Running Full Tilt

by Michael Currinder

  The hounds were out in force at this party, guys from the all-boys Catholic schools in the area sniffing the grounds for available girls. I spotted Mary and a few of her artsy friends amid a cluster of guys from Jesuit who’d got wind of the party. She was wearing a black cape and had powdered her face so it glowed like white marble. I’m pretty sure she was supposed to be a vampire. With her lips painted ruby red and her green eyes framed in eyeliner, I was mesmerized. The guys she and her friends were hanging with looked harmless enough, but one guy filled her cup from the keg and was now cozying up to her. She cast me a quick glance, then shifted her hip toward the dude in a way that made my gut turn.

  “What are you going to do about that, Coughlin?”

  “What am I going to do about what?” I answered, pretending to be unfazed.

  Curtis chomped on some ice and spat it in the direction of the budding romance unfolding before our eyes. “Don’t be an idiot, Coughlin. Have some balls and go save the poor girl from that creep,” he said. “Show some honor, for Christ’s sake.”

  The dude was now leaning against a tree, his body shifted toward her. He said something to Mary and she laughed.

  “She doesn’t look like she’s suffering, Curtis.”

  “Are you shitting me? That’s all an act, Leo. The girl is dying for you to rescue her.”

  “I didn’t know you were an expert on romance,” I told him.

  “Grow some, Leo,” Curtis mumbled as he walked away. “I’m going to see if I can find someplace to take a leak. I’d make a move if I were you, unless you’re content with people thinking you and I are a couple.”

  “Screw you” was all I could muster for a comeback.

  “Leo, that’s fine by me,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m not on that team, but I’m an enlightened individual. I’ve got no problem if you are.”

  I gave him the one-finger salute but lingered with Stuper, Burpee, Rasmussen, and a few other losers at the sanctuary of the birdbath.

  I figured Curtis was probably right about Mary. I needed to step up and take action, but when I turned to make my move, Mary had already beat me to it. She was standing just three feet away, hand on her waist, glaring at me.

  She gave my costume the once-over, then sipped from her cup. The expression on her face was somewhere between curiosity and mild disgust. “Do I know you?” she asked.

  My hair was heavily oiled and slicked over, and my body covered snugly in polyester. “This is Curtis’s creation,” I mumbled. “Courtesy of his father.”

  “Is Curtis now dressing you too?” she asked snidely.

  “Very funny,” I said.

  Mary held out her hand and felt the fabric of my coat. “You’d better be careful,” she told me. “You get anywhere near a flame and you’ll catch fire. If I had a match on me, I’d be tempted.” She looked at me for a long moment, a slight frown on her face, those amazing green eyes fixed on mine. “Can I ask you something, Leo?”

  “Sure.” I knew what was coming.

  “Is there a reason you haven’t called me?”

  I stared at the ground and said nothing, but she wasn’t about to let me off the hook.

  She took another sip of liquid courage and then let me have it. “You want to hear something pathetic?” she asked.

  “Sure.” I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, but at least she was talking to me.

  “I sat at home every night this week waiting for my phone to ring,” she told me. Her eyes started getting all watery, and I was panicked thinking she was about to lose it and make a scene. “I’ve tried to figure out what I did to piss you off. I thought you were a nice guy, but now I’m starting to think you’re a prick.” She let that word hang for a couple of seconds. “What’s even more pathetic is, the other day my friend Laura and I drove back and forth past your house. I was hoping that you would step outside so that we could pretend we were just passing by.”

  Now I was starting to feel like shit. I really liked her. I had to do something if I was going to salvage any chance in hell of making it with this girl. “I’m not a prick. I promise you that. I like you. I really suck at girl stuff, in case you haven’t noticed. This is new territory.”

  “Are you shitting me, Leo?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  It was silent for a moment. Mary chucked what was left in her cup toward my feet. “Damn it,” she whispered. “I can’t believe I just told you all that crap.”

  I hesitated, then rested my hand on her shoulder. “You really drove back and forth past my house looking for me?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, what kind of person does that?”

  “According to the law, I think that might make you a stalker.” I regretted saying the words as soon as they left my mouth.

  She punched my arm, and for a second I worried she was going to storm away. But she started to laugh. “We must have driven past your house fifty times,” she said through laughter and tears. “By the way, what in the hell is your brother doing making all those little piles of grass in your yard?”

  I seized the moment. I put my arms around her and whispered into her ear, “You must not tell anyone. Our family belongs to a pagan cult that worships the moles that reside in the underworld. Our winter-solstice ceremony is fast approaching. Caleb has been commissioned by the high priest to create the burial mounds where we will make sacrifices.”

  When she laughed again, I knew I had finally broken the ice. “How is Caleb?” she finally asked.

  I ran my fingers through my hair like I always did when I was at a loss for words, then let out a long sigh. I’d forgotten that my hair was an oil slick. “Caleb can be a real pain in the ass,” I told her.

  Mary let those words sit for a long moment before she spoke. “Do you want to get out of here for a while, Leo?”

  I looked into her eyes, and that was it. “Sure.”

  We walked away from the party and into the darkness of the adjoining backyards, passing a few couples making out behind trees. I wasn’t going to tell her about Caleb trying to beat the crap out of me on a random basis, but I wanted to talk. I just didn’t know what I wanted to say.

  Mary spoke first. “Honestly, Leo. What’s going on with you?” she asked.

  I didn’t really have an answer, but all of a sudden I had this crazy childhood memory. “Do you remember how you learned to ride a bike?” I asked her.

  “I think my father just decided to remove the training wheels and I spent a little time with him holding me up in the driveway. I might have fallen a few times, but then I got the hang of it,” she told me.

  The thing I liked about this girl was, I knew I could ask her a random question and she’d answer me, letting our conversation wander wherever it might. We walked for a few seconds in silence before she took my hand. “How did you learn to ride a bike?”

  “My father was actually trying to teach Caleb how to do it. I think he was maybe six, and Dad thought he was getting too old for training wheels. Not that it mattered, because Caleb didn’t really give a shit. He would ride around the old neighborhood back and forth, just talking to himself, laughing, lost in his own world. But my father didn’t want him to stick out from the other kids, and he was determined to get rid of those training wheels.

  “So one day Dad threw the bike into the trunk of the car and drove us to this park that had this long grass hill, not steep or anything, just a grass hill that would cushion a fall. Dad took the training wheels off, but Caleb wouldn’t have anything to do with it. My father put him on the bike and pushed him along, but Caleb wasn’t interested. Even when my father let go of the bike, Caleb would just coast a little until the bike fell over.”

  I guess we weren’t really walking so much as slowly wandering. She leaned in closer to me and put her head on my shoulder, but I kept talking, trying to make sense of the sudden memory.

  “My father finally got frustrated and gave up. I remember Caleb just walked over and sat down under a tree and started tw
irling his stick. So I picked up Caleb’s bike, got on it, and coasted down the hill all by myself. I’d only been on a bike with training wheels for a few weeks, but now I was riding a two-wheeler. My father couldn’t believe it. He pushed the bike up the hill, placed me back on it, and ran alongside me, cheering me on. We did this a couple of times together. It must have bothered Caleb, because he finally stood up and walked over to me. ‘My bike!’ he yelled. I got off the bike and gave it to him, and then he rode it down the hill perfectly, like he’d done it his entire life. He did it a couple more times, and then he just said to Dad and me, ‘Go home.’ ”

  “What made you think of that story?” she asked.

  “The hell if I know,” I told her, but right then I figured it out. “I sometimes wonder if it pissed him off that I learned to ride a bike before him.”

  “Maybe he just needed to see someone else do it,” she said. “Maybe you helped him.”

  “There were other kids in the neighborhood who were riding bikes,” I said. “I think it was something else.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe he felt like he was supposed to be a step ahead of me but he didn’t really understand it at the time.”

  “So?”

  “How would you feel if your younger brother could do everything better than you?”

  “Do you think Caleb even thinks about that?”

  “I never really thought about it until now, but I think he finally gets it. I think he’s started putting the pieces together and realizes I can do a shitload more than he can, and that I always could.”

  “Why are you thinking about this?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Lately, Caleb and I haven’t been getting along too well.”

  “What’s going on?”

  I didn’t feel like going there. “It’s not a big deal, Mary. We don’t need to talk about it anymore.”

  “We can talk, Leo,” she said.

  “No. I’m good,” I told her.

  I feared she was going to press the issue, but instead she took my hand and squeezed it softly. We headed back to the party, shoulder to shoulder, a guy in a leisure suit with a thick layer of hair cream nestled up to a chic vampire. I loved how this girl could read my energy. Before we returned to the light of the party, she turned and put her arms around me. “Now’s the time you should probably suggest we try this again…if you have any guts.”

  “I’ve been hearing a lot about some movie called Corpse Bride,” I said. “Word on the street is Tim Burton is ‘brilliant.’ ”

  “No, thanks,” she said, laughing. “That movie is now bad karma. This time you choose what we’ll see.”

  I looked into her eyes. “Sure. I’ll ask my mother if she’s seen anything good lately.”

  Upon our return, we found Curtis entertaining the masses. He had retrieved the discarded Yoda mask owned by the dude who was somewhere else on the premises, engaged with Missy Hamlin. Someone had put on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack at full volume, and Curtis was performing an impressive rendition of Travolta’s dance routine. Curtis in his leisure suit, helped along by Yoda’s sage, stoic face and some tight choreography, was now the focal point of the party.

  “Find your rhythm! Find your rhythm!” Rosenthal yelled, sounding remarkably similar to Gorsky.

  I was laughing my ass off until Mary pointed out Blake Crawford saying something to Glusker. Crawford was another of Glusker’s goons, and whatever he said to him ignited something. Glusker came barreling across the lawn and blindsided Curtis, rolling him onto his back and pummeling his head with his fists. What made it surreal was that Glusker was unleashing his savage fury upon Yoda, whose expression remained fixed, calm, and pensive.

  It took Rosenthal, Burpee, and me to haul Glusker off Curtis and explain the misunderstanding. When we finally got the mask off Curtis’s head, his nose was gushing. “Well, that didn’t exactly go as planned,” he moaned. Curtis pressed his father’s coat to his nose to halt the flow. Glusker, embarrassed but still loaded for revenge, mumbled some bogus apology and stormed off to find the true competition.

  When the crowd realized Curtis was going to live, they dispersed, and it was just Curtis, me, and Mary alone. He lifted his arm slowly and pointed toward Glusker trudging through the crowd with his crew. “Like his master before him, be destroyed he must,” Curtis said in Yoda voice.

  “Seriously, dude. Are you all right?” I asked him.

  Curtis stood up slowly, examining his father’s shirt and coat, which were covered in blood.

  “I think I’d better get him out of here,” I mumbled to Mary.

  “Agreed. Better go take care of his nose. Next weekend?” she asked.

  “I’ll be at the state meet.”

  “Weekend after?”

  “You bet.”

  —

  Curtis and I walked back to his house mostly in silence. “I don’t think the blood is going to come off those clothes,” I said.

  “My friend, as always I’m already one step ahead of you,” he said. When we arrived at his house, he walked directly to his backyard and toward the Weber grill at the edge of the patio.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  “Something that should have been done long ago,” he said. Curtis lifted the grill lid, removed the cooking racks, and took off his clothes. “Trust me. My mother will thank me for this,” he assured me.

  He tossed the leisure suit, shirt, and tie into the grill. I removed my clothing as well and tossed them on top of the pile. Curtis took a large bottle of lighter fluid and doused the clothing. He opened a Tupperware container, grabbed a box of matches, struck one, and tossed it onto the clothes. A fireball exploded from the grill.

  Mary was correct—the suits were highly flammable. We stood there in our underwear and socks, and I entertained him with my description of Glusker going ballistic on Yoda in a leisure suit. It was a cold October night, but the grill warmed us.

  Wearing a leisure suit had certainly backfired on Curtis, but the party had gotten me back on track with Mary.

  23.

  GORSKY CUT OUR MILEAGE in half the final week to rest our muscles for the final race. We didn’t know what to do with all our excess energy, so by Friday morning’s departure we were bouncing off the walls. I was plenty nervous, but Curtis was an absolute train wreck.

  We met Gorsky outside at his van and climbed in with our bags.

  “Got everything?” Gorsky asked.

  We nodded.

  He turned to Curtis. “Spikes?”

  Curtis blasted from his seat like someone had hit the ejection button. He sprinted back toward the locker room. For once I wasn’t the more nervous one.

  Gorsky turned to me. “So how are you feeling, Leo?”

  “Awesome,” I told him. “What could be better than a day off of school?” It was even better to be getting out of my house for a night, but I wasn’t going to mention that. He knew me only as a runner, and that was good enough.

  “You ready to run fast?” he asked.

  “Curtis says the course is a beast.”

  He laughed. “He’s right about that. It’s a true cross-country course. The winner won’t necessarily be the fastest guy, but he’ll definitely be the strongest.”

  “Think Curtis has a shot?”

  “Of course he’s got a shot. But he’ll need to run a smart race like you did last week.” Curtis burst from the building and jogged toward the car. “Speak of the devil.”

  “Onward!” Curtis yelled.

  As soon as we hit the interstate, Curtis pulled out this old crumply photocopy of last year’s program with a map of the course and gave me the lay of the land. “It’s going to be an ass-kicker from the start,” he explained. “As soon as the gun goes off, we climb a long, steep incline, and then it’s basically a roller-coaster ride. This course is going to beat the crap out of most guys’ legs by the end of the first mile if they go out too fast.”

  We looked at the list of previo
us state champions and their times. For a 5,000-meter course the times were relatively modest. “Not very impressive times,” I said.

  “It’s all relative, Leo. It’s not a fast course,” he agreed. “But it’s my course.”

  The drive to the capital took a little over two hours. Gorsky wouldn’t let us touch his CD player. Instead he introduced us to some guy named Herbie Hancock, and the smooth, mellow sounds actually settled Curtis. He walked me through my role as the sacrificial lamb in his quest to become state champion, just as he’d been for me in the district race. He reviewed the course topography in precise detail, drawing lines and arrows to mark the inclines and descents. His strategies and explanations weren’t really necessary, but I allowed him to ramble. My job was quite simple. When that gun went off, I was to take off like a bat out of hell and let everyone chase me, just like they chased him at district.

  —

  The Ramada Inn looked like a tank of tropical fish. The parking lot was filled with school buses and vans from all over the state, and cramming the lobby were runners in sweat suits of all colors looking one another over, some measuring themselves against tomorrow’s competition. Curtis once more came unglued. “Don’t look anybody in the eye, Leo,” he mumbled as we made our way to the front desk.

  I was feeling loose for once and enjoying the reversal of roles. “Jesus, Curtis, can you relax?” I asked him. “You’re acting like we’re about to rob the place.”

  “Everybody is just trying to get into each other’s heads at this point. I can smell the nervous energy.”

  I inhaled deeply. “I think most of it’s coming from you.”

  “Shut up, Leo.”

  We took our bags to our room, changed into our running clothes, and headed over for a final preview of the Oak Hills Golf Center, where the race was being held. Gorsky parked his van and told us to meet back up with him in ninety minutes. I looked around at the cast of hundreds in their school colors, jogging, striding, and doing sprints, and finally got sucked into the collective nervous energy. I broke into our customary warm-up jog to take the edge off.