“I come to your meets,” she said as we approached my car. “I even go to those stupid tournaments. Do you think I like wrestling? Do you have any idea how bad it smells in there?”
I clicked the button to unlock the doors. “If you don’t like it, don’t come.”
Natalie planted her hands on her hips. “You should be more interested in what I do. You should be more supportive of me. I’m your girlfriend, after all.”
“I’m interested,” I said even though, at the moment, I was tempted to tell her that cheering is a lame excuse for a sport. I know cheerleaders can jump high and scream loud, but other than checking out their asses when they’re lunging into the air, no one really cares about them.
“If you’re not interested,” Natalie said, “maybe I’ll find someone who is.”
I climbed into my car. “Be sure to send me a wedding invitation.”
“Fuck you,” Natalie said. Then she turned and stomped toward the school.
I tore out of the parking lot. When I got home, I watched TV, getting up only to microwave some chicken. Natalie didn’t call my cell all evening and I didn’t try her either. I figured we were headed toward another breakup and, to be perfectly honest, I was fine with it.
By the time I went to bed, I was actually thinking that maybe this time it’d be for good. Maybe I’d find a younger girl, someone who looked up to me. Natalie was always treating me like an idiot, yelling at me and expecting me to take it.
The next thing I knew my dad was sitting on my bed, telling me she was dead. That she’d died with some other guy. Jake Kulowski, my dad said. Did you know him?
That whole night, after my dad told me about the accident, I kept thinking that if I’d gone to the Penfield game, Natalie wouldn’t have run off with Jake. She would have taken the bus. Or maybe I would have driven her home. The girls’ cheerleading coach liked me, so she probably would have let me do it. I never would have attempted to pass on that stretch of Penfield Road. I definitely never would have crashed into a cement truck.
four
As I crossed the lawn into school, I loosened my tie around my neck. It was a warm spring morning, too hot for a suit. Too hot for school, actually, for being cramped up at a desk, acting like I’m paying attention. I reminded myself that there’s only five weeks left until graduation. Hopefully summer will fly. By the end of August, I’m off to Fredonia and away from all this.
“Dakota!”
I turned around. Gina Robinson was waving and calling my name.
“Nice suit,” she said as she caught up with me.
“Thanks.”
Gina was a cheerleader friend of Natalie’s and one of the girls who was going to speak at the ceremony today. I always had the feeling Gina wanted to hook up with me, even back when Natalie was alive. She wasn’t my type, though. She had bulging eyes, almost like someone was strangling her. Also, Gina was a notorious gossip. Get together with her and the next day the whole school will be blabbing about the size of your dick.
“How’re you feeling about today?” Gina asked as she fell into stride next to me.
I shrugged.
“Have you heard about the poem?” Gina asked.
“What poem?”
“Supposedly Natalie used to write poetry,” Gina said. “I didn’t know that about her, did you?”
I shook my head.
Gina continued. “I guess Jake’s mom found this poem in his stuff that Natalie wrote for him. It was from the week before they died. She gave it to Natalie’s family. Supposedly it’s really deep. Natalie’s brother is going to read it today.”
I stared at Gina.
“I know,” Gina said, leveling her bug eyes at me. “I thought you’d want to know about that.”
I skipped homeroom. I shoved my bag into my locker, grabbed my iPod and the folder with the hall pass, and headed to the locker room. No one was around, so I sat on a long bench and lowered my face in my hands. I could hear the principal reciting the Pledge. I reached for my sports bottle and took a quick taste. Next came the girls’ and boys’ baseball scores from yesterday’s game. We creamed Rush-Henrietta six to nothing. My buddies and I were riding high at Burger King last night, everyone slapping my back because I batted in two runs.
The principal downshifted to his soberest tone. “The ceremony for Natalie Birch will commence in the auditorium at nine o’clock,” he said. “Attendance is mandatory. Students, come directly to the auditorium after first period. Anyone participating in the program should report to the auditorium at eight forty-five.”
I clutched my gut. I could feel the pain ripping into my stomach. I took another sip of Jack and Coke, changed into shorts, and headed downstairs.
When I stepped into the weight room, I spotted Coach Ritter at his desk. He’s been my wrestling coach for the past four years. Even though it’s baseball season, he’s still Coach to me. Anyone who doesn’t do wrestling doesn’t get it. It’s not like the other sports where you’ve got a whole team to back you up. With wrestling, it’s one-on-one, so there’s this instant camaraderie, a brotherhood of wrestlers. Only another wrestler will understand the pain you go through, how much you hate dropping weight, and how, as much as the sport sucks, you keep coming back for more.
Coach used to wrestle in high school and college, so he’s more like one of the guys than the other teachers. He teaches chemistry, but he also has a small office in the back of the weight room. Sometimes I go in there and talk with him. He can be tough, but he’s the only adult here who doesn’t treat me like a dumb jock. He was the person who encouraged me to apply to Fredonia. I was thinking I’d go to MCC, do community college for a year, but he said it’d be good for me to get away from home.
“Hey, Ritter,” I called out to him.
Coach looked up from his desk and saluted me.
“Okay if I work out?” I asked.
“Where’re you supposed to be?”
I held up the pass from the principal.
“Go for it,” Coach said. “But easy on the biceps. I heard you batted in two runs yesterday.”
I put on my iPod, pumped some heavy metal, and warmed up on the treadmill. I ran for a few minutes at a steady five mph jog and then turned it up to ten. As my sneakers pounded against the track, I began to forget Natalie, that poem, the ceremony. Whenever she drifted into my mind, I’d hit the arrow to increase my speed.
By the time I moved on to biceps, I was dripping with sweat. Guys won’t admit it, but we’re all obsessed with our biceps. I did three sets of ten reps, thirty-five pounds on each side. I knew I was pushing it, especially since we have practice this afternoon, but what the fuck. That was going to be my motto today. What the fuck.
Now I was ready to start benching. I glanced into Coach’s office. He was on a call, his chair rotated so he was facing the wall. He’d murder me if he knew I was benching without a spotter, but there was no one else in the weight room. And, besides, you’d have to be an idiot to drop the bar on yourself.
I headed over to the bench press. Back in wrestling season, I was in prime shape. I was wrestling at 145 and benching as much as 150. Now I’m a fat slob, my weight probably up to 158 or 159. And the last time I benched, I couldn’t do more than 120. Damn depressing.
I put seventy on both sides. Then, after another glance at Coach’s back, I added another five pounds each. One-fifty, baby. Time to get serious.
I lay down on the bench, gripped my hands on the bar, and unracked the weights. Oh, man, I thought as I brought it down. I was one weak motherfucker. As I heaved it up, my arms were trembling so bad I thought they might buckle. But I kept—two—pumping even though—three—the blood was rushing to my—four—head and I was struggling to—five—
“What the hell are you doing, Evans?”
Breathe.
Coach was standing above me. He wrangled the bar out of my fists and fitted it onto the rack. “I said, what the hell are you doing?”
“I’m benching,” I sputtered.
“Without a spotter?” Coach barked. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”
I didn’t say anything. Sometimes you just have to wait for Coach to finish. He cools off quickly.
“Listen—” Coach slipped twenty pounds off each side. “You do whatever you want on your time, but you’re not going to injure yourself on my watch. I’ll spot you, but take it easy. You were only doing one-twenty last week.”
Coach had me on 110 now. My pecs were killing and my triceps were strained, but I wasn’t about to tell him I couldn’t do any more.
I got my hands back in position. Coach unracked the bar again. I pumped out ten and then stared up at the ceiling, panting. I was just lifting my arms to do a final set when Coach said, “Hey, Evans, it’s almost eight thirty. You have to be up at the auditorium in fifteen minutes.”
I didn’t say anything as I gripped the bar. Coach unracked it and I did ten more reps, slower this time. When I was done, I sank my arms onto my chest. Baseball practice was going to be hell this afternoon.
Coach glanced at his watch and then gave me a long look. “You okay about today?”
“Yeah.” I wiped the sweat from my forehead and got up off the bench. “I’ll be fine.”
No one was in the locker room. I stripped down, grabbed a towel from the spare locker in the back, and headed to the showers. I cranked the water and stood under the spray, hoping the heat would ease the pain. I totally overdid it just now. Too much weight, not enough warm-up. I’ve been doing sports my whole life. I should have known better.
As I was drying off, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Gina said. I can’t believe Natalie wrote a poem for Jake. So that means there was definitely something going on between them when they died. I guess I’m not surprised. Natalie and I were on thin ice anyway. I just don’t understand why she didn’t end it with me before she began composing love sonnets for him.
It was five to nine as I crossed the atrium and headed toward the auditorium. There were kids pouring in from everywhere, chatting as they filed through the double doors. Whenever someone spotted me, they stared. That’s how it was after Natalie died, that expression of pity and intrigue and even a little respect.
I wondered how they’d look at me after Natalie’s brother read the poem. Then I’d have to walk up on the stage and, like an idiot, recite my speech about how I was her boyfriend and she was so great.
My stomach began burning. I veered into the bathroom and hunched over the sink. I splashed my face with water and then headed outside again. Just as I was rounding the corner, I practically slammed into Natalie’s brother.
“What’s up?” I said, stepping back. I hadn’t seen Timon Birch since the funeral in February. He was a junior at Dartmouth and a complete prick. It helped that he was away at college the whole time Natalie and I were together. But whenever he came home, I always got this condescending vibe from him, like he thought I was some low-class cop’s kid. I had the last laugh, though, because when he was backpacking in Europe last summer, Natalie went down on me in his brand-new Prius.
Timon was tall, practically a head above me, with an annoying flop of Ivy League hair. He smirked at me, but didn’t say anything.
I tensed my jaw. “I said what’s up?”
Timon muttered something that sounded like Hmph.
I was not in the mood for this. “Have you got a problem?”
“I’m just surprised to see you here,” Timon said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“It’s not like you’re going to be reflected in the most positive light.”
“Are you talking about that poem?”
“You want to hear it?” Timon reached into his pants pocket.
I could feel anger radiating through my body. “Are you trying to fuck with me?”
Timon unfolded the paper in his hands. As soon as I saw it, my stomach lurched. That was Natalie’s stationery, for sure. The same stuff she used when she slipped notes in my locker. I hadn’t thought about that since she died, how they always smelled like vanilla and fresh ink.
“For Jake.” Timon glanced down at me. “And so, finally, it makes sense. Even on a February night, I can feel flowers, sing songs, soak in sun—”
“Shut the fuck up, okay?” I shouted, pushing him in the shoulder.
A hush fell over the atrium. Kids hurried back from the doors that lead into the auditorium and gathered around us.
“What the hell are you trying to prove?” I asked. “That your sister was cheating on me? Great. Thanks.”
“I’m just saying”—Timon rubbed his shoulder—“that you thought you could treat her like crap and she’d take it. But she didn’t put up with all your shit. She had her own things going on.”
I visualized slamming his head into the wall, felt the satisfying crack of his skull.
Timon continued. “You know that necklace Natalie got you in the Bahamas?”
“What about it?” I asked, clenching my fists. Natalie and I had only been together a few months when she went on a vacation with her family. Things were good with us back then. We hadn’t even broken up once. We chatted online every day of her trip and, when she got home, she brought me a T-shirt and a white puka-shell necklace. The shirt got wrecked in the dryer, but I still wear the necklace every day.
“Some guy at our resort gave it to her,” Timon said, “to remember the time they spent together. You know, the long walks on the beach, the—”
I shoved Timon in the chest. He went stumbling backward a few steps but then regained his footing, lunged forward, and pushed me hard. I pushed him again. He drew his arm to punch me, but before he could make contact I dropped onto my knee, wrapped my arms around his legs, and drove my shoulder into him.
Timon fell to the ground with me straddling him. I was just getting ready to pound his face when, all of a sudden, I felt intense pain. Someone was gripping my shoulder, yanking me off Timon, shoving me into the wall.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Coach Ritter shouted. He was breathing fast and I could see veins pulsing in his temples.
I craned my head around Coach. Timon was standing up, shaking out his suit. A couple girls were fluttering around him, offering to fetch ice from the nurse.
“Come with me,” Coach barked, grabbing my elbow.
Neither of us said a word as he steered me through the halls, down the stairs, and into the weight room. He propelled me into his office and jabbed a finger at his chair.
“I’ll be back,” he said as I slumped down. “Don’t move an inch.”
five
I got a week’s vacation. That’s the automatic sentence for fighting. I’d never been suspended before because, other than minor shoving, I hadn’t been in full-fledged combat on school premises.
Coach was the one who handed down my punishment. It’s usually the vice principal, but I have a feeling he let Ritter do it because of the circumstances, Natalie’s ceremony and all. I ended up waiting in Coach’s office for an hour, spinning around in his chair, reading the memos on his walls. He was probably up in the auditorium. I wondered what would happen in the slot when I was supposed to give my speech. My name was in the program and everything. I wondered who would lead people down the hall to see Natalie’s plaque.
At ten, Coach opened his office door, gestured to the folding chair, and said, “Move it.”
I stood up, wincing in pain. My left knee was smashed from where I’d dropped onto the floor when I took Timon down.
Coach sat in his chair, leaned forward so he was looking me in the eye, and said, “What the hell were you doing up there, Dakota?”
Coach never calls me by my name. I was in deep shit. I looked down at my shoes. I wasn’t going to whine about the crap Timon said to me, how he was asking for it.
“I know emotions were running high,” he added, “but I always tell you guys that you’ve got to walk away. Especially now that you’re eighteen. You’re not a minor anymore. You don’t want pe
ople pressing assault charges, do you?”
“No,” I said.
“I spoke with Mr. B,” Coach said. “You’ve got five days. Nothing I could do about that.”
“What about baseball?”
“Out for a month. That means you’ll miss the rest of the year unless you guys win sectionals.”
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Watch the language,” he said, reaching for his phone. “What’s your number?”
“You mean my home number? Who’re you calling?”
“Parents have to be notified when there’s a fight. Mr. B wanted me to get your dad in for a conference, but I convinced him that a phone call would do. It’s your first time.”
Now this was really starting to suck. After fourteen years as a sergeant, my dad had no tolerance for juvenile delinquents. Also, it was just a few minutes after ten, so he was still asleep.
“Your number, Dakota.”
I recited the digits. As he dialed, I prayed it would go through to voicemail. I prayed Coach would tone down the description of the fight. I prayed my dad would take Natalie’s death into consideration.
“Hi, Mr. Evans? This is Curt Ritter, the wrestling coach over at the high school.”
Coach covered the receiver for a second and mouthed, Wait for me out there. Then he pointed to the bench press. As I limped outside, he closed the door.
After a few minutes, he emerged from his office. His broad face was stern. “Your dad wants you home right now,” he said.
I stood up slowly. This was going to be fun. People sometimes say I have a temper, but believe me, it’s nothing compared to my dad.
Coach escorted me out of the weight room. When we reached the door, he said, “I expected more from you, Dakota.”
I tossed my coat onto the passenger seat and pulled out of the student parking lot. It was ten twenty on Friday morning. It’s not like I love school, but no one wants to get suspended. And now baseball season was fucked. The guys were going to kill me. I’m always good for a run or two. Maybe three if I’m pumped.
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