. And now I’m standing alone in this dark room in front of an empty freezer. I touch my lip, gently. I can’t tell if it’s bleeding. It feels like the mother of all paper cuts on my face.
I edge back over to the door that leads outside. I lean around to peek out.
The grass is empty. The asphalt is empty. The classroom windows are blank.
The bleachers are empty too.
My friends are yellow-bellied dipshits.
I step out, shut the door to the concession stand. How many minutes till the bell?
I poke each screw back in its hole. The wood’s splintered, and the screws keep falling back out. I finally have to give up. I pick up my bat, stick it back in my bag. I sling the whole thing over my shoulder and walk, very casually, up the slope toward the parking lot. The back of my shirt is wet from the sweat I worked up hammering on the lock. My lip stings from the cat scratch.
The bell rings right as I’m slipping onto the breezeway. Then I’m walking down the hall to my locker, so I can get my English book. I duck my head when Max Gutterson passes, so he doesn’t see the mark I know is there, on my face.
I don’t mind much that my friends were afraid. They’re my friends, after all, and this kind of thing is why I have the rep I do. Besides, I like danger, and I got to destroy school property and save a helpless animal all at the same time!
I’m a fucking hero.
Not for long. On the way up the stairs to assistant, it occurs to me: What if somebody sees the broken lock? What if somebody saw me from the windows and puts two and two together? What if it gets back to Vice Principal Sheridan that I had something to do with busting the door open?
If Mom had a cow over bad grades, she’ll come un-fucking-glued if I get suspended.
I can’t work on my English now. I can’t even open the book. I plunk myself down in a chair a few seats down from Chlorophyll, who’s reading, as usual. I scowl at the table, because I’m pretty pissed at myself. I don’t know how I get mixed up in stuff like this.
Chlorophyll doesn’t look up or say hello. She never says anything to me—except when I go first, and even then I have to poke her, or say “Hey.” We’ve been in here alone every day for three weeks now, so I know her, I know that’s how she is. Doesn’t give a shit about anybody but herself.
Her book isn’t a textbook today. It’s a regular book. But she’s actually marking on the pages. With a pencil, writing notes in the margins. Writing in a book that’s already filled up with words. Figures.
I turn sideways, so I can look out the window. I can’t see the concession stand from here, but now I’m realizing my fingerprints are probably all over it. Sheridan could call it more than breaking a hinge. He could call it breaking and entering.
I could get arrested.
How can everything get to be such a mess in a few short minutes of brainlock?
“I’m such a dumb fuck.” I mutter it out loud. I can’t help it. It’s so true, it has to be announced.
“No impulse control.”
It’s Chlo. I look over. Her eyes just keep moving down the page. I thought she was off in her book world. When she’s like that, she could be a chair or a part of the table. She could probably sit here all day and never notice if the roof blew off.
And she must have been talking to her book, because for somebody who just butted in, she doesn’t seem at all interested.
Impulse control. What does that mean? Was she talking to me? She’s not explaining—it’s like she doesn’t even know she said it.
I think about it, looking out the window again. Then I turn around in my chair and stare at the tabletop for a few minutes. I’m trying to figure it out. “You mean I don’t control my impulses,” I say, and as soon as it’s out of my mouth, I know it sounds dumb. But it makes sense, somehow, to say it that way.
“Maybe.” Now she gives me one of those librarian looks, over her glasses. “But then, I don’t know you. Could be you are just a dumb fuck.”
I aim one quick glare at her—what’s she doing listening to me all of a sudden?—but she’s got her eyes down again, and I’m too depressed to start anything with anybody right now.
Somebody left a pencil stub on the table. I pick it up and start digging my name into the tabletop.
“Maybe,” I hear Chlorophyll say, and when I glance over, I see that she’s staring at the page without really seeing it, “maybe they mean the same thing. What is a dumb fuck but someone who doesn’t think before he acts?”
I get her point. It’s me. No matter what you call it. “It sounds better to call it no impulse control,” I say, grinding the pencil into the curve of the o in Colt.
Chlorophyll doesn’t say anything. She’s just staring and thinking. She’s forgotten that this is about me.
It’s too bad. For a minute there she could have almost passed for a human being.
I realize I just carved my name in the table, where Miss A. will see it. And tell Coach. “Listen,” I say as I turn the pencil over and try to erase the letters. “Don’t tell anybody I called myself a dumb fuck. You hear?”
Chlo’s pencil is hovering over her book. She’s completely spaced.
I stop erasing and lean over the table. “Hey!” She blinks. “You hear? Don’t tell anybody what I said.”
She gives me that look. The over-the-glasses one.
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