Gutless

by Carl Deuker

  In Monday’s morning announcements, Mr. Spady gave the score and a cheer went up in classrooms. After that came an announcement about Richie. He’d made it to the finals of a violin competition that I hadn’t known he was in. Spady slipped and pronounced his name “Fang,” and people around me smirked.

  All day, kids congratulated me, and I let the praise wash over me. But when the school day ended, I felt lost. What was I supposed to do? For the first time since mid-August, my afternoon was empty.

  I stood at the top of the stairs to the main entrance of the school looking toward downtown. The sky was dark gray, and a black cloud hung over Queen Anne Hill. I zipped up my jacket and was about to get going when I heard Richie’s voice from behind. “Hold on. I’ll walk with you.”

  We could feel the wind rising and a few warning raindrops. As we hurried home, he told me he’d heard about my catch, and I told him that it was great he’d made the violin finals. When we reached his house, I said goodbye and was about to continue home when he asked me if I wanted to see his project.

  “What project?”

  “The model of Crown Hill High. You know, for the ecological design contest in Portland. I told you about it a while ago.”

  “Right, right,” I said, trying to remember. “Yeah, show me. I really want to see it.”

  He led me to the shed behind his house, opened the door, and switched on the light. On a sheet of plywood the size of a Ping-Pong table was a miniature Crown Hill High, only a transformed Crown Hill High—what Crown Hill High could become. A creek wound through the center of campus; an amphitheater took the place of the main parking lot. The cafeteria had a clear roof and an open-air eating area where the dumpsters now sat. The roofs of some of the buildings were covered in grass and moss; the roofs of others were covered with tiny solar panels. “This is amazing,” I said, leaning forward to get an even closer look.

  He shrugged. “It’s not done. I haven’t started the main wing or the gym. And that glass roof looks great, but nothing is holding it up. The judges will notice that. Once I get the buildings finished, there’s the detail work—painting the trees and bushes, putting in paths across the grass and bridges across the creek, adding streetlights. I haven’t started on the athletic fields either. They’ll go there.”

  I walked around the model. He was right—there was a lot left to do. “When is the contest?”

  “The Portland contest is in June. If I win, the finals are in Pittsburgh in December.”

  “I could help if you want.”

  Immediately, I was afraid I was sticking my nose in where I wasn’t wanted, but his face broke into a smile. “Would you really?”

  For the next half hour, we measured green felt and laid it out on the back corner of the board, slowly creating a miniature baseball diamond. By the time we quit, the rainstorm had ended and my back hurt.

  “Does that creek really exist?” I asked, pointing to a ribbon of blue that wound through the campus.

  He nodded. “Yeah. People don’t know it, but there are a bunch of creeks that run to Puget Sound that are covered by roads. If you ask me, they should all be daylighted.”

  Suddenly, the shed door opened and Richie’s mother stepped inside. When she saw me, she stepped back and covered her mouth, a little surprised sound leaking out.

  I could hear the tension in Richie’s voice as he introduced me. His mother made a small bow of the head, so I made a small bow back. Then she held out a plate. On it were a few little globs that looked like eyeballs from some sea creature. “I made you something,” she said, speaking to Richie. “You share with your friend. I’ll leave now.” Then she said something in Chinese, and he answered in Chinese.

  Once the shed door closed and we were alone, Richie held out the plate with the weird stuff on it. “They’re called sago,” he said, popping one into his mouth.

  I picked one up, stuck the whole thing in my mouth, chewed a little, and swallowed. I thought it would be disgusting, but it didn’t taste like much of anything. Maybe a little mango flavor, but just a little.

  “It’s good,” I said.

  After that, a quiet settled over us. He was leaning against his model; I sat down on the wheel of a lawnmower.

  “Do you like to look at girls?” he asked, out of the blue.

  “Sure,” I said, surprised by the question. “Doesn’t every guy?”

  “I mean at their breasts.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said, confused. It was a question one of the McDermotts might have asked, but it was odd coming from Richie.

  Richie frowned. “Breast cancer is making my mom sick, but I still like to look at girls’ breasts. I look all the time.”

  I shrugged. “You and every other guy.”

  He picked another sago from the plate and popped it in his mouth, and then I ate the last one. “The first one weirded me out a little,” I admitted as I chewed, “but these are pretty good.”

  I looked around for something new to talk about, and I spotted a couple of soccer balls in a box in the corner. I nodded toward them. “Do you play?”

  He switched back to Richie the comedian. Even his voice changed. “Do I play? I am the greatest soccer player in the history of Canyon Park Middle School. Last year, I scored seventeen goals.”

  “Come on, be serious. Do you play?”

  “I am serious. I’m a soccer stud. I can kick the ball long and far and straight, or I can bend it like Beckham.” Then he grinned. “Would I make something up?”

  The touchdown catch made school better for me. Hunter and the other juniors and seniors nodded to me in the hallway, pointed a finger at me across a lawn. I was somebody.

  I shouldn’t have cared, considering the way Hunter was treating Richie. And if I’d dropped that pass and we’d lost the game, he would have looked for a chance to shove me into a garbage can and roll me down the back steps of the school—something that happened to at least one guy every year. But I had caught the pass; we had won the game. And that made me part of Hunter’s circle. I was way out on the edge like Pluto. But I was in his orbit.

  Most days when school ended, I’d walk with Richie to his home and we’d work on his eco-school. His mom would bring us some strange sugary thing that I’d end up liking.

  I enjoyed working with Richie, letting time pass without thinking. But eventually I’d have to go home. And when—ten minutes later—I stepped inside my own front door, I’d see my dad in the den doing his exercises, trying to keep up his strength.

  And all that time, Christmas kept getting closer.

  I’d always looked forward to Christmas; it was even better than my birthday. Every year, we drove to San Francisco, where my grandparents and my aunt Gina lived. Some years, my grandparents from my mom’s side would be there too, though they stayed at a hotel and I didn’t know them as well. During the day, I’d hang out with my cousins Mariah and Aaron. They’d take me to places like Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown.

  But this year, with my father the way he was, Christmas would be different. He couldn’t drive all that way, which meant my mom would have to, and she hated to drive, especially over the snowy mountain passes. And once we reached San Francisco, I’d have to see my aunt and my grandparents looking at my dad. They knew what he had—I’d heard my mom tell them on the phone. They’d smile and pretend everything was fine, but nothing was fine. Probably I’d hear my mom whispering with them when my dad was in another room. I was sure my grandmother would cry, which would make my mom cry. And what would my cousins say to me? What would I say to them? I didn’t want sympathy. I didn’t want to explain.

  I kept waiting for my dad or mom to say something about the trip to California, but by the time school let out on the twentieth and Anya asked me if I was going anywhere, no one had mentioned California yet. “I think I’m going to San Francisco,” I told her.

  “What do you mean? Don’t you know?”

  “Not really.”

  She looked at me as if I were crazy.
>
  That night after dinner, I asked my mom.

  “Would it disappoint you too much if we stayed home this Christmas?” she said. Her voice was quiet, but her neck turned bright red, which always happens to her when she gets nervous.

  “No,” I said, my voice steady. “It’d be fine with me.”

  “I know you like seeing everybody. We all do. But it’s a long drive, and flying this time of year is expensive.”

  “Really, it’s okay. I can help Richie with his project. His family lives in Nanjing, so he’s not going anywhere.”

  Everything felt wrong Christmas Day. I got great gifts—​some video games, clothes, an iTunes gift card—but there wasn’t enough noise or people. The phone calls from San Francisco only made it worse.

  The second semester began mid-January. Just before Christmas break, I’d gone to the counselor and switched my P.E. class from volleyball to weight training. I had to get stronger.

  When I walked into the weight room for the first time, almost the entire varsity football team was in the room, including Hunter. Football coaches always want guys to lift weights, so why not do it during school for credit instead of after school for nothing?

  The teacher, Mr. Drager, passed out a list of suggested exercises, a warning sheet on steroid abuse, and a notebook for us to keep track of our progress. “I’ll come around and help you with technique.”

  The varsity guys took over the back wall of the weight room, which had all the free weights on racks in front of huge mirrors. Some of the linemen were gigantic to begin with. If they got much bigger, they’d fill the room. I found myself a spot with other freshman and a few sophomores. As we worked out, we kept our eyes down and our voices low.

  My leg strength was okay—you can’t be quick with weak legs—but I had nothing in the way of upper body strength. The other freshmen around me—Trent Haslem, Cory Morris, J. J. Jones—bench-pressed at least thirty pounds more than I did.

  Halfway through class, Hunter walked over to our side of the gym. “Hey, Ripley,” he said, “I’ve got something for you.” As he spoke, he tossed me handgrips. “Squeeze those every day. The stronger your hands, the more touchdown passes you’ll catch.”

  I nodded, my head going up and down way too fast. “Sure, Hunter.” He turned and walked back to his friends. The other freshmen stared at me, impressed.

  On a Friday night a couple of weeks into the new semester, I got a text from Anya: Call me when you can. I immediately went to my contacts and hit the green button. The phone rang twice before she picked up. “What’s up?” I said, trying to sound calm, hoping that she wanted to do something, anything, with me.

  And she did.

  Her second-semester elective was a class on the environment taught by Mr. Symonds. I didn’t have Symonds, but everybody said he was funny—and smart and inspiring. He’d been arrested a couple of times during protests over police shootings of black men. He was huge on political activism, and Anya was huge on pleasing Mr. Symonds. “I want to make a difference in this world. What’s the point of being alive if you don’t?”

  It was the coal train—Mr. Gates’s coal train—that she’d picked out. She was planning to set up an informational table in the school cafeteria, and she wanted me to help her pass out leaflets and answer questions. “We’ll do it every Friday, or at least every other Friday. The big energy companies are raping the environment. We’ve got to stop them.”

  As she talked, all I could see was Hunter. What would he do if he saw me handing out leaflets attacking his father’s company?

  “Can you pass out political stuff at school?” I asked when she stopped. “I mean, is it legal?”

  “This is America, Brock. People can stand up and speak their minds.”

  “I know, Anya, but it’s school, too, and we’re aren’t adults, so—”

  “Are you going to help me or not?”

  My hand was sweating so much, I had to switch the phone to my other ear. “Anya, I don’t really know anything about the coal train, so—”

  She interrupted. “It’s Hunter Gates isn’t it? His dad is the lawyer for the coal company. He’s a big part of the problem, but you don’t want to make Hunter mad at you. You’re afraid of him.”

  “That’s not fair, Anya. I’m not in Symonds’s class. You know all about the coal trains, but I don’t.”

  “Well, it would take about ten minutes of research to figure out that they’re no good.”

  “You say that, but there’s got to be another side. People like—”

  “It’s okay, Brock,” she said, interrupting again. “I’ll get somebody else.”

  She got Richie.

  Friday, the two of them sat behind a large table in the back of the cafeteria. Richie had built a diorama of the coal train to get people’s attention. It wasn’t anything like the model he was building of his eco-school, but it was effective. A miniature train—the cars filled with pepper to represent coal—was halfway across a map of Washington. Behind the train, the land was black; little plastic deer and coyotes were tipped onto their sides to show that everything was dead. The land in front of the train, including the Cascades, Puget Sound, and the Olympics, was still green. Above the diorama was a sign with letters in fiery red: BAN THE DEATH TRAINS!

  Lots of kids stopped at the table. Anya and Richie handed them leaflets and answered questions about spills in Puget Sound and train explosions in Quebec and Illinois and West Virginia and North Dakota. Just before the lunch period ended, I spotted Hunter on the other side of the cafeteria, glaring.

  I didn’t want oil and coal trains coming through Puget Sound, but I couldn’t blame Hunter for being angry. People hate banks, and my dad works for one. If somebody were passing out leaflets saying that his bank was raping the environment and killing animals and people, I’d glare too. But that’s all I’d do.

  Hunter Gates would do more.

  He didn’t wait long. A week later, the morning announcements included the news that Richie would be playing a solo during a performance of the University of Washington Symphony Orchestra. I saw him before second period. “Way to go!” I said, giving him a knuckle bump.

  Richie played an invisible violin for me and then bowed to an invisible audience. “I’m the man, Brock.”

  I gave him another knuckle bump and headed off just as a bunch of mainly Asian kids, maybe from his orchestra class or his math class, came up to him. Richie stood in the center of them, smiling, while they patted him on the back and shoved him this way and that.

  I’d walked about twenty feet when I heard the voice. “Hey, Fang, I’ve got a question for you.” I looked back.

  Hunter.

  Standing with him were Colton and other friends. The hallway had gone quiet the way it does when everyone can feel that something bad is about to happen. The kids surrounding Richie had backed away.

  “My name is pronounced ‘Fong,’” Richie said, his voice loud and clear.

  Hunter smiled mockingly. “Oh, it’s Fong. So sorry, Fong. Now can I ask my question?”

  “Ask whatever you want,” Richie said.

  “Are you gay?”

  Richie’s face went red. “What?”

  “He asked if you were gay,” Colton said. “So, are you?”

  “No, I’m not gay,” Richie shot back.

  Hunter tilted his head. “I don’t know if I can believe you, Fang. I mean, being a violin player seems pretty gay to me.” He paused. “Do you kiss boys, Fang?”

  There were at least twenty kids watching. A few of them laughed—a nervous, unhappy laugh—but most stayed silent, waiting. You could feel the violence in the air. Somebody needed to stop Hunter. Somebody needed to have the courage to step forward and tell him to shut his fat mouth. I wanted to be that somebody. I wanted to move forward, but my legs stayed rooted.

  “No, I don’t kiss boys,” Richie said, his voice shaky.

  Hunter, nine inches taller and seventy pounds heavier, took a step toward Richie. “But you’d lik
e to, wouldn’t you, Fang? I mean, if you could? Sloppy-wet French kisses. Your tongue deep in some guy’s mouth. You’d like that. I know you would. You’d like to do even more.”

  That did it. Richie dropped his backpack and charged Hunter, who turned aside quickly and—using Richie’s momentum against him—gave Richie a shove that sent him toppling to the ground. He landed hard and then skidded forward on his belly, awkward and ugly. Hunter and Colton and the others looked at him for a second and hooted, and then they were gone, down the hall, turning once in a while to look back and laugh.

  Richie pulled himself to his knees, then to his feet. Some kids helped him pick up the books and papers that had fallen out of his backpack. I took a step forward to help too, but a dozen kids were in front of me. I turned away and headed to class, my head down.

  Seattle schools get a week off in February around Presidents’ Day. As soon as we returned from the break, Mr. Jacklin, the Crown Hill soccer coach, plastered flyers announcing soccer tryouts around the school.

  If you’d asked me in December, I’d have said I wasn’t going to turn out for soccer. But once I saw those flyers, I felt the itch. I’d played on a soccer team every year since turning six years old. Most of the Whitman guys would be trying out. And I wanted something to do after school, instead of going home early and seeing my dad sitting in his chair.

  Richie had said he played soccer, and I seventy percent believed him, though I doubted he could bend it like Beckham. As I sat down in Ms. Ringleman’s class, I dropped the flyer onto Richie’s desk. “Did you see this?”

  It’s hard to describe how he’d changed after the whole “gay” thing in the hallway. Nothing more had happened between him and Hunter, or at least nothing that I heard about. Richie joked a little before class; he joked more at chess club. But I never saw him in the main hallways, so he must have been using side hallways to go from class to class. As soon as school ended, he was off campus, heading home, one of the first guys out the door. He never waited for me.