“Why are you avoiding me?” she said.
“I’m not.”
“I saw you turn back there, down the other hall.”
He shook his head. “It’s not what you think,” he told her.
“I can talk to George,” she said. “I’ll make it okay.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No you won’t.”
“So you want to pretend that we aren’t even dating?”
“We’ve only been on one date.”
“Fine,” she said.
“You want to go out this weekend?”
“I don’t think so. I think I’m busy.”
“Fine,” said the boy.
The two turned and walked in opposite directions in the hallway.
11
He spent an uneventful weekend by himself, anxious about what the coming week would bring. On Monday, he was relieved when the Youth members he saw smiled and acted warmly toward him. Birch even gave him a quick pat on the back on his way by in the hallway. But underneath the relief, he also felt a bit of remorse, perhaps even sadness. If the Youth were happy, their plot to bring down Kevin Dennison must have gone as planned. Maybe the note had been lost in Kevin’s locker. Or maybe Kevin never returned to it on Friday afternoon.
Peckerhead was late coming into third-period biology and he was also quick to leave. The boy grew uneasy and his suspicions heightened when Peckerhead disappeared after their last-period American government class. He walked alone down the hallway of the portable and squinted as he stepped out into the bright fall sun. He headed across the cement courtyard to the front of the school, where the buses idled. It seemed safest to head home. Perhaps he could probe the Youth with a few phone calls that evening.
He was halfway across the courtyard when he saw Jason Becker and Birch coming his way. He was about to put his head down and make a jog for the bus, but they both smiled. Becker even waved. The boy slowed so that their paths intersected.
“Teddy,” Birch said, holding his fist out.
The boy punched at it.
Becker gave him a quick, playful shove. “The Wrench,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Heading home?” Birch said, looking in the direction of the buses.
The boy nodded. “I got homework,” he said.
“Nah,” Jason said. “Come with us.” He smiled and shoved him again.
“Yeah?” the boy said.
“Don’t be a dumb-ass.” Jason smiled and walked in the direction of the parking lot. The boy fell in behind them.
When they got to the parking lot, something in the boy told him to run. It felt wrong. The usual crowd wasn’t there, no George, no Peckerhead, no mob of young cadets. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the last two buses groaning out of the drive.
“Where is everyone?” he said.
“At the shop,” Birch told him. “We’re all meeting up there.”
Becker climbed into the driver’s seat of the Volkswagen and Birch held the passenger door open for him. The front seat was folded forward, but the boy hesitated. Becker bent his neck down to look at him.
“Come on,” he said.
The boy didn’t move.
“What choice you got?” said Birch. “You going to walk?”
The boy got into the backseat.
“That a boy,” Becker said, smiling. Once they were in the flow of traffic, Becker looked over his shoulder. “Everyone’s at the shop to watch the video from this weekend.”
The boy looked down at his lap. His hands played with a torn corner of nylon that hung from the seat in front of him.
“Cool,” he said. He smiled quickly, but then he winced, thinking of how he had failed Kevin again.
When they arrived at the shop, he saw Colleen’s car in the lot. He walked through the door, and it wasn’t the mob of Youth members that surprised him. It wasn’t the television on the counter or the ring of chairs set up around it. The quiet looks on their faces didn’t catch his attention. What struck him when he entered the shop was the sight of Colleen Crenshaw standing at George’s side, behind the glass case of handguns and knives. Her hand was flat on the counter and his was atop hers. George’s eyes were upon him as soon as he entered the store, but Colleen looked down, away, anywhere but in his direction.
“Glad you could make it, Theodore,” George said.
The boy nodded.
“Take a seat,” George told him, but he didn’t move.
“Please,” George said, motioning to the chairs before the television.
When the boy still didn’t budge, Becker took him by an elbow and walked him across the room.
“Sit,” Becker said, and the boy sat.
“We have a little something we’d like you to see,” George said. He reached over the top of the counter and turned on the television. It erupted in static. He pushed a tape into the VCR and the television went quiet, the snow on the screen replaced by a night shot of the local coffeehouse. A girl walked out holding a foam coffee cup. The boy heard whispering in the background of the video. The camera panned down the sidewalk and came to rest on three boys standing by a car in the parking lot. When the camera zoomed in, the boy recognized one of them as Kevin Dennison. The three leaned in to speak privately. Then they all leaned back and laughed. Kevin buckled over, holding his guts. One of his friends held a hand over his face and leaned back on a car. They seemed stoned out of their minds. The boy grew nauseous thinking where it was all headed.
One of Kevin’s friends stepped behind a car for a moment and then he walked down the sidewalk toward the entrance. He had a black hooded sweatshirt on that hung past his waist.
Halfway to the entrance he bobbled his empty coffee cup and dropped it. When he bent over to grab it, his bare ass popped out from under his sweatshirt. It happened so quickly that the boy doubted what he’d seen. The kid got to the entrance, threw out his cup in a trash can, and returned to his friends in the parking lot. The three laughed wildly. There was silence in the room around the boy.
“What the fuck?” someone whispered on the videotape.
Kevin regained his composure and headed down the sidewalk. He was stiff, unnaturally upright. He stopped, looked down, and quickly bent over as if to tie his shoe. His pale ass blinked out from under his untucked shirt. He stood, but held his shirt up and slapped his ass. Then he pulled up his pants and turned to face the camera. He bobbed two middle fingers up and down and turned it into a kind of dance, gyrating, turning, flipping the camera off the entire time. When he finished his dance, he faced the camera again and pulled out the insides of his pockets. Then he smiled and held his hands up in a mocking shrug. The two other boys quickly ran over and began to moon the camera again. The boy was entranced by the footage. He wanted to laugh and cheer for them, but the screen went back to static.
George reached over the counter and turned off the television. No one spoke. The boy could hear the many Youth members shifting their weight on the creaky floor around him. He tried to steady his breathing and he wiped his hands along the legs of his pants.
“So,” George said. “We have been humiliated.” He walked out from behind the counter. “And I can only assume it was possible because of you, Theodore.”
The boy looked at George. He thought through his options.
“But this isn’t the end of the world,” George said to him. “We all make mistakes. And with the proper amount of repentance, we can all be forgiven. At the end of the day, Theodore, we want you on our side.”
The boy knew he could grovel and beg his way back into their favor. But he looked at the group around him—their khakis and loafers, their goddamn argyle socks. He looked at Colleen, behind the counter, picking at a fingernail. She looked up quickly and he caught her eye. She blinked slowly. She saw George watching her and she went back to working at her finger.
“Are you even going to try to deny it?” George asked him.
“Does it matter?” the boy
said. He thought of Kevin and his two friends. He thought of Terry Duvall and Dan the wrestler. He looked quickly at the door and saw that he had a clear alley.
“Of course it does,” George said. “Did you tell him, Theodore?”
“Don’t call me that,” he said. He reached up and scratched his head. Then he lurched out of the folding chair and sprinted for the exit. He felt the tug of someone grabbing his shirt, but the tension quickly gave way. He hit the horizontal bar of the door at full stride and blew it open. It slowed him a bit and gave them the time they needed. He felt a hard kick to his trailing leg, which sent his foot colliding into his opposite heel. Tripped up at the top of three stairs, he had nowhere to go but down. He got his hands out in front of him, but they hardly slowed his fall. He came to the ground with a grunt and the clash of his teeth. A blast of white light flashed inside his clenched eyes. He bounced and slid to a stop in the rocky dirt of the drive.
He rolled over and immediately clasped a hand over his mouth. His tongue had been between his teeth. He couldn’t feel it and he feared he had bitten it off. He opened his mouth and touched the tip. It was still there, but his fingers came away thick with blood. He looked up at the group of awestruck boys. Peckerhead cringed and turned away.
The boy grabbed a baseball-size rock and clambered to his feet. He stayed low, the rock back and ready. He felt like an animal. He knew he would swing the stone with all his might at anyone who approached and the Youth seemed to sense this. The boy felt the warm fluid dripping off his chin. He took a couple of steps back and wiped at his face. There was more of his blood than he’d ever seen. He spat at his feet and it came out crimson and bubbly. He tried to threaten them. He tried to tell them he would kill anyone who so much as stepped a foot closer, but it came out garbled and meaningless. He continued to back up, step by step. He saw another good-size rock at his feet and he grabbed it with his empty hand. He shook it at them.
As he backed past a parked car, the tingling in his mouth began to turn into a searing pain. The superhuman strength he felt, the fearlessness, was melting from his limbs. He leaned against the car. He shook the rocks at the boys another time and then turned and sat, his back resting against the tire. He kept the rocks tight in his fists and listened carefully for footsteps. He spat again at his side and at the sight of the blood he realized the fear was coming fast. What if he’d done something they couldn’t fix? What if he couldn’t speak again?
“Teddy?” George called out.
The boy grunted. He jumped to his feet and hurled one of his stones. The group scattered and the rock bashed into the vinyl siding of the shop. The boy shook his second stone before turning and sitting again.
“Ted,” George hollered. “What is wrong with you? Come on out of there so we can get you to the hospital.”
The boy shook his rock above the fender of the car for everyone to see.
“This isn’t at all what we wanted, Ted,” George went on, but the boy was shrinking back inside his head. He was filled with a terrible fury. He wanted to beat them all to pulp. Even more, he wanted to dash in his own head—take the sharp end of the rock and go for his temple, over and over again, until the job was done. He was furious with himself for being so desperate, for needing their company, for believing Colleen. He hated this bleeding, whimpering thing he’d become, hiding like a child behind this car. Tears began to run down his cheeks, and they only added to his rage.
“Ted?” Colleen’s voice drew him back. “Please don’t throw a rock at me, okay? It’s just me. I’m going to pull my car over there and we’re going to go to the hospital. Okay?”
He fisted the rock until the edges began to cut into his hand. He wanted to kick her until she wept. He heard her car start and shift. He heard her back out and pull forward in his direction. He wiped fiercely at his face to hide the tears. The Escort pulled up beside him and she leaned over and threw open the door. He didn’t move.
“Come on,” she said. She waved him into the front seat.
He still didn’t budge. He glared at her out of the corner of his eye.
“It’s either me or them,” she said.
He slowly got to his feet and walked to the car. He never looked back at the group of boys in the lot.
“How bad is it?” Colleen said.
He flinched when she reached across the car but she only went for the visor above the windshield and pulled it down.
“Do you want to look?” she said.
He saw himself in the mirror. Blood was smeared across his cheek and jawline. Fresh drops ran down from the corners of his mouth. His eyes were runny and bloodshot. He slowly opened his mouth. At first it didn’t seem too bad. A cut ran halfway across his tongue. But when he stuck it out of his mouth, the weight of the hanging tip pulled the wound open. He saw the raw meat of the deep cut and drew it back in. He closed his eyes and cringed. He shook his head.
“Bad?” she said.
He nodded.
“I’m so sorry, Ted,” she said.
He told her to fuck off.
She leaned closer. “Huh?” she said.
He shook his head. He batted a hand that told her to forget about it. He put his face in his hands and leaned over against the door.
“Back there,” she said. “It wasn’t what it looked like.”
He didn’t move.
“When I heard what they were going to do, I went to George to try to stop him,” she said. “I thought if I was there they wouldn’t hurt you.”
He shook his head. “Fanks,” he said.
“I’m serious,” she said.
He held up a hand for her to stop talking. She did.
At the hospital they sat before the registry desk. When the woman returned, she had several packets of large gauze pads. She helped the boy open them and he used the first couple to wipe his face. He spit a mouthful of blood into the next handful and held a couple more over his mouth.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get some paperwork done so we can get you in to see someone.”
He nodded.
“You can’t talk?” she said.
He shook his head.
“This will do,” she said. She took a prescription pad off her desk and a pen out of a coffee mug and handed them both to the boy. She asked him questions and he wrote out the answers.
“How did the injury occur?” she said.
He wrote, Fell.
“He fell?” she said to Colleen.
Colleen nodded. “He tripped at the top of a couple stairs,” she said.
The woman behind the desk nodded. “You’re under eighteen? Do you have a number where we can reach your parents?”
He wrote down his home number and the woman dialed it. She held the phone to her head but eventually shook her head. “No answer,” she said.
He scratched a second number on the pad and wrote, Ask for Donna LeClare.
The woman dialed and asked for his mother. “It’s an emergency,” she said. After a long wait she introduced herself and explained the situation to his mother. “We’d like to get him in to a doctor as soon as possible. He can’t talk at the moment. He has a friend here with him. Would you mind giving me consent before I do that? Yes, I think it’s important that he’s seen immediately. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Here’s his friend.” She handed the phone over to Colleen and came around the end of the desk. “Come with me, Teddy,” she said.
He followed her through a set of swinging doors, down a hall, and into one of many small rooms.
“Climb right up there on the bed,” she said. “Someone will be in shortly.”
He sat with his head in his hands and then leaned back and pulled his legs up on the bed. He let an arm fall across his face to hide his eyes from the bright fluorescent lights. There was a quick knock on the door before it opened. A smiling Indian man in a white coat stepped through the door, a younger woman following.
“Mr. LeClare,” he said. “I hear we had a run-in with some stairs.”
The
boy nodded and he began to sit up, but the doctor was already at his side with a warm, heavy hand on his chest. The woman stayed back, just behind him.
“You can stay,” he told the boy. He had him rest his head on the pillow and he ran his hands over his jaw and neck, pressing and probing the bone and muscle. “Any pain when I do this?” he said.
The boy shook his head.
“Lose consciousness at all?”
He shook his head again.
“See any stars or bright flashes?”
He shrugged.
“Yes?” the doctor said. “Sounds like you took a pretty good hit.”
The boy smiled.
“Okay,” the doctor said. “Now let’s get a look at that tongue.” He went across the room and came back with a wooden tongue depressor. He had him open his mouth and he moved his tongue around with the wooden depressor and his gloved fingers. “Looks like the stairs won this round,” he said. The woman looked over his shoulder. “But I think we’ll live to fight another day.” He listed off the things he would need to the woman and she wrote them down on a clipboard.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to the boy. “And we’ll get you stitched up.” He smiled and stepped through the door.
There was another knock, but this time Colleen poked her head through. She smiled when she saw him. She walked over and sat on the chair beside his bed. She looked down at him and ran a hand up his chest and along his cheek, dragging her fingernails across his scalp. He closed his eyes and focused on the feeling. She reached back and massaged his neck.
“Sorry I took so long,” she said. “Your mother had a ton of questions. She’ll be here soon.”
The door opened and Colleen took her hand away. The boy opened his eyes and saw the woman who had come in with the doctor. She had a tray of odds and ends that she placed on the table beside the bed.
The doctor was close behind her. He adjusted the height of a wheeled stool and folded the railing of the bed down. He situated himself above the boy and arranged the things on the tray beside him.
“Do you mind if I stay?” Colleen said.
American Youth Page 10
