by Greg Herren
If his spirit was restless, wouldn’t it make more sense for it to go see Laney, or Randy Froelich, or one of his actual friends? Maybe even his parents, or his brother?
With the sunlight coming through my window in the morning, it was a lot easier to be calm and rationalize the whole thing away as a bad dream. It was just the shock of Noah’s death—I probably wasn’t the only kid in town who’d had some kind of nightmare, right?
As for the key chain, well—it’s not like I was an expert on ghosts or anything, but from what I remembered from movies, I didn’t think a ghost could actually carry something real around with him.
So there had to be another explanation for the key chain ending up in my room, even if I couldn’t figure it out for myself.
I debated mentioning it to my mother after I showered and ate breakfast. I had the key chain in my jeans pocket, but she looked more tired than usual. She looked at me after I washed out my cereal bowl.
“You doing okay?” she asked, her eyebrows up. “If you want to talk about your friend—”
“I’m fine, Mom,” I cut her off. “Noah wasn’t really my friend.” As I said the words, I realized I sounded like Glenn had.
Maybe I had been a little harsher on him than I should have been.
By the time Glenn picked me up Monday morning, I had pretty much come to the conclusion that the whole thing had been a dream. And maybe I’d picked up the key chain over at Laney’s and didn’t remember doing it. Hell, I couldn’t even be certain it was Noah’s in the first place.
There was no such thing as ghosts, and so it had to have all been a dream. I just woke up in the middle of the night freaked out from the nightmare and found the key chain. My tired imagination did the rest.
*
“Hey,” Glenn said as he backed out of our driveway. “Did you talk to Laney?”
I nodded. “Yeah. She was pretty freaked out yesterday.”
“I don’t know, maybe you were right, maybe I should have called her.” He gave me a weak smile as he turned onto the main road. “I don’t know. I mean, I know you think I was being an asshole about it, but you know what a dick Noah always was to me—and after I came out—”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know what to say.
“So I felt pretty sure Laney would know I didn’t mean it. I mean, I didn’t want him to die or anything. I don’t want anyone to die. But”—he pounded his hands on the steering wheel in anger—“people our age aren’t supposed to die. I feel like I owed it to Laney—because of how close we used to be—to be supportive and instead I just hung out with Sara all day.”
I opened my mouth and shut it again.
He glanced at me as he pulled into the parking lot at school. “Yeah, and that’s all the stuff you were trying to tell me yesterday, I know. You were right.”
“I had a nightmare last night,” I said as he pulled into a spot and turned the car off. I fingered the key chain through my jeans. “About Noah.”
“I slept like a baby.” He grinned at me. “But I’m sure a lot of kids did. Have nightmares, I mean. Do you think Laney’ll be in school today?”
“I don’t know.” I got out of the car. I spotted Candy’s car parked a few rows closer to the school building.
“School’s going to be weird today.” He made a face as we walked across the lot toward the front doors. “A kid died in my old school—they brought in grief counselors and everything.” He shook his head. “Totally stupid.”
He was right about that—Noah’s death cast a pall over the entire student body. The whole school was weirdly quiet—people were talking in really hushed tones, when they were talking at all. As I walked down the hallway to my locker, I could hear snatches of what kids were saying to each other in whispers.
“I heard he was drunk…crushed, the truck rolled right over his body…they’re going to have a closed casket, my mom said…the funeral’s going to be Wednesday afternoon, do you think they’ll excuse us from classes to go…poor Laney, I can’t imagine what she’s going through…well, you know it was just a matter of time until something like this happened after one of Linda Avery’s parties…”
Linda Avery herself was nowhere to be seen. I looked around for Candy, but I didn’t see her anywhere either.
I got my sociology textbook out of my locker and headed to my first class.
They didn’t bring in grief counselors, like at Glenn’s old school, but by the end of the day I almost wished they had.
Every one of my teachers apparently thought it was “important” for them to bring the subject up and discuss it in the class. They also felt the need to let every one of us know that they were there for us, if we needed someone to talk to about our feelings about Noah’s tragic death. Some also took the opportunity to explain to us the dangers of teenage drinking—some even used that as an intro into talking about the dangers of premarital sex because “sometimes drinking results in that.”
It was pretty obvious that none of them were comfortable talking about any of it, and when no one responded to their offers, they seemed genuinely relieved to move on to their regularly scheduled programming.
The whole thing was really stupid. Noah had been at best an average student. He never participated in class but never disrupted it either. His death actually seemed to shake them up a lot more than it had any of us. Sure, Noah’s friends were upset, but for everyone else, there was a morbid fascination with it. Between classes, as the rumors spread and grew, the details of the accident became more and more exaggerated and gory—the shop kids, the ones who spent every available minute sneaking cigarettes out behind the shop or chewing tobacco, were the most honest about it. They were fascinated by the mechanics of the accident, about the gore factor of him being crushed by the truck, and some of them reenacted the whole thing in the lunchroom with a pencil standing in for Noah and a salt shaker standing in for his truck.
The cheerleaders and pep club girls were the exact opposite. They cried at the drop of a hat, walked around all day with sad faces and their eyes red from their crying. They were Laney’s main support base, whispering to themselves and anyone else who would listen about how brave Laney was to face coming to school after losing her boyfriend. They were turning her into the heroine of some tragic movie. The teachers, too, fussed over Laney. Several times I noticed her in the hall between classes, surrounded by a group of girls, her lower lip trembling as though she were about to burst into tears as they consoled her.
“It’s almost like they want her to break down,” Glenn mumbled to me as we walked past them on our way to the weight room. “They want her to make a spectacle of herself, like Hecuba on the walls of Troy.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. “It sure seems like she likes the attention.” I said.
“The Widow Greene,” Glenn said, theatrically rolling his eyes as he opened his gym locker.
“Have you talked to Sara?” I asked casually as I put on my workout shorts. “How’s she dealing with all this?”
“It takes some getting used to, coming to a small school after going to a big one, but she seems to be taking it all in stride.” Glenn grinned at me.
Taking it all in stride was an understatement.
Sara walked down the hall like she was on a runway somewhere, her head held high and her shoulders back. When she stopped to talk to someone, she held herself like she was posing for a camera. And honestly, I don’t think Southern Heights had ever seen anyone like her before. She was effortlessly polite and friendly to everyone, but in a distant sort of way. Her perfect smile never really seemed to reach all the way to her eyes. Even when she laughed, she didn’t seem to be really amused—just watching.
There was just something about her that seemed, I don’t know, off somehow.
But she was beautiful—there was absolutely no question about that. Every guy in school noticed, and couldn’t take his eyes off her whenever she was around. She was wearing a black tube dress that hugged every curve and shape of he
r body, and she did have an amazing figure. The dress was cut a little low in the front, so deep cleavage showed, and a single pearl hung there from a gold chain around her neck. She was also wearing heels—something none of the other girls did very often. Her legs were long and shapely, and the heels of her boots clicked as she stalked her way from class to class. I sometimes saw freshmen and sophomore boys just staring at her as she walked past, their mouths open in wonder. Her long silky white-blond hair was parted in the center, framing her face, and it somehow stayed perfectly styled, bouncing when she walked and swinging back into place when she stopped.
And whenever Glenn was around, she would take his arm and hang on his every word.
“She’s hot, huh?” Craig Morton, a sophomore, nudged me in the side with his elbow when she walked past us right before lunch. “What I wouldn’t do with that!”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with that,” I replied sourly. I walked into the cafeteria line, and once I had my food, I saw Candy sitting alone in a corner of the lunchroom reading a book while she ate.
“Mind if I sit down?” I asked, putting my tray down across from her.
“Not at all.” She smiled up at me. She glanced over at a nearby table, crowded with pep club girls and some of the other cheerleaders. “I told them I needed to read this chapter”—she leaned forward and whispered—“but to be honest, I was tired of talking about Noah’s funeral and planning a tribute to him for the game Friday night.” She rolled her eyes. “Am I a bitch?”
“No,” I said, looking over my lunch tray—sloppy joe, French fries, salad and brown betty for dessert. “Everyone’s acting like Noah was some kind of a saint, and he really wasn’t. It kind of bugs me.”
“Glenn said the same thing to me after English,” she said with a shrug. “We do tend to do that when people die, I guess.” She smiled at me, and I felt warm. She had a really great smile that lit up her entire face. “I suppose the team’s going to dedicate the game to him?”
“I don’t know.” But once she said it, I knew that Coach Roberts would probably do exactly that. It was hokey and corny—so of course we would do it. We’d win the game for Noah.
It made me want to throw up.
“So, I’ve been wondering, how exactly do you know Sara, Candy?” I took a bite out of my sloppy joe.
She looked at me and frowned a little bit. “I don’t really know her at all. Her aunt and uncle go to our church, so when she got into town on Friday her aunt called my parents and asked if I would take her out after the game Friday and introduce her to people.” She shrugged. “I didn’t really have a choice. Not that I minded doing it,” she added quickly.
“So you’d never met her before Friday night?”
“No.” She brushed her red hair away from her face, raising her eyebrows and frowning a little bit. “Why all the questions, Sherlock?”
“Oh, I was just curious about her, is all.” I didn’t meet her gaze, picking up my sandwich again. “How you wound up being out with her, is all.”
“Interested in her?” She said it casually, but her jawline tightened and her nostrils flared a little bit.
“No, no, not at all.” I shrugged. “Glenn’s spending a lot of time with her, so I was wondering.”
“You’re really protective of him, aren’t you?” Her right hand touched mine briefly before she pulled it away again. “I think that’s really sweet.”
“Glenn can take care of himself, trust me.” I grinned at her. “But still…you know, he’s been having a tough time of it lately, so, yeah. I wanted to check her out.”
“He’s so brave.” She took a drink out of her can of Diet Pepsi. “I can’t imagine doing what he did this summer. Did you have any idea? I didn’t.”
“I didn’t either.” I laughed. “I would have sworn he was in love with Laney and would be chasing her all year.”
“No idea at all? Really?”
I glanced at her. “What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing.” She smiled again. “Seriously. I was just wondering. I mean, like I said, I think he’s so brave, and I admire him for that—I don’t know if I could do it myself.”
“I know I couldn’t,” I said before I could stop myself, without thinking.
She tilted her head to one side and narrowed her eyes. She opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything for a moment. When she finally spoke, she said, “Well, we’re still going out this Saturday, aren’t we?”
I smiled at her. “I’m looking forward to it.”
She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “Me, too. Just do me a favor and stay away from Sara.”
“Jealous?” I teased her.
“No, not jealous.” She frowned. “There’s something about her, though, that—” She stopped, and started playing with her napkin. “Never mind.” She shook her head and laughed it off.
“What?” I stared at her, curious. “You can tell me, Candy.”
“No, it’s silly, nothing really, nothing at all.” She stood up as the bell rang. “I better get to class.” She winked at me. “Why don’t you call me after practice tonight?”
“I’ll do that.” I watched her walk out of the lunchroom. She was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a pink blouse, but to me she looked a thousand times better than Sara in her expensive black dress.
For the rest of the day I did wonder what she’d been about to say. I figured maybe I could get it out of her when I called her.
And I really was happy she wanted me to call her.
*
Football practice was a real drag that day.
Usually, the Mondays after games we just practiced in shorts and T-shirts. We would have a session in the lunchroom where Coach would go over plays he wanted us to try on the blackboard. He would go over things that went wrong and went right in the last game, and then we’d head out to the practice field to run plays for the rest of the practice before we did our wind sprints to close out the day.
Ordinarily, after a loss Coach Roberts would not be happy—and we would get a stern lecture in addition to a pep talk. The whole song and dance about not getting down, that the season was more than just a game, the usual rah-rah bullshit.
But this wasn’t a normal Monday after a game. One of our teammates had been killed over the weekend. And as we quietly took our seats in the lunchroom, it was pretty obvious he wasn’t very comfortable. He stood in front of the chalkboard and cleared his throat. The murmurs in the room died to silence, but he didn’t say anything. He just stood there and cleared his throat a second time, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“If he tells us to dedicate the goddamned season to Noah, I’m quitting the team,” Glenn said to me under his breath.
But Coach Roberts did no such thing. He did give us the same “it’s a great, great tragedy” speech we’d been hearing all day, but he didn’t stop there. He went on to talk about Noah and what a good player he’d been. “He wasn’t a great player.” Coach Roberts wiped at his eyes, and wouldn’t meet any of our eyes. Instead he looked up at the ceiling. “Noah wasn’t ever going to be all conference, wasn’t going to go on to play in college. He just liked to play football, and he had a lot of heart. But you all know that. You all played together for years, and you know what Noah Greene was all about. I remember that first season, when I first started coaching here—some of you remember that year, some of you younger players don’t—and I remember Noah telling me after we lost our fifth straight game not to get down, because we’d win a game, he knew we would, and I shouldn’t lose my faith in the team. And we did only win that one game. And after that game was over, Noah came up to me, and told me, ‘Told you so, Coach!’”
I wasn’t so sure I believed the story. The Noah Greene I knew was a sore loser and always blamed other people if he lost. Nothing was ever his fault—that was one of the main reasons I never liked him.
So I kind of tuned Coach Roberts out as he talked about how Noah wouldn’t want his death to affect the res
t of the season, that he would be watching us, and we should make him proud to have been on our team. It was really corny, the kind of thing you’d see on a family-oriented television show. I let my mind wander, and I wondered again about the key ring.
Where the hell had it come from?
When Coach Roberts finished talking, I looked around. A couple of Noah’s friends had tears in their eyes, but most of us looked real uncomfortable and kind of glad he was finished.
“It’s like something out of one of those corny old black-and-white movies,” Glenn muttered, and I stifled a laugh. Rather than going over the game plan or new plays, Coach Roberts announced that the funeral was going to be Wednesday at one p.m., and we would all be excused from class to go, “but we’re still going to have practice on the dot at three thirty. Now, let’s go out there and run some plays, and we’ll call it a day.”
We ran plays for about an hour and a half, and Coach didn’t even make us run sprints. The whole day was kind of subdued, actually. No one really seemed to have their heads in it, and even Coach didn’t seem himself. Ordinarily he’d yell at us when we screwed something up.
Maybe he was afraid to yell at us in our delicate emotional states after Noah’s death.
It wasn’t until after practice that things began to get ugly.
And it happened in the locker room, of course. I took my time getting to the locker room after practice the way I always did—I hate standing around waiting for a shower stall, so I like to wait until almost everyone else is finished. That way I also don’t have to hurry, and Glenn never rushes me.
I was just coming out of the shower, tying my towel around my waist when I heard Zack Zimmer say, “I bet you’re pretty glad that Noah’s dead, aren’t you?”
I froze in place, and then Glenn replied, “I don’t really care one way or the other, if you want the truth.”
“Don’t be thinking that since he’s gone we’ve forgotten you’re a fag and a pervert and a cocksucker.” Zack went on, “And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t be looking at the rest of us when we’re changing.”