by Carl Deuker
There’s not much to say about the first three periods: math analysis, computer drafting, art. I won’t even bother with the teachers’ names. The classes weren’t boring or hard or weird. They were just school.
Right before lunch I had English with Ms. Hurley. I was looking forward to it, and not just because of Josh. I’d seen Ms. Hurley around the school. Most teachers are beaten down, but she glowed. She was from Egypt or Israel or someplace like that. Somebody said that in college she’d been a swimmer. Her olive skin gleamed and her dark eyes shone. Word was that she was excitable, that she’d get so worked up over a poem or a novel that she’d actually cry in class. Kids who had her liked her. I couldn’t help hoping that something good would happen in her room.
I was one of the first there. I took a seat in the center, toward the back. I was just opening my notebook when Josh walked through the door.
“Hey, Josh, over here!” I called out.
He nodded in my direction, then shuffled over and took the seat next to mine.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Nothing much,” he said, his voice barely audible.
The tardy bell sounded. I couldn’t talk to him then, but I knew what was wrong.
As Ms. Hurley took attendance, Monica Roby came breezing in. “Sorry I’m late,” she said to Ms. Hurley, then she sat next to Franklin Dement, a tall skinny kid who acted in the school plays with her and who helped her with the Viper.
“Please be here on time in the future,” Ms. Hurley said, but there was a smile on her lips. I don’t suppose too many teachers are sorry to see Monica Roby walk into their classrooms, even when she’s late.
Ms. Hurley told us her rules, then passed out our first novel, a book called A Farewell to Arms. Once we all had copies, she sat on her desk, opened the book up, and started reading out loud to us.
The book seemed pretty good. It takes place during World War I. This man lives in a little village somewhere in Europe. From his house he looks out on mountains and a river. It should be the greatest place in the world, but troops are always marching down the road and he can hear fighting off in the distance.
Every once in a while Ms. Hurley would put the book down and ask questions about how it might feel to be in a war. The discussion was pretty lively, but I was only half listening. I kept sneaking peeks over at Josh. When you’re used to a guy being fired up all the time, it throws you off to see him down.
The bell rang ending class, and we headed to the cafeteria. Josh’s shoulders were slumped and his eyes were on the ground. We joined the line, slid our trays along, stopping now and then to have the cooks slop some food onto our plates. We paid and found an empty table in the corner. We both started eating whatever it was we’d gotten.
Then a little buzz ran through the cafeteria. I looked up. Celeste Honor, wearing a T-shirt with Mount Rainier blazed across the front, was walking toward us. “Josh,” I said, glad to have something to talk about, “get a look at her.”
Celeste is a legend at Crown Hill. She has an incredible body and she loves to show it off. Every top she wears is skintight. All eyes were on her—boys’ and girls’. Josh didn’t break into a smile, but he did follow her as she moved past us.
She slowly walked the length of the cafeteria before she sat down and her beautiful body finally disappeared from public view. You could hear the whole room sigh and the ordinary sounds and conversation of lunch return. Somehow Celeste had broken the spell of silence that had fallen over us, too.
“Does she dress like that every day?” Josh asked.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Sometimes she wears less.”
He shook his head and whistled through his teeth.
I took a sip of my Coke. “What’s the word?”
Josh grimaced. “Canning posted the depth charts.” He nodded toward Brandon Ruben, who was sitting at a center table laughing and joking with Colby Kittleson. “Ruben is starting.”
I stared for a while, but then Ruben’s eyes caught mine and I looked back to Josh. His head was down again, and he was mechanically shoveling food into his mouth.
“You’ll get your chance,” I said. “You’ve just got to be patient.”
Josh didn’t look up, but I could see his mouth contort. “Spare me the pep talk, Ryan.”
“Listen,” I went on, ignoring what he’d said. “All you’ve got to do is wait for your chance. If it doesn’t come this week, then it will come next. If not next week, then the week after. I know how bad you must feel, but it will come.”
I wasn’t ready for what happened next. Josh’s head snapped up and he glared at me, his eyes blazing, his index finger jabbing the air right in front of my face. ”You know how I feel! You know how I feel! What a joke! I put every ounce of myself on the field every single day. Every ounce. And I’ve done it for as long as I can remember. But you—you get one injury and you quit. You don’t know how I feel, so don’t tell me you do.”
I was so stunned I’m not sure I would have answered him even if I’d had the chance. But I didn’t have the chance. He stood up so quickly his chair tipped over with a loud crash, and a second later he was gone—out the doors and into the main hallway.
The kids around me were staring. I don’t know whether they’d heard what he’d said, or whether it was just the chair toppling over that made them look. My face was flushed and my heart was pounding, but I picked up my tray as though nothing had happened, walked over to the nearest trash can, and dumped it. The bell sounded. Everyone headed to afternoon classes. It felt good to blend in, to disappear.
I had American history and chemistry left. Mrs. Beck, the history teacher, had a bony, bird-like face and iron-gray hair. She peered down her glasses as she handed out twenty typed pages listing all the reading and writing assignments for the first semester. She told us ten times that she accepted no late work. “On time or zero! That’s my motto.” You could hear the satisfaction in her voice as she said the word zero.
The chemistry teacher, Mr. Woodruff, didn’t look or act tough, but he didn’t have to. Just flipping through the first five pages of that book convinced me I’d have some long nights ahead. But I was too numb from what had happened in the cafeteria to care.
3
When school ended, I went home and closed myself off in my room. I flicked on the radio and lay back and stared at the ceiling. Around four-thirty I heard the front door open and my mother come in from work. “Ryan, you home?” she called.
I went to the stairway. “I’m doing some reading.”
She smiled up at me. “I won’t disturb you, then.”
My father came home a little later. I heard them talking together downstairs. He didn’t come up at all.
I wanted to spend the whole evening in my room, but I couldn’t have skipped dinner without facing the third degree, so I trudged downstairs.
My parents were both full of questions. “Your senior year! I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed! Tell us all about it!” They wanted to know everything about my teachers—what they looked like, how hard and strict they were.
I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm. Mentally I was back in the cafeteria, Josh’s finger right in my face, his words striking like bullets. My answers were pretty short.
“Did something go wrong at school, Ryan?” my mother asked finally. “Was there trouble with gangs or something?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “There was no trouble with gangs.” I frowned. “I’m just not a little kid anymore, Mom. I don’t like being checked up on.”
“We’re not checking up on you,” my father said, stuffing a meatball into his mouth. “We’re just asking you about your day.”
“You are checking up on me,” I shot back, working myself into a rage. “You want to find out about my classes. You want to make sure I do my work.” I paused. “Well, I’ve never flunked, have I?”
My mother put her fork down and stared at me. “Pretty touchy, aren’t you?”
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��I’m not touchy,” I insisted. “I just don’t like being treated like a first grader.”
Her face went blank. “If you don’t want us to ask any questions, we won’t,” she said coolly.
“Well, I don’t,” I said loudly, and as soon as I’d finished speaking I felt foolish for making a big deal out of almost nothing. But there was no backing down. “I can do my work without you checking on me.”
And to prove it I went to my room after dinner and started on Mrs. Beck’s first history assignment even though it wasn’t due for four days.
I’d been working twenty minutes when I heard the doorbell ring. I figured it was Greenpeace or somebody like that hitting up my parents for money. But then my mom called my name.
Downstairs I found Josh in the front room, a football in his hand, his lips pressed together tightly. “You want to go over to the Community Center, toss the ball around a little?” he asked.
It didn’t take me any time at all to answer. “Yeah, sure,” I said, even though I’d vowed never to talk to him again. “Just let me get a sweatshirt.”
My mother followed me upstairs. “This is a school night, Ryan. What about your homework?”
“Oh, Mother,” I said. “It’s the first day of school. I don’t have any homework. Besides, you just said you weren’t going to check on me.” I grabbed my sweatshirt and hurried past her down the stairs, and out the door.
I thought Josh was going to apologize, that that was why he’d come over. But as we walked to the Community Center we hardly talked at all, and what we said was nothing. Once we reached the field, we threw the football back and forth. His passes to me were on a line—hard, tight spirals. My throws back to him were lazy rainbows. It wasn’t like baseball, where I was a real partner, but it was something.
At nine-thirty the field lights went off. There was nothing to do but go home. As we walked up our block, he spun the ball up into the air and caught it. “See you tomorrow,” he said as I turned up the walkway to my house.
“Yeah,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”
I knew that asking me to throw the football around was Josh’s way of apologizing. And it was okay, I guess. Besides, what had happened was partly my fault. He’d warned me to keep quiet, but I had rattled on.
Still, nothing could entirely erase what he’d said to me. It was as if I’d flipped over a shiny golden coin and discovered the other side was all pitted. I wanted to flip the coin right back and pretend I’d never seen the other side. But some things are hard to forget.
After that we settled into a routine. I saw Josh fourth period and ate lunch with him every day that week. I talked to him and he answered, but there was a hollowness in his voice and a vacantness in his eyes.
I did have a run-in with Monica Roby during Ms. Hurley’s class. We were talking about how a person finds out whether he is brave or cowardly, strong or weak. “There are times when each one of us is called upon to stand up for what’s right,” Monica said, her voice quivering with excitement. “We all face moments of truth. That’s when we find out who we are.”
Ms. Hurley nodded her head in agreement, but Monica’s words didn’t ring true to me. “You act as if life is some action-packed Hollywood movie filled with drama and suspense,” I said. “It’s not going to be that way. Most of us will go through our whole lives and never face any big moment of truth.”
Monica’s eyes widened. “Are you serious, Ryan? You can’t possibly think your life is going to be that smooth.”
“Well, I sure don’t expect to spend much time defending truth and justice against the forces of evil and corruption like Superman,” I scoffed. “Or like Superwoman.”
I hadn’t planned the dig at all. It just came out. Kids laughed though, and Monica turned scarlet.
“Nobody will ever mistake you for Superman,” she retorted, but kids were still laughing at my joke, and hers was lost.
4
I’d never gone to any football games, not in my three years at Crown Hill. There was no reason for me to go to the opener that year either. Josh wasn’t starting, probably wouldn’t play at all. But when Saturday night rolled around, I knew I had to be there.
I took the Number Fifteen bus. Crown Hill kids got on at every stop, and by the time we crossed to Queen Anne the bus was rocking. Kids were hollering and shouting out the window. The driver kept looking in the rear-view mirror, a scowl on his face.
Inside Memorial Stadium, the dance team members turned flips while the yell leaders screamed: “We are the Vikings, the mighty mighty Vikings.” Or: “Beat Franklin! Beat Franklin!” Even the band, which sounded terrible at school assemblies, was loud and lively.
The PA system crackled. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the opening game of the Metro football season. Please note the following rules. It is against . . .”
Finally the special teams took the field for the kickoff. Everybody rose and cheered as Garrett Curtis, a big sophomore I’d seen in the hallways, fielded the Franklin kick and returned the ball to the thirty.
As Brandon Ruben led the offense onto the field, I spotted Josh, helmet in hand, standing behind Coach Canning, looking like a well-trained dog. Suddenly I was back in the cafeteria, Josh’s finger jabbing the air in front of my face, his mouth spewing insults. Let him wait, I thought. Let him wait. It was a strange sort of revenge, and it surprised me that I wanted it, but I did.
Ruben’s passes didn’t have the zip of Josh’s, but he wasn’t heaving the football into the stands either. On our first drive we made three first downs before a holding penalty forced a punt. Our second drive ended in a missed field goal. Occasionally I’d sneak a peek at the bench. Josh was always standing right behind Coach Canning, helmet in hand.
The game was scoreless midway through the second quarter when the first big play came. We had the ball on our own sixteen-yard line. Ruben faked a handoff to Colby Kittleson, then dropped back to pass. The Franklin middle linebacker didn’t bite on the play-action. He blitzed right up the gut and leveled Ruben, flat-out creamed him, jarring the football loose. The ball bounced free and a Franklin guy fell on it on our six-yard line.
Ruben popped right up, but he was wobbly walking off the field, and when he reached the bench he just about collapsed onto it. “He won’t be back for a while,” the kid next to me said to no one in particular. “Anybody know who the backup quarterback is?”
It took four downs, but Franklin scored a touchdown. Their fullback pounded the ball in from six inches out. With the extra point, they went up 7–0.
Curtis took the kickoff again. This time he broke a few tackles and made it all the way out to the forty before the kicker pushed him out of bounds.
My eyes were glued on the sidelines. Ruben remained slumped on the bench, head down and helmet off, still trying to shake out the cobwebs. Josh was going to get his chance.
It’s amazing how quickly you can change. I’d been glad that Josh wasn’t playing. I’d wanted him to sit and suffer. But once he was in the game, I wanted him to throw touchdown passes and lead the team to victory. I can’t explain why I changed. I just know I did.
On first down he took the snap and made a quick pitch to Kittleson. Kittleson almost broke free for a big gain, but the Quakers’ safety dragged him down from behind after four yards.
Second down was another running play—Kittleson up the middle for maybe a yard. That made it third and five—a passing down. I looked to the sidelines. Ruben was up, talking to Canning. He wanted back in. Josh was going to have to do something good to keep him out.
Josh took the snap, dropped back three steps, but before he could set his feet a blitzing linebacker was right in his face. He somehow ducked under the guy and came up firing. The ball must have gone forty yards in the air, a perfect spiral to a wide-open Jamaal Wilsey. It was a touchdown, a cinch touchdown—but somehow Wilsey let the ball slip through his fingertips. Everyone groaned. I looked back upfield to Josh. He was on his knees, his eyes to the sky in disbelief.
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nbsp; We had to punt, and the Quakers ran out the first half with a long drive that ended in a field goal at the gun, a wobbly thing that hit the crossbar and dropped over. Still it counted, and at the half Franklin led 10–0.
During halftime the bands came out and marched around, a light drizzle started to fall, and out of pure nervousness I ate two lukewarm hot dogs.
The way I figured it, Canning had to start Josh in the second half. Josh had put the ball in Wilsey’s hands. It wasn’t his fault that Wilsey had dropped it.
The teams came back onto the field for the second half. The Quakers took the kickoff, so I had to wait even longer to find out who was playing QB. They managed a couple of first downs before they had to punt.
I stared at the sideline. Josh and Ruben stood shoulder to shoulder. Canning looked at both of them, and a second later Ruben was pulling his helmet over his head and running out onto the field.
“What are they playing him for!” I shouted.
“The other guy didn’t do anything,” somebody hollered from below.
I was about to yell something back, but I swallowed the words.
Not only did Ruben play, but he played pretty well. We got a first down on a screen pass, another one on a nifty run by Kittleson, a third on a slant-in pass. But then Kittleson fumbled on a third-and-four and the Quakers recovered.
After that the game took on a boring sameness. Back and forth; back and forth. A couple of first downs, then a punt or a fumble. All that time Josh shadowed Coach Canning, waiting for the call. And all that time I stewed, hoping he’d get it.
It wasn’t Coach Canning who put Josh back in; it was the Quakers. With six minutes left in the game, their safety blindsided Ruben on a blitz, hitting him so hard Ruben’s helmet popped off. It was scary, and I clapped along with everyone else when Ruben stood and limped off the field, though I felt like a hypocrite. I wanted him out.