by David Klass
So even though Ed wasn’t much of a soccer player, and was picked on in school from time to time, and had lost his mom, I always thought the Mouse was a pretty lucky guy. As we reached his house, the pretty lucky guy who was also my best friend, and who had just been dunked repeatedly in a lake, slowed down and cleared his throat a few times, as if he was preparing for a brief conversation that he really didn’t want to have. “Thanks for walking back with me,” Ed said with his hand on his front door and his face turned away. “And for showing up at the golf course and everything. You, uh, don’t have to come in, Joe.”
“I want to come in,” I told him.
“I’ll be okay. Really,” Ed the Mouse assured me, still not looking at me.
“I’m sure you will,” I said, lying, “but I’m thirsty. I just need a drink of something and then I’ll go.”
His thin shoulders quivered and he took a few seconds. “Really, I’ll be fine. Truly.”
“I won’t stay long. I just want a soda and I’m on my way,” I told him. “Come on, Mouse.”
He reluctantly let me into his house. It was dark and empty. Ed’s father worked long hours three or four days a week and sometimes on weekends. He had a maid and a cleaning woman to look after the house when he wasn’t there, not to mention the landscape gardeners, and the snow-shoveling service in the winter, so the house was always immaculate and Ed had virtually no chores and could spend hours on his homework, his video games, or whatever else he wanted to do. But sometimes, when I came home with Ed and the big house was dark and empty, it felt lonely to me. Ed never complained. We headed downstairs, to the finished basement, where we always hung out.
I can’t tell you how many thousands of hours we’d wasted over the past ten years playing Ping-Pong in that basement. I even had my own paddle that I kept down there. It was made in China and had a specially padded surface and a leather grip. I almost never lost with it, but then Ed the Mouse wasn’t much better at Ping-Pong than he was at soccer.
Ed opened the mini-fridge and fished out a can of soda for me. “Thanks. Drink one yourself,” I suggested. “It’ll make you feel better. And you might want to put on some dry clothes.”
I didn’t mean anything by my suggestions. I just didn’t want Ed to catch pneumonia. But maybe I hit a nerve. Or maybe Ed was all nerves, and anything I said would have set him off. “Do me a favor,” he said sharply. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Easy, Mouseman,” I said. “It’s just that your shirt is wet and you might catch a cold—”
“I said don’t tell me what to do.” His voice started low, but it got louder and, at the same time, somehow more fragile.
“Okay,” I said. “Chill. Don’t drink a soda if you don’t want. And you don’t have to scream at your old buddy who just saved your neck.”
Ed walked over to the Ping-Pong table and picked up a paddle. His hand was shaking. “And don’t call me that.”
“What?”
“What you just called me.”
I had to think back. “Mouseman?”
“Mouse anything.”
“But that’s been your nickname since the third grade …”
“I didn’t need you to help me tonight,” Ed said.
“Sure,” I muttered. “Whatever. Let’s drop it.”
“Let’s not drop it. I can manage just fine by myself. And I don’t need you to call me Mouseman or Mousehead or Mousedick or any other insulting name you can think of. And I don’t need you to save my neck. I can handle things on my own. You got that?”
“Got it,” I said. “Sorry. It’s just that it looked to me like when you were handling things on your own, you were about to be drowned in a lake, and since you’re my best friend, I felt like I had to do something—”
Ed threw his paddle at my head. I ducked, and it hit the wall with a loud CRACK. If it had hit me, it would have hurt. It could have broken my nose. He threw it that hard. I could see his face clearly now. We were looking right at each other. His eyes welled up and then the tears poured out. He brought the back of his hands up to his eyes as if they were two sponges and he could dab the water back with them, and then he gave up and lowered his hands and he just stood there and wept.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen your best friend start weeping so tears start sliding down his cheeks like raindrops down a windowpane, and suddenly he looks like a little kid again—the way you remember him from third grade—innocent and vulnerable and not able to hide anything.
Guys are not good at comforting guys. I wanted to put my arm around Ed or give him a shoulder to cry on or say something soothing. Instead I just stood there like a gawking gorilla and finally I heard myself mumble, “Jesus, Ed, pull yourself together. It’ll be okay.”
“How will it be okay?” he gasped through his tears. “How will anything be okay? You heard him, I’m marked. But I won’t do it. I tell you now, I won’t do it.”
“Sure you’ll do it,” I told him gently but firmly. “And I’ll tell you why you’ll do it. Because it’s nothing. It’s just a silly custom and—”
“It’s a barbaric, emasculating custom,” Ed blurted out. He was the only guy I knew who could use ten-dollar vocabulary words when he was so upset. “Everyone will see …”
“Yeah, but no one will care,” I told him. “It’s just for one week. Anyway, what choice do you have?”
“I have a choice,” he said. “There’s always a choice. I can go to Mrs. Simmons and tell her what’s up.” Mrs. Simmons was the head guidance counselor—a nice woman, trustworthy, and easy to talk to. “Or I can march into old Landisman’s office and let him know what kind of delightful traditions are being observed at his beloved school.” Mr. Landisman was our silver-haired principal, and I had to agree with Ed, the old fellow didn’t have the slightest clue what was really going on in the hallways of the high school he was supposed to be running.
“You could do that,” I said. “But …”
“But then I’d get my head handed to me, right?” Ed managed to look pathetic and furious at the same time, which was quite a trick. Tears were still streaming down his cheeks, and his nose was running, but he stood there glaring back at me with his hands on his hips. “It’s so clear to you that I should just go with the flow and demean myself, isn’t it? You don’t have any such problems. Captain of the soccer team. Star of the wrestling team. Big man on campus.”
I was shocked at his words, but I was even more surprised by the furious tone of his voice. I looked back at my oldest and dearest friend, and I whispered, “Ed, I’m anything but.”
“No one’s saying you’re marked. Everyone respects you. You have no problems.”
My mind flashed to Kris and the Phenom, down by the Boat Basin. “Sure,” I muttered. “None at all. Okay, Ed, I’m done with my soda and I’ll leave now. Hope you feel better.”
I headed up the stairs. I got about halfway up before I heard Ed kick the weak leg of the Ping-Pong table so that there was a loud crash, which I knew was half the tabletop crashing to the floor. Then I heard breaking glass, which I think was Ed picking up one of the glasses from the downstairs bar and hurling it against the wall. Then, as I neared the top of the stairs, I heard rapid footsteps as Ed started racing up behind me. I walked quickly to the front door, and I was very tempted to run out and leave him there, but I forced myself to stop and let him catch up.
“Sorry, Brickhead,” he said in a very low voice.
“No sweat, Mousedick.”
“I’m serious. Don’t call me that.”
“Listen, I’m gonna talk to Slag,” I told him. “Maybe I can make this go away.”
“How can you possibly do that?”
“Because he got it wrong. He’s understandably pissed off about Jack Hutchings getting his knee busted up. The football team’s in a race for the league championship, and now they’ve lost a key starter. Slag thinks the Phenom is one of us, and that this is the soccer team dissing the football team, and hurting its chances. And
Jack is Slag’s cousin, so it’s also some kind of family revenge thing for Slag. But the Phenom’s not on our team. I’ll let Slag know that if he has a problem with the Phenom, he should settle it with him one-on-one. However he chooses.”
“You’re not a big fan of the Phenom’s, are you?” Ed the Mouse asked.
“No, I’m not,” I muttered. Ed gave me a curious look—he must have heard something in my voice that’s not there very often. I have my bad qualities, but I don’t hate many people and I’m not usually cruel or bloodthirsty. I shrugged. “Whatever they want to do to him is fine by me. Just so they understand he’s not one of us and never will be. Now, why don’t you put a dry shirt on before you catch pneumonia, Mousedick?”
“Okay, Brickface.”
9
The Phenom came sauntering up to me first thing Monday morning, before homeroom, and flashed me a condescending smile. His blue eyes were beaming with self-satisfaction, as if he was thrilled at his own generosity for the favor he was about to charitably bestow. “I have great news for you, Joseph,” he said.
It’s amazing how a little thing like someone calling you by your full name, Joseph, when everyone else calls you Joe can really piss you off. I finished taking books from my locker and slammed it closed with enough force to rattle the hinges. “You’re going back to Brazil?” I muttered.
He decided to treat it as a joke, and he laughed. “No, I like it here more and more. I’m staying in Lawndale. And the good news is that I want to join your soccer team.” He said it as if he expected me to fall down on my knees and touch my forehead to the ground in gratitude.
I managed to reply in a low, polite voice that masked all traces of anger. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
The Phenom’s expression became incredulous. I guess not too many soccer team captains turned him down on a regular basis. “Why not?”
“Because we don’t want you,” I told him.
He studied me for a few seconds with those bright blue eyes. I got the feeling they didn’t miss much. “Are you feeling okay, Joseph? You don’t look so good.”
“Thanks, I’m feeling fine,” I told him. I didn’t mention that I had been pacing around my room at 1 a.m. on Saturday night—actually Sunday morning—when his blue sports car had finally pulled into Kris’s driveway. And that after I had watched her get out of his car and walk toward her porch, and then stop, turn back, and blow a kiss at his car and presumably at him, I had nearly put my head through my piranha tank.
Nor did I mention that while I was going crazy over Kris being out with him, it didn’t help much that my father had been in his bedroom with Dianne Hutchings, door closed, baseball cap on the knob, which was a sign to me to keep out. He had his stereo cranked way up, but even so I heard them laughing together, and fooling around, and doing God knows what, till he walked her down the stairs a few minutes after Kris disappeared inside her house.
What happened to innocent first dates? What happened to people taking the time to get to know each other? How could I blame Kris for taking the Phenom down to the Boat Basin when my father and sole parental role model was setting a new speed record as a first-date Don Juan?
On Sunday I put in a half day working at the car wash, and hour after hour, car after car, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Phenom and Kris. I didn’t see her at all that day—maybe she was sleeping off her big date. Or perhaps she’d gone off somewhere with her parents. I didn’t even want to think about the possibility that she and the Phenom were out on a second date, but I knew it was possible.
Sunday night I hadn’t slept a wink, even though I was exhausted from drying so many hoods and hubcaps. I ended up getting out of bed, tiptoeing downstairs so as not to wake my dad, and working out in my little gym in the basement. It’s not much fun to do sets of push-ups and sit-ups and chin-ups while the rest of the world sleeps. Nor do you get much lasting satisfaction at hitting a heavy bag in the same spot, over and over, with enough force so that the bag seems to groan and beg for mercy.
So my eyes were red and I’m sure I appeared a little tense as I stood in our school hallway looking back at the Phenom. I was confused and angry and jealous as all hell. To put it bluntly, I hated his pretty face. I hated his flirty blue eyes. I hated his mocking manner. Even though I barely knew the Phenom, every muscle in my body from my clenched jaw to my arched feet wanted to wring him like a sponge, to pound on him like a punching bag, to kick him all the way back to São Paulo like a soccer ball that has rolled onto the wrong field. “The team is doing fine without you,” I told him. “Even though we don’t really play soccer. So thanks, but no thanks. We don’t need you.”
“Kristine says you do need me.”
It took a second or two to sink in that he was talking about Kris, my Kris, to me. I couldn’t tell if he had any idea how I felt about her. She must have talked to him about me, if they had discussed our soccer team. Was he mentioning Kristine’s name as a kind of challenge? Was this his way of telling me that she was his now—that he had taken possession? Or did he really want to join our team, and did he think that citing her opinion would help his cause?
“So what do I care what she says? I’m the captain,” I told him evenly, “and I say we don’t need you. Now, excuse me, I’ve got to go to homeroom.”
The Phenom didn’t step aside. In fact, he didn’t move even an inch to get out of my way. “I saw your team play,” he said. “You need me, Joseph.”
I stepped forward and jabbed a finger into his chest with enough force to push him backward. “Get this straight, you stupid, conceited jerk. Stay the hell away from my soccer team.” I wanted to add, “And stay the hell away from Kristine,” but I didn’t. Instead, I turned my back on the Phenom and stormed off down the hall.
I walked quickly, feeling those mocking eyes watching me from behind, sensing the slight smile on the Phenom’s lips. Then I realized that someone was trailing me, trying to catch up with me. The faster I went, the faster the footsteps came behind me. When I felt a sharp tug on my arm, I whirled, ready for a more serious confrontation with the Phenom. I started to say, “Get the hell away from me—” and then I saw that it wasn’t the Phenom at all but rather my teammate Charley the Fish.
“Don’t be angry at me, Joe,” he whispered quickly, and his voice was so frightened it sounded like air escaping from a punctured tire. “I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t. I need you to tell them that.” Charley was never the bravest guy in the world, but just then he looked like he thought a bolt of lightning might snake in through one of the school’s windows and strike him dead at any minute. His eyes were flicking around the corridor, from wall to wall and face to face. He was carrying a thick algebra book, which he held high and flat against his chest, like a shield.
“I’m not angry at you,” I told him. “But if you’re saying you didn’t run away Saturday night and leave the Mouse and me hanging out to dry, then you’re a liar.”
Charley the Fish was about to reply, but then he saw something, and ducked his head and shoulders in a humble and submissive bow. Two junior girls watched him kowtow and giggled, and Charley tried not to look like he heard their laughter. A guy on the football team had just passed, and Charley the Fish was doing what a marked student in our school has to do. For one week, every time a football player passed him in school, or even outside, Charley had to bow to him. After a week, he would have paid his respect, and he would no longer be marked.
Charley the Fish straightened up and tried to act like nothing had happened. “Sorry I ran away,” he said in a rushed, low voice. “I’m not proud of that, but you weren’t there for most of it, Joe. They were ready to beat us up bad. Anything could have happened.”
“Isn’t that more of a reason to stick with your buddies?” I asked him. And then I took pity on him, because four football players passed, and poor Charley the Fish had to make four distinct bows, right at the most crowded part of the hallway. Grovel, grovel, grovel, grovel. People on either side of the corridor s
tared and laughed. Everybody knew what was going on. At our school, news travels like lightning. And there’s a certain cruel fascination in watching a marked student humiliate himself. I have to admit, I’ve watched more than a few students bow and scrape over the years, and I’ve grinned to see it.
“Listen,” said Charley, sounding a little more frantic, “I’m not talking about Saturday night—”
“Then what are you talking about?” I asked him.
“The police,” he said softly.
I stopped walking. “What police?”
“They’re here.”
“Where?”
“Tobias’s office.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Charley the Fish said. “Because I didn’t call them. I didn’t tell them anything. I’m not that stupid.” His quick black eyes searched the corridor. We were momentarily alone. His voice sank to a dry whisper. “But they know that something happened on the golf course Saturday night and they’re calling in students. And if Slag talks to you, you have to tell him that I didn’t call the cops and I don’t know anything about this. Tell him that I accept being marked and I’m paying my respect. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “But who did call the cops?”
“How should I know?” Charley the Fish whispered back quickly, as if even to speculate on such a question was to share a portion of the guilt. And then, as he headed away, he added an observation that I didn’t like at all: “But the Mouse isn’t in school today.”
“So? What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.