The Rule of Won

by Stefan Petrucha

  Ethan buffed the paper towels against his pants like he was shining shoes.

  “Well, Caleb, the human mind’s a funny thing,” he began, which made me feel even more like an idiot. “We think of all sorts of things. Millions of thoughts a minute. The thoughts we’re aware of are just the tip of an iceberg. Can’t control all of them, right? I’m sure everything in my life happened because part of me wanted it to, but I can’t be sure why. I think it happened maybe because it was part of my bigger purpose.”

  My mind flashed back to the day the gym collapsed. Had I been there for a reason? Was I secretly ashamed of being a slacker?

  “I don’t get it. You think you’re subconsciously punishing yourself?”

  He folded the paper towel in fours, tossed it out, and straightened his pant leg. “No. No, no, no. I think maybe I sent myself here to help out people like you, who really need it. I mean, look around. Who needs help more than Screech Neck? Some of you guys don’t even have cell phones.”

  He had on this half grin that might’ve been sheepish, but if you looked at it another way, it was smug. If he was trying to joke with me, I wasn’t laughing.

  “Cell phones?”

  The grin got wider. Smug. Definitely smug now. “Sure, you act like it’s okay, but it’s like you’re not part of the twenty-first century. If you ask the kids what college they want to go to, most don’t even know. And that’s the seniors. I mean, unless you have some idea of what you want to do with your life, you’ll never do anything, right, Caleb?”

  “Right.”

  Only . . . my ambition is to float.

  He slapped me on the shoulder on his way out. “If I’m here talking to you, you must have wanted me here for some reason, too. Maybe I’m here to help fix everybody.”

  I had another question, but the door closed behind him.

  I asked anyway, to myself, “Dude, are you sure we’re broken?”

  I stepped out in the hall and made my way toward the gym. There weren’t many people around. There never were when the Basket Cases played, but even so, this crowd was anemic. Searching for snacks, I spotted a nice old-fashioned corn popper in a red wagon in front of the gym doors. Even their freaking popcorn was special. Remembering my deal with Erica, I plopped down four bucks for two bags.

  As I reached the gym doors, which, of course, are these beautiful polished things that made you feel like you were entering the Emerald City from Oz, I spotted a familiar figure at the school entrance. It took me a while to realize who it was, because he wasn’t dressed in black and didn’t have undead eyes or black lips. Still, that size and shape could belong to only one man: Landon, the Goth who craved an Xbox, which sounds kind of like the title of a fairy tale.

  Only now, he was wearing tan pants and a blue hoodie. Turns out his hair wasn’t even black, it was kind of a sandy brown.

  The only reason I recognized him at all was because he was standing next to Screech Neck’s remaining Goth contingent, both of them. They’d obviously just arrived and were as surprised as I was by Landon’s appearance. As I watched the odd scene unfold, I absently tossed some popcorn into my mouth, surprised by how good it was.

  The one with spiked hair and a safety pin through his ear stated the obvious. “Landon, you look like a freaking sun worshipper. This a joke?”

  “I thought we were coming to goof on this lame-ass game,” the short thin one said. He had stringy bleached-blond hair and was decked out in black leather pants and button-down shirt (I didn’t even know they made black leather button-down shirts). His clothes were so tight, you could see his bones poking out. I had no idea how he breathed, or even if he was breathing.

  Landon glanced nervously around, then sighed. “I can’t do it anymore, Dingo. My Crave is here.”

  Dingo wasn’t buying. “Is this about that stupid F-box? You kidding me? Put in your contacts and get some lipstick on. You look like an idiot.”

  Landon took a lumbering step, as if ready to do as asked, but he stopped abruptly and waved his meaty hands in the air. “No, no. I . . . I have to be true to myself. I have to support the team. I have to support the Crave.”

  “Landon?! What are you . . .”

  He took a step away from them.

  Dingo’s eyes went from wide to angry to disgusted. “Fine. Screw it. And screw you, Landon.”

  “Dingo . . .”

  Dingo turned his back. “That’s it for you, man. That’s it. Enjoy your weird-ass book club. Come on, Rad, let’s go rent some DVDs and crash in your basement.”

  Rad, the little bony one, shook his head sadly at Landon, then turned his back.

  Landon stood there like an open wound, watching them leave.

  Ethan would probably say this was a good thing. Landon was getting rid of the negative elements in his life so he could devote more time to The Rule of Won. Landon’s parents, thrilled to see their boy’s “handsome face” again, would probably agree.

  Me, I wasn’t so sure. He looked like a big lost puppy dog.

  I stepped out. “Hey, Landon.”

  He half nodded, but didn’t speak as I stood beside him. We both watched Rad and Dingo as the glistening doors of the Emerald City closed behind them.

  Still chomping on some popcorn, I looked up at the big guy. “I know I don’t know you well, Landon, but ever since I first saw you at school you hung out with those guys. How long you known them?”

  “Since grade school,” he said wistfully.

  “Yeah, well . . . ,” I said. That’s what I say when I don’t know what to say. “I’m here with Vicky, Ethan, and Erica. Want to come hang with us?”

  “Okay,” he said quietly. I held out the popcorn bag and shook it. He held out his hands and I poured a good serving out. Truth was, he still looked weird in that hoodie. It was at least a size too small. I guess he didn’t have many non-Goth clothes to pick from. Still, he was a big guy, and people made a respectful path for us as we walked into the gym.

  With Regis flu-ridden and Screech Neck having all the school spirit of a slug, most of the seats were empty and some of the kids in the audience had stretched out across a few, planning to watch the game lying down, I guess. It was easy to spot Erica, way up in the back row. No sense in waving at her, her book was out on her lap as she wrote. Dylan was up there with her, looking all fidgety. Grace the groupie was next to him, bubbling with excitement. She saw me and nearly stood up as she waved at us.

  “Over here! Over here!” she shouted, and it, like, echoed through the gym.

  But where was Vicky?

  As I led Landon across the shiny scuff-free gym floor, I noticed that in the thin alley between the raised seats and the wall there were two figures standing close.

  Landon, looking where I was looking, said, “That Ethan?” He nodded toward the taller shadow. “Looks like he’s kissing some girl.”

  I heard Vicky’s voice saying, “Ooooooh,” like she was feeling faint.

  Forgetting Landon, I dove into the little alley. This was awkward, since I was wider than it and had to shimmy sideways. Vicky saw me and practically leaped away from Ethan. Not easy to do in that tiny space. She nearly smacked her head against the seats in an effort to put some distance between herself and Ethan.

  “Caleb!” she said. “I was . . . Ethan was . . .”

  Ethan cleared his throat. “I was just showing her the drawing Alyssa did for the game tonight.”

  I bet he was.

  Vicky grinned. “Yeah, I was being a real nag about it.”

  I bet she was.

  “I was just so impressed,” she added. She lifted a sheet from Ethan’s hands and held it toward me. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t take it, what with my hands holding two popcorn bags, but I looked at it, since that was much easier than, say, dealing with whatever Vicky and Ethan were really doing back here. And what was I going to do about it, really? Hit Ethan? Punch Vicky? Burst into tears?

  At least I had the picture to look at.
It was beautiful. Ethan’s kid sister had gotten the Regis gym so perfectly she must have visited just to do the drawing. It was in the same style as the Screech Neck picture, black ink and some kind of paint or wet marker for the colors. One of our players was making a basket and everyone was cheering. I remember being particularly impressed with how well she had done the shooter’s hands. Hands are tough.

  “Nice,” I said, hoping they would both read some deadly sarcasm into my one-word critique. Then I spun and headed out of the alley. Landon was waiting at the edge of the seats, and I led him up to the back, where we sat with the others. The bleachers creaked a bit from Landon’s weight, enough to make Erica look up from her spiral bondage. I used the opportunity to hand her one of the popcorn bags.

  Before taking it, she looked at Landon and said, “ The Rule makes strange bedfellows, eh?”

  “Got that right,” I said as Ethan and Vicky clambered up to join us. Vicky sat next to me and patted me on the leg. Ethan sat stiff-backed next to her and pretended to be looking at the rest of the gym. Occasionally, he whistled to himself. Erica gave them a wide-eyed look. I think she was pleased.

  “Going to offer me some popcorn?” Vicky asked me with a campaign-button grin.

  “I’m thinking no,” I said. I was afraid she was going to ask why, but she didn’t—and we got down to the serious business of watching the most stunningly lame game in the history of basketball.

  No, really. After the first five minutes, it made me want to put on vampire contact lenses and wear black lipstick. The Hurricanes were practically unconscious, dropping the ball, tripping over it, missing easy layups, screwing up like crazy. On our side, it was nice to see that Mike was actually a decent player. He even made a few good shots, but despite all that, for the entire game, Regis stayed ahead by at least two points.

  As the clock ticked away the remaining minutes of the fourth quarter with us still losing, Dylan, Landon, and Vicky looked stricken, deeply worried, horribly nervous. Erica would look up occasionally, then go back to her writing as if nothing important ever happened in the real world. Grace, bless her, never lost her grin, and Ethan? He just kept watching. Never moved his head, and he had that smug little smile on his face, like he knew the miracle was going to happen, and it didn’t matter what he was seeing.

  He spotted me watching him, grinned, then chanted softly, “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game. The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  Landon started chanting, too. “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  Vicky joined in. “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  She nudged Erica, who looked up as if she’d been asleep. “What? Oh yes. The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  I’d just popped a big handful of golden, delicious popcorn in my mouth when they all nodded at me to join in. “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game. The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  So, still chewing, I did. “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will . . . ack!”

  A whole kernel, probably the only one in the bunch that didn’t pop, had, as Joey likes to say, “gone down the wrong hole.”

  I started hacking. “Ackk . . . ackk.”

  The others kept chanting. “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  My coughing got so loud, a few players looked up at me from the court. Fortunately, they were Regis players, and their distraction let Mike dribble through and make a shot. The score was now 31–29 in favor of Regis.

  Erica leaned over and thwacked me on the back. The kernel flew out, and I could chant again: “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  The few kids there from our school, people who weren’t even members of the Crave, joined in: “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  Now Mike had the ball and was driving it madly down the court. Now half the tiny crowd was chanting:

  “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  One basket could tie it, then there’d be overtime. If that didn’t happen, it’d be over. Instead of picturing my spork and chanting, I clenched my hands and shouted, “Come on! Come on!”

  The Regis defense was coming up fast on Mike’s side, but he faked them out and drove for the net. The ball flew…

  “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will win this game.”

  . . . and hit the rim.

  It bounced straight into the waiting hands of a Regis player, who dribbled it back to the midcourt nice and slow, taking his time, running out the clock. With five seconds left and our boys bearing down on him, he passed it to someone else. Four seconds. It was passed again . . . only this time, Mike snagged it out of midair.

  As the clock hit two seconds, he was at the wrong end of the court. For the first second, he looked totally lost.

  This time, I joined in. “The Screech Neck Basket Cases will . . .”

  “Shoot!” his coach and half the audience screamed.

  He did. Up and away. The buzzer sounded with the ball in midair. From where we sat, it looked like the shot was way off, like it wouldn’t even reach the backboard.

  It didn’t.

  But it did hit the net when it went through. A three-pointer!

  Like the people said, the Screech Neck Basket Cases had won the game, 33–32!

  Dylan, Erica, Landon, Grace, Vicky, and Ethan flew up out of their seats, cheering. I leaped in the air and nearly fell off the back of the bleachers. Even some of the Regis kids cheered our guys.

  I landed just in time to see Vicky gave Ethan a big hug. Oh, it looked enough like a friendly hug, but I found myself not leaping up and down so much anymore.

  I stood there overwhelmed, feeling like I’d won something, feeling like I’d lost something more. I must have stayed that way a long time, because people began filing past me. Ethan patted me on the shoulder on his way out. So did Vicky, after she flashed me a grin. Landon wasn’t the touchy-feely type, but I could see he was smiling, too.

  Only Erica stopped and gave me a hug. It wasn’t a congratulatory kind of hug. More of an I’m-so-sorry-for-your-loss kind of thing.

  She whispered in my ear, “Maybe we can get together and imanifest a car accident for Ethan.”

  Erica, always with the death images. This one, though, I kind of liked.

  I guess she could tell I didn’t feel like talking, because she went on ahead with the rest of the crowd. Soon, I was alone in the gym, taking in the empty space, not really knowing what to feel.

  Realizing I wasn’t going to decide anytime soon, and realizing I still had to drive everyone home, I turned to leave, but before I did, I glanced back at the seats. I was still imagining Ethan and Vicky hugging, I guess, but I noticed something else. Erica’s book.

  It was totally bizarre that she had left it there. For Erica, it was kind of like leaving your head behind. I nabbed it.

  And yeah, of course I looked at it. I was secretly worried she’d left it behind on purpose for me to find, and there’d be some sort of note for me. Not an I-love-you note, more of a how-dare-you-look-at-my-journal note.

  But I flipped through it anyway. Y’ever see that horror movie The Shining, where Jack Nicholson’s wife finds the novel he’s supposedly writing, and it’s just the same thing written over and over again about how all work and no play made him a dull boy, and this proved, in a really creepy way, that he was totally psycho?

  Well, there it was, right in front of me, page after page after page after page, the same thing over and over again, in Erica’s small but immaculate handwriting:

  I will pass my next algebra test.

  I will pass my next algebra test.

  I will pass my next algebra test.

  I will pass my next algebra test.

  I mean, it filled the entire book.

  9

  • I would still like the greatest gaming system in the world, the Xbox. A 733 MHz Intel main processor and 233 MHz gr
aphics processor from nVidia create photorealistic graphics in real time. A huge hard drive stores saved games and characters, and a built-in Ethernet port enables super-fast multi-player online gaming over a broadband Internet connection. —Landon

  • My brother Dave is overseas. He taught me everything I know about skateboarding. He can do a terrific ollie. Lately, they’ve been sending him to some hot spots. We IM each other once a week when he’s at base. I have to get up at 3 A.M. to do it, but we were always really close. A friend of his got killed by an IED last week. When I tried to talk to Dave about it, he got all weird. So, screw the skateboard move, if this book actually works, what I really want most is to have him back home safe and sound, job done. —Alex

  • Shoes, check, tank top, check, but really, I’ve been feeling a little selfish lately, so now I’m thinking I should be worried a little more about all the problems in the world. I think we should work on world hunger or world peace or global warming or world something. —Beth

  • So is The Rule of Won, like, a miracle or what? School funding! Basketball winners! I was so excited about the game, I ordered this custom version of the “1” pin made of gold with some real diamond dust in it. It took all my allowance for a few months, but I’m not worried about that! The universe is one of eternal abundance! I don’t even know what to want next! —Grace

  • I have a friend hooked on crystal meth. He’s in the hospital now, and they say he might have some brain damage. I want him to be okay. —Jacob

  • The Rule rocks! My boyfriend and I are back together and I was made weekend manager at Barry’s Books! Everyone says my outlook has improved and I’m smiling all the time. Okay, so I haven’t gotten the little red Porsche I’ve been trying to imanifest, but I know it’s just a matter of time. —Colleen

  • I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. I will pass my next algebra test. —Erica