Wired Man and Other Freaks of Nature

by Sashi Kaufman

  When no one said anything, she looked directly at Tyler and said, “Are you going to come?”

  Tyler looked at Ben. Ben shrugged. “I guess so,” Tyler said.

  Joanna didn’t even glance at Ben. “Good,” she said. “At, like, three.” It definitely wasn’t a question. She turned around and the three girls walked back to their friends, ponytails bobbing and butts shaking. Ben felt a surge within himself that usually came only from soccer or sometimes from certain parts of movies that made him clamp a pillow over his lap if he was watching at home with his family.

  They hung out at the pool all summer. Joanna was the first girl Tyler ever kissed. Ben could still point out the exact spot where it happened, on the side of the pool building near the dumpsters. He had been just around the corner, waiting awkwardly with two of her friends. But it wasn’t just Joanna. That was the summer Tyler became Tyler: good-looking, popular, funny, and athletic. He’d been that way all along, Ben supposed. But after that summer there was no going back.

  Ben stole a sideways glance at Tyler in the car. He was drumming distractedly on the steering wheel as he scanned the street in front of Colucci’s for parking. He didn’t look like someone who was troubled by anything. Since that summer after seventh grade, Tyler had had a girlfriend here and there. But it never seemed to last more than a few weeks, and he could never get a good explanation from Tyler about why. After a while he just stopped asking about them. The story never changed much, and they were gone a few weeks later. Megan Sewell was the first one he could remember ever cracking the one-month mark—not that he was keeping track exactly, because that would be weird, wouldn’t it?

  They didn’t say much until they ordered and sat down in one of the cracked red vinyl booths in the back of Colucci’s general store and pizza place. The pizza place was mostly a takeout operation with a few booths making a halfhearted attempt at a restaurant in the back. Ben could smell the peppery steak grease sizzling on the flat grill and felt his stomach contract and gurgle in response. “What about Megan Sewell?” he asked.

  “What about her?”

  “Are you going to see her this weekend?”

  Tyler shrugged. “Maybe. She said she might go to Jessica’s party.”

  Ben shook his head and grinned. “So that’s it, huh?”

  The guy from behind the grill slapped their sandwiches down in front of them on two circular silver trays. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Tyler took a big bite of his sub, and his eyes bugged out in appreciation.

  “Well, it’s been a while,” Ben said. He popped a grilled onion that had slid out from the bun into his mouth. He bounced it around on his tongue until the heat dissipated. “You must like her, right?”

  “Do you?” Tyler asked. He seemed annoyed.

  Ben’s first thought was that he didn’t actually like Megan that much. He thought she was kind of aloof, maybe even a bit snobby. But he hadn’t really hung out with her that much. She and Tyler always seemed to hook up at parties or get together, just the two of them. It occurred to him that he might be coming off as jealous, so he did something to lighten the mood.

  “I asked you first,” Ben said. He blew his straw wrapper at Tyler’s face.

  “Of course I like her,” he finally said. “I mean, I wouldn’t hang out with her if I didn’t. She makes things pretty easy.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Ben said. He tried not to act annoyed. If there was something special about Megan, Tyler was clearly not going to tell him about it.

  “What about you?” Tyler picked up the straw paper and flicked it back at him.

  “Me and who?” Ben said.

  “Whoever.”

  Ben gave a little cough. “I don’t really think we’re in the same, er, league as far as girls.” He tried to keep his voice cool so they could stay in the world where it just hadn’t happened, hadn’t been convenient. And out of the place where he was a complete defective unworthy of a serious hookup with any girl ever.

  “What?” Tyler smacked the table with his open palm. The guy behind the grill gave them a long stare. “Look at that face,” Tyler said. “Seriously, look!”

  Ben glanced at his reflection in the mirror over the beer coolers. When he saw that the flesh-colored plastic in his ears was covered, he looked a little longer. Shaggy brown hair, hazel eyes, the telltale red dot on his chin from an incoming zit.

  “Dude, you’re hot,” Tyler said.

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “I’m not,” Tyler said indignantly. “When am I ever an asshole? No wait, don’t answer that. But seriously, you are a nice-looking guy. You act like a Sheldon, but you’re not, you’re like a Pitt or a Cruise. Seriously. You look like that guy in the vampire movies, whatshisface?”

  Ben sighed.

  “Edward Cullen!” Tyler shouted. “That guy!”

  “Do I sparkle like diamonds?”

  “You watched it!” Tyler shouted. This time the guy behind the counter put down his spatula and made like he was coming over. Tyler put his hands up in defeat and mouthed a silent Sorry. Ben laughed and took another bite of his sub. The last time he’d slept over at Tyler’s house, Tyler had tried to get him to watch one of the Twilight movies. He had refused, opting instead for the latest in the Bourne sequence, The Bourne Calamity or something like that. Anyway, he’d given Tyler a lot of shit for trying to get him to watch it when really he’d already seen it with Shannan one weekend while she was home from school.

  Now, the look of betrayal on Tyler’s face only made him laugh harder, and a piece of gristle rocketed out of his mouth onto the floor. He looked over for a minute at the grill man, but he was busy with a customer. Ben scooped it up into a napkin thinking for a minute how, whether or not it was bullshit, he was glad that at least Tyler still seemed to prefer his company over one of the countless girls he hooked up with.

  Chapter 8

  “WE GOT THE SPIRIT! YEAH, YEAH! WE GOT THE SPIRIT! YEAH, YEAH!” The Easton High School Fighting Hornet cheerleaders were leading everyone in the gym in a popular cheer. Popular mostly because it involved the cheerleaders leaning forward and celebrating feats of athleticism by bouncing their boobs around.

  “We got the tits!” Tyler shouted every time that part of the chant came up. They were standing up on the stage with the rest of the team in their uniforms on Friday, the day before the Eastern Mass final. They were supposed to be cheering along, but the clamor in the gymnasium was so overpowering that no one could hear Tyler’s slight alteration to the lyrics. Ben and Brandon, on either side of Tyler, were trying not to crack up.

  “We got some ass!” Tyler yelled as the cheerleaders bounced forward. This time Coach turned around and shot them all a look. Ben elbowed Tyler in the side. They started clapping again, slightly off from the rhythm of the cheerleaders. It didn’t matter. Everyone was in a good mood. It was Friday and they were missing last period to stand around in the gym and get pumped up—it didn’t really matter what for. Ben was actually trying hard not to think too much about the actual game. When he did, he felt something between nausea and excitement.

  Shannan was coming home from school for the game, and he was looking forward to having the weekend together. Besides the fact that she was his sister and he loved her, the house felt a little more complete when she was around. When it was just the three of them, Ben sometimes got the feeling he was keeping his parents back from something. Like the last customer in a restaurant, appreciated but not encouraged to linger over dessert.

  “What are you doing tonight?” Tyler asked as they walked out of Plummer Gymnasium. Someone had propped open the outer doors, and the blast of cold November air felt great on Ben’s red face and sweaty back. It must have been a thousand degrees in the gym by the end of the pep rally. The hallways were emptying out as kids headed to their lockers and then home, eager for the weekend to begin.

  “Shannan’s coming home. We’re probably just going to have dinner and watch a stupid movie.”

  “
That’s cool,” Tyler said.

  Ben felt a pang of guilt. On any other night at his house, Tyler would be more than welcome, but Ben was looking forward to time alone with Shannan.

  Was he being a douche about it? It’s not like Tyler wasn’t fed or had pants that ended five inches above his ankles like Danny Fisher, who had been in their elementary school class and had to take a food backpack home every weekend. Tyler lived in a big, beautiful house. He had two parents. But it was cold, a house that never seemed like a home to anyone—especially since the Nusons had outgrown the last of the nannies. Tyler and his brother drifted through the large high-ceilinged rooms like two ghosts passing time in a mausoleum.

  It was only five or six years since the Nusons dismissed their last nanny. They were Mannies, actually. Usually college guys who lived in the in-law apartment attached to the back of the house, made some meals, did some laundry, and were responsible for supervising Tyler and Jeremiah when work kept Mrs. Nuson and the professor busy. Which was a lot. The Mannies were like built-in older brothers, except they were paid. Tyler hated the last one with a vehemence Ben didn’t really understand. Besides being a bit obsessed with his car—to the point where he polished the red Mitsubishi with a cloth diaper every weekend—he had seemed to Ben to be an all right guy.

  After Scott left, Tyler gave his parents an ultimatum: either leave him to watch Jeremiah in the afternoons and evenings, or pack them both off to boarding school. That was the last of The Mannies. About half the time, Tyler made dinner for the two of them—usually pizza, always served in front of the television. When the Nusons were around, his mom cooked and they ate in a formal dining room at a long glass table with high-backed crushed velvet chairs. Ben had been forced to sit through his fair share of those dinners. He always left feeling slightly confused as to whether the Nusons were actually parents or just a pair of badly cast actors trying their hand at a parental role.

  “You need a ride?” Tyler asked, interrupting Ben’s thoughts.

  “Nah, I got my bike.”

  “All right then. Pick you up for the game?”

  “Definitely,” Ben said. He held his hand out and Tyler greased it with a little high-five handshake they had perfected over the years. They parted at the intersection of two hallways. Ben needed to grab some stuff out of his locker before riding home. The locker area was quiet on a Friday afternoon. A custodian was pushing one of those tall brooms down the hall, catching the flotsam of writing utensils and missing homework assignments.

  When Ben came out of the locker row, someone brushed past him heading in the other direction. Ben caught a glimpse of blue hair and heard a single word uttered clearly and distinctively—almost like he’d said it inside his own head.

  “Freak.”

  He whipped around, but the person had already gone through the double doors that led to a hallway of classrooms. He walked over to the small windows set into the doors and saw the same backwards trucker hat from the other day outside the gym. He shook his head and, glancing around first, pushed the test button on his hearing aids to make sure he was getting a clear sound. They were fine. Who the hell was trucker hat girl? By senior year, he was pretty sure he knew everyone by face or by name. She was probably one of the burnouts who hung out in the Bridge and were finishing high school on the five- or six-year plan. Who was she to call him a freak?

  He got on his bike, his face still flushed from the gym and from a feeling he hadn’t felt so strongly since middle school. As he rode home, the flush of embarrassment turned to intrigue and annoyance. He wasn’t the freak. He belonged. Hell yeah, he’d worked hard to make sure of that. He decided if he saw her again, he’d make a point to look her right in the face and see if she had the balls, or whatever, to say it again. Then he deliberately put it out of his head. He needed to focus on the game tomorrow, not on some burnout, blue-haired weirdo.

  It was hard not to be intimidated by Poly Prep. They were a city school, and their team looked different from the Greater Boston suburban schools Easton was used to playing. They were big, for one thing—more like football players than soccer players. And they had already done the Mohawks, and Ben could see why. It was definitely intimidating. Half their team was made up of African kids. Sudanese or Somali—they were recent immigrants to New England, and Ben knew they were amazing soccer players. Most of them had grown up with a ball at their feet, and they played with that same innate fluidity that Tyler did.

  Ben tried not to watch them as their team ran a warm-up lap around the turf, but everyone was glancing past Coach as he gave them some instructions for warm-up. The steel bleachers at Wentworth College rose higher around the field and, combined with the tall steel light posts, gave the whole stadium more of a gladiatorial feel. The fans were pouring in dressed in Easton and Poly Prep colors. He looked for familiar faces in the crowd, something to anchor himself with, but couldn’t find his parents or Shannan. He stared at the goal, reminding himself that it was the exact same size as the one they used at school.

  “Hey!” Coach said suddenly. “You earned the right to be here. Play your game. Don’t just defend against their game. I don’t need heroics here. I just need you to play the game I’ve seen you play a million times, and you’ll win. It’s that simple.”

  At the half, they were tied one all. Both teams had scored early and been deadlocked ever since. Ben drank and spit water and jumped up and down, trying to stay loose. He pushed the thoughts of overtime and penalty kicks from his mind. He had to focus on the game that was now. If he thought too far ahead, then he would lose focus and make a stupid mistake. He glanced into the stands, and this time he saw his mom and dad and Shannan. Shannan grinned and waved like a maniac. His dad mouthed, Have fun. Ben rolled his eyes back at him. He could see the crease between his dad’s eyebrows from the field. His dad was a worrier. He had no business telling Ben to loosen up.

  In the last ten minutes of the second half, Poly Prep turned up their game and made a couple big pushes down to their end. On one of their scoring attempts, they ended up with a corner kick, a beautifully lofted ball that landed right in the middle of the swarming pack of players. Someone got a head on it, but Ben got there with both fists and punched the ball out. A Poly Prep defender quickly rebounded, sending the ball back into the fray. Ben reached out to stop a hard low shot to the corner as a Poly Prep defender thundered toward him. He blocked the ball, bouncing it off the other team and then out to one side of the goal. But the player was running at full steam, stumbled, and tripped right over the top of him, crushing Ben’s hand with the full force of his plastic molded cleat. The scream shot out of Ben’s mouth as he felt a crunch of plastic against bone into hard packed ground. He staggered to his feet only to hear the play whistled, and then rolled to the ground holding his injured hand underneath his body.

  Brandon Rosetti was there first, patting Ben’s back and asking him repeatedly if he was okay. Ben could only groan. He wiggled his fingers gingerly, but the pain was like a bolt of lightning up his arm and into his gut. Next, Coach was there with the trainer. They were turning him over and trying to pull his arm away from his body to assess the damage. He focused in on Coach’s face. There was a ref there too. “Looks like you’re going to need a sub, Coach,” he said.

  “Give us a minute,” Coach snapped. He helped Ben sit up and got him to extend his hand to the trainer, who held it gingerly in both hands, assessing the damage. There was already a series of red marks where the cleats had dented his palm.

  “Can you try and close it for me, Ben?” the trainer asked.

  Ben grimaced but slowly closed and opened the hand. He felt a glimmer of hope. The pain was bad, but moving it hadn’t made it worse. The trainer looked at Coach. “Could be fractured,” he said. The whole team was standing around him now. He could see Tyler’s pink and yellow Adidas shin guards closest to Coach. Tyler knelt down so he was at Ben’s eye level. He gave him a small smile and a chin nod.

  Ben returned the nod—they both kne
w he would be okay. “Good thing you beat off with your left hand, Wireman,” Tyler said.

  “Christ, Nuson, get the team into a huddle,” Coach said, gently shoving him away.

  Coach looked back at the bench where their backup goalie was getting warmed up by the freshmen. Mayhew wasn’t a bad goalie, but he had hardly seen any playing time this year. Coach mostly put him in at defense when they were already destroying another team. Coach looked back at Ben. “It’s your call, Ben,” he said.

  Ben looked at the play clock and flexed his hand one more time. He didn’t want to wimp out, but neither did he want to blow a save because his hand was compromised. He looked up, hoping to find Tyler—something in his face would tell him what to do—but Tyler was talking to the rest of the team. He decided his experience was more important to the game, even with a busted right hand. It hurt, but he could move it enough. “Wrap it up and leave me in.”

  The trainer cracked open his tackle box before Ben finished speaking. He wrapped Ben’s hand tightly with tape so that Ben could only close it with extreme pressure. The rest of the team came over, giving him props for manning up and staying in the game. Still, they sounded a little nervous. He wiggled his fingers in their white athletic-tape cocoon. “I’m all right,” he said. He knew he sounded less than reassuring.

  Tyler looked around at the defense. “Get it out of here,” he said. “Get it up and out of here, and then it doesn’t cross midfield. We’ve got six minutes to wrap this up and get ourselves to States. Play like there’s no overtime, no PKS. We’re going to win it right now.” Ben looked at Tyler. He knew Tyler was thinking of him. Just like he knew that it was his heart beating explosively in his chest. Like he understood what it meant in those war movies when guys talked about how they would risk their lives to save their buddies.