by N. Griffin
But Eddie didn’t answer, and hunched over his wheel like he was driving a tank.
“Holy hell,” said Dan, and leaned out into the aisle, eyes on the road unfolding in front of the bus. “This is it. He’s flipped and he’s going to kill us all!”
Oh my effing God. I just called him crazy in my mind, but I didn’t mean it literally. And now he literally is. My own mother a cop and I’m the one getting kidnapped. I missed all the signs.
What signs?
What wasn’t a sign, Bett? Eddie was a walking bundle of signs. Crazy vet with crazy in his eyes. Oh my God, we’re all going to die.
“Eddie!” Ranger’s voice was high. “What are you doing? Are you kidnapping us?”
“Yep,” said Eddie.
“What?” Ranger yelped.
“I said, ‘Yep.’ ”
“Eddie, come on.” Even Mutt sounded nervous. “What are you talking about? What the hell are you doing?”
“I told you. I’m kidnapping you.”
“Eddie!” Dan glanced at Ranger, who was blinking. “Cut it out.”
“I will not cut it out. Shut up.” The bus was running along a wooden fence lining one of the fields.
“Where are you taking us?” Dan’s voice was strained.
But Eddie was silent and he drove the bus straight ahead, unyielding and piston strong. Until finally, for the third time in three school days, he stopped short.
“Here,” he said amidst the ensuing tumble of backpacks and food wrappers. “Everyone get out.”
What was going on? Terrified. Terrified. Slowly, Bett reached her hand into her bag for her phone. If she kept it low, he wouldn’t see in the mirror.
“BETT! I SAID OUT! GET IN THAT FIELD!”
Bett let go of her phone.
“Is he, like, going to execute us?” Ranger whispered. His eyes were round and his neck looked impossibly thin.
“Don’t worry,” said Dan, calming, calming. “Take your backpack.” And the four of them grabbed their packs and got out.
“Why are we going along with this?” said Mutt, and even his voice wobbled a little as they walked into the middle of the field.
Bett shielded her eyes from the low sun and tried to make a plan in her head. Never let the kidnapper take you to a second location, Bett knew. But how was she supposed to have known that had been part of Eddie’s plan? Was this some weird way of Eddie’s to try to get her to listen to him? In front of all the other kids?
Bett’s stomach roiled. Think, Bett. Could she get her phone out and call her mom without Eddie noticing now?
Nope. Not yet. The four of them watched as Eddie approached them, waving a duffel bag he brought from the bus.
“Is it guns in there? Is it guns?” Ranger’s voice was terrified. Dan put his arm tight around his brother’s shoulder.
“Of course not,” Dan said, again calm, calm. Bett glanced at him. He shrugged back at her, eyes glancing meaningly down at the top of his little brother’s head.
Eddie cleared his throat. “I guess you kids wonder why I’ve brought you here.”
Bett was afraid to even nod.
“Are you going to kill us?” asked Ranger. His chin was quivering, and he burst into tears.
“Jesus Christ!” Eddie yelped. “What’s with the waterworks? What the hell is the matter with you?”
“You’re kidnapping us,” sobbed Ranger, and Mutt stepped forward and stuck his chest out at Eddie.
“I can take you, old man,” he said. “I got six inches and sixty pounds on you.” He moved back and forth in front of Eddie and shoved his chest in Eddie’s chest.
I hope there’s no bomb in there, Bett thought desperately, and she ran up to the duffel bag and kicked it as hard as she could.
Everybody turned to watch the bag as it described a perfect, long arc and landed fifty yards from the terrified group.
“YES!” shouted Dan, and he muscled up to Eddie, too. “Bett is strong as shit, asshole,” he said in Eddie’s face. “She and I will take you.”
“What is the matter with you kids? What the hell has gotten into you? You just can’t kick my property like that!”
“Says the psycho, phone-throwing man who kidnapped us!” Dan yelled back.
Ranger gulped noisily, sobbily, in the background.
“I did not!” Eddie shouted back. “Okay,” he said, “okay. I threw a phone. But come on. That was a couple of days ago. And you aren’t kidnapped.”
“You said we were!” cried Ranger.
“Yeah,” said Mutt. “Why else are we here?”
“Against our will!” Dan added.
“Jesus Christ,” said Eddie. “Jesus Christ! I was kidding when I said about the kidnapping! A figure of speech, for God’s sake. I’m not a stranger! You kids know me!”
“Most abductions happen with people known to the victim,” said Bett, breathing heavily.
Dan and Ranger looked at her with . . . respect.
Bett shrugged. “My mom’s a cop.”
“Call her!” screamed Mutt.
“Oh my God,” moaned Eddie. “Don’t call her!”
“See! You are kidnapping us!” cried Ranger, his voice growing damp again. “You’re controlling our phone use! You’re an abductor! That’s what they do!”
“I am not! Fine! Call her! All of you all call who you want.” Eddie gestured grandly. “There. I just gave you permission to use your phones on school time and property.”
“THIS IS NOT SCHOOL TIME OR PROPERTY!” shouted Mutt. “WE SHOULD BE HOME RIGHT NOW ON OUR TIME AND OUR PROPERTY, BUT YOU GODDAMN KIDNAPPED US!”
Eddie’s shoulders sank. “Kids,” he said. “Kids. If you’d have just let me explain before you started crying around and kicking my bag.”
“I am on you like green on grass, old man,” said Mutt, and he continued to yak-chest his way onto Eddie.
“No,” Eddie said. “Please. Hear me out. It’s kinda you who sparked this, Mutt.” He blew air through pursed lips. “You run like a damn gazelle, kid.”
Mutt pushed Eddie. “Perv!”
“No,” said Eddie. “Not like that. For God’s sake. I may have kidnapped you a little, but I’m no perv.” He breathed heavily again. “It’s like this. You know how we’re a real small school.”
What the hell? But they nodded.
“And it’s hard to get coaches. AND teams. For sports.”
“Mr. Grisley,” countered Mutt. “Field hockey. Basketball.”
“Yeah,” said Eddie. “Grisley does those. What you might not know, see, is that I was a real athlete when I was your age. And older.” He broke off and coughed.
“Was that before you started smoking, or after?” Dan asked.
“Shut the hell up. Before.” Eddie wiped his mouth. “Anyway. My thing was running. And there was this notice from your principal the other week about how great it would be for the school to have cross-country. Only there was no coach. And could we spread the word. And I thought to myself, well, I could do that. But it would mean more time with twerpy kids—”
“Hey,” said Ranger.
“—with twerpy kids,” Eddie repeated firmly. “And the pay sucks.”
“Does it suck more than bus pay, Eddie?” asked Ranger. His voice sounded almost back to normal.
“Sucks even worse,” said Eddie. “It’s, like, nominal. So I said to myself, Eddie, it’s not worth it. But then . . .” He shook his head. “You kids. You four. None of you already doing football or field hockey. None of you too twerpy. Mutt, you running. You on that bus and you two boys.” He nodded toward Dan and Ranger. “Thin and stringy, perfect for distance running. And then Bett came on the bus this year. You.” He gestured at Bett but didn’t meet her eye. “You’re built—real strong.”
Shut up about how I’m built!
“Not to mention you ran up that slope the other day like a mother— like a very good runner,” Eddie amended.
Dan glanced at her. Bett stared at the ground.
“A
nd it was like a sign,” Eddie continued. “You all on the bus and Mutt running and Bett here booking it up that hill like a catamount. We need four to be a team, and with the Title Nine stuff I can let Bett count.”
What was he talking about? A team? Then Bett’s thoughts skittered to, Oh, how great, I get to count.
“So we aren’t kidnapped?” said Dan.
“No,” said Eddie. “I’m explaining. Shut up a minute.”
“You shut up a minute!” shouted Mutt. “You’re the one scaring us to death with your crazy vet ways.”
There was silence.
“Don’t you ever,” said Eddie, and his voice was deadly, “call me that again.”
“Don’t you ever kidnap me again!”
“I’M NOT KIDNAPPING YOU! I’m working with you! The four of you! I’m letting Bett on!”
“Letting Bett on what?” Dan asked.
“On our team. ON our TEAM, dammit! What do you think I’m talking about?” Eddie grinned nervously. The four of them stared unsmiling back at him. “Hold on,” said Eddie, and he sprinted over to where his duffel had landed.
“He does have good speed,” Mutt observed.
“Why are we still here?” Dan wondered. “What’s the matter with us?”
“He’s got the keys to the bus,” said Bett.
“Good point,” said Mutt. Bett ignored him.
“He kidnapped us to be on a team? A track team?” asked Ranger. He sounded less scared, thank God.
“I think so,” said Bett.
“Cross-country, more like,” said Dan. “What a way to do it.” His eyes were still locked on Eddie.
But now Eddie was back. “Look,” he wheezed.
“Quit smoking, Eddie,” said Dan.
“Shut up.” Eddie opened the duffel. “Four shirts. One for each of you. All men’s extra large because I wanted to make sure they would work for everyone. You,” he said, “are my new team. Welcome to the Salt River Cross-Country Fishermen.”
“I’m no man,” said Bett.
“Be a Fisherperson, for God’s sake, then!” Eddie shouted. “I don’t care! Cross it out and write in what you want.”
“I got a Sharpie in my backpack,” offered Ranger.
Mutt waved away Eddie’s and Ranger’s words with a meaty hand. “I’m not joining your goddamn team,” he said to Eddie.
“Come on,” said Eddie. “Come on! You’re born to it, Mutt. I can really make something out of you.”
“I’m already making something out of myself,” said Mutt.
“I’m not joining either,” said Dan. “Why do we have to be the four? You can’t just kidnap us to an open field and then think we’re going to do you a favor by joining your cross-country team.”
“Do me a favor? Do me a favor? Everything I ever learned in life I learned in sports. Teamwork. Discipline. This shit would do YOU a favor.”
“I’m sure,” said Dan. “I’m sure team sports really made a man of you, Eddie. Really made you into the person you are today. Great. But no. I hate running, I want to do tech for the fall play, and I’m not doing this.”
“Come on, Dan! Who’s been driving you to school on and off since you were a little twerp? Who came all the way back to the school to get you and take you home when you forgot to get on the bus that day in first grade?”
“You’re the one who drove off without me, Eddie,” said Dan. “There I was, waving my arms like a maniac on the sidewalk, and you just drove—”
“Regardless, Dan. Regardless. I can make you love running. I can make you wake up and want to get your sneakers on your feet before your eyes are even open.”
“Why do you even want to? Shit pay and we all are pretty twerpy,” said Dan.
“I’m not twerpy,” said Ranger, but Dan ignored him and continued: “What’s in it for you?”
But before Eddie could answer, Ranger spoke up again. “I’m never being on a team with you, Eddie. You scared me to death. I, like, cried in front of people.”
Dan moved and put his arm around Ranger again.
Ranger’s voice trembled, but he forged on. “You don’t want us to call you crazy, but you scared us so hard we almost died.”
Eddie shifted uncomfortably. “You got a point,” he said. “I apologize. Okay? I apologize. I really do. I just see real potential in you all. It means something to me.” He cleared his throat. “It’s kinda moving.”
“Moving,” said Mutt disgustedly.
“Well,” said Ranger, seemingly in spite of himself, “I would look goodcakes in that shirt. Wicked goodcakes.” And he wrestled the team shirt on over his clothes and looked down at himself with the start of something like pride blooming.
“Goodcakes,” sneered Mutt.
“I do look goodcakes,” said Ranger, and pulled the shirt away from his stomach to look at the mascot fish swimming cheerfully across it. He dropped it, and the hem skirted his knees. Bett snort-laughed. Then she froze. She hadn’t laugh-snorted like that since . . . No.
Dan looked tactfully away, but he laugh-snorted, too. Bett’s shoulders shivered for a second, but then she was okay. She was fine.
“I’m not doing it,” Mutt was saying. “I work after school. I can’t stay two and a half extra hours every day after school to practice and then work, too.”
“What’s this work you do?” asked Eddie.
“Lawns,” said Mutt.
Eddie rolled his eyes. “Lawns,” he said. “Kid, in two weeks nobody’s mowing their lawns anymore until spring. You’ll have all kinds of time.”
“Then I have to find something else,” said Mutt. “Eddie, I have to work, because come basketball, which is my real sport, I can’t work again anyway, and I have to earn what I can now.”
Eddie squinted. “I got it,” he said at last. “You can be my assistant.”
“Why does he get to be the assistant?” cried Ranger. “Does he get a uniform?”
“He gets a little prestige. And a little cash. They said I could have an assistant,” said Eddie. “For nominal pay,” he hastened to add. “But it’s something.”
“I’ll do it!” said Ranger. “Let me do it, Eddie! Why does it have to be him?”
“Because,” said Eddie, “I told you. The kid runs. Like a goddamned gazelle. You can all learn from him.”
“It pays?” said Mutt. “Because I got a clientele.”
“For two weeks more, tops, you got a clientele,” said Eddie. “Then nada. Finish them on Sundays. Our first meet isn’t until Saturday.”
“What!”
“That’s not even a week!”
“They come up quick,” said Eddie. “Most teams start practice in the summer. Don’t worry about this one. We’ll take it as a practice meet. And Mutt, you’ll get overtime pay for it.”
Mutt looks at him steadily. Then, “Well,” he said. “Okay. Running’s better than most other work I could find, probably.”
“It will be better,” said Eddie.
“Fine,” said Dan. “Whatever. Me too. I can do the winter play. I’m supposed to watch out for Ranger after school anyway.”
“You are not, you smerchface! Shut up!”
“Yes, I am, turd.”
“I’m in seventh grade!” fumed Ranger, his face growing red.
But Eddie didn’t care. “Yes!” he said, and punched the air a little. “And how about you?”
Everyone turned to Bett. She felt huge in her grandfatherly sweater and shorts.
Bett shrugged. She opened her mouth, but she only managed a grunt. How could she do this when it was nothing but pure Plus? And yet, she loved . . . No.
“Is that a yes?” Dan asked.
Bett cleared her throat. “I have to call my mom,” she said. “She’s probably like what the hell since I haven’t gotten home, anyway.”
“Sure,” Eddie said grandly. “All you kids. Call your folks. Tell ’em I got you.”
19
Monday Afternoon, Still Weirdly in the Field
“YOU’R
E JOINING THAT TEAM,” BETT’S mom declared when Bett finally reached her, still at the station house. “Especially after all this I hear about you getting to school late because you missed the bus? And walked to school on your own?”
“Mom,” said Bett. This rotten town was so damn small. Eddie, Mrs. Schlovsky in the office, her mother at the school to work on the psycho case. One conversation with her mom would be all it took.
But then Bett was quiet.
So was her mother. Then: “Do it, baby. Why don’t you just do it?”
Bett was silent again. Her mother’s voice firmed up again. “You’re doing it. At least then I’ll know you are where you say you are, when you are.”
Her mom did have her over a barrel. First Eddie. Now her. Whatever. Bett could always refuse to run and just walk, couldn’t she? She was only a body they needed to count.
“Fine,” said Bett, and hung up.
“She’s making me,” she said to Eddie, and then, accepting a Sharpie from Ranger, Bett leaned down over the grass and crossed out the “-men” in “Fishermen” on her T-shirt and wrote in “people” above it instead.
Dan took the Sharpie from her and did the same.
Bett looked at him, shocked. Then she reddened and turned away.
20
Autumn, Tuesday Morning, Day Four of Eleventh Grade
I WAS KIDNAPPED, AND NOW I am on a sports team. It was a hell of a first thought to have in the morning when she woke up. But have it Bett did, and the weirdness of the previous day stuck with her through the morning bus ride. On the one hand, the team was about running, which was too Plus. But on the other, equally awful hand, it was more exposure to Eddie and his wanting to talk to her. He had a better chance of that if he had time with her every day after school. And Bett was scared enough already of the impending Plus running, because if that was wrapped up in some Eddie plan about her weight, too, what was she going to do?
Her mother was acting like this was the best thing to happen to their family since they’d moved into the SIM card house.
“You’ll get back to yourself,” she had told Bett at dinner last night. “Girl, you got talent, and you’ve been wasting it. Do what God put you on this earth to do.”