by A Corrin
“Staff and students, I have a grave announcement to make. One of our students, Tyson Locklear, has been one of hundreds to suffer life-threatening injuries in the crash of a hijacked plane bound for California.”
I didn’t hear the rest of the announcement. I felt myself go empty—as if an arctic wind had rushed down my throat and into my lungs.
I stepped out of the classroom, ignoring Mr. William’s halfhearted protests, and dialed Rebecca Montral’s number—Tyson’s sister.
On the fourth ring, she picked up with a wet and stuffy, “Hello?” She sounded close to falling apart.
“Hey, Rebecca, it’s me, Jonathan. We haven’t seen each other in a while, but I’m—”
“Tyson’s friend,” she interrupted, sounding a little happy to hear from me. “I remember you.”
There were a few seconds of quiet, and I clenched and unclenched the fingers of my free hand, popping my knuckles with agitation, then asked, “How is he?”
Rebecca sniffled and struggled to give a coherent answer. “He’s in the E.R. right now. The plane wasn’t too high up before it crashed, and he was right in the middle of the plane, so he’s not in the worst condition, but…” She blew her nose, excused herself, and continued. “His right lung collapsed, one leg is broken in three places, his spine is bruised, he’s got a concussion, and he almost lost three of his fingers.”
I gulped, growing closer and closer to tears with each listed injury, even as Rebecca’s voice became nearly unintelligible.
“Mom and Dad are fine. Both of them just have a few sprains and fractures. Tyson’s tough. He’ll make it.”
I nodded, then remembered I was on the phone and reassured her. “Yeah. He’s a rebel. He’ll come out of there with a smile on his face and a joke at the ready.”
Rebecca laughed and agreed. We waited for each other to say something else, and when we didn’t, we said goodbye. She promised to keep me posted, and I promised to spread the news to Nikki and the others. After that, I didn’t feel like sticking around at school. I barely endured the rest of the English lesson, then skipped out early, walking home and texting my friends as I went to fill them in on Ty’s condition.
When I got home, I tried to watch some TV, made myself a sandwich that I didn’t have the appetite to eat, picked up the garbage and empty beer cans in the living room, and flipped through my new books a little more, but nothing helped to distract me from what had happened. Would Tyson be okay? Was my best friend dying at that very moment? I had just taken out the garbage and put the lid back on the garbage can when Dad came peeling in the driveway, his rusty pickup rattling.
A spike of alarm and fear pierced my chest and my hand shook a little as I replaced the garbage can lid. Usually I timed it to where I was out taking a walk through the woods behind my house when Dad came home. I’d been so wrapped up in my thoughts that I hadn’t been paying attention to the time.
I watched Dad stumble out of his truck, cursing when he almost slipped on the gravel, holding as still as I could. If I left him alone and ignored him maybe he’d just go straight inside.
Dad looked up, belching, his face covered in rough stubble, his skin pale and sickly. “What the hell are you looking at?” he said in a slurred growl. “Your disgusting old man? Your...failure of a father? Come on, say it!”
Quickly, I looked away, my hands going clammy, hating myself for the weakness I felt. The fear. I started walking along the wall toward the back of the house but Dad beelined and met me at the corner, his steps uncoordinated and aggressive. He blocked me and the stench of alcohol came off of him in a cloud.
“You got a problem?” he hissed.
“No,” I muttered.
“Lookit me when I’m talking to you!” Dad shoved me against the side of the house, hard enough to rattle the window beside my head. Pain rolled up my backbone where it had struck the siding hardest and all of the frustration, anger, anxiety, and grief that had been building up inside me for the past few days started boiling over. I looked up and met Dad’s eyes and something in my face seemed to arrest him.
“Yeah, I’ve got a problem,” I said, real low. He blinked at me stupidly. “You. You’re my problem.” I pushed him off of me and my voice was rising as I spoke. “Who do you think you are? What are you even doing here? This isn’t your house. I pay the bills. I clean up after you and your shitty friends. You’re just a rat crawling out of whatever tavern will still have you to grab some food and sleep before starting over again.” Dad started backing away and I followed, outrage continuing to swell inside me. “And I’m glad Mom’s not here to see what you’ve become because you know what you are? You’re worthless.”
Dad’s face went slack as if I’d shot him and something dark and hot deep in my chest crowed with pride at the reaction I’d elicited. Then, so quickly that I didn’t have time to register the danger I was in, Dad’s expression went from wounded to a broken and agonized kind of fury. He hit me across the side of my face, and I went down to the gravel hard, skinning my cheek and the bridge of my nose. Instinctively, even though blotches of color marred my vision and my head swam, I curled up and scrambled as quickly as I could to my feet to avoid any further blows, one hand going up to my face.
Ice seemed to seize my guts in a sudden deep-freeze. Dad had given me some excessively disciplinarian slaps and beltings before; pushed me or thrown things at me, usually while shouting himself hoarse with despairing rants of self-loathing. But he had never hit me like that before, on purpose with a closed fist.
He trembled, but not with anger anymore—that had gone as quickly as it had come. His mouth was a mortified “O” and his eyes were just as round and filled with the same guilt I’d seen countless times before when his anger passed, after he realized what he’d done.
“Jonathan! Oh, I’m so sorry, I—”
I pushed past him. Tears of pain and a cocktail of other feelings had started to well up in my vision and I didn’t want him to see them.
“I’m staying at a friend’s for a few days,” I said as I walked. “You can do whatever the hell you want.”
Dad didn’t come after me, didn’t say anything, and I didn’t look back once as I made it to the end of my driveway and started walking up the street.
Of all of my friends, Vince was the one who looked after the group’s emotional wellbeing. He was a big guy from Mexico who couldn’t claim a spare ounce of fat, and he was a beast on the football field, but his eyes were as gentle and warm as those of the horses he and his family raised. It was Vince who had been the one to drag me to football tryouts my freshman year, and in all honesty, it had probably saved my life.
Everyone needs an outlet, some way to vent, to get away from their stress. Between Garrett at school and Dad at home, I didn’t have that. In middle school I had started getting edgier, shorter-tempered, picking fights with Garrett’s stupid friends, blowing off homework. High school didn’t look too bright for me. But after I’d made the team, a combination of Vince’s encouragement, the coaches’ strict rules about maintaining grades, and falling for Nikki a few months later, turned me around.
I owed my every smile to Vince, and whenever I tried to thank him for being so selfless, for having been so patient with the jackass I used to be, for showing me that I could make a different future for myself, he would just roll his shoulders bashfully and change the subject.
After the fight with Dad, I had considered going to Nikki’s, but once I felt the bruise growing on my cheekbone, I decided on Vince instead. His parents wouldn’t ask too many questions about what had happened and Vince, who would know what had happened, wouldn’t ask the questions I didn’t want to answer and wouldn’t fret like Nikki’s mother would. I didn’t go to school the next day to give my face a bit of time to heal, and when Nikki called later to see what had happened, I explained the whole thing. She came over and she, Vince, and I took some of his horses o
n a trail ride along the edge of his property.
Rebecca texted me halfway through the day to say that Tyson was still groggy from his operations, but he would pull through. My spirits lifted considerably and climbed higher when I woke up on Vince’s couch the next day.
It was Friday. Game day.
Everyone at school was pumped for the game. They were dressed in school colors; not an inch of clothing wasn’t red, black, or yellow. Ben had coated himself in the hues and looked like a big multicolored mountain man in his layered garments. Terrified underclassmen, when they saw him trundling down the hall shouting the school’s alma mater proudly, ducked behind teachers and snack machines. Most everyone had “Play for Ty” worked into their outfit in some way: with paint on their faces, bedazzled onto their shirts, or on homemade armbands.
Nikki had convinced some of her friends to join her in wearing little lion-like griffin tails and tiny feathered wings. When we passed in the hall, she winked and wrinkled her nose at me. I curled my hands into talons and tickled her, wrapping her up in a quick, tight squeeze.
Right after school, the team met in the locker rooms to change into our gear for practice. I slipped my breeches over the hip and leg padding and laced up my cleats. Tightening the bulky shoulder pads and tossing on my jersey, I faced Vince and asked, “How do I look?”
“Ready to slay some Minotaurs.” He grinned. “How does your face feel?”
“It’s sore,” I said ruefully, gently sliding my helmet down over my face and grimacing as it dragged across my swollen cheek.
“Can you still fight?” Vince asked. I showed my teeth in a wolfish smile. He was reciting our team’s mantra; our battle-chant.
“Hell yeah.”
“Can we still win?”
“Oh, we’re going to win.”
He held his hand up and we clasped forearms. “Then let’s go, Griffin,” he said.
Already, the stadium was filling up. No one was sitting. No one probably would for the whole game. The Minotaurs’ school rivalry with us was bloody and legendary.
The band was practicing on a platform beside the stadium. Vince was getting a little jiggy, and when the band struck a raw note and started a different song, he stopped and dejectedly hung his head.
“Poor Vincie!” I heard Coach bark. “Drop down and give me thirty!” He turned to me. “You too, Captain, for keeping us waiting.” I obeyed and did as I was told, though I felt like I could’ve done a hundred more. Energy was coursing through me, my adrenaline building as if I was about to charge off into bloody combat.
I may not have had a place I could exactly call “home,” but this was the closest thing to it. The Astroturf was where I belonged. This was my battlefield, where I could slay my dragons. No matter how out of control my life was, here, I was in control.
After I’d finished my pushups and jogged to the sidelines to get a drink of water, I noticed a figure standing conspicuously against the railing of the stadium, leaning over it with arms crossed staring at me, chewing some gum. It was Garrett.
I blinked at him, astonished that he’d suddenly made an appearance after his lengthy absence from school. And as far as I knew, Garrett never showed up to sporting events. A smile crawled up his face. It was a sinister and secretive kind of smile; something challenging and cold and snakelike. He winked and tapped his wrist as if to indicate a watch. I knew what he was saying, even if he hadn’t used words: After the game.
A wicked kind of hunger filled me. After everything that had happened, Tyson getting hurt, fighting with my dad, my weird dreams, this would be good. I’d have to face Nikki’s wrath once she found out about the fight, but Tyson had been right about this being a long time coming. Garrett had hit me where it hurt in the diner, mocking my family, gouging my self-esteem and he’d almost added manslaughter to his rap sheet, sending Carl up the mountain. Even worse, he hadn’t cared. Well, I would make him care. I flashed him my own savage little smile and nodded.
Eventually, the other team showed up on a bus and came spilling out onto the field. The mascots looked ready to beat the costumes off each other. Our griffin mascot shook his fists at the rival, his wings flapping as he jumped up and down on the spot and imitated aiming punches like a prize-fighter prepping for a match. The rival Minotaur mascot pointed at the horns of her mask and then at the griffin, her posture tight and intense, locked like a bull bracing to charge. The griffin put his hands on his stomach and pantomimed guffawing.
By the time Coach pulled us in close for a huddle, I had worked myself up into a kind of bloodthirsty frenzy. I had taken all of my anxiety and anger and given it a physical form to be defeated: the Minotaurs. The stadium lights shone unflatteringly on the bald dome of Coach’s head as he bent, looking heatedly at each of us.
“Okay, boys. You’ve made me proud so far this year. Don’t let me down now. Remember, even if we lose, we want everyone to think back on this day and know that we didn’t go down without a fight. Jon, Vince”—we looked at him—“you two sure you don’t want to sit this ’un out? I understand if Tyson’s accident is too fresh—”
“If anything, Coach, I want to do this for Tyson,” I interrupted with the fierce bloodlust contact sports bring out in a man.
“What about you, Vince?”
Vince nodded solidly, lips pressed into a firm line. The coach looked proud enough to cry. I’m pretty sure his chin wobbled.
“Alright, then, Griffins. Vince, I want you and Manuel to keep an eye on Jonathan. Those linebackers of theirs look tough. Jonathan, run as fast as you can. Let’s show those Minotaurs, okay?”
I stepped in with an extended fist and roared, “Who’s ready to fight and win?”
The team piled their hands on mine and yelled, “Gooooo, Griffins!”
We broke apart, and I loped over to the opposing team’s captain where he paced by the referee. Smiling through my mouth guard, my ears picked up the sound of the cheerleaders coaxing the audience into our school chants. I reached out to the opposing team’s captain to shake his hand, as was customary. He briefly gripped mine while holding my gaze as if trying to get across the fact that he wanted to crush me into the grass and then step all over me.
“Heads or tails?” the ref asked, holding out a quarter.
“Heads,” I said.
The quarter flipped in the air and thumped onto the ground. We all kneeled to see the upward side. Tails.
I grimaced and the Minotaur captain’s mouth quirked into a small smile. “We’ll kick off,” he said.
I clenched my jaw. This gave the Minotaurs two advantages: they would get the kick off after half-time. And secondly, after having gotten the measure of my team and knowing how and where to hit us, they would get to choose which side of the field to play from. Our field, though looked after lovingly enough, was notorious for being windy at its western side where it faced the sloping, open fields. On rainy days it also tended to accumulate puddles, but we wouldn’t have to worry about that until a few weeks more. Still, the Minotaurs were aware of, and would exploit, our weaknesses.
The Minotaurs jeered at me as their captain returned to them. For Tyson, I thought. Keep it together for Tyson. I turned away and, just for a moment, drank in the atmosphere, pulling in every sound, sight, smell, and sensation, and embracing it. A group of people in the front row of the bleachers started to rhythmically chant my jersey number, stomping their feet in time to the chant. I spread my arms at them and bowed as I stepped forward into motion again, earning a collective laugh of audience appreciation for my trademark playful arrogance.
But as I moved, as the chant melted into a toneless wave of breath and excited shouts of near-pandemonium, the most curious sense of deja-vu came over me and I remembered my strange dragon-slaying dream with alarming clarity.
For a long, disorienting moment, dream and reality meshed and I had the strange, disconnected feeling that I wa
s in both, as if I’d just been baptized in my own imagination and was feeling it cloud over me. The brilliant colors of the waving banners and pom-poms became torn pennants snapping in a foul, smoky wind. The cheers became a solid, wavering note of misery and pain from a demolished village. The stomping feet became steadily approaching, flapping wings…
“He-klarr!” Vince shouted. I came to, shaking my head, and the deja-vu feeling dissipated slightly, though it wavered at the fringes of my mind. It was no wonder that I was mixing the game with the dream—sometimes the heat of the game was a lot like a battlefield.
The stadium was now full, and the air was beginning to freeze into nighttime. We got into position for the play. I crouched, fingertips snarled in the grass and leg muscles tight, still a tad dizzy from having my dream come flooding into my mind. The whistle was blown, and the game began.
I bounced off of a left fielder and scurried backward, heard the distant pop of a Minotaur kicking the football in our direction. Merging into a clear space, I looked ahead to find Vince. The ball sailed through the air, canting oddly as the wind caught it. But Vince jumped like a cat, snaring it in his fingers. I burst into motion, close behind him. He turned and lobbed the ball laterally to me. I caught it and tucked it against my stomach just before Vince was crushed beneath twenty-five million Minotaurs. I poured on the speed, heading toward the endzone.
I almost thought I heard the clash of metal armor, the ringing of swords and shouting of fighting men. The lights of the stadium, flickering in my vision as I turned my head, put me in mind of dragon-fire. Rather than let myself become overwhelmed by the strangeness of the poignant daydream, I embraced it and channeled the euphoric battle-fury I had felt as a storybook knight about to face down a fire-breathing monster.
Keeping light on my toes, I extended a leg to sprint for a touchdown. But like a dragon’s claws around an unlucky knight-errant, I felt thick arms clench tightly about my legs. A helmet dug behind my knees, and I collapsed and skidded a ways. I flopped over and came face-to-face with a Minotaur fielder.