“Dude,” I say. “Relax. Let go.”
“Did you know she could play like that?” he says quietly, as if enchanted. “I had no idea she was so good.”
“I’ve never seen her play,” I say. The second I say those words, it sounds absurd. How is it that in all the years Shirah has been playing volleyball, I’ve never once come to a match?
Soon it’s Shirah’s turn to serve again. Shirah closes her eyes, kisses her fist, bounces the ball, lofts it into the air, and raises her arm back as if she were going to chop a tree—the ball rockets to the other side, and the Wildcats miss the return. Another point.
“Oh my God,” says Max. “That’s incredible. Go, Shirah!”
She sends five more of these unstoppable serves over the line, but the sixth goes out of bounds. We’ve caught up to the Wildcats and stopped their momentum. This game goes much more slowly, each side inching closer and closer to twenty-five. A few more rallies go by before it’s Shirah’s turn, and again, she closes her eyes, kisses her hand, and blasts the ball into the other side. A player on the other team bumps it, but it rockets out of bounds, straight at my eyes.
BLAM!
Pain shoots up my nose, and I see stars. My glasses are knocked clean from my face. I’m stunned, and I feel something warm and wet welling up in my nostrils.
“Holy crap,” says Max. “You’re gushing blood. I think you need a tourniquet.”
There is a minor commotion around me. Adult faces, contradicting advice: Tip his head forward! Tip his head back! A coach with a whistle and a white first-aid kit, some gauze, an ice pack.
Then I see Shirah looking at me from her spot on the court. I’m pinching my nose as I was instructed, and the ice pack blocks my eyes, but I can see her face. With my free hand, I wave. Shirah doesn’t respond. Her expression is blank.
I hear an adult yell, “Yo, let’s go! We gotta finish this game!”
With my head back, I can hear but can’t see most of what happens next. There’s silence; the hollow thump of the ball. The other team cheers and then more silence. The pop of the ball, and the Purple Martens’ fans cheer. Max cheers the loudest: “Go, Purple Martians! Go Shirah!”
I turn to Max. “What are you saying?” I ask.
“ ‘Go, Purple Martians,’ ” he says.
“You know that our mascot is a marten,” I say. “It’s like a weasel. Not a Martian.”
“Oh,” he says. “I always thought a purple Martian was a weird mascot.”
Then the entire gym drops into silence.
“Dude,” Max hisses. “This is it. Game point. Shirah’s serve.”
I twist my head to see as Shirah, again, closes her eyes and kisses her fist. I feel a surge of inexplicable energy inside me. I want her to win. I want her to win so badly that for a moment, I don’t exist. There’s just Shirah and the ball—the ball that is now midair, and her fist that flies at the speed of light. The thing that streaks across the net is no ball—it’s the full force of Shirah’s will. The ball hits the ground before the other team can even move.
The Purple Martens cheer, and the players form a circle around Shirah. Her blank expression melts, and I see her take a big breath, but that’s all. No huge smile. No laughter. No fists in the air. It’s the same face I saw her make as she finished her Bat Mitzvah speech. It’s the face of someone who knows she’s done her best.
* * *
• • •
While the team climbs into a van, Shirah comes over to where Max and I are standing. Max is trying to balance-beam along a chest-high brick wall, and I’ve been replaying Shirah’s rallying moment in my head: the fist, the kiss, the blast of power.
“Can I talk to you?” she says to me. She grabs my arm and pulls me away from Max. “Why did you bring him?” I can hear the contempt in her voice. She looks irritated, and she’s breathing hard.
“I didn’t bring him,” I say. “It was his idea to come. He didn’t want you to be alone at the game.”
She opens her mouth, as if to add another harsh comment, but instead, her expression softens. She glances over at Max where he’s walking heel to toe on the back of a bench.
“He wanted to see me play?” she asks. “Really?” She seems to consider this for a second. Then she turns to get in the van.
“Wait,” I say, and she stops. “Why do you close your eyes and kiss your fist before you serve?”
“Why do you want to know?” she asks, climbing in the van’s front passenger seat. “Why do you even care?”
How can I explain that she inspired me? How can I tell her that I wish I had power like hers? How do I say that I wish we could go back to the way things used to be? I can’t, so I say nothing.
“It’s private,” she says, and shuts the door.
The leaves have started changing. The Back 40 is no longer a wide wash of green. The final flowers of autumn, waving like stubborn flags, and the droning chirrup of crickets in the thicket are signs of life all around. And yet, there’s a feeling in the air: everything knows that the cold is coming. I wonder if this is the last winter in the Back 40. Next year, will this be a bunch of houses? Lawns? Driveways?
The excavator Max was climbing on back in September has been joined by a bulldozer and a backhoe. There’s a giant mound of dirt, beginning on the other side of the fence, leading to a squat row of trailers. There’s also a scattering of garbage: soda cans and Dorito wrappers, a few cigarette butts.
I head down to the pond, the pond where I failed RJ. I look down into the brown water. Standing here, I’m hit by a cold breeze, and the leaves rustle around me. The turning of the seasons brings a memory—not to my mind, but to my body. I can actually feel it.
I’m a little kid. I’m walking in the woods with Dad. Maybe right here, right here in the Back 40. Leaves on the ground. Cold hands, cold nose. Now I’m up high, bouncing along on Dad’s shoulders.
That’s it—as fast as it comes, the memory is gone.
I bike home as fast as I can. Mom is watching TV.
“Hey, honey,” she says. “Dinner’s in half an hour. Where are you coming from?”
“When I was little,” I gasp, breathless, “did Dad ever take me to the Back 40?”
“The Back 40?” she says, confused. She changes the channel on the TV and then changes it again. “He died before we moved here, Will. You know that.”
“I had this memory of being on Dad’s shoulders. I’m sure it was right there in the Back 40,” I explain.
“Memory can be funny like that,” she says. She turns away from me and rubs the back of her hand over her eyes. When we talk about Dad, Mom sometimes cries a little. It makes me feel bad for bringing him up.
“Okay,” she says, getting to her feet. “Enough of that.”
“Why do you always change the subject when I talk about Dad?” I ask.
“I don’t change the subject.”
“Yes, you do. I say the word ‘Dad,’ and you’re off to get ice cream. You said we’re having dinner in thirty minutes! I think you don’t want me to know about him!”
“Will!” she shouts, one hand raised, as if to block a punch, eyes squinted and brows furrowed. Then she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
“We lost your father,” she says. “And we miss him. But we have to move forward in life. We can’t spend it looking backward. I know I’m not a perfect mom, but I’ve been on my own for eight years now, and this is the only way I can manage.”
Before I can say another word, she turns and goes into the kitchen. She leaves an absolute silence, a silence so repelling, it pushes me upstairs and into my room. I shut the door as quietly as I can.
On the drive to the hospital, Rabbi Harris tells me that I’ll need to wear the booties, a sterile gown, and head cover again.
“And I need to give you the update on RJ’s conditi
on,” he says.
I nod.
He explains that the infection has caused swelling in his abdomen. It’s putting pressure on RJ’s organs. He’s on medication, but he’s in a fair amount of pain. Later in the week, he’s going to have an operation to reduce the swelling.
I open Rabbi Harris’s glove box, and I pull out two fruit pies. I hand one to him and open one for myself.
“If he’s in pain,” I say, “are you sure he wants me to visit?”
Rabbi Harris turns and flashes me a kind, sad smile.
“The day before you come to visit,” says Rabbi Harris, “he perks up. And for days afterward, he has more life in him. I don’t know what you guys do when you visit, or what you’re talking about, but whatever it is, it makes a big difference. He’s much happier because of you.”
On some level, I already knew this, but hearing Rabbi Harris say it out loud makes me want to cry. I take a huge bite of lemon pie, barely chew, and swallow hard. The bucket list is no longer only a promise I’ve made to RJ. It’s a promise I’m making to myself.
I resolve to do the next task without a word of complaint.
* * *
• • •
“Talent show?” I say. “No. No way. Please. I don’t have any talent.”
“Yes!” RJ says excitedly. “Halloween Spooktacular! This coming Saturday night! I saw it on the school website. All you have to do is put your name on the list, find a costume, and get onstage! You’ve been practicing, right?”
“Yes,” I say. “But—”
“Look, man,” RJ interrupts “I’m a drummer, and I’ve never played for a live audience. I really want to know what it’s like to be onstage. Where my music really counts.”
RJ has the blankets pulled up close to his neck, and despite the fire in his voice, he looks frail and weak, and the veins in his neck bulge when he talks.
“I’ve been onstage before,” I say. “We had a school musical in fifth grade. I can tell you all about it.”
In reality, Mom wrote a note to excuse me from participating, but I could probably come up with a convincing story.
“Stop trying to get out of it,” says RJ. “You’ve already used your free pass since you basically refuse to go swimming.”
I look away from him and sigh. On the one hand, he’s right. There’s no way out of this. On the other hand, people looking at me—especially a big crowd…That’s the scariest thing I can imagine. That’s even scarier than swimming in a murky pond. I sit there in silence.
“I don’t have drums,” I say. “All I have is the practice pad, and that won’t sound good.”
“Go lift up the towels off that box,” he says, pointing to the corner.
I go over to a large cardboard box in the corner, near the turtle, and lift a couple of folded white towels. Underneath is a crumpled red bow.
“Sorry about the crappy wrapping job,” he says.
I have a very bad feeling about this. I open the box’s flap, and the second I see inside, I am filled with incredible excitement and sadness, all mixed together.
It’s RJ’s drum set. Pots, pans, clipboards—everything.
“No, no,” I say. “No, no, no, no.”
“Yes!” says RJ. “I don’t play them anymore. You have to take them.”
“Why wouldn’t you play them?” I demand.
“I can’t really grip the sticks,” he explains. “The circulation in my hands is so bad, my fingers are numb. I don’t want to play like that; I’d rather not play at all.”
“You told me that drums are the only way you can escape this place,” I say. “You need the drums to escape.”
“No, I don’t,” he says. “Now I have something better.”
“What?” I say. “What’s better than drums?”
“In the past month,” RJ says slowly, “let’s see”—he counts on his fingers—“I finally got my own pet, I’ve gone to see Dog Complex, I’ve been to a school dance—I even got a slow dance—I went on the biggest roller coaster in Wisconsin, and I got a pair of sticks from my favorite drummer.”
He points above his head, where the sticks lie on a shelf.
“Believe me,” he says. “Every time we check something off the bucket list, I can see it. I can feel it. It belongs to me. I’d rather have that than a bunch of dented pots and pans.”
There’s nothing I can say to this.
“I’ll do it,” I say. “It’s just…I hate people looking at me.”
“I know,” says RJ. “Here.”
He pulls a frilly green-and-silver mask out from under his pillow.
“It’s from Mrs. Barnes. I traded it for a giant bag of Funyuns. I had a feeling it would come in useful.”
It’s Manzilla—the wrestler Mrs. Barnes and I cheered on during my second visit to RJ. That feels like a million years ago.
“Wear it,” he says. “And put together a drum solo and beat the crap out of those pots and pans and come back and tell me about it.”
“What if I’m not good enough?” I say quietly.
“You don’t have to do it perfectly,” he says. “You just have to do it.”
When I get home, I pull RJ’s bass drum pedal out from under my bed. It has a thin layer of dust on it. I’ve been using the practice pad, but I haven’t touched the pedal since he gave it to me.
I detach the mallet from the pedal housing. If RJ can make drums out of pots and pans, I can make a bass drum out of…something. I’ll know it when I hear it. I move around my room, knocking the mallet against random objects: boxes full of books and a Tupperware bin full of terrarium parts. They sound dead—no resonance, no vibration, no thump.
Mom’s room has nothing to offer: just her clothes, neatly hanging on the bar, and her shoes, side by side in a shoe organizer. Desperate, I even check the garage; maybe there’s something solid but hollow sitting out there.
Nothing.
I stand at the door to the basement. I don’t like to go down there—It’s dark and cobwebby and creepy—but I have no choice. It smells of mildew and mold, and I can feel my allergies flaring in the back of my throat. I walk around, hammering the mallet on whatever I can find. Bap-bap. Bip-bip. Bup-bup. Nothing sounds right. I try the box that an air conditioner came in: boom-boom. It sounds good, but it’s way too big. A metal filing cabinet: bang-bang. Wrong sound. There’s a box that says PASSOVER. Inside, I find some pie dishes, a Bundt pan, and a serving tray.
The serving tray could be useful as a platform for all of RJ’s metal pots and pans, but still, I need a thumpy bass drum. I continue to rummage as my allergies get worse and worse, my throat tightening and my eyes watering. Maybe I won’t have a bass drum.
I’m about to head back upstairs when I notice an old hard-shell suitcase, light blue with white trim. It looks like an antique. It doesn’t even have wheels, just a handle. I knock on it with the mallet, and it’s just the right bounce. It’s got two metal latches.
Pop-pop.
It’s full of random junk: a dry-cleaning ticket, a pine cone, a very beat-up baseball hat, a menu from a Chinese restaurant. I look around for somewhere to dump the contents. There’s an old wicker laundry hamper. I empty the suitcase, close it, and give it a few quick raps with the mallet.
Bump-bump-bump.
Perfect.
I grab the suitcase, along with a roll of silver duct tape from the kitchen closet, and bring it all up to my room.
There, I strap the board to the suitcase with a couple of leather belts. I arrange the pots and pans, copying RJ’s setup, and with long strips of duct tape, I attach everything to the serving tray. I place the drum pedal in front of the suitcase, propping it in place with a plastic box that once contained frozen feed grubs for my turtles. I sit down and pick up the sticks.
I begin with a simple rhythm on the clipboard, a
nd I hear RJ’s voice in my head: You can’t play it if you can’t say it.
Left, right, left, right. Left, right, left, right. Left, right, left, right. Left, right, left, right.
It’s a crisp, dry sound; the pace of marching feet. Now I double my speed, repeating in my head:
I can do it I can do it I can do it I can do it I can do it I can do it
It’s the chugging of a train engine. I play this for a while, and then I wonder: Could I double the speed again? Is that even a thing? Twice as fast? I loosen my grip on the sticks and lean forward, furrowing my brow in concentration, and I count off in my head: one, two, here we go!
Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em Lemme at ’em
It’s the buzz of a hornet. I add the bass drum, and additional fills and ruffs and accents.
I practice most of the night and after school the next day. I begin wearing the mask so I can get accustomed to playing without glasses. My hands and wrists and back are sore. The sun has set and my room is dark, but I haven’t stopped. My arms and legs are moving, flapping, flying independently, and just as I start to feel like I’m lifting clean off the ground, propelled on wings of sound and rhythm, I make the stupidest of all mistakes. I look down.
What if everyone gets bored? What if people yell for me to get off the stage? What if Jake and Spencer start the Turtle Boy chant?
I stop playing. This was a terrible idea.
I want to erase my name from the talent show list tomorrow, before it’s too late.
The smell of nut loaf wafts under my bedroom door. I hear Mom calling me for dinner. I slump down over my pots and pans. I can’t eat. I can’t get up.
A few minutes later, there’s a knock on the door.
“Will?” says Mom. “I’ve been calling you for dinner. Why are you sitting in here in the dark? And what’s on your face?”
“It’s a mask,” I say, pulling it off and replacing it with my glasses. “It’s for the talent show. If I play in the talent show.”
Turtle Boy Page 16