THE CONFESSION
THE WAR DIDN’T END WITH AN APOLOGY. IT ENDED WITH SOMETHING else. A phrase that somebody had cooked up and started passing around. An inside joke that didn’t stay inside for long. Even if you didn’t know what it meant, you could probably ask the person next to you and they would tell you. Or you could figure it out from the way Wolf dropped his bag and pushed Bench up against the wall, escaping through the back door before anyone could stop him.
One last message on locker B78, in permanent marker that couldn’t be scrubbed off, that would have to be painted over in order to cover it completely.
TOTAL ROMAN
Nothing. Almost nothing. Nonsense. Except it wasn’t. Because words don’t always mean the same thing to everyone. Because their meanings can change. And because word gets around.
And because this wasn’t the first time.
I told you I knew how the war began and how it ended. I told you it began with Ruby Sandels, but that wasn’t true either. It started long before that.
It starts the moment people see you for the very first time. Standing on the corner. Waiting in line. Walking down the hall. They get an idea in their heads. Maybe it’s because of your shoes or your haircut or the kind of phone you have. Maybe it has to do with the neighborhood you’re from, what team you’re on, whose side you take. Whether you look at the other person the right way or even look at them at all. Whether you are too small or too big or too just-right. Maybe you like the wrong kinds of movies. Maybe you’re in the wrong kinds of clubs. Maybe you’re just the easiest target.
It starts on a day in early September, a little over a year ago. The beginning of seventh grade. Still warm enough to dash out and check the mailbox in bare feet but cool enough that you tucked your hands into your sleeves while waiting for the bus. Me and Wolf, sitting in the locker room before gym, getting changed. A couple of kids we hardly know look over and see us looking back at them without their shirts on. One of them says to Wolf, “What’re you lookin’ at, homo?” The other laughs.
That’s it. A word. A nudge. I don’t think much of it. I’d been called the same for even less. I can’t even remember who said it that day, whether it was Jason or Cameron. It could have been either of them. It could have been anybody. Wolf looks down at the tiled floor, then over at me as if to say, Can you believe those guys? And I shrug, as if to say, Just forget it.
And I did. But Wolf didn’t. Because sometimes words are like shadows. They follow you around.
It doesn’t take much. A poem. A catch. A glance. A roll of the dice. And it doesn’t matter what’s true and what isn’t. Doesn’t matter what you think you know about yourself. The things you have the guts to tell people and the things you don’t. You get your label, and then you get ignored, or sometimes you get teased, but mostly you go about your business, thinking things that you would never say out loud, not to someone’s face.
Because there are some words you know you can’t say. Not out loud. Not without getting into serious trouble. You might whisper them to your friends, but you would never write them down. Instead you find some other way. A secret code. An inside joke. Something you’ve been whispering to your buddies for the past two weeks. Something they start to whisper, till it catches on. He’s so Roman. It spreads. And everyone knows what it means, but nobody says anything.
Until it’s written on your locker for all the world to see.
Wolf didn’t show up at all for first period. I squirmed in my seat all through English, kept glancing at his empty desk. Twice I twisted around to look at Cameron and them, but they just stared straight ahead, completely enthralled, it seemed, with a lecture on the dangers of hubris, Mr. Sword asking us, again, if we thought the characters in J. C. deserved what was coming to them. If justice had been served. I had my doubts.
After class I pulled Deedee and Rose aside and told them what happened. Deedee let out a grunt like I’d just punched him in the gut. Rose looked stone-faced.
“Any idea who put it there?” she asked.
I had ideas. She probably had the same ideas. But neither of us knew for sure. Like most of the messages that came before it, the message on Wolf’s locker didn’t come with a signature.
“Do you think he went back home?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know where else he might have gone. Outside of his parents and his older brother, the people who cared most about him were standing right here.
The bell for second period clanged above us. Rose chewed on her lip, clearly working something out in her head. Then she said she’d catch up with us later. I walked with Deedee to math.
“It was probably Cameron, that prick,” Deedee spit. “Trying to get us back. I knew something like this would happen.”
I didn’t bother to remind him that he was the one who said it was over. That we’d won. It could have been any of them. Cameron. Jason. Noah. Or somebody else they knew. Somebody they put up to it. “It might not be that hard to find out,” I said. Maybe it was just a matter of asking the right person.
Rose intercepted us by Deedee’s locker right before lunch. “Grab all your stuff,” she said. “We’re leaving.”
“Now?” I asked.
Rose glanced around, keeping her voice low. “We can’t very well call him, can we? So we’re leaving. He needs us.”
“But we’ll get in trouble,” Deedee said.
“Wolf’s in trouble,” Rose said. “Do you want to roll for it or can we just go?” Deedee shook his head. She looked at me for backup.
“Right behind you,” I said. Deedee groaned as he nodded.
We let Rose take point.
We used the door by the gym. There was a moment of hesitation, crossing the threshold, that sense that what you are doing is wrong on some level. But it was a really low level by comparison, so I quickly got over it. And it was easier with Rose in the lead, striding purposefully through the door like she owned the place. Rose Holland is going to do whatever Rose Holland wants to do. Bench had called that one. For a second I thought he should be here with us. That he should be the one marching us out the door instead.
No. Not instead. Too. He should be here too.
We skulked across the school parking lot and crossed the street, walking for a long ways in silence until Deedee couldn’t stand it any longer. “What happens when we don’t show up next period?”
Rose shrugged. “The teacher makes a note of it. Probably somebody calls our parents and tells them we weren’t in class.” She didn’t sound at all concerned. I was pretty sure she’d done this kind of thing before.
“And what am I supposed to tell my parents?”
“You tell them a member of the tribe was in trouble,” I said. Rose turned to smile at me. I gave her one right back. Deedee wasn’t finished panicking, though.
“What do we do if he’s not at home?”
“We go looking for him,” Rose answered.
“Looking where?”
“Everywhere,” she said.
I suddenly had this image of Wolf on his brother’s moped, taking the highway out of town. Except he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t run away from home. He wouldn’t leave us. Not over this.
“And what do we even say when we find him?”
Rose turned and put her hands on Deedee’s shoulders. It reminded me of the night we played Dungeons & Dragons and she grabbed his hand and told him anything was possible. This time he didn’t even flinch. “We’ll figure it out,” she said. “The important thing is that we are there for him. All of us.”
We didn’t have to hunt Wolf down, though. We didn’t even have to knock on his door. I heard a sound, like the pop of a firework, as soon as we turned down his block. Then I spotted him, standing in his backyard, holding a baseball bat. He saw us coming—he looked right at us for a moment—but then he went back to what he was doing without so much as a nod.
He stood on his cement patio with that aluminum bat—probably left over from his brother Simon’s days in Little League.
At his feet sat a parade of to-scale painted tanks and airplanes and sports cars, all lined up single file. It had to be his entire collection, brought down from his bedroom. Wolf had taken one of the bar stools from his kitchen and set it in the grass at the edge of the cement. An aircraft carrier—the one from his dresser—sat on top, sticking out over the edges.
The three of us came up to the gray picket fence that lined Wolf’s backyard, tall enough to reach Deedee’s chin. Rose called out his name.
“Go away,” he said, just loud enough for us to hear. He adjusted the grip on his bat. I’d seen almost all of these models. I’d heard their names, their histories, how long it had taken to build each one. I’d even helped him glue a piece on here and there. I knew the aircraft carrier was one of his favorites—it had taken him six weeks to put together. Which is why I dreaded what was about to happen.
Wolf spread his feet and swung the bat, driving it hard into the hulking ship.
Crack.
The U.S.S. Enterprise exploded, a dozen miniature fighter jets shooting into the sky before landing in the grass, nose first, the deck of the ship splintering and flying off into a bush. The majority of the hull soared ten feet before sinking into the lawn, an unsightly gash in its side. Beside me Deedee jumped involuntarily.
I surveyed the yard and my stomach felt like it was suddenly full of squirming maggots. This wasn’t the first casualty. There were already pieces everywhere, half hulls and busted chasis. Wolf’s backyard had been turned into a plastic scrap heap, turrets and wings and wheels and engines, scattered and broken, littering the ground. It looked like a war zone. I thought of my uncle Mike. What were the render safe procedures here? Probably he’d say that it was too late. That the bomb had gone off already. Probably he’d say to take cover and keep your head down.
Something pinched my arm and I looked to see Rose holding on to me. Wolf bent over and took a model car—a red Corvette—and set it on the stool. He wasn’t crying, though it looked like maybe he had been. If anything, he looked distant now. Determined. His lip curled as he took his stance again, bringing the bat over his shoulder.
“Wolf, man. Hang on,” I said, but he swung anyways, the Corvette taking it in the trunk and sailing out over the yard, fifteen feet or more. Wolf, apparently not satisfied, walked casually over to the model and proceeded to smash it to pieces. Swing after swing. You could hear the plastic splintering, see the red shards popping up out of the grass.
“Wolf, stop,” Rose shouted. She started to circle around the fence toward the gate, but a look from Wolf made her pause. Don’t get too close, the look said. I don’t want you to get hurt. He walked back to the porch and selected another model—a B-29 Superfortress—setting it gently on the stool, positioning it just right. He glanced back at us and I could see the humiliation in his eyes.
“Leave me alone,” he said, hefting the bat to his shoulder again. “Go home.”
“Wolf, seriously,” Rose said. “Put the bat down. It’s going to be all right. Tomorrow we can go talk to Principal Wittingham. We can find out who wrote it. We’ll get it taken off your locker. Just let us come in.”
Wolf dropped the bat to his side. “What difference does it make? So they clean my locker or give me a new one? They’re just going to write something else on it. It’s not going to end. Your stupid ride. That stupid apology. None of it made any difference, just like I said.” He turned back to the stool. “Besides. I’m not going back to that school again.”
The bat went up. Swung forward. Crack. I winced as the bomber snapped in two, its tail end twisting, propellers spinning skyward.
Wolf reached for another.
I looked to Rose. She stood there with her hands gripping the curved points of the fence, like a row of spears. Good fences make good neighbors. That’s what the poem said. But there was Wolf, destroying something he’d worked so hard to build, piece by piece, and us on the other side, only feet away though it seemed like so much farther. I thought about all the times I’d been to this house. Standing in this same backyard chucking water balloons. In his driveway lighting bottle rockets. Sitting on his couch watching TV. Standing outside his living room, listening to him play, note after perfect note, afraid that if I got any closer, he’d stop.
Now I was afraid that he wouldn’t. There were still a dozen models by his feet, but at the rate he was going, there would soon be nothing left.
“Wolf, let’s just talk about it,” I said.
He turned and glared at me. At us. “Forget it!” he snapped. “Just leave me alone.”
Rose looked at Deedee and me. I’d never seen her panicked before, not even staring down the mouth of the Gauntlet, but at that moment she looked lost. “What should we do?” she asked. “You know him better than I do.”
I wasn’t sure that was true anymore. Back when it was just the four of us, it was easy. We all knew our place. We counted on Deedee for the drama. We counted on Wolf to be reasonable. We counted on Bench to stick up for us. But here was Wolf, no longer reasonable, slugging away at his models, and Bench nowhere to be seen.
And me? What did we count on me for?
Standing on the other side of the fence, watching Wolf destroy the things he loved, I realized I hadn’t done anything. This whole time, I’d simply stood there and watched, a part of the chorus, afraid to speak up, afraid I’d somehow make it worse.
I was tired of feeling helpless. But before I could do anything, I needed to know who was responsible. I put a hand on Rose’s shoulder. I think it surprised her. It surprised me a little too. “I’ve gotta go.”
Deedee looked at me like I was crazy. “What? Go where?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s something I really need to do. You got this?”
It was a stupid question, I knew. The three of us on one side. Wolf on the other holding a baseball bat and yelling at us to go home. Deedee shook his head emphatically, but Rose nodded. She understood.
“Yeah, we’ve got this,” she said, putting her hand on top of mine.
I gave Wolf one last look, but he ignored me. He took another swing, and more pieces went flying as another busted battleship was buried in the grass.
I could still make out the explosions of cracked plastic, even once I was a block away.
The Joneses lived on the other side of the district from Wolf, in a two-story house with a brick front and a big enough backyard that you could play Wiffle ball and never have to worry about hitting it over into the neighbor’s. I’d ridden or walked the stretch between Bench’s house and mine with its goose-poop-bombed sidewalks a hundred times, so many I could do it backward without tripping over the cracks in the cement. Bench and I were the two members of the tribe who were closest to each other, his house on the way to school so I was always picked up first. Why I was always the one who saved the seat.
I walked slow, planning out what I was going to say. I wasn’t even sure he would be home yet. School had barely ended by the time I reached his neighborhood, but I decided that if he wasn’t there I would wait. I would sit on the curb until he showed. I wasn’t going to leave without an answer.
Like with Wolf, I heard him before I saw him—thunk, thunk, thunk—turning the corner to find him in his driveway, basketball in hand. I followed the rhythm of its bounce as he drove to the hoop then pulled up to nail a jumper, all whisper, no clang. He was always a better shot.
Bench spotted me at the end of the drive and immediately looked up and down the street. I remembered doing the same when Rose showed up at my door. I’d been doing it for weeks now.
“Just you?” he asked, bouncing the ball twice before tucking it under his arm. I came farther up the driveway so we could talk without yelling. I’d never yelled at any of my friends. Not really. Not yet anyway.
“Just me,” I said. He had to know why I was here, but I said it anyway. “We need to talk. About Wolf.”
Bench looked at me, shielding his eyes from the sun. Even in the chill air he’d already worked
up a sweat. “What’s there to talk about? It wasn’t me. You know that. He knows that. At least he should.” He started bouncing the ball again, except he didn’t dribble this time so much as pound, as if he were trying to bust up the blacktop with each bounce. He turned and took another shot, bricking it off the backboard this time. He hissed a word that Ruby Sandels had already gotten in trouble for.
He seemed mad, which just made me angrier. What did he have to be mad about? I got to the ball before he could, snatching the rebound, holding it at my side.
Bench put his hands on his hips. “Give me the ball, Frost.”
I shook my head. “You still owe me one, remember?” I shifted it to my chest. I was determined to get his attention. Determined for him to look me in the eyes and tell me the truth.
Bench smirked. “Right,” he said. “I owe you one. Whatever, man. Just give it here.”
He lunged for the ball and I twisted, starting an absurd game of keep-away. He reached out with one hand, attempting to knock it out of my grasp, and I moved the other way. He swiped and I dodged, the two of us choreographing some ludicrous dance in his driveway. Finally he got both hands on the ball and wrenched it from my arms with a grunt, the rough rubber scraping the underside of my chin.
“Grow up,” he said.
Bench dribbled twice then took another shot, bricking it again. It rebounded right toward me and I kicked it on the first bounce. The ball sailed into his front yard, missing his head by inches.
“What the hell is wrong with you, man?” He was shouting now.
“What’s wrong with me? What the hell’s wrong with you?” I yelled back. First time for everything. I couldn’t help it. “Right now our friend—your friend—is standing in his backyard smashing up all his freaking models with a baseball bat because of something some jerk wrote on his locker, and here you are acting like it’s no big deal!”
“I never said it was no big deal. And I already told you, I had nothing to do with it!”
Posted Page 22