Stick

by Michael Harmon

  “You know why I am, Mike. And I figured you’d get it.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “What is?” I said.

  “For the first time, I agree with your dad and Coach more than you.”

  Our friendship flashed through my head. Years of backyard campouts. Playing ball in the street. Riding our bikes down to the pond and chasing ducks. Joining Boy Scouts and quitting at the same time. Checking out girls downtown. “Don’t do this, Mike.”

  “Do what? Be pissed that you’re fucking everybody over, including your best friend?”

  “If the only thing I am to you is a way to get something you want, I guess so.”

  “Killinger was right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “He said you couldn’t cut it. That this is how they cull the weak from the strong.”

  “So I guess this is it, then? All this for nothing.”

  Mike didn’t answer, and the silence was deafening.

  “You’re better than them, Mike. You are,” I said. Then I hung up.

  I woke up at six with a stiff neck, a cramp in my foot, and a headache. Newly homeless, I’d curled up in the back of my car, spreading an old hoodie over me and hoping that bandits, car thieves, murderers, or traveling gypsies wouldn’t kill me.

  Sitting up, I watched the sun brighten the sky and took stock of what I had. Fourteen dollars and seven cents in my pockets. Fifty-three dollars in the bank. A half-dead cell phone with no charger. A quarter tank of gas. The clothes I had on my back. A new freedom that I found oddly exhilarating.

  I’d finally stood up to my dad, and I’d seen the look in his eyes. He’d believed me. He’d known I was serious. He’d listened. He would never touch me again. He’d never make me live the way he wanted me to live, and sitting in my garbage-strewn car, I knew that I preferred this to that. Things were different now, and even though I was freaked out about what the heck to do, I knew I’d do something.

  I also knew I wasn’t going back home.

  That struck me almost like a blow. Everything with my dad had always been a lesson. A teaching moment, he said. Punishment was a learning experience. This wasn’t. He couldn’t punish me any longer. He’d expected me to act like a man since I was twelve years old, and now that I was making my own decisions, he couldn’t accept that.

  I wondered for the millionth time what it would be like if my mom was alive, but I put it out of my head. I used to fantasize when I was little, usually after I’d gotten in trouble. My mom was always the hero. The superhero, I thought, then laughed, thinking of Preston. She would always rescue me in my fantasies. Hug me. Tell me everything was okay, and that I was okay.

  I knew different, though. If she was alive, she’d be gone. Away from him. And maybe, just maybe, I’d be with her, living a different life.

  Pulling myself out of my own mud hole, I thought about the positives. I had wheels and I had the clothes on my back, even if they were wrinkled and crumpled. I also had an empty belly. Deciding that the breakfast of champions would be a 7-Eleven breakfast burrito, I picked the one that didn’t look eight years old, grabbed a Gatorade, and ate in my car.

  Fifteen minutes later, and with a lump of lead in my stomach, I had to decide about school. The last thing I wanted to do was go, but something inside of me, a new thing, told me I needed to. Not to learn, but to at least not give in. If I was honest with myself, Lance Killinger scared me. Tilly might have the muscles, but Lance was far more dangerous because he knew how to play more than football.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  Mr. Reeves looked at me, contemplating. He tapped his pen on his desk. “About what, Brett? Football?”

  “No. Well, yes. Everything has just sort of fallen apart.”

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything. We’d been talking for ten minutes and getting nowhere. He wasn’t the type to press, and I wasn’t the type to tell people the truth about how I felt about things.

  I went on. “If I tell you stuff, is it private?”

  “Yes.”

  I knew he was full of crap because I’d Googled confidentiality with school counselors on my phone that morning. If he thought I was in danger—a danger to myself or being abused—he had to report it to the authorities. After reading that, I’d laughed. It meant anybody with any serious problems might as well sew their mouth shut rather than talk to a counselor with any honesty.

  But I had to trust him, because on my way to school I realized that I truly didn’t know what to do. I was more lost than I’d ever been. So I told him. Everything. Football, my dad, Coach watching the fight, Tilly, Killinger, and last but not least, Preston. I didn’t tell Mr. Reeves his name, though. The last thing I wanted was Preston sitting in the hot seat because I’d blabbed.

  And when I finished telling him, he looked at me, and my world crumbled. So much for trust.

  Mr. Reeves took a breath. “You are being harassed, physically assaulted, and bullied by fellow students. They could be suspended and put into mandatory counseling. Your father, by throwing the football at you, could be charged with domestic violence or child abuse. He could also possibly be charged with neglect for kicking you out of the house with no means to support yourself. Coach Williams could be severely disciplined for allowing students to fight. Your friend, whoever he is, puts himself in life-threatening situations and is in need of immediate counseling.” He stopped and stared at me.

  “What are you going to do?”

  He shook his head. “No, Brett. That’s not what this is about. You’re going to tell me what to do.”

  “But that is what this is about. I don’t know what to do.”

  He shook his head again. “I misled you when I said this conversation was private. I had no idea the severity of the situation. I assumed you were dealing with the typical problems surrounding quitting a team.” He paused. “But that doesn’t mean I need to force things all at once. I’m a counselor, and under those same laws, I have leeway.”

  “Then what? What are you going to do? My dad might be an asshole, but he shouldn’t be arrested.”

  He nodded. “First, I clear my afternoon. Second, I excuse you from your classes. Then you figure out what you need to do while I sit here and listen.”

  “Nice window,” Preston said. He’d been standing by my car after school, waiting.

  I looked at the empty space where my rear window had been. “Thanks.”

  He shuffled. “It would complicate my life if you told my mom what I do.”

  “Is that why you were waiting here? To tell me that?”

  “Partially.”

  I stepped to the rear of my car. “One of the good things about having a convertible,” I said as I threw my pack into the backseat, “is ease of use.”

  He watched me as I unlocked the door, then pointedly looked at the gaping hole in the back of my car. “Are you afraid somebody will steal something from the front?”

  I looked down at the key in the lock and laughed. “You need a lift home?”

  He shook his head. “I said I was partially waiting for you to ask you not to tell my mom about me.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “I told you that football was useless.”

  “It is.”

  He shook his head. “But I think you’re making a mistake by quitting.”

  “I hate playing, Preston. And besides, you basically told me to quit, so why are you telling me not to now?”

  “You hate all the reasons you give yourself to play. Your dad, the assholes you play with, that gorilla they call the coach. They’re all controlling you. That’s what I was telling you, Brett.”

  I realized he was the only person I knew who had never called me Stick. “No. I quit. I have the power, Preston. I finally stood up for myself. Don’t you get that? You of all people should.”

  “When you quit, you gave them all the power. I’ve seen you play, and even though I think it’s a stupid waste of time and played by below-average
human beings, you’re good at what you waste your time doing. Really good.”

  “You have a horrible way of complimenting people.”

  He leaned against my car. “Be honest. You love playing football, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. But it’s all just…”

  “It’s all just too much for you to take? You’re good at pretending to be stupid, Brett, but it gets tiring after a while,” he said. “You let them ruin what you love. Admit that, at least.”

  I bit my lip and watched as the few remaining cars in the parking lot filtered out. “There’s no other way to do it, though. All the strings are attached. And besides, after Coach watching you get beat up, I would never play for him.” I spat. “Jesus, even if I was willing to go back, Lance and Tilly would make my life hell.” I shook my head angrily, glancing at him. “Listen, Preston, I know I screwed up. The day I quit, I knew. But I quit for the right reasons. Football—or anything else for that matter—shouldn’t be this way.”

  He stood there with his fingers in his pockets, feet splayed like a duck, shoulders slumped, a skinny rail of a kid with an enormous amount of wisdom that I couldn’t fathom. “My dad shouldn’t be dead, either. Nothing is ever the way it should be.”

  “So that’s why you thwart crime in a costume.”

  He shook his head. “The costume doesn’t do anything important, Brett, just like your costume doesn’t do anything. After my dad died, everybody said I should deal with it the way everybody else does. But that didn’t work.” He paused, shifting on his feet. “I tried to jump off that bridge.” He looked at me. “But I couldn’t. That’s why I go back and walk the ledge. To remind myself.”

  I’d originally thought he was just a weird and sad dork pretending to be Batman. Some overgrown six-year-old with no friends who still played with action figures. “I guess I don’t have to do things the way they say, huh?”

  “I’m the one with the mental problems. You’re the star.”

  I laughed. “I think you’re the most sane person I’ve ever met. Weird, but sane.” Somehow, I felt better, but it didn’t leave me with any answers. “I can’t go back to the team, though. I won’t.”

  He smiled. “You are really stupid sometimes.”

  “What now?”

  He hitched his pack on his shoulders. “I heard the Tigers are tied for first with the Saxons, since you guys lost last week. I also know that there are emergency school transfer policies for students who are being bullied.”

  I blinked, widening my eyes.

  “Walk the ledge, Brett. Your way—not the way you’re supposed to,” he said.

  I bolted back to Mr. Reeves’s office.

  I knocked until he answered. He’d changed the locks. I could tell by the haze in his eyes he’d downed a few beers, and he scowled when he saw me. “I told you…”

  I held out a sheet of paper and a pen to him. “I need your signature.”

  He looked at the paper with the Hamilton Saxon standard emblazoned on the top. He brightened. “You decided to play, then? Coach said if you decided to rejoin, I’d need to sign another release form.”

  “I’m playing.”

  He grinned. “I knew you’d come around, son. Come in, come in. I had a spare key made. I’ll get it for you.” He clapped me on the back and went inside.

  I followed, the paper still in my hand. He sat down, and I gave it to him. He was shaking his head and smiling as he signed. “Sometimes it takes tough love to show you where you should be, Brett. I always had faith in you. Always. And we can put last night out of our heads. I set your trophies back up.”

  I took the paper from him, folding it. A sudden jab of guilt hit me. I knew he’d sign the transfer without reading it. I also knew he loved me, but maybe not the right way. “I’ve got to get this down to Lewis and Clark before five. Coach Larson said he’d wait.”

  “What? Larson? Lewis and Clark?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  He looked at the sheet in my hands. “Hold on here, Brett. I thought we—”

  I was playing football again, and I was playing it on my own terms. If my dad couldn’t accept that, it was his issue to deal with. “I know. I’m excited, too. They’re a good team, and Coach Larson said if I show myself during practice this week and next, I can start wide receiver a week from Friday. It’s against Shadle.”

  His face went dark. He’d gone to Hamilton as a teenager. He’d played Hamilton ball with Coach Williams. He jabbed a finger at the paper. “What did I just sign?”

  “Transfer slip. Mr. Reeves said I could have an emergency transfer because the team is bullying me. I’m playing for Lewis and Clark, Dad,” I said, then bent and picked up the extra door key. “Thanks for this, too. I don’t know how late I’ll be. I have to start studying the playbook and watching their tapes.”

  He gawked as I left. I could almost feel the silent explosions going off in his head.

  Coach Larson shook my hand and ushered me into his office. I’d never met him before, but the slender, youngish-looking man seemed nice enough. A picture of a woman and three kids, younger than me, stood on his desk.

  He was all teeth through his smiles, but there was an undercurrent in the tone of his voice, and I couldn’t tell if he was happy to meet Brett Patterson or happy to have the best receiver in the state on his team. I hoped both. He took a seat, gesturing to one of the chairs in front of his desk. “This is a surprise, son.”

  “To me, too, sir.”

  He took his baseball cap off and scratched his head. “I’ve been thinking on how to do this ever since your counselor called me this afternoon, and I can’t say I’m too comfortable with the situation.”

  “How is that, Coach?”

  “It’s going to look like I…,” he began, then stopped. “You’re transferring due to some bullying that went on. I’m assuming it was because you quit the team.”

  “Yessir.”

  He adjusted his cap. “Then let’s get one thing straight. It ends here. I coach fair and I fight hard. My team does, too. I’m sure Coach Williams will change his playbook after hearing about this, but if I hear one word out of your mouth that gives the Tigers an unfair advantage on the field, you’re benched for the season.” His eyes bore into mine, his smile gone. “You understand that, son? I play fair.”

  I laughed, full of relief.

  “You find what I just said funny, Brett?”

  “No, sir. Not at all. I just wasn’t expecting…I just want to play football. Fair football.”

  He extended his hand across the desk. We shook, hard and strong. “Then welcome to my team.” He tossed a playbook to me. “Practice at five-thirty tomorrow morning. You study up. Just because you’ve got all those numbers stacked up around you doesn’t mean you walk onto my team. You don’t prove it, you don’t play. Earn it, Brett. Now get out of my office.”

  On my way home, I was almost giddy with excitement. I would play, and I would play my way. The right way. And in the process, I’d watch Coach Williams and Lance Killinger wish they never knew me.

  I couldn’t sleep. I usually hit my bed and was out like a light, but my mind ran circles thinking about what would happen. Preston telling me I was Superman jabbed through my thoughts, and finally I gave up on sleep and grabbed my phone.

  He answered on the second ring. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “You up?”

  “Unless you’re having a particularly lucid dream, yes, I’m up,” Preston said.

  I glanced at the clock. A few minutes before twelve. “What are you doing?”

  “Why are you calling, Brett?”

  “I transferred to the Tigers.”

  “And you wanted to chat about it at midnight?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Are you out?”

  “Out what?”

  “Doing your thing. You know. Crime-fighting stuff.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  —

  Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up to the corner of
Sixth and Fiske. Preston hopped in. “Any luck?”

  Tonight he was in full regalia. No hoodie, no sweats covering his costume. “I wouldn’t consider people being victimized by crime as lucky, but no. Most times I go out, I don’t see anything.”

  “Don’t you feel weird walking around like that?”

  “No.”

  I drove. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Stay around this area. This neighborhood has the highest crime statistics in the city.”

  “How do you know this stuff?”

  “The police department has a detailed crime map online. And I keep my own records. Serial robberies generally follow a pattern. You just have to figure it out.” He pointed to a small convenience store up the block. “They’ve been robbed three times in the last six months.”

  “What’s the pattern there?”

  “The only thing I could figure is that it’s happened every other month, on the night of the fifteenth, and between twelve-thirty and one-thirty.”

  “Why?”

  “Payday is on the fifteenth. Stores like that sell cigarettes and beer like crazy on paydays. They have a lot of cash in the till.”

  I blinked. “And today is…”

  “The fifteenth,” he said. “And they weren’t robbed last month. If there is a pattern, it’ll happen in the next forty-five minutes.”

  A chill ran through me. “That’s pretty cool. Almost like one of those FBI profiler guys.”

  “Pull over up there. In front of that blue truck.”

  I did. “The first time I ever saw a crime happen was with you. Those guys and the car.”

  “That’s because you don’t look for it. And besides, if you research the right areas, your odds of seeing something go up dramatically. Turn the engine off.”

  “I’ve seen cashiers at 7-Eleven put cash in tubes and drop them in a safe. Why don’t these guys do that?”

  “Manuel Cruz. He’s from Venezuela. He opened up the store himself when he immigrated here. It’s not corporate. Just a mom-and-pop place. They live in the apartment upstairs. Two kids, nine and eleven.”