Bad Boy

by Diana Wieler

  “’lo?” Tully mumbled, trying to prop himself up on his elbow. But the waterbed made it difficult. He sank back on a whoosh of water and cradled the receiver with his shoulder.

  “Tul?” A.J. said. Even half asleep Tully recognized the edge in his friend’s voice. He tried to sit up again.

  “Hi. You okay?”

  A.J. heard a faint click and a tinny echo on the line, but he couldn’t place it. He started again cautiously. “Tul? I know it’s late and everything but can … can I come over?”

  A voice cut in. “Sorry, A.J. Tully’s not supposed to take this call.”

  Tully sighed. “Summer … get off the phone.”

  “He’s grounded,” Summer continued blithely on the upstairs extension. “Mom wouldn’t let him take a call from the Pope right now.”

  “Will you —”

  “His social life is finito Not that that’s a loss or anything, but he’s grounded until he’s thirty-five. I think they’re enrolling him in a monastery on Monday. He’ll make a great monk, A.J.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re a real comedienne. How’d you like to do this show with a phone in your mouth?” Tully said, warming up.

  “Ooh, I’m scared, macho man,” Summer purred. “You know, A.J., he marches around here pretending like he’s Schwarzenegger. You should see this little thing he does in front of the mirror with his neck …”

  “It’s better than what you do in front of the mirror, zit face,” Tully said. A.J. could hear his murderous smile. “You know, A.J., I go in there to comb my hair and I have to wipe the mirror —”

  “You gross pig!” Summer cried.

  “I mean, it’s just caked on in disgusting little dots. She’s a regular zit factory.”

  “You liar!” Summer said. “If anybody in this house has a zit problem, it’s you, jerk! With all that garbage you eat …” Her voice trembled.

  A.J. sat, glued to a conversation he never had a chance to be involved in. It was like a foreign language, a brother/sister code.

  Suddenly there was a shuffling sound, and a new voice broke in.

  “Okay, Tully, put a lid on it,” Mrs. Brown said with a short, sharp sigh. “You know, I’m really not happy with you right now, and I get so tired of you tormenting her —”

  “Tormenting her!” Tully bristled. “You tell that suckhole not to dish it out if she can’t take it. And besides, this was my phone call. She cut into my call.”

  There was a brief silence, then … “Hello, who’s on the line?” Mrs. Brown asked, her voice rising an octave.

  A.J. jumped. He felt like a voyeur. “Uh, it’s A.J., Mrs. Brown.”

  “Tully will call you tomorrow,” Mrs. Brown said, polite but firm. “If he grows up a little.”

  “Hey,” Tully blurted. “This is important. You can’t just cut off my call. Give me one minute to finish up. One minute!”

  There was a moment’s hesitation. “Thirty seconds, Tully,” Mrs. Brown said evenly, “and then I’m picking up the phone and you had better not be on it.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the boy muttered.

  “Thirty seconds,” she warned again, and then she hung up, and the line was quiet and clear. A.J. wound the telephone cord around one of his fingers, waiting.

  “Life stinks,” Tully said. Then his voice softened. “Look, come over tomorrow, as soon as you can get away. We’ll do some lifting or something.”

  “But what about —”

  “Don’t worry, they’ll let you in. They like you,” Tully said. “Probably more than they like me right now.”

  And at that moment, A.J. did feel liked. Crouched in the darkened hallway with the phone warm against his ear, he felt liked for the first time all day.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

  When he’d hung up, he sat for a moment, leaning against the wall. His father was ironing shirts in the living room. A.J. could hear the creak, creak of the ironing board and the sharp hiss of steam.

  Why were some houses so easy to be in, he wondered. How many evenings had he stayed late at Tully’s, too comfortable to get up and leave? He liked the sound of them, the way they fit together, even when they fought.

  A.J. knew that whatever had been bugging Tully after hockey practice, he could handle it. Living in a real family taught you how to fight back. The other kind of family, A.J. thought, just taught you how to duck.

  FOUR

  THERE was a ritual to getting dressed for a game. For some guys it started outside the rink. Mendel always tapped the door three times before he entered. Millyard put his skates on first, before anything, even his jock strap. To an outsider it would have looked ridiculous, a naked young man in skates, but nobody on the team even looked twice. Everybody had their quirks.

  For A.J., it was the way he taped his stick. He did it last, after he was dressed. He’d find an empty corner and sit down with his fabric tape — black for the bottom, white for the top — and start winding, silent, intent. If somebody spoke to him, the words bounced off. Once the process had started, he was in a trance until it was complete.

  He always began with the black tape on the blade of the stick, five or six rows to hide the puck. Some guys, the hotshots, did only two rows, but ever since he could remember, A.J. had liked the solid section of black across the blade.

  The taping of the top half was more crucial. It could take him twenty minutes and a whole roll of white tape to get it right. He began with the knob, the careful ball of tape at the top of the handle that would help him hang onto the stick. He’d anchor the tape to the stick, then pull out an arm’s length from the roll, spinning it into twine for the bulk the knob needed. He’d spin another arm’s length and repeat the process until the size and shape were right. Then he’d begin wrapping the tape smooth over the knob and hand grip.

  A.J. never remembered what he thought about while he taped his stick; he tried not to think at all. But that Saturday night of their first game against the North Battleford Kings, he couldn’t keep his head clear. When he tried to get rid of the doubts, they bounced back at him.

  He had only two fears: That he wouldn’t get on the ice, and that he would, and screw up.

  It’s just exhibition, for Pete’s sake, A.J. told himself. But he knew it wasn’t. Moose Jaw cared about Triple A.

  The whole province was passionate about it. Saskatchewan didn’t have an NHL hockey team. What it had were winters so long and bleak they bordered on madness. It had kids who started pushing kitchen chairs around the ice at the age of four, and parents who could break into fistfights in the stands. Minor hockey was something to devour in the hungriest, emptiest months of the year. A.J. knew that if he got on the ice at all, people would be watching him.

  And so would Landau. A.J. had had one, maybe two good plays in practice, but the rest of the week had been mediocre. Marginal.

  The taping finished, A.J. ripped off the roll with one deft movement, and dropped it on the bench beside him. Tape was expensive, but he never used the same roll of white twice. It was another quirk.

  Clangl Startled, A.J. dropped his stick.

  “Hook shot!” Tully cried, and fired another empty tape roll into the metal garbage can. Clang!“The crowd goes wild …”

  A.J. grinned and retrieved his stick. “Dr. J, I presume.”

  Tully snatched an empty drink can from the bench and faked a pass. “The sultan of smooth,” he said, tossing the can in a gentle arch. Ting! It hit the rim and skidded over the spongy black floor.

  “Don’t give up your day job,” A.J. said.

  Tully’s feet were bare. He never put on socks and skates until the last minute. He was so hyperactive before a game that it was maddening for him to clunk around in skates.

  Now he lifted a foot onto the bench beside A.J. and leaned forward, resting on his knee. “You coming out with us after?”

  “Who’s us?”

  “You know, Weitzammer, Mendel, some girls — just a bunch of us. It’s no big deal. Maybe we’ll just go
get a pizza or something.”

  “Who are you going with?”

  “Andrea Knutson,” Tully said, but he was interrupted by a loud groan. A young man who was almost unrecognizable under his equipment gave Tully a solid whack on the leg with his stick.

  “Knutson? You’re killing me, Brown. I have been trying to get to that girl for weeks.”

  “So I’m charming, what can I say?” Tully tossed, his head.

  “It’s the car,” the young man sighed. “It’s gotta be the car.” He thunked Tully with his stick again and drifted away. The blond boy turned back to his friend, and his voice dropped just a shade.

  “Summer’s coming, too,” Tully said.

  “So?” A.J. said. The word came out too fast. Tully’s mouth twisted into a knowing smile. He shrugged.

  “Summer,” A.J. said. He tried to make it sound like a question, but he couldn’t. “Get real.”

  “Hey, I’m insulted. She drives me nuts sometimes, but she is my sister. Family pride.”

  A.J. had picked up the roll of white tape and was fiddling with it, curling back the sticky edge. Was he so obvious that the whole world could see it, even when he tried to be careful? Or did Tully just read him because he was Tully?

  “Don’t fix me up, Tul.”

  “So who’s fixing?” Tully was defensive. “I’m making a statement. You said, ‘Who’s going?’ and I told you. That’s not fixing.”

  For a moment the only sound was the muted buzz of the locker room. They heard Grummett tell someone to be sure to swing out wide for the pass.

  “You’re crazy,” A.J. said at last. “She hates me.”

  “Aw, no, she doesn’t. She’s like that with everybody.”

  A.J. looked up, but he couldn’t keep the faint smirk off his face. “Liar.”

  Luckily, Landau came in then and started prepping them. A.J. was grateful for the diversion. He sat with the rest of the team while Landau went over the North Battleford lines, cautioning them about one of the defensemen, and a centre.

  “Don’t underestimate him,” Landau pushed. “The guy looks like a badminton racquet but he’s as slippery as a greased worm. Don’t turn your back on him. He wants to play footsie? Give him the message.”

  A.J. listened and watched. He was good at focusing. When it came time to play, usually he could put everything else out of his mind. Except now he kept shifting on the bench, trying to shrug off the uncomfortable warmth that flushed through him like a memory.

  He’d known Summer as long as he’d known Tully, but he’d never completely relaxed around her. Summer said what she was thinking, and you never knew what she’d think next.

  A.J. had no sisters. Even before his mother left, he had never run into wet stockings hanging in the bathroom; he’d never knocked over cosmetics on the vanity. Everything Alina Brandiosa had was tucked so neatly away, like her high heels at the very back of the hall closet, it was as if she’d been half packed for years.

  And so A.J. watched Summer. Not straight out, and not when she was looking — he was so careful. But he absorbed her. The way she moved, the way she sounded. And he wasn’t exactly sure when it had stopped being watching and started being something else.

  Once, last year, when the Browns were renovating the main floor, A.J. had gone upstairs to use the second-storey bathroom. The door to Summer’s room was open, and there was no one home except Tully in the basement. The sunlight from her window spilled onto the hall carpet by his feet.

  He’d just wanted to see. Where her things were, and where she slept. A.J. had stood in the doorway and looked at the rumpled quilt and the drinking glasses all over the dresser. There was a poster of David Bowie that reminded him faintly of Tully, and there were clothes abandoned recklessly on the bed and chair and floor. A yellow T-shirt caught his eye.

  He’d only come in for a quick glance, but all of a sudden the T-shirt was in his hand. It was soft cotton, not flimsy like his own, but heavier and softer. Before he could even think, the T-shirt was against his face and he was breathing in the scent of Summer.

  She smelled of sweat, salty but not sharp, and of outside. Grass. She smelled like the last day in August when you played football on the lawn. The heat grew inside him so gently, so cautiously, that he didn’t even notice until it hurt.

  There was a faint noise, a distant scraping from downstairs, but it jarred him. To be caught in here, feeling like this …

  A.J. threw the shirt down and bolted into the bathroom. It was some minutes before he could face his friend without embarrassing himself. But even when he was back to normal and could start down the stairs, the sensation rippled in him like an echo.

  You could date a friend’s sister, A.J. thought. You could date her and you could like her. But to date her and feel like this, that was dangerous.

  North Battleford was dangerous, too. It didn’t matter that it was only exhibition. They tore into the game hungry for ice. The forwards were fast and sly, and caught the Cyclones’ front line by surprise. The Moose Jaw goalie, Terry Frances, jumped and dove far more than he should have in the first ten minutes of play.

  “Jesus Christ,” he spat at his defense, “if you’re just here to watch, go sit in the stands. You’re blocking my view.”

  Halfway through the first period, though, the Cyclones began to click. It was little things — completed passes and sharp interceptions. They managed to move the puck better, and they moved it more often into the North Battleford zone.

  Landau hadn’t played A.J. at all, but he sent him in at the end of the first period. The boy had been suffering on the bench and now he checked and blocked with intensity, forcing the North Battleford forwards wide when they learned to duck him.

  He had one good play. It was the final minutes of a scoreless first period. The Cyclones had been worrying the puck in the Kings’ zone, unable to get a clear shot. Tully, against the boards at the blue line, finally manoeuvred around the winger who’d been covering him. He passed to Weitzammer, but the puck was intercepted by the North Battleford centre. The winger who’d been shadowing Tully dropped back to receive the pass, then whirled around to the open ice.

  Stationed at the North Battleford blue line, A.J. saw the play before it happened. He’d been watching the centre, not the puck, and the second he saw him flinch to scoop it, A.J. started backing up.

  He needed the head start. The winger was fast, and as soon as he had the puck on his stick he was away, hurtling towards the Moose Jaw net. Breakaway.

  The home crowd was up, screaming, but A.J. couldn’t hear it. He dug into the ice, scrambling to catch the gold and blue jersey that was only a blur in his eyes. He knew there wouldn’t be time to force the winger wide. He had to take either the puck or the player.

  He caught him just beyond the Moose Jaw blue line. A.J. saw the twitch, the windup for the slapshot, and lunged. The puck stayed where it was and the winger flew.

  No one had to tell him it was a great play, but they did. A.J. sailed into the dressing room on the sound of thunder, buffeted by the solid pounding of leather gloves. Even Landau cuffed him.

  “Nice piece of work, Brandiosa.”

  But the momentum didn’t hold. North Battle came into the second period cheated and hungry. They picked up the pace and put on the pressure, digging in with shoulders and elbows and the occasional stick.

  It was in the second period that A.J. met the Worm.

  His number was 5, and he was small, even for a centre. With his bandy legs and flapping jersey, he was laughable. But he was everything else Landau had said, too.

  When the puck was in the Moose Jaw end and A.J. was scuffling against the boards, the Worm stayed well back. But the moment the puck was flying down the ice and everyone was watching the North Battleford net, Number 5 tripped him. Hard.

  A.J. tumbled, his stick skidding, and came up cursing. But the Worm was long gone. And of course the referee was watching the play. A.J. let it go, but the next time the two were on the ice together, Num
ber 5 hooked him again. And again.

  A.J. came off his shift spitting blue. Landau watched him bluster and sputter for a few minutes, and he couldn’t hold back the I-told-you-so gleam from his eyes.

  “You’ve got a problem, Brandiosa?” Landau said finally. The corners of his mouth quivered.

  “Yeah, I got a problem — a bug problem,” A.J. seethed. “There’s this freakin’ insect with a big number five on its back!”

  “That skinny little guy is giving you trouble? What do you weigh, kid — 180?”

  A.J. could hear the chuckle in Landau’s voice. “Hey, come on. The guy is a … a …”

  “Worm?” Landau supplied, his mouth twisting. Then his features hardened again. “If you’ve got a problem, solve it. But we can afford five minutes, not two.” And he turned away.

  A.J. sat on the bench, melting the ice with his eyes. Landau had made himself clear. A fighting penalty was five minutes, but the player was replaced on the ice. A two-minute penalty for roughing would leave his team short-handed. A.J. didn’t want two minutes and he didn’t want five. He just wanted to give the Worm some of his own medicine.

  A.J. and the centre weren’t on the ice together until halfway through the third period. The set-up had to be perfect, A.J. knew. If it wasn’t done exactly right, he’d get two minutes for sure.

  He was watching the North Battleford centre so intently, he missed seeing the only goal of the night.

  It wasn’t beautiful but nobody cared. It was a mishmash of a goal, all elbows and sticks and cursing in the North Battleford zone. Mendel to Tully to Mendel to Rudachuk — who should have shot but didn’t have the nerve — back to Tully, who finally squeezed it in.

  The crowd, almost as sweaty and wrung out as the players, cheered with exultation and relief. And even though he had no part in the goal, didn’t even see it, A.J. was lifted by the inevitable rush. They were ahead, and the game was almost over. He was soaked with power.

  “Come on, Worm,” he coaxed under his breath. And at last the Worm came.