“Son, I was talking about when you’re older. You still don’t know what the right fit is for you. I understand how you’re feeling. You think you know what you want, but you don’t. You have to trust us. Your father only wants the best for you.”
“Of course he does. Dad never does anything wrong.” I stood up and threw my backpack over my shoulder. “Dad does everything right, so he’ll respect our agreement. I’m sure he doesn’t want to set an example for his son that demonstrates how he goes back on his word when it’s convenient for him.”
“I won’t go back on it,” he calmly assured.
“Then I can stay in the public school as long as I pass.”
“If you get good grades. I won’t break my promise, but you can’t change the terms of the agreement.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll get good grades,” I grumbled. “If I fail I’ll have to go back to that disgusting private school you sent me to—”
“It’s the best—”
“It’s like a military prison. No, in fact, that’s exactly what it is. And you shouldn’t worry. Knowing I could end up back there again is the best motivation I could have to study. I will pass. Now I’m going to school . . . and I’m walking.”
A block away from school I was still angry with my parents. Since I’d come out of the subway station, I’d been dribbling a soccer ball, dodging pedestrians and streetlights to maintain control of the ball. But even that didn’t help me forget about the discussion at breakfast. My father’s voice echoed in my head.
I concentrated on the ball like there was nothing else in the world. I worked hard to control it, treating it as if it were an extension of my own foot, making contact with it exactly where I needed to so it would go in the direction I wanted it to at the speed I wanted it to. For a short while it was just me and the ball. Everything else was just an obstacle to overcome . . . and then the image of my father crept back into my mind again—against my will—along with the bitter taste left by the argument we’d had. His words were still resounding in my ears when I suddenly realized I couldn’t go forward.
A foot was resting on my soccer ball. Even before I looked up I knew who that foot belonged to. It was Eloy—the real one—not the deformed one who had invaded my dream. His friends were with him, naturally—the three idiots with zero personality who always laughed at his stupid jokes and were ready and willing to do anything Eloy told them to do. And there were precious few nice things Eloy would order those three to do.
“Good morning, you little waste of space,” Eloy greeted me mockingly.
He was a year older than me, half a foot taller and considerably bulkier. But I went up to him without saying a word and stretched my leg out to get the ball back. With one swift kick Eloy passed it to one of his friends.
“Aren’t you even gonna say hi?” he asked me. His friends smiled. “You are so rude.”
“I didn’t hear you,” I replied without responding to the provocation, willing my voice to sound indifferent. “You mind letting me get by?”
“You worried about being late to class?” Eloy came closer. “I guess you’re not a complete butt head, so if you want to pass, no problem.” He stepped aside. “We’re just gonna keep your ball and play a while. You don’t mind, do you?”
“And if I don’t give it to you?”
“Then we’ll give you something else.” Eloy smacked his fist into the palm of his open hand as he spoke. “We’ll give it to you right in your mouth. How’s that sound?”
I had no idea how I was going to get out of the situation. There was no way I could win a fight against all of them. And there was nothing I could say that would placate Eloy. It was well known he was a troublemaking flunkey who was always looking for a fight. He thrived on intimidating people.
“Why do you want my ball?”
I pounced at the ball in a vain attempt to get it back, but Eloy was quicker. He passed it to one of his friends, who in turn passed it to another.
“You’re really slow,” Eloy chided.
The ball made its rounds among them. When one of them would pass it to another, he’d look at me and make some cutting remark. Then they’d all laugh. I never tried to get it back; I knew if I failed it would only make the obnoxious comments worse.
“Come get your ball, pretty boy.”
“He can’t move, the poor thing.”
“You gonna cry? I bet so.”
I didn’t look them in the eyes. I stayed still, watching the trajectory of the ball out of the corner of my eye. But I was mostly focused on Eloy.
“I can see you and your friends are having a blast,” I said, controlling my voice so it didn’t show the frustration and powerlessness I was feeling. “How nice. I’ve heard it doesn’t take much to entertain a bunch of morons.”
In response to that slam, Eloy’s expression hardened. He didn’t see the ball coming toward him. It ricocheted off his foot and I caught it.
“Give it to me or we’ll have to take it from you.”
I took a quick step to one side, but they immediately surrounded me. There was no way out.
“Okay,” I said. “Here you go.”
I put my foot under the ball and lifted it up a little. Eloy gestured for me to give it to him, and that haughty, arrogant gesture infuriated me. It wasn’t enough for him to steal from me; he had to lord his superiority over me, too.
So, at the last minute, I took the ball in my hands and dropped it. Before it hit the ground I kicked it with all my might. The ball shot up and over the security gate of a nearby building.
“Oops—how clumsy of me. Looks like neither one of us gets it now.”
If I had given it to him without a fight, maybe nothing would’ve happened right away. But the next day he would’ve demanded something else from me. Eloy would have tagged me as someone he could abuse whenever he felt like it.
“You’ll be sorry,” growled Eloy.
As soon as I saw the nasty look contorting his face, I knew it wasn’t one of the best ideas I’d ever had. But there was no going back.
I barely dodged a fist coming straight for my stomach. Adrenaline flowed furiously through my body. I was going to defend myself as best I could, but Eloy’s friends grabbed my arms and held me back. I couldn’t avoid the next blow; it hit me right where he’d aimed the first one. It knocked the wind out of me. I groaned and doubled over, now almost flat on my face on the ground.
“I bet now you’re sorry you didn’t give it to me, tough guy.”
Eloy’s friends burst out laughing.
“He didn’t get the message, Eloy. Give him another dose so he remembers not to try the brave act next time.”
“If you insist . . .”
I saw Eloy’s foot pull back to gather momentum. In a few seconds I’d be reeling from a painful kick—probably to my face. There was no way I could avoid it; his goons were still holding both my arms back. I was fuming with rage when I suddenly noticed an odd detail about Eloy’s leg. There was a bulge on his knee that, for some reason, had captured all my attention.
I gathered all my strength and managed to get myself upright. Guided by desperation I immediately kicked straight at Eloy’s knee, hitting my target—the bulge I’d seen. Eloy howled and fell to the ground. He grabbed his knee, his face twisted in pain. I took advantage of his friends’ confusion to writhe away from them and make my escape. I took off running as fast as I could.
As the door of the school got closer and closer, my strides got faster and faster. My heartbeat drowned out all sound—except one. It was a sound that scared me though I wasn’t sure why: the crunching sound of Eloy’s knee.
And then I remembered. It was the same sound I’d heard in my dream when Eloy was acting like a monster and his knee had given out as he’d tried to kiss Claudia for the first time.
Math class had just begun when I opened the door to the classroom. The teacher glanced at me with a look of reproach but then let me off with a warning that if I wasn’t more punctual, the next time I would no
t be admitted. I apologized and walked to my seat amidst the stares of my classmates.
“You look like hell,” whispered Ivan, who was seated next to me.
I took out my math book and opened it to some random page.
“Bad night,” I said as I was putting on my glasses. Usually I only needed glasses to read and watch TV, but since I was seated in the last row I had to use them if I wanted to be able to see the chalkboard without squinting. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“Looks like it. Page 124. Did you do the homework?”
“No. And don’t give me any crap. I get enough of that from my dad.”
Ivan had been my friend since I was little and was the main reason I wanted to go to the public school. I had never fit in at the private schools my dad had sent me to. Well, years ago I hadn’t had any problems there but by the time I was a teenager, something changed for me. The more I was around all those rich kids, the less comfortable I felt with them. There were some nice ones, like anywhere else, but little by little money became too important to them. Pretty soon the name brand on your clothes or the kind of car your dad drove was what mattered most. When you were eight you didn’t notice stuff like that, but at fourteen those status symbols became the criteria by which you judged everybody else and established the popularity scale. It wasn’t long before I started noticing my classmates’ contempt toward the kids who came from families who were less well off.
I wasn’t totally conscious of it until I saw several of my classmates making fun of Ivan one day when he’d come to meet me after school. I got into a fight with one of the ringleaders and that was the beginning of my periodic visits to my father’s psychologist who would eventually label my issue as “problems with authority.” It took me two years to convince my father that I really didn’t want to go to that school anymore, and I might never have been able to convince him if I hadn’t been about to be expelled. I’d confronted a teacher who’d given me a bad grade on a test I’d actually studied for. I didn’t deserve a failing grade. But the teacher hated me—with good reason. I was constantly interrupting his class and took advantage of every opportunity to cause trouble. The school was very strict, so it was a common practice to start disciplinary proceedings for the kind of outburst I’d had—and for much less, actually. The truth is, they should have expelled me after the scene I’d made. But I’d gotten out of there with an unblemished academic record and I knew it was due to my father’s influence.
Maybe the psychologist was right. Maybe I did unjustly see my father as the enemy and projected that onto my teachers or any other authority figures in my life. Or maybe I simply had been saddled with one or two jerks for teachers. Whatever the reason, I hated being under my father’s “protection” and pushed for the right to follow my own path—outside his realm of control and closer to my lifelong friend.
“If you keep not turning in homework, you’re gonna fail,” Ivan reminded me.
“There are lots of people in this class. There’s no reason for her to single me out and ask for it.”
Luck was unfortunately not on my side.
“You can’t afford to be coming in late,” scolded the teacher. She was now standing beside my desk. “And then on top of that, you interrupt my class by talking while I’m explaining the lesson.”
“I’m sorry,” I answered as humbly as I could. “I was asking Ivan for a pen. Mine’s not working anymore.” I held it up shook it as a demonstration of my innocence.
The teacher’s expression was stern.
“All right then. Since your pen isn’t writing and you like interrupting class, you should probably go to the board and use the chalk to do the problems that were assigned for homework. I assume you’ve done them?”
“Naturally,” I assured her. “I always do the homework.”
I heard several students’ stifled laughter. I’d turned in my homework only half the time—at most—and it was common knowledge the teacher had warned me that she’d fail me if I continued skipping the homework.
The teacher went up to the board and picked up a piece of chalk. I took advantage of the second she had her back turned to snatch Ivan’s notebook out of his hands. He looked shocked to see his homework disappear right from under his nose.
“You suck,” he whispered.
I went to the front of the classroom, my lips curved slightly into a smile, feeling the weight of the other students’ stares once again. I saw an amused, expectant, almost defiant gleam in some of their eyes. And those eyes wanted to see me fail.
“My homework,” I said, leaving the notebook on her desk.
The teacher quickly glanced at the exercises.
“Fine. To the board—no, without the notebook. If you really did the exercises yesterday you won’t have any trouble doing one of them in front of the class.”
And I didn’t. I may not have been disciplined and I didn’t like doing homework but I was good at math. I solved the system of equations the teacher dictated without any problems. I only made one mistake, but I fixed it before anyone noticed the error. I wouldn’t even have made it if my head hadn’t been spinning with everything that had happened that morning. When I finished and turned around to face the class, I could see the other students’ interest in me had faded considerably.
“Take your seat,” ordered the teacher curtly.
I happily obeyed. The teacher had been looking for some way to trip me up but she hadn’t found it, and now she had to let me off the hook. The look on her face—brimming with the pent-up rage she was desperately fighting to keep out of her tone and her words—amused me to no end. I was still gloating when I sat back down at my desk.
Ivan did his best to fake an admiring smile.
“Ivan!” called the teacher. “You were talking, too. Give me your homework.”
I tried not to make a face as Ivan’s smile vanished in a split second. I didn’t succeed.
Ivan was pretty annoyed with me. He managed to remain aloof as I apologized repeatedly during the next two classes, and actually went almost a half hour without speaking to me at all. But when we got to the soccer field I knew he couldn’t stay mad much longer.
“I still think you’re an asshole. Don’t laugh, you jerk. I took a zero thanks to you.”
I moved off to the right, away from him. “You think now is the best time to discuss this? A zero’s not so bad. Forget about it. Besides, it was your fault.”
Ivan left his position and headed toward me.
“My fault! I saved your ass with my homework!”
“Go back to your spot, retard,” I replied, starting to get a little annoyed. “And yes, it was your fault. You’re the one who started talking to me during class and that’s why the teacher busted us.”
Ivan stopped walking, scowled and scratched his chin. “I don’t know how you manage to twist things around like that,” he grunted.
I smiled without looking at him. “Because down deep you know I’m right. C’mon, go back to your position or they’re gonna score on us.”
The opposing team was coming toward Ivan and me. We were playing defense. The goalie yelled at Ivan to cover his zone. Ivan finally reacted, too late to stop the other team’s forward from taking a shot but just in time to interfere enough so he missed it. The ball went out of bounds a few yards from the goal box. Not even close.
“Stop your blabbing or I’m gonna break your legs!” howled the goalie. “Run a little, you tools! And somebody get over there and score a goal right now! Losers!”
“We’ve got it under control!” Ivan shot back. “No need to freak out.”
“Maybe he’s freaking out because we’re losing,” I pointed out. Ivan was about to say something, but he was so out of breath from all the running that he managed only to let out a snort that sounded like something between a bray and a bark. “Stop thinking about math and concentrate on the game—which, by the way, we are still getting trounced at. And you just keep playing like crap!”
I jogged back ov
er to cover my position—and to deny my friend the chance to protest. I really wanted to win this game. We played a match almost every day at lunch time against teams from other classes in a small intramural league we students had set up ourselves. There were ten teams and we were second-to-last in the standings. We’d been playing for two weeks straight and hadn’t won a single game. Needless to say, I was hell-bent on breaking our losing streak.
And now today we were only losing by one goal. If we could score, we’d be tied. We shouldn’t have been losing all the time; we weren’t that bad . . . well, there were a couple of guys who moved like they had two left feet but the team as a whole should’ve been in the top three—or at least not at the bottom of the rankings.
The goal that tied things up came a few minutes later in a play that was more about luck than skill, but it was a goal all the same. And the score is, after all, the only thing that counts in soccer. A wave of euphoria washed over me as I gave the forward who’d scored the goal a congratulatory slap on the back.
“Awesome, man! One more and we’ll give ‘em what they deserve!”
The team’s morale skyrocketed.
“I wanna see another goal in the next five minutes!” roared our goalie. “If not, you’ll deal with me, you pack of losers!”
The ball had just gotten back in play when some girls sat down at the edge of the field to watch the game. Claudia was there, as pretty as she’d been in my dream—no, even prettier—with her long, shiny, flowing hair and her dazzling eyes . . .
“Wake up, you dork,” Ivan called out. “If they score another one on us because of you, I swear I’ll kick your balls off.”
“You suck worse than anyone on this team. Worry about your own zone,” I snapped.
I was hoping he hadn’t figured out what had distracted me. There were just a few minutes left before the end of lunch hour and we were still tied. The ball ricocheted out from a collision in the middle of the field, rolled away from all the players there and stopped at my feet. I reacted with lightning speed. By the time the rest of the players realized what had happened I had already passed the center, running full out, the ball practically glued to my feet. It was incredibly easy to slip past the first opponent that tried to stop me—I just had to shift my direction a little and then left him behind. He couldn’t keep up with me.
Get Out of My Dreams Page 2