by Andrew Cotto
I laughed. “This ain’t gonna take long.”
An hour later we were at The Can, sitting in a booth with four Early Birds, four Cokes, and a basket of fries. We’d killed those guys, mostly because of Terence’s face-job on Rice, but I’d helped, too. And let me say, for the record, that there ain’t a short, fat, potsmoking Puerto Rican on the planet that can guard me one-on-one. If the league was full of guys like Santos, I might have gone out for the team again, but as it was, I was happy just to do my part in having some fun and earning a free meal.
“You know,” I said, slowly separating two halves of the sandwich, allowing a string of orange cheese to dangle like a telephone wire, “these things taste even better when they’re free.”
“Damn, dog,” Rice moaned, crossing his arms and slumping into his side of the booth. “That’s cold.”
You could tell Rice was soft and spoiled by what a sore loser he was.
“You know what else?” I started again. “Based on that score, you should probably buy us another.”
“What I should do,” he spat, “is buy you some new shorts and shit.”
“Hey, these things are lucky,” I said, rubbing my short-shorts.
Terence and Santos laughed at the back and forth between me and Rice.
“I’m sorry you ever brought this fool out,” Rice sulked to me about Terence. “How’d you change his mind anyway?”
“I told him I knew how to get the only good meal around,” I answered, elbowing Terence. “On the biggest fool around.”
“That’s cold, man,” Rice whimpered. “That’s cold.”
“Yeah, you said that already, dawg.”
I nudged Terence again, then looked over at Santos. He had a sweet smile on his fat brown face. I shot him a wink and he nodded. Poor Rice seemed to be the only one not having a good time. “Hey,” I said to him. “What’s with the funji face? So you had to buy some Birds. But now you know that scholarship wasn’t wasted on a stiff.”
“Yeah, you right,” Rice said, correcting his posture. “Solid!” He slapped Terence five across the table.
We polished off the food while Terence checked out the hokey decorations and the wooden tabletops left empty by those (somehow) not interested in wrecking their appetite for dinner. The upstairs game room had a few students watching the giant screen TV in their dress clothes. A young couple played Foosball. Ouch.
On the way out, I got stuck holding the door for a group of girls I didn’t know, except for Brenda Divine, who was bringing up the rear. She had on this swinging skirt that kind of danced above her knees as she walked. Her sunshiny hair rested on the shoulders of a button-up sweater. My normal blast of adrenalin upon seeing her was cranked even more by the flowers I could smell when she stopped in front of me.
I’d been trying to make eye contact with Brenda for weeks, after I figured the smoke had cleared from our little exchange. She hadn’t looked my way, not even once, and I’d all but given up on Brenda Divine… or at least I’d begun the process of trying to get started on thinking about giving up on Brenda Divine. But now she stood in The Can, right in front of my face, reaching out with the same silence and sad eyes she’d had that lousy day in the classroom. Even in my state of constant delusion, I sensed she was giving me a chance. And I wasn’t going to blow it.
“What’s the matter, Cinderella?” I asked. “Bluebirds don’t make your bed anymore?”
“No, they don’t,” she said with a banged-up smile. “They haven’t for awhile.”
“Sorry about that,” I told her. Then I told her again.
“Me, too,” she said, squeezing my wrist before walking away.
“Hey Bren,” I called after her. She turned around in the middle of The Can. “You think these shorts are, you know, too short?” She gave me the once-over and then covered her mouth as she cracked up laughing.
Chapter 5
I liked sports and everything, and I loved playing baseball, but I didn’t buy any of that “Big Game” business, like it was the end of the world if Hamden Academy didn’t beat the York School every time we faced off in some competition. Without a football team to pile our hopes on, the other fall sports — soccer, field hockey, cross-country — combined to take on this special importance during the second Saturday in October. What made this whole deal even funnier was that York’s rival wasn’t even Hamden, but some school called Milton. They played each other in football on the first Saturday in October.
Hype ruled all week, with banners covering campus and announcements every night at dinner. The worst part was that the players took it all seriously, and they walked around like big shots all week (like the wrestlers did all year), even though they were mostly missing the two things needed to be good at sports: strength and skill, which the wrestlers, unfortunately, had by the bucketful.
Anyway, I wanted no part of Pride Day, especially since Meeks had been blowing his horn all week about Todd coming back. This was worse than the hype for the games. The thought of Todd being around bothered me, since I didn’t know how I’d react. What do you do with a guy like that? Someone who hurts you on purpose even though he’s your friend? Do I forget it, like Meeks and Grohl suggested, since all is fair when it comes to girls? Or do I go batty on him until I feel better? I leaned toward going batty, so I decided to make myself scarce on Pride Day.
My favorite part of the Hamden campus was the Far Fields recreation area. Starting on the front side of the gym, and extending out behind our dorms, was this enormous collection of fields. We had separate sections for everything: soccer, lacrosse, Softball, baseball. I almost fell over my first time out there. I’d never seen so much grass in my life!
In the spring, there could be four games going on at once, but the only fall sport out there was soccer, men’s and women’s, side by side, on the first two fields (field hockey was in front of Montgomery, and cross-country took place somewhere in the country, I guess). The baseball field angled away from the woods in the far corner, and that’s where I went with my pride on Pride Day.
After sleeping in, kicking around, and having a late lunch alone, I left the crowded campus and walked behind Montgomery onto a wide trail through the woods. Once out on the open fields, the bonfire contraption was to my left, dead center in the middle of the expanse. I hugged the right side of the woods, walking away from the soccer games in the panhandle above the gymnasium.
After reaching the baseball diamond and walking behind the pitcher’s mound, I was pretty much out of sight. I lay down in the grass. With hands behind my head, I looked up at the blue, blue sky. Not a cloud anywhere near New Jersey that day.
Lying there, alone and out of sight, a slight breeze swept over surface of the earth. It swept over me, too. The bent grass tickled my arms and neck. With the sunlight on my face, I closed my eyes and thought about things. I thought about my life and all the bad that had happened to me. I thought about the loss of Genie Martini and my childhood friends in the neighborhood where everyone once knew me as Domino. I thought about that year at Catholic school, with its all-boys policy and its scary nuns. I thought about Todd Brooks and the fact that a crap kid like him got to be with a dynamite girl like Brenda Divine. And I thought about me some more. I lay in the grass feeling sorry for myself, wasting time while my last days of high school — my last chance at getting back all those things I’d lost — were whizzing past like trees on the side of the highway.
I opened my eyes. Overhead, two hawks dipped and dived in the swimming pool-blue sky. I wished I could swim. I wished I could fly. Tired of wishes, I hopped to my feet and ran across the field. I must have been laying there for awhile because, in the distance, the soccer fields were empty. Some students and faculty stared at the unlit bonfire, and I booked it past them and entered the woods behind Montgomery. On the dirt path, I tripped on a root and tumbled over my shoulder, but I got up and kept going until entering Montgomery. I was going to shower, get dressed up nice, and spill my guts to Brenda Divine. After I apologi
zed, about 10 times, for making her cry.
Cutting through the common area, toward a shower and some sharp clothes, I heard a little bit of noise — laughter, voices, music — coming from the corner room. I stopped. I should have kept walking, but I stopped without thinking and knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” a voice called out.
“It’s me,” I barked over the music.
Waiting for the door to open, I tried to stay still, but my heart jumped like a small animal trapped in my chest, and breath escaped from my nose in short bursts. My mouth went dry and my hands got wet as I made fists for Todd Brooks. I was going to walk in there and just kill him. I couldn’t help myself. All I knew about fighting, and all I had to lose by getting kicked out… all those plans I’d had for Brenda were ditched the second I sensed the presence of someone who had hurt me bad. I should have stayed out on the fields.
After half a minute, I heard someone fussing by the door, and then the lock popped and the door cracked open. Grohl pulled me inside and re-set the lock. I searched the darkened room for Todd, but all I found in the shadowy space was Rice and Santos, laid out like lizards, stoned to the bone.
“What up, Cuz?” Rice asked, sprawled across a bed with his legs hanging off. “We came looking for you dawgs, and found these cats instead.”
“Where’s Todd?” I asked Meeks. He was sitting in his beanbag chair with his hands behind his head, a surly look on his pinched face.
“Didn’t show,” he snapped. “Thanks to you.”
“Me?” I asked. “The hell you blaming me for?”
“Maybe if you’d just called the guy, told him you didn’t care about some stupid girl, he would’ve come.”
“Listen up, ball bag,” I said through my teeth. “I ain’t your social secretary.”
Meeks tightened his eyes and duck-billed his lips. But he didn’t say anything.
In the background, the Allman Brothers Band played this song with a winding guitar solo that had enough notes to fill a Springsteen box set.
“Yo, yo,” Rice waved his arms. “Let’s squash that shit, aight?”
I kept staring at Meeks, and the little turd was doing a pretty good job holding my eyes. He had no idea how much anger he was messing with. I was thinking about walking over there and kicking him in the face, for starters.
“So where were you all day anyway?” Rice asked me.
“What?” I turned to ask.
“Where were you? We was looking for you before, and T said you might be down here.”
“I went for a walk in the woods,” I lied.
That was the first thing I could think of to say, and I thought it was better than admitting I’d been lying down on the ball field having a moment with myself. The room was silent for a few seconds before the three of them burst into hysterics. Maybe the truth would have been better.
“To the woods!” Rice cried. “What, like, on a hike? Nah, nah! I must be high! I must be high!”
“Looks like the woods won, Guy,” Grohl said, slapping his thigh.
“What?”
“Looks like the woods won,” he said, pointing at the dirt stains on the knees of my jeans and on the shoulder of my thermal undershirt.
“Hey, ah, maybe the next time you go out hiking, nature boy,” Rice coughed, trying to contain his laughter, “you could get the Fresh Air Fund to go wit chu! Look out for your city ass and shit.”
Santos, already on the floor, rolled over on his side and shuddered. All of them laughed at me, except for Meeks. He kept his little kid’s pout, in his little kid’s chair. I figured I’d better leave him there.
“Later,” I said.
“Much!” Meeks’s bratty voice chased me out the door.
The sky was stretched into faded blue when I burst out of the dorm. The tree tops had gone dark. Groups of students and parents funneled toward the dining hall, so I stomped across the field and into the smoking shack. No one was smoking on Pride Day, with parents all around, so I sat in the silence and the smell of rotting wood. I spat on the ground and cursed Meeks. I felt dirty and itchy in the dank room, but I didn’t want to have to go back to the dorm for a shower and a fresh set of clothes. Another run-in with Meeks might cost me my night. Or more. I needed food and time to cool down, so I made a plan.
I wouldn’t be allowed in the dining hall looking like one of the Outsiders, so I went to the Can to eat with the orphans. There were a dozen or so faces, either alone or in twos, none of whom I knew. I ate by myself. In the bathroom, I washed my face and neck and hands. To hide the stain on my shoulder, I inverted the shirt and made for outside.
I walked down the path and between the dorms, following the trail to the fields. The smell of wood smoke filled the air. The fire shot orange flames into the darkened sky. A good crowd had gathered, and I searched the glowing faces that surrounded the vigil. I didn’t find Brenda, though.
I left the flames and followed the fields past the gymnasium complex. The back of Brenda’s dorm was dark, except for a few glowing rooms. I thought about climbing up the fire escape, but figured I’d get in trouble, especially if I ended up knocking on the window of the wrong room, so I walked around to the front. The common area was empty, except for a bookworm-type girl reading under a library lamp. I took a deep breath and called on some courage, but none came. None came. I was out of guts. I sighed and walked off the porch, feeling kind of collapsed.
Chased by the noise from the headmaster’s house, I cut across the meadow. On the path, I decided to skip the shack after seeing Meeks and them there, smoking their brains out. Loneliness seeped from my chest, hard and heavy, and I fought the urge to run while picking up my pace down the path. At the dorm, I entered the quiet lobby and, feeling numb and alone as I’d ever been, headed for my room.
“So,” a soft voice startled me. “You finally made it.”
Brenda Divine sat on a couch, a suede jacket laid over her lap, her hair fanned down to the shoulders of a black turtleneck.
I almost fell over.
“Come on,” I said, helping her put on her jacket. “Let’s get out of here.”
We crossed the field and went up the hill and onto a gravel path, past the Language Arts building. After a rocky meadow with a crumbling cemetery in the corner, we hopped a low stone wall and caught a pitched trail through some open trees. The air smelled of earth and leaves. The sound of the crashing waterfall filled our ears before we reached the clearing that opened to an old wooden bridge spanning a falling stream. Brenda took my hand. We walked.
“I miss this place,” she said as we settled on the bridge, our legs dangling between the rungs. The sky was hazy and blank, except for a harvest moon that hung above the trees.
“Yeah,” I said, looking at the lights of the small town below. “It’s some spot, alright.”
I remembered how we used to sit on the bridge last year, talking for hours, sometimes not talking at all. And sometimes we would follow the stone steps alongside the waterfall, down to the empty lot that led to Main Street. We would kick around town and stop for lunch at the old diner before acting like little kids in the playground. I liked to push Brenda on the swings, touching the small of her back with my hands.
Once, just outside of town, I chased her through a field covered in dandelions. She laughed as I ran behind. After I caught her (and I’m pretty sure she let me), we stood still as agitated seeds floated around us like wispy fireflies. On the way home, she bought me a T-Shirt in the Five-n-Dime that read: wherethehellishamdenville? I treated that shirt like a trophy, until somebody stole it at the end of the year.
“I’m sorry, Danny,” Brenda broke the silence, bringing me back to the bridge.
“About what?” I asked.
“I’m sorry about what happened last year,” she said. The wind ruffled her bangs.
“Ah,” I waved. “Forget it.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about how hurt you were, and I can understand why.”
�
�You can, huh?” I picked up a twig and began snapping it into pieces.
“Yes,” she said, taking my arm. “I know that, at first, we liked each other, and flirted and whatever, but you knew I had a boyfriend, and I thought we became, you know, like real friends, and that made me so happy. I can’t even tell you.”
“You can tell me,” I joked.
She poked me with her elbow and kept talking. “It was just that I never had any real guy friends because, every time I made one, it turned out they just, you know, wanted to be with me, and then there was you — this really cute, charming guy who was just happy to be my friend. It was so validating.”
“There you go with them SAT words again, Bren.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “I know it seems, well, self-absorbed, but it meant a lot to me — though I guess I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“First of all,” I said, dropping the broken twig pieces into the pool below, where they circled, then shot away, “I prefer handsome to cute.”
“Got it,” she noted.
“And I did like just being friends with you; you were like my number one guy there for awhile.”
“Thanks,” she smiled, bumping my shoulder with hers. “I’ve never been anyone’s number one guy before.”
“Yeah, well, that’s good, but I wanted more than that, too, you know. I wanted more than that.” It felt weird to admit what I’d known for so long. My face grew tingly and my throat went dry.