Mercy Rule

by Tom Leveen

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

  “Hey, never apologize!” Kelly declares. “We do that too much. No apologies.”

  I don’t know if she means she and I apologize too much or if she means women, like a feminist sort of thing, or if she means something completely different, so I just nod and don’t say anything and point to her book. “You like Shakespeare?”

  “Not particularly, but auditions for the fall play are on September ninth and tenth. I’m taking Drama Four, so Mrs. Tanner has to give me a shot. I mean, it’s senior year! What’re you doing after school, do you know yet? You have to do something. Or maybe not. I just have to because if I don’t then I’ll end up at home and I am so beyond done with that.”

  She’s still nervous around me, me and my scars, but I don’t bring it up. I also don’t tell her how much I already know about theater because that just reminds me of Mom and Dad and when I get reminded of Mom and Dad I want to use my paperclip.

  “So?” Kelly says, staring me while she eats her chips.

  “So?”

  “So are you going to be in any clubs this year? Obviously, I am kind of a drama kid.”

  I point to the loudest group in the cafeteria, the one singing songs from Hamilton. They are definitely drama kids, and they are not throwin’ away their … shot! “Aren’t those the drama kids?”

  Kelly glances at them, then away, shrugging. “Okay, so I’m not technically one of them, yet.”

  “Well, maybe I can come with you? To the auditions? Just to check it out, you know?”

  There’s no way I’ll audition, but the bell is about to ring and Kelly is nice and I want to make sure she’ll talk to me again.

  Kelly looks like I just made her day, which I don’t understand. She puts a hand on my arm like she’s known me forever and says, “Absolutely!”

  She doesn’t even wipe her hand on her shorts after touching my scars.

  CADENCE

  At lunch I find a table of girls who are giggling and talking and doing all sorts of things with their phones and I zero in on them. Maybe next week I’ll find some boys to hang out with, too, but I think for my first day, girls are probably safer.

  I go to their table and sit down at one end. “Hi! What’s up?”

  The girls, there are four of them, all stop talking and look at me. One of them says, “Uh, hi?” With a question mark. She’s wearing a shirt that says ADMIT IT, YOU’D GO TO JAIL FOR THIS, which takes way too long for me to figure out is a joke. But it’s not really funny, anyway.

  “I’m Cadence,” I say.

  “… Okay?”

  Hmm. I feel like this isn’t going well. “Are you guys freshmen?”

  “… No?”

  Those question marks are really weird. “Oh. So, who do you have for English? Maybe we have the same teacher at some point!”

  “… Mr. Case?” the spokeswoman says.

  “Oh. I have Mrs. Christiansen.”

  She doesn’t say anything this time. They just keep staring. Jeez, do I have tentacles?

  “Do you like the Ramones?”

  “… No?”

  Sad face. Definitely not going good here. Maybe girls were the wrong choice.

  “Okay, well, is it okay if I sit here? There weren’t a lot of places to sit, and I thought—”

  “Uh, okay?” she says.

  I start to say thanks, except they all get up at literally the exact same time, carrying their trays, and walk away so it’s just me.

  Dang it. And I don’t see Zach anywhere. I bet he’d let me eat with him. I put in my earbuds and let Joey try to convince me that this is a rock ’n’ roll high school. Fun fun! But honestly, I’m kinda doubting Joey right now.

  COACH

  His office smells of old shoes and grass clippings. Locker rooms, gymnasiums, coach’s offices the world over—they all smell exactly the same. This office smells just like all of the offices of his own coaches: high school, Coach Page; college, Coach McMann. Then that all-too-brief stint in the League. He made it as far as practice squad, further than he’d really believed he could. That triggered the dreams of being a backup; maybe starter someday.

  Then, during practice: the god damn knee. No starting, no second string, no practice squad. Just back to school to find a way to keep doing what he loved. And what he loved was this game. Coach Page had made an impact on him back in high school. While coaching a Pop Warner team, he discovered that he wanted to do what Coach Page had done for him: help other high school kids. Seemed like a good fit.

  In hindsight, he wouldn’t change a thing. Yes, even an NFL practice squad would have paid better, but here he can actually mentor. NFL stars can be role models, but they can’t be in the day-to-day grind that is high school life.

  He drops into his ancient swivel chair for the eighth year of his tenure as head coach. The chair is older than his children, a relic from the 1970s that creaks and whines and clunks. People say football programs get all the money. Where’s the money for a new chair?

  He rocks back and forth, easy, toes of his Nikes resting lightly on the thin, industrial carpet. This is going to be a good year. Brady Culliver’s in pretty good shape, despite all the odds against him. Donte Walker came back from summer camp with a ferocity he can’t wait to unleash, and a Sparq score of almost 94. The other boys look good this year, too. A good crop of JV coming in, and the varsity must’ve put on an extra two hundred pounds between them over summer.

  Except for Culliver. That boy’s got to get fed more.

  A bell rings. Second period is about to start. He doesn’t have a first this year. Gets to hit the gym first before coming to work. He doesn’t use the school gym. He loves his fellas, but doesn’t need to get into a pissing contest about bench presses. Better to let them wonder just what he’s pressing these days.

  Two-ten, it turns out. Not bad at all.

  Coach picks up his class rosters, flipping through them. Time enough to worry about football this afternoon. First, get through the rest of his classes. Maybe start with some laps to get everyone warmed up.

  He winces as he recognizes a name on the attendance sheet. There’s one every year. One class, and at least one kid, that’s a problem.

  Well, that’s just fine. He’ll sweat this little snot until he can’t run his mouth anymore. And maybe, just maybe, turn him into a bit of a man by the end of this year. That’s what Coach Page would’ve done.

  Coach rubs his thumb across the roster, smearing a little of the ink that spells out JENNINGS, DANIEL.

  Just after the bell rings, ending first period, he shoots a text message to Steve Butler over in English Ed. Steve is his best friend at work, and biggest NFL rival. The vast majority of their conversations are heated debates about Monday Night Football.

  Culliver show up? he writes.

  His phone buzzes right back: Yes. Seems fine. Tired maybe. State!

  Steve wants the Spartans to take State almost as bad as Coach does. Another reason they get along so well.

  Coach puts his phone in his desk and rises at the sound of people shuffling hesitantly into the gymnasium. Freshman and sophomore PE. If he were a traditionalist, he’d start the morning with dodgeball. But that strikes even him as cliché. Laps will have to do. Laps are simple, but they tend to reveal character—or lack thereof.

  The bell rings, starting second period. He steps out of the football office and follows the hall to the gym entrance, where dozens of boys are standing in loose clumps or sitting on the floor. One, he sees right away, has elected not to dress out and is seated on the top, furthest bleacher, like he hopes the windows up there will open and he can slip away.

  He looks like a god damn vampire, Coach thinks.

  He blows his whistle, making most of the boys jump. They’re nervous. Sweat will help. Sweat heals a number of things. Including nerves and attitudes.

  “Hello, boys,” Coach says with his biggest smile. “I’m your coach for the period. I say it, you do it, we get alon
g fine. You hear the whistle, you put your eyes on me. Those’re the only rules. Got it?”

  Some nod. Most look terrified.

  “Good,” Coach says. “Start running. Around the sideline. If you don’t know what that is, you can start doing push-ups instead. I see you cut any corners, you’ll do ’em anyway. Go.”

  He tweets the whistle, and the boys drag themselves in a circle around the court.

  Coach eyes the lone deviant at the top of the bleachers. “Mr. Jennings,” he calls, “how about you get yourself into your PE uniform and join us?”

  “No, thank you,” Danny Jennings calls.

  “All right. Then you can head on over to Dr. Flores’s office. Let’s go. Now. Hustle.”

  “I could take health instead,” Jennings offers.

  “That class is closed. So you either get to work in here, or you go talk to the principal, your choice.”

  Jennings stands, shoulders his bag—which looks more like a god damn purse—and clomps down the stairs in boots that reduce his already skinny legs to the width of hockey sticks. He heads for the staircase that will take him up to the doors out of the gym.

  As he passes Coach, he says, “But it’s not my choice, is it? Not really.”

  Coach inhales, about to give the little snot a piece of his mind, but Jennings is already past him, raising a hand.

  “Never mind,” he says. “You don’t have to answer that. Peace.”

  He disappears through the double doors.

  He’d never say it out loud, not during regular school hours; but in his head, Coach says, God damn that kid.

  Then he tells the other students to pick it up. Hustle. Put some effort into it.

  BETWEEN CLASSES

  It takes only seconds for the phone’s built-in flash to pop—

  For him to shriek in surprise—

  For a fast, athletic thumb to strike the right icons—

  And then:

  It takes only seconds for a full-frontal, naked shot of The Fat Kid to land online.

  It’s an instant crime; legally, it’s child pornography, and the guy responsible should be brought up on charges. Big ones. Bad ones.

  Except the phone doesn’t belong to the guy who took the pic. It belongs to a skinny sophomore piece of shit, and this guy got the requisite passwords from the sophomore’s sister.

  And The Fat Kid won’t say anything. Because there are worse things than naked pictures of you on the web. And those things happen to people who go to The Authorities. The whole point in taking weight room this year was to work off some of the girth. Sitting at a drafting table or easel doesn’t make for a great weight-loss regimen. If he keeps losing weight, maybe they’ll leave finally him alone.

  But they won’t, will they. They’ll make it impossible. They won’t let him change.

  He rushes from the shower, red-faced and burning furiously on the inside while the laughs of zoo animals follow him to the lockers—elephant linebackers, panther receivers, rhinoceros forwards, cheetah pitchers. He tries to get dressed quickly, never mind trying to dry off … except his clothes are already wet, why are they wet?

  And why do they smell like—

  When the laughing gets louder, including hoots and jeers now, that’s all he needs to know.

  He’ll be throwing away his favorite Da Vinci T-shirt, forced to wear someone’s leftover PE jersey from the coach’s office. The coach who will do nothing, even if he were to say, Someone pissed on my clothes, and by the way, there’s a naked pic of me floating around today, I can tell you exactly who did it, but I won’t because you love the prick and you love to win and I’m just—

  The Fat Kid.

  I Wanna Be Sedated

  DONTE

  I don’t know the exact temperature, but it’s over a hundred. That’s without all my pads and helmet. Or running full gassers on the field.

  “You can stop anytime,” Coach says to us as we line up after the first round of running from sideline to sideline. “Be my guest. Take your gear off, go home, and don’t look back. Fine with me. Or you stay here, and you want it. You want it?”

  I want it. I make eye contact with Brady—quick, though, because the standard is we watch Coach when he’s talking. Brady meets my gaze fiercely. He’s dialed in. He wants it, too.

  Most of the varsity team wrangles up a “Yeah!” in unison. It’s only been one gasser so far, fifty-three yards and back, twice in a row. Our hearts are pumping, our sweat is flowing, the sun’s heat pierces our helmets like a laser beam. And it’s gonna get worse. But we are the boys who are going to State this year. A few gassers can’t take us down.

  “One more,” Coach orders, and blows his whistle.

  The team races for the opposite sideline. We lose a second or two from the last time, I’m pretty sure. Damn.

  “You think this is for time?” Coach shouts as we re-form the line. Lots of the team have their hands on their hips as we watch him pace. Somebody on the line dry heaves. I don’t look to see who. “You think I got stopwatches on all you boys? ’Cause I don’t. This is not for time! This is for heart!”

  The whistle blasts and we go again.

  Some workouts are for time. Some are for strength, some for agility, some for cardio. That doesn’t include practice, which is all about sharpening skill. Today’s the first full day back at school and a Long Day practice. This one is about guts—and man, I got more of those than ever before. I cross the final sideline first in that round, and it feels great.

  “You want to win?” Coach says.

  “Yeah!”

  “That’s a word! I want proof.” The whistle blows, and we go again.

  On this return trip, one of the linemen stumbles past the sideline and pukes through his face mask. Coach blows the whistle and calls for a knee. The team surrounds him. Me and my teammates breathe hard, panting, as we take off our helmets and gaze up at Coach.

  “Now, I can run you till you die,” Coach says, as if resuming a conversation we started earlier. “I can run you till you puke, Monty. Right?”

  Monty, the lineman, nods once, looking both embarrassed and determined.

  “But that’s not what I’m here for. That’s not what you’re here for. Anyone can play a game. We can come out here and play Candy Land if you want, it doesn’t matter to me. That what you wanna play?”

  Me and the others know not to answer.

  “You came to play football. You came to play hard and train hard and win hard games. This Friday, that’s what we’re going to do against the Titans. This is a man’s game now. Suck up the tired, suck up the doubts, and man up. You do not have to win, but you CAN. NOT. STOP, ever. Because if you do not stop, ever, if you do not stop pushing yourself and your team, then you will win. That’s just what happens. Don’t be afraid, of anything, ever. Just keep pushing. Hoo?”

  The team, having barely caught our breath from the gassers, bursts into our favorite chant of hoo hoo hoo hoo, great guttural vocal punches that announce the season is now in full swing.

  “All right,” Coach says. “Get some water.”

  The team hops up and heads for the white plastic tables where the water is waiting. Also waiting? The water girls. The best part of practice.

  I chug cool water, grateful for the relief. I am pumped, ready for Friday. Three more practices before then; two Shorts and a Long, with a break on Wednesday to recover. I turn my face up to the sun, eyes closed, daring the star to beat me down. Then a cold splash against my face makes me shake.

  “Oops! Sorry,” says Amy, not sorry at all.

  I smile, happy with both the cold splash and her attention. When I catch Coach’s glare, I stop smiling and turn for the field instead.

  Damn. I hope Amy understands. She probably does.

  After some parting instructions from Coach, the team jogs to the locker room to clean up. We run through some locker-room talk, literally—comparing the various water girls at practice—but no one talks that way about Amy. Not me, not anybody.


  Me and Brady finish cleaning up at the same time and head out of the locker room together. Brady looks pale to me. And, damn, way too skinny.

  “Hey man,” I say to B as we walk. “I’m gonna get some pizza, want to hang with me?”

  Brady hesitates for only a second. “Yeah, sure, that’s cool.”

  “Cool.”

  We take my new-old car to this hole-in-the-wall place called Chizona’s. It’s a few blocks from Brady’s. The pizza’s damn tasty. I order an extra large with sausage, pepperoni, green peppers, olives, and onions. We grab a table near the windows and talk strategy and shit about the Titans.

  “Mercy rule,” I say.

  “Mercy rule,” Brady says, thumping my fist with his own.

  When the pizza arrives, I shake my head and say, “Damn, that is way bigger than I thought. I won’t finish this. Jump in, man.”

  So Brady grabs a slice, and together we take out the entire pie, barely speaking through it, watching ESPN on Chizona’s old boxy television hung up high in one corner.

  After a series of belches that take about ten pounds off me, I say, “I got to head out. You want a ride?”

  Brady gets up from his chair with a wave. “Nah, I’m gonna get another run in before I get home.”

  No way is he running anywhere. But I don’t say it.

  “Cool,” I say instead. “Tomorrow, pick you up at that Starbucks down there? Seven?”

  “Seven’s good. Hey.”

  “S’up?”

  Brady squints at me. “You and Amy. That a thing?”

  Damn.

  “Man,” I say, “Amy and nobody a thing.”

  “Yeah, but if you could?”

  I consider how to answer. In the time it takes me to make a decision, I realize the pause was answer enough.

  “Yeah,” I admit, “if I could. You?”

  Brady shrugs, but doesn’t look pissed. “If I could. But Brianna’s been hanging around. I might go that way.”

  I whistle, screwing my face into a mask of make-believe pain. Brianna’s damn hot. Not my type, but hot. “Montaro? Damn, son. You could do worse. You could do worse.”