by Greg Herren
“Have you been sleeping okay?” I blurted out. The hall was emptying, and if we both didn’t hurry we were going to be late.
Startled, she looked at me for a moment before answering. “Now, why would you ask me such a weird question?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t been sleeping too well.”
“I can see that.” She stroked the circles under my eyes with her free hand. “What’s wrong, Tony?”
“I’ve been having a lot of nightmares. Weird nightmares.”
“I guess that’s only natural, considering what’s been going on around here lately.” She looked away. “I’ve been having nightmares, too. My mother says it’s normal, under the circumstances, what with Noah dying so awfully and everything. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t want to go to bed every night.”
“What kind of nightmares have you been having?”
“Why are you asking?” She looked into my eyes. “What’s going on, Tony?”
“I don’t know what’s going on, Laney. But I want to find out.”
Candy walked up to us then, and kissed me on the cheek. “Hey, sweetie. Hi, Laney. How are you both doing?”
“We’re talking about that witch Sara Sterling,” Laney said as the warning bell rang.
“Don’t say things like that!” Candy replied quickly, glancing around.
“Why not?” Laney said, her voice getting louder. “That’s what she is, some kind of witch! And I don’t care who knows it!”
“Laney, will you please shut up?” Candy smiled at the people who had started staring at us when Laney’s voice had gotten louder. “Just calm down, okay? Everything’s going to be okay. Don’t talk about Sara that way.”
Laney stared at her. “I don’t care. I think she’s a bitch, and I’ll scream it from the top of the school if I want to.” She stormed off.
“Laney!” Candy went after her and caught her just out of my hearing. Candy grabbed her hands and talked to her quietly, with an intense look on her face. Laney nodded and walked away.
“What was all that about?” I asked when she rejoined me. “Why are you so worried about Sara?”
“Will you stop talking about her?” Candy pulled away from me, her red hair flying. “I mean, why are you so concerned about her? She’s all you talk about anymore! Sara this, Sara that, for God’s sake, Tony, how do you think that makes me feel?”
“I care about you, Candy, you know that.” I put my arms around her and kissed her cheek. “I’m worried about Sara, that’s all.”
“Well, don’t worry about her.” Candy pulled away from me, and her cheeks were wet from tears. “She’s more than capable of taking care of herself, believe you me.”
“Candy, what do you know about her?” I pulled her to me. “Please tell me. Why are you scared?”
She pulled away from me. “I need to get to class. I’ll see you later, okay?”
I stared after her and started walking to my government class. Laney hadn’t answered me about the nightmares, or why she thought there was something wrong with Sara. But she had the same feelings about her that I did. What was it she had said?
“Noah thought he knew her, that she looked familiar.”
That was it! But Sara had told everyone that she had just arrived here from Boston the day before the football game. So Noah couldn’t have known her.
Maybe she’d just looked familiar to him.
I walked into my class and slid into a seat in the back of the room.
That couldn’t be, though.
Sara was beautiful, one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen.
You couldn’t mistake her for someone else—she was too beautiful and distinctive-looking.
No, somehow Noah must have known her from somewhere.
Maybe he’d been dreaming about her?
Somehow I made it through the rest of the day. I never got a chance to talk to Laney, and I wasn’t about to bring Sara up to Candy again. My classes passed in a fog, and I couldn’t get my head into practice. I dropped every ball thrown to me, and Coach screamed at me a lot more than usual. He’d mentioned Zack’s suicide at the start of practice, and we had a moment of silence. He then went on to tell us going forward, it was business as usual. We had a game to win on Friday, and he wasn’t going to let us use the deaths of our teammates as an excuse to have a losing season—and we owed it to them to finish the rest of the season undefeated. And if we thought otherwise, then we needed to stop wasting his time—we could just go ahead and forfeit the rest of our games right then and be done with it all.
“Is that what you want?” he screamed at us.
“No sir!” we bellowed back at him.
And somehow, we had a good practice—well, everyone except for me, that is.
All I wanted to do was get off the practice field, go home, and go to bed. I was so tired. My mother had some sleeping pills, and I had decided during the warm-ups that when I got home I was going to crib one and sleep for about twelve hours. It didn’t seem like practice was ever going to end. Finally, it was time for wind sprints, and I was dripping with sweat and every muscle in my body ached when Coach blew the whistle and shouted, “Hit the showers!”
With an enormous sigh of relief, I started to run to the locker room, but as I passed him Coach grabbed my arm and pulled me aside.
“Martin, you’ve been running around with your head up your ass,” he said, scratching his head and staring at me. “I know you weren’t friends with Greene, and you and Zimmer haven’t been friends for a while, so what gives with you?”
I was sorely tempted to tell him the truth, about the dreams, the weird way that Laney and Candy were acting, about Sara, and just get it all out of my system once and for all. But he was an adult, so instead I took off my helmet and shook my head. “I just haven’t been sleeping good, Coach. That’s all.”
He sighed. “That’s not all, Martin, and you and I both know it. Did Zimmer say something to you yesterday?”
“You mean at the hospital?”
He peered at me. “There, or after, or before. Did he give you any idea of what he was planning to do?”
I bit my lower lip and shook my head no.
“There is something funny going on around here.” He sighed. “And I think you know it, too. But I can’t exactly force you to talk to me, either. Hit the showers.”
What would it have hurt? I scolded myself as I jogged off. At least he’s noticed there’s something weird going on around here. He might not have believed you, but at least you could have talked to him about it.
I jogged around the corner of the school to where the door leading to the locker room was and almost jumped out of my skin.
Randy Froelich was leaning against the door. He was holding his helmet in his hands. His face was dirty and sweaty from practice, and his dark blond hair was plastered to the side of his head.
“Hey, Tony, I need to talk to you.” He forced a smile on his face that looked more like a grimace.
“What do you want?” I rolled my eyes. “I’m tired and I want to hit the showers.”
“Glenn’s your friend, isn’t he?”
“And he used to be yours,” I sneered back. Just being around him made me edgy. I never could put my finger on it, but we’d never liked each other. There was just something about him I couldn’t stand.
He blushed. “Yeah, well, that’s what I want to talk to you about.” He took a deep breath. “I tried to apologize to him—”
“For being such an asshole?” I interrupted him.
“For being such an asshole.” He swallowed. “Yeah, I admit it, okay? When he came out I was an asshole.” He looked me right in the eye. “It kind of caught me off guard, you know? I’d spent the night at his house. He’d spent the night at mine. And all this time—” He dry swallowed. “But it didn’t bother you? Not at all?”
I started to say that it didn’t but the words caught in my throat.
“That’s what I thought.” Randy blew out a sig
h. “I handled it bad. And it didn’t help that I had Noah and Zack, you know—”
“Peer pressure?” I didn’t even try to keep the mocking tone out of my voice.
He had the decency to look embarrassed, and even though I didn’t like him and was enjoying myself, I started to feel bad. We weren’t that different. I’d just hidden how uncomfortable I was about Glenn being gay.
“Yeah, well, and now”—he swallowed again—“what with Noah and Zack, you know, I just don’t feel right about it. Glenn’s my friend, and I wanted to apologize and you know, get things back the way they used to be.”
“Like it’s going to be that easy?” I replied. “I mean, you called him a fag, Randy. I don’t think he’s going to forget that just because you apologize. That really hurt him.” Which is why you weren’t honest—you didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “Besides, what can I do about it?”
“You could talk to him,” he pleaded.
“Since when does Glenn listen to me?” I asked, stepping around him and pulling the door open.
“It can’t hurt,” Randy followed me down the hall to the locker room. “Come on, Tony, don’t be a dick.”
“You mean like you were?” The locker room was almost completely empty, but there was a note on my locker in Glenn’s handwriting: Waiting at the car. I pulled it off and crumpled it, smiling in spite of myself.
“Yeah, like I was.” Randy sat down on the bench and untied his shoes.
I turned to him, and he helped me pull my shoulder pads over my head. I returned the favor and started untying my pants. “Okay, I’ll talk to him. I can’t promise it’ll do any good, but I’ll do it.” I wasn’t really sure why I was agreeing to do him a favor—as far as I was concerned, Glenn was better off without Randy as a friend. But it couldn’t hurt to have him owe me a favor. “But if he doesn’t want to hear it, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Thanks, man, I appreciate it.” Randy sighed and flashed a smile at me. “After what that bitch Sara did, you were my last chance.”
That got my attention. “What do you mean? What did she do?”
Randy shook his head as he took his pants off and grabbed a towel. “She told him that all I do is use him, you know, to help me study, that I was never his friend in the first place.” He wrapped the towel around his waist. “I didn’t use him, you know. I really liked him, we were friends, and I miss him.”
I hid a smile. I couldn’t deny that I’d thought the same thing about Randy and Glenn myself. It always seemed to me Randy’s friendship with Glenn always intensified when Randy needed help with a class or a term paper or something, but I’d never said anything to Glenn. And I never would have, either—just like I’d never said anything to him about not being completely comfortable with the gay thing.
You don’t do that to your friends.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Randy said. “You’re thinking she’s right. You’re thinking that I use him. You’re thinking the only reason I’m talking to you now is because I need your help. I’m not going to pretend, Tony—I don’t like you any more than you like me. But I don’t like what this girl is doing to him, Tony. She’s changing him.”
“You don’t like Sara, do you?”
He looked at me in surprise. “No, I don’t. Do you?”
“I don’t know what to think about her,” I admitted.
“There’s something about her that’s not right, I don’t know what it is, but that’s how I feel.” He shivered.
I looked at him. “You haven’t—you haven’t been having weird dreams by any chance?”
“Weird dreams? What kind of weird dreams?” Randy shook his head. “I don’t remember my dreams.” He looked at me strangely.
“Never mind.” I grabbed my soap and shampoo out of my locker and headed for the showers. I let the hot water run over me, easing the aches and pains out of my tired muscles. I still just wanted to go to sleep, and my bed was definitely calling to me as I washed the dirt and the sweat off me. I heard another shower start up and figured that was Randy. I finished and turned off the shower. I dried off quickly and changed into my street clothes. I didn’t feel like talking to him anymore.
I didn’t even know how I was going to bring him up without pissing Glenn off.
“Hey, Tony.” Glenn smiled as I walked toward his car. He slid down off the trunk. “You need a ride home?”
I grinned back at him. “Yeah.”
He clicked the doors unlocked and I got in on the passenger side. As I was sliding the seat belt on, he said, “What did Coach want?”
I shrugged. “He just wanted to know if Zack had said anything to me yesterday, you know. About…” I let my voice trail off.
“Yeah, I wondered if he did it because I kicked his ass yesterday.” He turned the key in the ignition. The radio blared, and he turned it down quickly. “I’m not sorry I punched him, you know.”
“You did break his nose,” I replied.
“You heard what he said to me,” he said, shifting the car into reverse and backing out of the spot. “He deserved to get punched, and I won’t pretend I’m sorry I hit him even if he did hang himself. That wasn’t my fault.”
“But you aren’t sorry he’s dead?”
He stopped the car and looked at me. “I didn’t want him to die, Tony. I didn’t want Noah to die, either. But I’m not going to pretend that I’m sad, either. I’m not sad that no one’s going to write faggot on my locker anymore, or Glenn Lockhart sucks dick on my desk, or call me cocksucker or fag or any of that shit anymore. Because I’m not.” He slammed the car into drive and looked out the windshield. “They weren’t nice guys, Tony. You can’t say that they were.”
“They treated you pretty shitty, yeah.”
“I saw Randy talking to you,” he said as he stopped at the road, checking both ways before turning right. “What did he want?”
“Just to talk.”
“Yeah?” He looked over at me, a smug look on his face. “I don’t suppose he wanted you to talk to me, did he? About his so-called apology?” He laughed, and it really wasn’t a pleasant sound. “You know what that’s about, right? He wants me to help him with trig. We have a test on Thursday and he’s not getting it, so now he wants the fag’s help.” He spat the last words out. “Well, fuck him. He can flunk trig for all I care. If he wants help he can get it somewhere else.”
“He didn’t tell me that part.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” Glenn started speeding up. “He makes me fucking sick to my stomach. When I needed him, where was he? Oh, yeah, hanging out with Zack and Noah and posting shit about me online! Some fucking friend he turned out to be. Well, fuck him.”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say.
I also felt guilty.
“I’m tired of being used by people.” He scowled, and then laughed. “Love to be a fly on the wall when he flunks trig and his parents find out! Good enough for them, anyway, homophobic assholes.”
“His parents are homophobic?” It didn’t surprise me. “How do you know?”
“His mother said something to my dad at the game on Friday night, the bitch.” We were coming up to the four way stop where we’d turn left to go to my house. “She’s lucky Sara wasn’t around!”
“Sara?”
“Yeah, she’s great, isn’t she?” He grinned. “She sees right through everyone’s bullshit and tells it like it is. She’d have given that bitch Mrs. Froelich an earful, you can be sure of that!”
“What does she tell you about me?” I asked carefully.
“Oh, she likes you.” He grinned at me. “She kind of thinks you’re hot. No accounting for taste, but there you go.”
I smiled back at him, even though my heart froze a little bit. “Well, that’s nice to hear.”
“You’re my best friend, Tony,” he said seriously. “You’re like a brother to me.”
I smiled back at him, and then looked at the road. “Slow down, pal, that light’s red.”
“Oh, shit.” He pressed down on the brakes, and a look of terror crossed his face. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“The brakes—they aren’t working!”
“Oh shit!” I looked ahead to the intersection. A pickup truck was coming from the right, going pretty damned fast. “Turn the car off! Put it in neutral or something!”
“I’ll have to beat that truck!” he shouted.
The car sailed into the intersection. Everything was going in slow motion. I saw the truck, right on top of us. I saw the face of the driver clearly. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth was open as though he was screaming. I began to yell, I could hear Glenn screaming, and then the truck hit us. The car went up into the air and flipped over. I heard something else before everything went black.
When I came to, I was in the hospital. I had a leg elevated and in a cast, my ribs were bandaged, and my left arm was in a cast. The doctor told me I had a concussion and was lucky to have survived. I wanted to ask about Glenn, but somehow couldn’t get the words out. When I finally asked my mother, she said that he was fine, a few cuts and bruises, but he was fine. I closed my eyes.
But the one thing I couldn’t get out of my mind was the feeling that I was now out of the way—which was what she wanted.
Something terrible was going to happen, and I couldn’t stop it.
The last thing I heard when the car started to roll was Sara’s laughter.
Chapter Seven
This year is cursed, Laney Norton thought as she watched the scoreboard clock tick down the final seconds to halftime. As the teams ran off the field, she went through the motions—clapping, smiling, a high kick or two with her right leg, and shouting. She wasn’t the only one going through the motions—the rest of the cheerleading squad for Southern Heights seemed lackadaisical and out of it.
It wasn’t just them, either. The bleachers were half-empty, and the crowd was listless. Even the pep club seemed down—and they were always loud and boisterous. The team itself wasn’t playing well. Last year, they’d blown Paducah Springs right off the field. Tonight, though, they just kept blowing it. They’d fumbled three times, and thrown an interception in the end zone. They were only ahead 7–0.