by Gurley, Jan
“Okay,” Helena said then, “Spell it out. What have you agreed to do?”
So I explained. When I got to the naked-from-the-waist-up-picture-of-the-Dog part, there was a collective gasp.
Robin and Alex were the only ones to weigh in with words: “Cool,” and “That’s hot.” Alex and Robin never went anywhere without the other and the two of them were having a black eyeliner week. Both head-bobbed their approval with half-lidded raccoon eyes. I turned to the rest of the group.
“Guys, please, please, trust me on this one. See the money there? Don’t you think that kind of money — for only a few minutes work — is worth a little risk?”
“That's not just risky, that's impossible,” said Gonzo. “How do you expect to get that close to some half-naked University guy you don't even know?”
“The only place I’ll get that kind of picture is in the locker room, after a football game.”
Another gasp.
Helena said, “But isn’t football season over?”
I said, “There’s nothing left — except for today — you can hear it. Today there’s a demonstration.”
“Does it have to be a game?” Helena asked. “Don’t they do off-season practice stuff?”
Gonzo said, “Kate’s right. At a practice, people would notice her. And she’s got no excuse for being there. But when it’s a game, there’s all kinds of confusion.”
Tio said, “But that’s not a real game — the band isn’t even doing a half-time show.”
Gonzo said, “A demonstration’s a kind of post-season game, for the recruiters. Some huge college B-team plays us. The college freshmen get a chance to play against a tough team. And recruiters like to see our high school guys take on some older players. It’d work for Kate — there’s usually lots of people in the stands — people like seeing a college team play against a tough underdog.”
Silence fell. We all stared at Gonzo. See, we in the Academy pod don’t do sports, not even spectator sports. Gonzo, pink color steaming up his neck from his collar, said, “What? Can’t I like puff pastry and football? I mean, it’s not like I understand the game or anything. I hear guys talk, that’s all.”
A distant thunderous cheer rumbled across the field.
“There’s no time!” I wailed.
Phoebe, glowering as usual, said, “You guys are always telling me to stop and think before I lose my temper and do something stupid. You ought to think this through. A game’s best, sure, but really, why can’t this wait? We could earn the money another way. Why does it have to be now?”
I sat up and looked around at them, not wanting to answer.
The breeze slowed to listen and the only sound was the scritch-scratch of branches twisting and fretting above us. Phoebe said, “There was a city planning committee meeting last night, wasn’t there?”
I nodded, my throat pinched tight with misery.
“Tell us,” Phoebe said, her hands balling into fists. “I promise I won’t go into smackdown mode.”
We all cared about the fairy circle. That’s how our group formed. I couldn’t keep the trees to myself. When I found someone crying in the far toilet stall of the girls’ changing room (Viola) I had to tell her about them. When I saw hallway crowds sneering at the couple that was too weird and different (Alex and Robin), I had to drag them both to the circle for lunch. That’s how it happened, one person after another. Until there were eight of us.
How could you keep such a treasure for yourself, when you knew other people desperately needed it too?
We were all in it together — we’d been doing everything we could to fundraise money to save the trees all year — ever since I saw the tiny paper stapled on a sidewalk tree in the neighborhood last fall. It was a mandatory notification sign about proposed construction on the school field.
“We don’t even have as much time as we thought. Now that the city’s given the okay, there’s less than four weeks left. If we don’t do something drastic, the trees’ll be cut and the school will be pouring concrete here in June. Which means I’ve got to get this shot. Now.”
Alex said, “But we raised a lot of money — right?”
I picked at the edge of my tee shirt. “You guys are great. We raised eighteen thousand dollars in seven months. Just us. That’s…that’s unheard-of.”
Helena, oblivious to the trembling emotion around the group, scalpeled right down to the heart of the problem. “But four hundred dollars for a picture isn’t going to do it, Kate. Not when we’re still eight thousand short of what the school’s offering old lady Hathaway for the fairy circle.”
I looked around the group and I could see the news hit them hard — how far behind we were, how little time we had, how much was at stake. Well I wasn’t going to let it happen. Not to my friends, not to the trees. I gritted my teeth and said, “First, see, I get this one shot of the Dog. And then I’ll do something else. Whatever it takes. That’s what we’re going to do.”
People seemed to steady. Glances went from one person to the other, weaving around the group like safety ropes, keeping everyone from losing it.
“So we need a plan for today. Ideas? Ideas?” Helena barked like a drum major calling out the formation.
Various suggestions filled the small circle of trees. “Drop Kate with a crane! Pretend you’re delivering pizza! Janitor- you could be a janitor!”
Voices dwindled without a usable idea. Oh God, this was never going to work.
Viola said loudly, into the silence, “You could be a band. And play a song.”
Helena said, to Viola, “Kate is already in the marching band. But the band’s not playing today. Kate can’t very well march out on the field by herself. And certainly not into the men's changing room.”
Viola said, “Why not?”
Into the shocked and embarrassed silence, the group turned awkward. Earbuds plugged into ears, and sweatshirt hoods pulled up and down over foreheads. Within moments, the circle of trees housed a group of teen-monks, heads bowed, eyes averted from Viola.
Viola smiled at me, the only person still making eye contact. “I’ve got a flute. And Tio said he can play the triangle. Or was that something else we were talking about in geometry class?”
I took a deep breath of the resin-filled air, the redwood smell sharp and tangy as tears in the back of my throat. It was like a hit of something soothing. Then, with my eyes closed, the floodgates of inspiration flung open.
“Yes! Yes! Viola! You did it — you’re brilliant!”
I grabbed her hands and we leaped, boinging off the ground, chests back, a half-smile on Viola’s face. “I did? What’d I do?”
I stopped and threw my arms around the nearest tree. The roughness of the bark against my cheek felt the way my dad’s beard used to feel — a comforting scratch with a piney aftershave smell. I couldn’t be near these trees without believing that the world could be better than it was, that everything was possible when I stood in their shelter. Just look at them — I wanted to shout at everyone I knew — they had sprung up a hundred years ago, from hidden roots of a destroyed tree, climbing up to the sky against all odds. They held hands underground and gave each other strength. They were living proof that nothing was truly over, not until there was no hope left.
My voice rose in excitement, “Guys, remember how the band lines up on both sides of the concrete exit ramp and plays the team off the field? That ramp is the back entrance to the locker room. I can slip down the ramp behind the players and no one’ll notice.”
Everyone on the Legacy football team belongs to University pod, and everyone in the marching band belongs to my pod, Academy. We Academy students talk for weeks about who won the half-time band smack-down show, and why, and if we’re having an overall winning band season or not. For most of the game, if you’re in the marching band, you sit there with your book open on your lap, unable to see anything because of the rows of towering furry band hats in front of you. You’re dependent on your band-mates to elbow you if the
drum major gets a freakish urge to play something in addition to the predictable pre-game, half-time, and post-game routines.
Tio looked aghast. “That will never work with a packed stadium watching?”
I waved my hand at the objection, brushing it off like a buzzing gnat. “Everybody mills around at the end of a game. No one ever notices the band. Tio — grab me that zoom camera from the newspaper office. Viola — get your flute out of your locker and then go to the game. You’re going to meet me and Tio at the ramp. I’ll hit the band room for instruments for us, but Tio, just to warn you, I can’t carry my case and that whopping bass sax of yours.”
Tio, shaking his head in horror, said, “You’re not getting me a triangle. Tell me you’re not.”
“Don’t look so panicked. ANYONE can play the triangle. You hit it with a stick.” I took a breath, so my voice wouldn’t shake from the fear that rattled inside me like a high wind. “Attitude, Tio, that’s all we need. Think about it. Who’s going to stop us?”
Please God, I thought, let me be right.
***
Usually I try to slow it down when Tio and I are speed-walking across campus, being as how he’s got two steps to my every one. But there wasn’t time right now, so he pistoned beside me like a toy wind-up car, kicking up dust in his wake.
Tio said, “Have you even thought about what happens if you make it inside? You don’t know anything about the Dog. You don’t know what you’re up against.”
It kind of annoyed me how he never got winded. Me? I was hauling a long, heavy instrument case and a metal triangle chiming every step I took and I already had a stitch needling my side.
“So he’s got a big ego. Maybe he’s rude. So what if he finds out? So what if he gets angry? With all this money at stake, he can say what he wants. Words are just words. It’s only so much air.” Maybe if I said it enough, I’d believe it.
“You know you’re insane. Have I mentioned that? You’re obsessed with those trees. It’s like you’ve got a tree addiction. You’re…you’re an arbophile.” He said it like it was a dirty word, then muttered, “I bet there’s medication for that.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
He grabbed my arm, dug in his heels, and I nearly spun around at the abrupt stop.
“You. Are. Taking. A. Picture. Of. A. Naked. University. Student.” He rapped me on the head with his knuckles.
“Ow. That hurt.” My voice sounded shakier and weenier than I wanted it to and I felt the prickly heat of a blush crawling up my face. I held the long black instrument case tight against my chest, hiding behind it, feeling the metal flip-buckle digging into my breastbone. My eyes even started to sting. Did he think I was a fool? “You heard me — I don’t do naked.”
“You’re right. Sorry,” he muttered. “But you’re not taking another step until you hear me out.”
This was way more emotion than we usually had hanging in the air between us. Usually I did stuff and Tio trotted along. He’d never before thumped me, yanked me and rapped me, all in a few minutes. It didn’t really hurt that much, but still. What it actually hurt was my feelings.
Tio had the humungo camera still clutched in his left hand. He shoved his right fist in his new cargo pants. No one in our group ever mentioned the fact that Tio still bought his clothes in the boys department. Thinking about it made me a little less angry with him.
“Viola’s probably already waiting. Say what you got to say.”
He pulled some folded papers out of his thigh pocket. “Look, I grabbed these from the Legacy Campus News files. Some are confidential tips. Some are stories that got printed in the school paper.” He clearly wasn’t giving me the camera until I read the pages.
I could feel time ticking away as I took them. The distant roar of the school stadium rose and ebbed. The game between the Legacy Lemurs and the Cal B-team was going to end soon, I could feel it down to my bone.
My trombone, that is. When you play for a marching band, you get a sense for these things. It’s like you can feel the tide shifting in the deafening sound all around you, so you stand, clear your spit valve, and start paying attention — otherwise you miss the downbeat for playing the team off the field.
And then the school’s newspaper’s headlines in my hand caught my eye. Celebrity Senior Involved in Drunken Brawl. Pac-10 Comes Calling. The Pit- Bull Named To Parade’s High School All-America List. Legacy Probation Extended for The Dog — Will He Ever Get Out Of The Pound?
“You see that one?” Tio extended a shaky finger to hand-written sheet sticking out underneath the others, where the words “Dog’s homecoming date complains about aggressive behavior” were written. “There’s more. ‘From all such devils, the Good Lord deliver us.’”
“You’re doing it again,” I said. Whenever Tio gets really stressed, he involuntarily spouts lines from Shakespeare. Instead of Tourette’s syndrome, our group calls what Tio does Bard-ette’s syndrome. When no Hostiles are around, we have some code phrases to help Tio rein it in — “stop with the verbal ‘Spears” was our best, because saying it seemed to help him snap out of it. The whole thing started in Middle School.
Tio was the Target. There were so many reasons for it. First, well, there’s the fact that puberty passed him by. Second, his name, Lucentio, came from Shakespeare, which I personally thought was an unforgivable crime committed against him by his English-major parents. Finally, there was the Shakespeare obsession. Tio used to read and re-read Shakespeare obsessively.
Why Shakespeare — other than the name connection, that is? Shakespeare probably gave Tio some smart ways to answer his middle school tormenters — the old writer-dude always was handy with an insult guaranteed to impress your adversary. If, that is, your adversaries wore codpieces and neck-ruffs. Tiny Tio had faith, though, so he read and re-read Shakespeare like there was a mystical answer buried in the plays. But then the words burrowed so deep in Tio’s mind, he sort of lost control of them. Things popped out. His mom saved up for months and got him a few visits with a therapist, who said that Tio’s Bard-ette’s syndrome would go away on its own eventually. Tio himself always says, hey, at least I didn’t get obsessed with quoting Harry Potter.
“This guy — the Dog — isn’t allowed to kill me. I won’t die,” I said, folding the rest of the school paper pages so I couldn’t see any more. “Besides, you can’t believe rumors.”
“No. You can’t print rumors. At least not in the school paper, you can’t. They call him the Dog for a reason.”
“How do you know?”
“His real nickname is the Pit-Bull. Does that sound touchy-feely to you?”
I took a deep breath. “He’s just another student.”
“You realize you could get suspended. You even could get expelled. Forever. This is the Dog. His mom is worth a fortune. He’s been in the L.A. Times. Three thousand words. He was even mentioned in the Prep section of Yahoo sports. Everyone wants a piece of him. And no one cares that he’s a jerk. There’s got to be other ways to make money.”
“Not in chunks like this. If I pull this off, we might get a few more orders. That’s all it would take. If we don’t do something different, we won’t raise enough money in time. The book sales, the monster rummage sales, the clothes swaps, and even the Flash Mob snack sales aren’t cutting it. You know that. You can do the math as well as I can.”
“You can’t let those trees go, can you?”
“Tio, babe, if I thought they wouldn’t get a cherry-picker and just drag me out like they did those Berkeley and Santa Cruz students, I’d be sitting high up in them right now.” I could hear the announcer’s squawk drifting on the breeze toward us. Every second we stood here, the game — and my chance to save the trees — came closer to ending. “Listen, we’ve got to go. Give me the camera. Now.”
And then Tio did something unbelievable. He clenched his jaw — I could actually see a muscle tightening at the edge of both his pudgy cheeks, “You’ll have to take it from me.”
&nbs
p; There was a shocked silence.
“Are you kidding? I’m twice as big as you are. This is ridiculous. Hand it over.”
“No. You’re going to take me with you. Into the locker room. You think you can do this on your own. But you need help.”
I glared at him, hands on hips.
He had the decency to look away for a second. “Okay, maybe you don’t want me to get in trouble too if things get ugly. But that doesn’t change the fact that I can get closer to a boys locker room than you can.”
“Not without a University I.D. badge, you can’t. And you can't take the picture. It has to be me.”
“I’m not letting you mess this up.”
Oh no he didn’t. Of the two of us, he was the one that always crashed and burned under stress, and we both knew it.
The knuckles on Tio’s hand holding the camera were white. The one thing that was clear was that he wasn’t backing down. If I wanted that camera, I had to include him. But taking Tio with me was a pure disaster in the making — I’d never be able to live with myself if I got him expelled. His life would be absolute hell if he had to start over in another school.
Why was he doing this to me?
Maybe we’d all ruffled his hair too many times, and treated him too often like a little kid. Heck, he was going to be 16 soon. Was I willing to risk this one shot to save the trees, all for his ego? To be honest, all for our friendship? Because if I shut him out, even for his own good — no scratch that — especially for his own good, nothing would ever be the same between us again.
I tilted my trombone case up over my shoulder, elbow up and pointed forward, the handle gripped in my fist. I looped my other elbow around Tio’s head and tucked it into my side, so that he oofed and had to walk hunched over sideways, trotting again, to keep up.