Leverage

by Joshua C. Cohen

  “Better make it five days,” I say, then cough for effect and rub my belly like it aches, grimacing the whole time. “I’ll take it in Monday.”

  “You wouldn’t want to ruin your streak, I suppose.” He scowls.

  “Nope.”

  “What about all those skipped gymnastics rehearsals?” he asks, putting his hand around my neck. “Doesn’t that mean you’ll have to miss your team’s recital this week?”

  “They’re not rehearsals. They’re practice. And they’re not recitals.” I practically spit the word out on the floor. “They’re meets.”

  “That’s right,” he says, tugging me into him by my neck, then ruffling my bedhead. “Practice and meets. Got it. And it’s not your schoolwork and classes you’re skipping. It’s your future.”

  I can’t really say anything back, so I don’t. Besides, I like him rustling my hair.

  “Well, you should get to bed if you’re sick. Get your rest.”

  “I will,” I say. “I’m just going to watch The Late Show first.”

  Friday, my last fake sick day, Coach Nelson calls our house. My own cell has been eerily quiet and that’s fine with me. No news is good news. Staying home from school has taught me that when our house phone rings in the daytime I can expect offers to refinance our mortgage, order new life insurance policies, or subscribe to a dozen magazines. So when I realize it’s Coach calling, I clear my throat and cough into the phone.

  “Danny, sorry to hear you’re under the weather,” Coach Nelson says. “You and Bruce, both. Some sort of bug going around. Half of Coach Brigs’s starters been out sick this week, too. Kurt Brodsky’s still gone. Scott Miller, Mike Studblatz, and Tom Jankowski only returned yesterday.”

  “Something’s going around, I guess.” I clench the phone tight enough to break it while Coach lists the names: Bruce, Brodsky, Miller, Studblatz, Jankowski. All of them mashing into my ear. Only one name missing for a royal flush. Ronnie. Poor, miserable Ronnie.

  “Yeah . . . well ... I wish that’s why I was calling.” Coach Nelson pauses. “You get yourself healthy. Both you and Bruce. We miss you in the gym. Miss you gu—” and Coach’s voice catches. The line goes quiet for a second. I wait, unsure what’s wrong, somehow scared he knows about the attack, blames me for letting it happen, for not saying anything. Maybe he’s angry about the vomit stench. Maybe I didn’t clean up good enough and he can smell it. Did I leave the lights on? He’d be mad about that, too, threatening to take the gym keys from us. Maybe he never should have left us alone in the gym. Then Saturday never would have happened. My mind races while waiting for Coach to start talking again.

  “This is real hard, Danny, and it ain’t right doing it over the phone but there’s no more time,” Coach begins. “We had a team meeting today, gathered before the rest of the school heard the announcement.”

  “What?” He’s freaking me out.

  “There is no ... there is no easy way to . . .”

  Someone told. Ronnie told. Everyone knows. Everyone knows about the attack. Everyone knows! I feel equal parts panic and relief.

  “Ronnie Gunderson passed ... Ronnie Gunderson killed himself yesterday.”

  WHAT!?

  “What? How? Where?”

  “His father found him in the bathtub. Unconscious. The paramedics couldn’t do anything for him.”

  “But . . .” I trail off, having no idea what to say next. My ear feels hot from pressing it to the receiver.

  “You still with me, Danny?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought he was out sick. Like you, like Bruce,” Coach says. “If I had even an inkling what was going through his mind ... Danny, I’m going over everything and I’m . . .” Coach’s voice fades. I hear him swallow over the phone and then sniff, as if he’s holding back from crying. I’ve never heard a man cry before except in movies. Not even my dad has cried in front of me, even after telling me Mom died, not even at her funeral. Sometimes I got so angry at him for that, told myself maybe he never loved her like I did. Coach Nelson almost crying over the phone into my ear hurts as much as the actual news about Ronnie. It coils around my chest and begins to squeeze, accusing me of cowardice. I should have said something to someone. If I had gone to school on Monday and told Coach what happened, not pretended it never happened, not hated to think about Ronnie facedown in that room screaming his guts out while those guys ... he’d probably be alive right now.

  “Danny?”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ll get through this,” Coach says. “The school’s already contacted a grief counseling service and—”

  “Does Bruce know?” I cut him off.

  “Yes. I called him first, wanted him, as the team captain, to ... you understand . . .”

  “I have to go,” I say, then repeat it. “I have to go.”

  “Sure, Danny.”

  28

  KURT

  After a full week out sick with the “flu,” I walk into first period on Monday shadowed by a dull headache; wondering how I’m supposed to set foot on the same field as Miller, Jankowski, and Studblatz and remain their teammate. Mrs. Helmsley, our English teacher and a tiny thing with arms like Popsicle sticks and a brittle voice to match, sets her chalk down at the board and pulls her eyebrows into a serious expression. “As you heard last Friday,” she begins, “one of our students killed himself. I thought maybe we could take some time out of our regular class today to talk about it, if anyone wants to.” She is met with silent, unmoving heads staring back at her. I’m massaging my temples, only half listening. “Did anyone know the student? Ronnie Gunderson?” she asks. A few heads shake no while the rest remain motionless as she struggles with the topic. Finally, a girl two desks in front of me raises her hand, then asks why he killed himself. Mrs. Helmsley lets her cheeks puff out, holding her breath for a moment, before releasing a long exhale.

  “That, I’m sure, is a very complicated answer,” she says.

  “Who was he?” someone near me whispers while I press my thumbs under the top of my eye sockets, once hearing that was a way to stop headache pain. It’s not working.

  “No clue,” someone whispers back. “Never met him.”

  It takes at least a minute before the news actually penetrates my bruised brain and I understand that Ronnie Gunderson isn’t just some freshman I never met and too bad for him. Ronnie Gunderson is Ronnie. The gymnast. That kid. Ronnie. The one who helped Bruce and Danny spot me on back handsprings. The one ... Scott offered up to me in the storage room, pants down ... “You want a shot, Mr. Wolf?”

  Absorbing the full hit of Mrs. Helmsley’s news, my skull clamps down on my swollen brain. My head starts pounding and pounding and I know if I have to sit in that cramped desk for another second and pretend I don’t know anything about why Ronnie killed himself, I’ll maybe tear the desk apart, if not the room, to relieve the pressure.

  I lurch up to standing, feeling the whole class tilt with me.

  “Yes, Kurt?” Mrs. Helmsley asks, partly helpful and partly challenging. I wave her off, not really sure what might come out of my mouth if I try talking. Like maybe I’ll blurt out that Ronnie Gunderson, the freshman nobody knew, was torn apart in a storage room and that’s what killed him. The suicide came after. And maybe I’ll stutter and stammer that our homecoming king did it. And maybe I should go find him right then and make sure, once and for all, he never hurts someone like Lamar—like Ronnie ever again. I walk up the aisle and out of the classroom, gripping my books tight, wanting to whip them as far down the hallway as possible as if that might help even for a second. Breaking things is all I can imagine, is all I want to do. It’s all I’m good at. I suck at saving things, suck at saving people.

  Outside the school, there’s a spruce tree planted in the middle of the lawn near the edge of the teachers’ parking lot. It’s warmed up again, back to being early fall, and the sky is powder blue and the grass is emerald green and still soft and the leaves on the maples are starting to turn auburn
and gold. It’s a perfect day and I feel nothing but wet concrete churning through my blood, causing my tongue to taste clay while light and sound just turn to dirt. Brown dirt. All of it. Everything.

  I reach into the spruce and grab smaller branches and start breaking them off the tree, twisting them down and back until they make a satisfying snap, like the spine of a small animal.

  Dumb sons of bitches!

  Snap! Snap!

  Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .

  Snap! Snap! Snap!

  I stay outside hoping the sun might burn off some of the ugliness swirling around me, but it ain’t working. When I finally go back inside, it’s only to catch Danny in math, hoping he knows more, hoping he’ll tell me Ronnie was already suicidal, that me pushing him out of my room—telling him nothing happened but a fight and it was all in his head—wasn’t what killed him.

  I get to algebra early and drum my fingers on the desk waiting for Danny to arrive. When the bell rings, there’s still no sign of him. Mr. Klech starts diagramming on the chalkboard while everyone pretends to care or at least not fall asleep. I keep watching the door and waiting for Danny to slip in with a hall pass. Thirty-five minutes later, I give up. He ain’t coming. And even if he does, I realize, he ain’t about to offer any words that’ll excuse me.

  No one except me saw what happened to Ronnie in that storage room. No one. If I go down to the principal’s office and tell the truth about what I saw, they’ll accuse me of doing it. Accuse me just like last time. They’ll tell everyone about my past. They’ll start the rumors all over again; that I hurt Ronnie same way I did my best friend at Meadow’s House before I killed him. That I’m the monster. Without Bruce or Danny seeing anything until after it finished, it’s three against one; Tom, Scott, and Mike’s story versus mine. Ronnie can’t say different. Ronnie is gone. I try picturing Ronnie in the gym last week but I keep seeing Lamar instead, resting in his polished chrome casket, smile like a mannequin’s. The memorial service attended by three news crews and more people than either of us ever met. Lamar’s shiny, boy-size casket—the most expensive thing he ever got to own.

  Algebra finishes. Mr. Klech sets the chalk down in the metal tray running along the bottom of the board. He rubs his hands together and gives us our assignment. I write it down, not paying attention, wondering, instead, how I’ll get through the next hour, afternoon, day, year.

  I’m back at practice that same day I hear the news, too weak-minded to quit, unable to imagine walking away from it, hating myself for showing up. Scott, Tom, and Mike are all yammering and jawing on the field, same as always. I mean to ignore them and expect the same back. But when Scott sees me, he jogs over and greets me with a fist thump on my shoulder pad.

  “Hey, man, no hard feelings, all right?” he says in friendly tones. The helmet shades his face, making it hard to read him.

  “Wuh?”

  “My left arm’s still aching after that shot you gave me.” Scott lowers his voice so it barely clears his face mask. “Good thing you didn’t hit my throwing arm, huh?”

  I don’t answer.

  “But you wouldn’t do that,” he says. “Don’t want to mess with our record. Mess with what we got going on here. That would be pretty stupid.” Scott pounds my shoulder pad with his fist again, then jogs over to run passing drills with Assistant Coach Stein.

  “Hey, bro,” Tom yells over at me. “Starting to wonder about you, weren’t we, Pullman?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Pullman agrees. “Glad you’re back, man. That flu’ll kick your ass.”

  The gate of my practice helmet, the one without the camera and mic, dips as I nod back at him.

  “Just don’t give it to me,” Pullman says.

  “Now that Brodsky’s back, we can start slaughtering the rest of the division again.” Tom thumps his chest pads and then slaps the top of Pullman’s helmet. “Without your daddies on the field, that last game was a little too close.”

  “We still won,” Pullman answers. “And it was an away game. That’s all that counts.”

  “You won by a field goal,” Tom says. “A field goal. If you can’t beat Farmington by at least ten, you should wear a skirt.”

  “My man is back!” Terrence calls out. His smile, at least, is genuine. I move closer to him, feeling safer in his zone. “Ain’t too fun running behind your backup,” Terrence tells me, then clasps his hands together like he’s praying and tilts his helmet up to the sky. “Thank you, Lord, for giving me my stat boy back. You know how bad my yardage totals were last game? Please don’t let Kurt go off and get sick no more, you hear?”

  I hold out my fist. Terrence bumps it with his.

  Judging from practice, you’d never guess my captains and me helped kill a boy. Wearing the red vest that makes him unhittable, Scott doesn’t even have to protect his bad arm during scrimmage. Tom bullies every player within shoving distance during our drills, same as always. Studblatz, unlike Scott and Tom, stays away from me, but, for him, that’s normal. As leader of the defensive unit, he always treats our offense as the enemy during practice. Halfway through scrimmage, though, I notice him favoring his right side, like his rib cage on the other side’s real tender. Good, I think, pretty sure that’s my doing.

  “Brodsky, Miller, Studblatz, Jankowski,” Coach Brigs calls out, “meet in my office after showers, gentlemen.” Coach Brigs’s tone leaves no room for negotiation.

  I dawdle on the field, pretending to work on some blocking techniques and lateral steps so I won’t have to change alongside those three guys. Once in the shower, I take my time, letting the water scald me, hoping it might help clear my head. I put off the meeting in Coach’s office long as possible.

  “You squeaky-clean, now, Kurt?” Coach asks, closing the door behind me. “I support good hygiene as much as the next guy, but let’s not go overboard with the prima donna routine. It leads to softness. And softness is something I can’t tolerate in my players.”

  Scott snickers while Tom grins knowingly like they’ve been discussing my softness with Coach the whole time. Along with Studblatz, the three captains sit on Coach’s couch, their bodies packed tight between the armrests.

  “Softness leads to problems, leads to trouble,” Coach continues as he settles into the chair behind his desk. “Hell, that confused boy, Ronnie Gunderson—God have mercy on his soul—I heard was troubled with that problem. Soft.” Scott and Tom, I notice, lose their smiles.

  “It’s a damn shame what that boy did to himself,” Coach says, staring up at the top shelf of trophies in his office. “What a selfish, selfish act it is to take your own life. Can you imagine what his poor parents must be going through? I’m sad for his parents. I’m sad for his family. I’m not sad for him, though. For him, I feel only anger. I feel contempt. I don’t have an ounce of pity for such a cowardly act.” Coach squeezes his eyes shut as he stresses the words, then suddenly opens them again. “Maybe it’s just as well he got culled from the herd early. Lord has a plan. He always has a plan. Bet on it.”

  I shift my weight in the small wooden chair, the only seat left in Coach’s office.

  “Now, boys, I bring up Ronnie Gunderson for a reason,” Coach says. My eyes shoot over to Scott. He’s holding his breath, same as Tom, same as me. Mike looks like he’s just chomped down on his tongue. “What that kid did tore a hole in the fabric of our community. Do you understand? And what we provide our community on Friday nights is more than a ball game. It’s a time for restoring faith in our future, of passing the baton from the strong of one generation to the next. So this ball game coming up is not just about winning and improving our record. It’s about healing our community after suffering a serious blow, about giving our community something more than the failure of one soft, misguided boy to dwell upon.”

  I gaze down at my knuckles, examining the scabs left on them from the punches I threw in that storage room.

  “You all might be asking yourselves why I’m not giving this speech to our whole team, why I’m privi
leging you boys with it all by your lonesome.” Coach leans back in his chair until I’m sure the springs will snap and send him toppling over. He stays upright, though, drumming his finger on his belly, taking his sweet time shifting his gaze to each of our faces. “You boys, you did something weekend before last.”

  This is it. Here we go. It’s all about to burst open.

  “I don’t know what happened or what you did, but I find it more than a coincidence that my four best starters all come down with the same bug that lays them all out for a week, risking an away-game loss to Farmington High, of all teams!” He keeps drumming his fingers on his belly. “Meanwhile, not one other boy—not a single player on the team—missed class or is even remotely sick.

  “You want to know what I think?” Coach asks us.

  The only thing that calms me is watching Scott, Tom, and Mike actually squirm on the couch, waiting for Coach’s next thought.

  “I think you boys had yourselves a little party,” Coach continues. “Maybe drank a few too many beers and decided to go for a joyride and got banged up enough that Brodsky was out with some sort of concussion, Studblatz now has bruised ribs, Scott has a bad arm—you real lucky, boy, it’s not your throwing arm—and Tom’s been limping during sprint drills.”

  Coach rocks forward in his chair, the springs creaking, and jumps up to attention. He leans over his desk, planting both arms on it like cannon supports. “I’m not even going to begin lecturing you all on how stupid it is to drink and drive and how lucky you boys are that you didn’t—God forbid—hurt anyone other than yourselves and how lucky you are that you got by with a few scrapes, near as I can tell. I’m not going to start lecturing on how badly you let this team down when your own selfish need to party gets in the way of performing on that field with the body that you were fortunate enough to be gifted from the good Lord himself. I’ll leave all that for now.