by Tim Green
"Come on, Lewis," Calvin said. "You think you're so tough?"
Ty shook his head. "I don't."
"Don't what, Turd Man? You don't think you're tough?" Calvin said, raising his voice. "You were tough yesterday when you took a cheap shot at me."
"I didn't," Ty said, his voice sounding small and weak.
"I say you did," Calvin said, talking even louder. He stood toe-to-toe with Ty now, bumping his chest into Ty's. "So let's see how tough you really are."
"I don't want to fight," Ty said.
"You little pansy. You're fighting. Right here, right now."
"I don't want to get in trouble," Ty said.
"Boo hoo," Calvin said, whining. "Toilet Turd Face."
"Hey!" someone shouted.
Calvin's three friends turned and pushed at someone who pushed them right back until she burst into the open space on the landing.
"You leave him alone."
"Charlotte," Ty said.
Charlotte had her books under one arm. In her other hand she still carried her lunch box. Pink blotches highlighted the pale moon of her face.
"Wow, Super Freak Girl wants to save Turd Boy," Calvin said, laughing. "You're such a pansy you've got some dorky girl trying to save you. You think you're a football player? You're so weak."
"I said, leave him alone," Charlotte said, her voice rising to a scream.
"What are you gonna do, freak?" Calvin said.
He spun around and dumped Charlotte's books, spilling them across the floor.
"You jerk!" she yelled, closing the gap so that her nose almost touched his.
Calvin palmed Charlotte's face with his hand and shoved her backward into his three buddies. They pushed Charlotte back out onto the landing, laughing. But instead of taking it, Charlotte swung her metal lunch box with blinding speed in a wide arc that connected with the side of Calvin West's head with a hollow metal bang.
Every kid in the stairwell sucked his or her breath in at the same time. Calvin's eyes rolled and he staggered like a loopy boxer. Charlotte wasn't finished.
With a high-pitched screech, she grabbed him by the shirt and shoved him, hard. Back he went, stumbling and flying off balance down the stairs. Calvin did a cartwheel and hit the lower landing with a terrific crack and a scream of his own. Charlotte stood at the top of the steps huffing and puffing and glaring down at Calvin, whose arm stuck out from under his body at a funny angle.
"I told you," she yelled over the sound of Calvin's screams. "Leave him alone!"
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
TY SAT NEXT TO Charlotte just outside the principal's office. Through the window they could hear the roar of the ambulance's engine as it pulled away from the school, and then its siren when it reached the first intersection. Charlotte had her arms folded tightly across her chest. She scowled straight ahead, as if daring someone to even talk to her.
The principal's secretary occasionally looked up from her typing to make sure they hadn't escaped. Every couple minutes a teacher would peek inside the door, look at the two of them, shake his or her head, and leave. Ty heard the broken muffler on Uncle Gus's truck from quite a distance. Charlotte's face had shown very little sign of life, but at the sound of her father's truck, she began to breathe in little huffs through her nose.
The rumbling noise came closer and closer, then stopped right outside the window before going quiet. Ty couldn't see from where he sat, but he had a good idea of what Uncle Gus's face must look like: scrunched up tight, swollen, and boiling from red to purple. A minute later, when the office door swung open and that's exactly what Uncle Gus looked like, Ty couldn't help nodding his head.
But Uncle Gus surprised him when he didn't say a word.
Instead, Uncle Gus looked over his shoulder, and Ty saw Aunt Virginia bringing up the rear. She looked like a wet hornet, partially because her hair looked like she'd just gotten out of the shower, but mostly because of the way her eyes had been reduced to pin-pricks, so tiny were they behind the big, thick glasses.
"Where is Mr. Clemons?" Aunt Virginia said, puffing up her chest and snarling at the secretary. "I want to know exactly what happened here."
The secretary rose from her seat and hurried over to the principal's door, cracking it open and whispering before she turned to face Aunt Virginia.
"Mr. Clemons will be with you in a moment," she said. "He's talking with the other boy's parents. He's on his way to the hospital."
At this news, all three adults swung their heads in the direction of Ty and Charlotte to stare. Ty shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
"Charlotte," Aunt Virginia said, casting a dark look at Ty, "I can't believe you let yourself get involved. I'm surprised at you."
Charlotte popped out of her seat like a jack-in-the-box.
"You leave him alone!" she shrieked, pointing at her mother. "Ty didn't do anything! All of you, just leave him alone!"
Just as suddenly, she was back in her chair, staring intently at the wall as though she hadn't said a word, huffing through her nose.
"Well," Aunt Virginia said with a gasp. "We'll see what the truth is."
Mr. Clemons emerged with dark, slicked-back hair and a suit that glimmered when the light hit it just right. His fingernails gleamed with polish and a gold watch flashed on his wrist. He spoke with a Boston accent.
"Mr. and Mrs. Slatz?" he said.
"I want to know what happened," Aunt Virginia said.
"We have a conference room right here," the principal said with a slight bow and an open hand extended toward the door.
"Let's go," he said to Ty and Charlotte.
They followed the adults into the room and sat down at the long, dark table under the watchful eye of George Washington. Mr. Clemons folded his hands, resting them on the table.
"Evidently," he said, "this began yesterday in football practice. Ty apparently got a little rough with Calvin West. He knocked him over a bench, right off the field."
Uncle Gus gave Ty a funny, half-smiling look.
"Today, after lunch, in the stairwell," the principal said, "they had words and Charlotte and Ty attacked him. They knocked him down the stairs. His arm is broken and he has a concussion. The parents want us to bring in the police and file charges."
"It's a lie!" Ty said, jumping up. "He hit her. He grabbed her face and shoved her and dumped her books."
"He what?" Uncle Gus said, pounding a fist on the table.
Mr. Clemons held up his hands. "We're getting several versions of this."
"Charlotte doesn't lie," Aunt Virginia said, slapping her palm on the table with a crack that silenced them all. "Charlotte, what happened?"
"I already--" the principal said.
"No," Aunt Virginia said, glaring and slapping her palm down again. "You let my daughter tell what happened. I want to know."
Mr. Clemons swallowed and gave his head a short nod.
"Charlotte?" Aunt Virginia said.
Charlotte kept her arms crossed. She stared at the table, cleared her throat, and said, "Calvin West was bragging to people that he was going to use his Tae Kwon Do on Ty and beat him up for what Ty did in football practice. When I saw the crowd at the stairs and people were saying 'fight,' I pushed through Calvin's friends and saw him and Ty. Ty said he didn't want to fight and I said for Calvin to leave him alone. That's when Calvin dumped my books and grabbed my face."
"Is that what those red marks are?" Aunt Virginia said, her voice raising to a hysterical pitch.
Charlotte touched the two small welts on her cheek and nodded.
"Then they pushed me from behind, his friends," Charlotte said, looking up with tears in her eyes.
"And I...I swung my lunch pail and hit him with it and then I pushed him and he fell. Ty didn't do anything. He didn't touch anyone, so why can't everyone just leave him alone?"
Charlotte heaved a sob, then covered her face with the crook of one elbow while she continued to hug herself with the other arm.
"Did you hea
r that?" Aunt Virginia said with a shriek, standing and pointing at Charlotte. "I'm the one pressing charges. This Calvin West, grabbing her face. Look at those marks!"
Mr. Clemons breathed in deep through his nose, held up his hands for calm, and said, "There are several versions of the story. I'm afraid I'm going to have to suspend both Ty and Charlotte from school until we get this sorted out, and I can't rule out expulsion."
"Can I still play football?" Ty heard himself say.
The adults all stared at him.
The principal said, "Of course you can't."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
"YOU JUST HOLD IT right there," Aunt Virginia said, standing up and pointing at the principal.
"Suspend?" she said, arching her eyebrows all the way above her big, round glasses. "Did you say 'suspend'?"
"The boy has a broken arm," Mr. Clemons said in a mutter.
Aunt Virginia narrowed her left eye and tilted her head as if to bring it even closer to the principal. "And he didn't ask for it?"
Mr. Clemons frowned and cleared his throat. "No one asks to be thrown down the stairs, Mrs. Slatz."
"You do that to my little girl's face, you better believe you're asking to be thrown down a flight of stairs, Mr. Clemons," Aunt Virginia said, stabbing a thick finger at Charlotte. "Look at those welts! That's self-defense! And if you think you're suspending my children for this--either one of them--then you better also believe you'll be hearing from our lawyer, because we will not only sue this school, we'll sue you personally."
The principal opened his mouth, then closed it for a moment before he said, "I know you're upset, and that you probably don't realize what you're saying, Mrs. Slatz."
"Before my carpal tunnel," Aunt Virginia said, flexing her fingers, "I was a paralegal at Price, Meese, and Breen for seven years, Mr. Clemons. So I know exactly what I'm talking about. We sued the Port Authority over a dozen times, and who do you think wrote the complaints? Don't you make the mistake of underestimating me."
Uncle Gus clamped his mouth tight under his mustache and nodded his head in total agreement. Ty watched the principal attempt to digest the situation. A greenish color crept onto his face, and a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. He licked his lips as his eyes darted back and forth between Aunt Virginia and Uncle Gus.
"All right," he said, laying his hands flat on the table. "I'll reserve my judgment until I have a better handle on this."
"You be careful what you do," Aunt Virginia, said, glowering. "A person is innocent until proven guilty. Proven."
The clock on the wall ticked away another minute. Ty felt his question building up inside him like a burp he couldn't suppress. Finally, it came.
"So, I can play?" he said quietly.
They all turned to stare at him again with their mouths hanging open. Ty stared back until the principal nodded, then sighed and looked out the window. All the while, Charlotte cried quietly, but this news seemed to cheer her up, because after the principal's nod, she wiped her eyes and sniffed and offered Ty a small smile.
Ty returned to his classes amid whispers and secretive stares. He concentrated on his schoolwork and pretended not to notice. When he arrived at the locker room after the final bell, he noticed right away--no toilet plunger. In the area around him, players laced up shoes and tightened the straps to their pads, stealing looks at him without offering any comments. When Ty walked through the tight space between lockers toward the outside door, teammates he normally had to push his way past stepped back, sucking in their guts and kicking aside loose equipment to make way.
When he emerged into the afternoon sunshine, Ty felt the fresh air and something else lift him so that his shoes barely seemed to touch the grass as he loped off toward the practice field. He caught some passes to help Michael Poyer warm up his arm, then jogged to the center of the field along with the rest of the team at the sound of Coach V's whistle.
"Take a knee," the coach said, an unusual way for him to begin practice.
Coach V whipped off his mirrored glasses and looked around.
"Team," he said. "Team is everything. It's how you win. Wars or football games. Anything."
Coach V began to pace, holding his sunglasses behind his back and clasping his hands there. "Like brothers, sometimes teammates fight."
Ty's stomach tightened. He looked around and swallowed.
Coach V stopped and said, "But we're still a family, a team. We get over it. Now, I know all about Lewis and West. Well, it's over. We're a team. We put it behind us so we can win. Lewis is with us. West isn't. That's life. I don't want it talked about. I don't want it whispered about. I don't want it thought about. Your job, as football players, is to think about football and winning. You treat every man on this team like he's your brother. Period. Everyone got that?"
The team answered with a ragtag collection of yeses. Coach V glowered and growled.
"You got that?" he shouted.
"Yes, Coach!" came the cry in unison.
"Good," Coach V said. "Now give me that first team offense against the first team defense. We're going to scrimmage."
The players cheered, none louder than Ty. Scrimmaging captured the thrill of a game without the pressure, and it beat the pants off the same old drills they usually had to endure at the beginning of practice. Ty dashed into the huddle and listened eagerly as Poyer called a pass play that would send him on a post route, running straight up the field and then heading toward the middle at a forty-five-degree angle.
They broke the huddle and Ty jogged out to the edge of the field, lining up with one foot behind the other at the line of scrimmage, ready to run. The cornerback, Calvin West's backup, eyed him nervously and stiffly got into position in front of Ty. At the snap of the ball, Ty exploded off the line, making the cornerback wince in preparation for an impact that never came. At the last instant, Ty dodged the defender and launched himself up the field, sprinting ten yards before lowering his hips and shooting off to the inside on the perfect angle. He streaked past the free safety, reached out, grabbed the ball, and dashed into the end zone.
The rest of practice was more of the same, and Coach V couldn't keep the gleam out of his eye at the end of practice when he removed his glasses for the second time that day and talked to them about their opening game against their archrival, Brookfield Middle.
"Poyer," Coach V said, "you take care of that arm, and Lewis, you take care of those hands, and we are going to wipe the field with them."
Ty couldn't wait.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
TY LOOKED IN THE mirror, spinning his green Jets cap around backward just the way he'd seen Thane do on TV. He smoothed out the sleeve of the sweat suit Thane had bought him and walked slowly out of the locker room, trading nods and slapping high fives with Michael Poyer and a couple of the offensive linemen on his way. Outside, he sprinted across the grass and jumped into Thane's Escalade, which had appeared toward the end of practice. Thane grabbed him and hugged him tight.
"Now, that's the way to practice," he said, whipping off the Jets hat and messing Ty's hair. "You looked like an Edinger."
"Edinger?" Ty said.
"Mom was an Edinger," Thane said, starting up the truck.
"What's Mom got to do with it?" Ty asked.
"How do you think you got that fast?" Thane said, pulling away from the curb. "She took second in the NCAAs in the hundred meter. You didn't know that?"
Ty shook his head.
"She had a brother who played tailback at Alabama," Thane said. "They said he would've been in the NFL but he broke his neck--not paralyzed, but he couldn't play anymore."
"A brother?"
"Younger brother," Thane said.
"How come I never heard of him?"
"They weren't real close," Thane said. "Mom was a lot older. Then they stopped talking. I guess about the time you were born. He did something. They got into a big fight, and she never talked about him again. I asked at Christmas one time and the look she gave me?
I never asked again, and then I kind of forgot. He was in Chicago last I knew."
Ty looked out the window. For some reason, learning that his mom had a brother he never even knew about made the empty space inside him seem even bigger.
He didn't want to think about it, so he said, "One week till the opener. Coach says with my hands we can beat Brookfield Middle. They're our archrival. My hands and Michael Poyer's arm, he says. Like you and Pennington against the Bengals, right?"
A wave of pain passed over Thane's face.
"What's wrong?" Ty asked.
Thane shook his head and rolled his eyes. "You're not going to believe it. I twisted my dang knee."
"Your bad one?" Ty asked.
Thane nodded and patted the leg of his sweatpants. Ty heard the crunch and noticed for the first time the lumpy bag of ice beneath the stretchy material.
"Today," Thane said. "In a stupid two-minute drill at the end of practice."
"Man," Ty said.
"I know it," Thane said, massaging his knee through the ice bag. "I already had an MRI. There's no new tear in the cartilage, so that's good."
"Do you have to get treatment?" Ty asked.
"I thought I'd pick you up, go back for some electronic stim," Thane said, "then we could go to Barelli's right from there. It'll only take forty minutes or so."
"Are you gonna play?" Ty asked.
Thane glanced at him. "Why? For your fantasy team?"
"No," Ty said, shaking his head hard. "Just for you. Last week was so awesome. You'd tear that Cincinnati secondary to pieces."
Thane rubbed the back of his neck, steering with one hand, and said, "I guess if I were you, I'd take me off your fantasy team for the Bengals game."
"You're really not going to play?"
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
"I CAN'T SEE PLAYING this Sunday," Thane said. "This thing is killing me. I know how it gets. It'll take a few days."
Ty felt the injury list in his pants pocket. He didn't even want to ask about the other players now. They rode in silence for a while.