Thoughts & Prayers

by Bryan Bliss

  “Most people have no idea what it means to be courageous,” Dad says. “They think it’s climbing a flagpole to fix a flag or lifting a car off an injured person. But true courage requires risk. Because you aren’t thinking about yourself, when any normal person would be. And when most of us run into a truly courageous person, we don’t know how to respond. Because it’s like looking into a mirror and seeing that we don’t measure up. And the way we respond? That’s the true test of our character.”

  “I don’t feel courageous,” I say. “I feel tired.”

  Dad puts a hand on my knee and squeezes. “You know what I see when I look at you?”

  Even though my parents’ love has been drilled into me again and again, for a brief second, I wonder what he’s going to say. I wonder if it’s possible that he could be just like everybody else—could see something completely different from what I feel. Who I think I am.

  I start to pull away, but he won’t let me.

  He forces me to look him in the eyes as he says, “I see everything I wanted to be, but never could. And I see the strongest person I know.”

  Chapter Ten

  THE NEXT MORNING DAD GIVES ME A SMILE WHEN I SEE him in the hallway. He’s dressed and ready to leave for work.

  “How you doing this morning?”

  “Good,” I say. “I feel better.”

  Last night, after our talk on the stairs, I spent the rest of the evening—the baked ziti, the movie Mom convinced Dad to rent, even though there was a game on—trying to put on the same unaffected face as always. Every so often I’d catch Dad looking at me and I’d smile, attempting to assure him that everything was fine. That I was going to be fine.

  Tyler hadn’t stopped texting me since he left my house, and when I checked my phone this morning there were ten more messages, all of them sweet and concerned and, ultimately, unanswered.

  Dad leans against the wall, popping his newspaper against his leg. “I have to work, but I’ll be done before tip-off. And I’ll give the school a call on my way this morning. To let them know about everything.”

  “Okay. I’m just going to stick around after school and put up shots in the gym until the game starts,” I tell him.

  He nods. I watch him hesitate, decide something, and then say, “Go show them who you are, kid.”

  I pull into the school parking lot expecting a crowd of teen boys wearing those red T-shirts, chanting or doing whatever they think passes as activism. Yelling about dying ideas. Or maybe it will be adults, waiting to usher me from the school, once again fearful that I’m going to disrupt everything they hold sacred.

  Instead, it’s just the normal parking lot with the normal kids, milling around and waiting for the first bell to ring. I pop out of my car, trying to focus on the game tonight. Imagining myself releasing the ball, watching it go through the hoop, all that superstition, when somebody says my name—like they’ve known me my entire life.

  I turn around and it’s a boy I barely recognize. He’s wearing boots and pressed Levi’s. His jacket is unzipped just enough for me to know what he’s wearing, before I even seen the top of my head.

  “Good luck tonight,” he says, laughing and slapping his friends on the shoulder as they walk away.

  I stand there, unsure if I’m shocked or angry. A few people are watching me, phones out and waiting for me to—what? Charge the guy down and beat the living shit out of him? As good as that would feel, the only thing it would do is keep me off the court, so I started walking to the door when another guy—this one I actually have known my entire life—says my name.

  “What do you want, Carter?”

  I’d been in school with Carter Nelson since kindergarten, and he’d always been a sniveling douche. My ferocity—I can already see the red shirt peeking out from underneath his hoodie—takes him by surprise.

  But he quickly rallies and says, “Good luck tonight.”

  I push past him and his laughing friends. Once I get inside, I don’t even look at the next guy who says my name or respond to their laughter when they realize I’m ignoring their game. I rush toward Mrs. Hoffman room like the hallway is on fire.

  When I get there, I’m the only student. Hoffman looks up at me briefly and then goes back to her lesson plan without saying a word. I stare at my desk as the classroom slowly starts to fill up. Around me, kids are chatting and laughing and maybe it’s about me, but I don’t look up until Ben slides into the desk behind me and says my name.

  “You good?” he asks.

  “Where’s Tyler?” I ask.

  When Ben doesn’t answer, I finally look up.

  “The office. He saw somebody wearing one of those shirts and he went to report him.”

  As soon as he says it, the speaker crackles to life and the office attendant’s voice comes streaming into the classroom.

  “Mrs. Hoffman, Eleanor Boone to the office, please.”

  Hoffman looks annoyed, even though class hasn’t started, and half the kids are still in the hallway. When she says my name, she sounds tired.

  “Miss Boone, to the office. And bring a pass back with you.”

  In the hallway I dodge other students, trying to simultaneously keep my eyes on the ground and somehow make sure I don’t run into anyone. I only get a few steps before somebody says my name and it takes every single bit of strength I have not to look—not to give them every bit of my hot rage. Instead, I focus on the office, which is just around the next corner.

  Two steps away. A boy jumps in front of the door and begins unzipping his hooded sweatshirt. Before he even gets it an inch down his chest, I shove past him, which might be a mistake but still feels so, so good.

  “Miss Boone!” The office assistant is a woman named Alice who’s about my mom’s age and gossips more than most freshmen. The type of adult who wants kids to like her, no matter how it makes her look to everybody else.

  She’s up from her desk and rushing past me to see if the kid I just shoved aside is okay. When she turns back, her eyes are narrow and her hands are on her hips.

  “You just shoved that boy. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Nothing. I give her nothing. She plops back down in her chair and, after taking a second to collect herself, tells me Mr. Townsend will be out in just a second.

  “Eleanor, hello.”

  Townsend is standing with one foot out his office door, smiling.

  “Why don’t you come on in here for a few minutes,” he says.

  As I walk, I’m surprised to see not only Tyler, but also my parents. I can’t move, just stand there like my shoes have been filled with a hundred pounds of lead.

  “Hey, honey, why don’t you sit down,” Mom says.

  When I still don’t move, Dad stands up and helps me into the chair he was just in. He leans against the wall and everybody looks at Townsend, who seems genuinely concerned.

  “Well, Eleanor, there’s no need to beat around the bush,” he says. “Given everything I’m hearing, I think it might be best if you didn’t play in the game tonight.”

  “What?” I turn around and look at Dad, who grimaces but doesn’t say anything. “I’m not going to sit out. No way.”

  “Eleanor, listen,” Tyler says. “It’s best to just ignore these idiots. Let them get it out of their system and then play in the next game.”

  Mr. Townsend cuts in. “Well, to be clear, we’re going to make sure every single one of those shirts is confiscated. You have my word on that.”

  Dad steps forward and puts a hand on my shoulder. “We all want to make sure you’re safe.”

  “They’re just a bunch of morons wearing T-shirts,” I say. “I’m not missing the game.”

  Everybody shares a look and it pisses me off, how they all met without me. How they all think they can protect me. And suddenly, I don’t want to be around any of them. I stand up and start toward the door. Mr. Townsend clears his throat.

  “We can’t officially stop you from playing,” he says. “But even if w
e keep them from wearing the shirts, I’m afraid that we can’t control how they respond to you.”

  Townsend pauses. He looks the same way he did at the assembly, as if every ounce of spirit has been drained out of him. For a second I wonder how this changed him. I wonder what comes to him at night, when everything is quiet and he, too, remembers everything that’s happened here—everything we’ve lost.

  “You should know there are other kids struggling. Other kids who might not be able to handle something like this right now.”

  I understand. Sometimes I even see it, brief glimpses of the fear—the anger—still inside me. But does that mean we should be quiet? Does it mean we should never stand up and fight?

  “So, I’m just supposed to let them do whatever they want,” I say. “It doesn’t matter how I feel or what I want or what I have planned. My entire life is now at the whim of a bunch of high school boys?”

  I look around the room, half expecting Dad to tell me this conversation was over—that it was decided before I walked in the room. Instead, I catch him smiling. Though it disappears quickly when Mom turns, also expecting him to say something. To stop me.

  When he doesn’t, I muster more indignation.

  “Do you realize that this happens to me every single day? And it’s not just students. It’s adults—teachers, sometimes. People I’ve never met in my life who glare at me in restaurants, the grocery store. People on the Internet. Everybody.”

  What could twenty or thirty high school boys do to me that hasn’t already been done? What could they possibly say that hasn’t already been said? I shake my head, not wanting to be here a second longer.

  “I’m playing.”

  Mom, Dad, and Tyler follow me out of the office. The period is about to end and there’s already a few people milling around in the hallway. I let all three of them have it.

  “Not play the game. Are you serious?”

  “Eleanor, please.” Mom tries to touch me, but I won’t let her.

  “No. If I don’t play, the NC State scout will know that they got to me, and so will everybody else. It means they win.”

  “Do you understand how many kids are planning on doing this?” Tyler asks me.

  “Do you understand that I don’t care?” I shoot back, knowing it will hurt him. But damn. “I’ve already had, like, four guys come up to me wearing that damn shirt.”

  “Wait. What?” Dad asks, looking around the hallway like he might spot one camouflaged against the wall. “It’s already started?”

  “It never stopped,” I say. “And it’s never going to stop—not while I’m still here. So, yeah. There’s no way I’m not playing in that game tonight.”

  Dad doesn’t respond right away, but eventually he nods and both Mom and Tyler look at him like he’s betrayed them.

  “Ronnie, no,” Mom says.

  Dad turns to her.

  “I’m sorry, but she’s right,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong. I think she should miss the game—but she is right. Even if she doesn’t show up tonight, it won’t stop them.”

  “So, she goes to the game and . . . what?” Tyler asks.

  “I go, I play, and I show them that there isn’t anything they can do that will rattle me,” I say. “I show them that they don’t register. They don’t mean a damn thing to me.”

  Chapter Eleven

  TYLER FOLLOWS ME TO MY NEXT CLASS, EVEN THOUGH he has to be on the other side of the school in a matter of minutes. He hasn’t said anything since I walked away from my parents and even now, as we stand outside Mr. Bruns’s classroom, he won’t talk. Before I can say anything, a kid walks right between us—like we aren’t even there—staring at the bathroom next to the classroom with a weird fascination.

  For a second I almost don’t recognize him—he’s a year older, longer hair. Thinner. He’s so focused on the bathroom, he might not even acknowledge me if I went up and tapped him on the shoulder.

  And what would I say?

  I’m still staring at the kid when Tyler exhales loudly. It breaks the trance and when I face him, I can’t read the expression on his face.

  “You’re mad at me,” I say, a best guess.

  He doesn’t respond as the bell rings above us. Bruns comes out of the classroom and snaps his fingers at me, but I played AAU with his daughter my freshman year and, despite being a bit of a hard-ass to freshman and sophomore boys taking his econ class, he lets me get away with murder.

  I hold up a finger and he shakes his head and says, “Disappointing, Boone. Disappointing.”

  I turn back to Tyler.

  “So?”

  “I’m not mad,” he says. “I’m worried.”

  “Why?” He gives me a look and I concede. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “One of them gets the idea that they should run on the court and hurt you? Or they wait until after the game? Or tomorrow? Or next week? You’re not exactly subtle on the court—you feed off people being pissed and frustrated.”

  It’s true. My best games always had hostile crowds or been against teams that people thought we couldn’t beat. Five-star recruits. State champions. Aggressive gun bros wearing T-shirts with my face on them. I’ll go at every single one of them.

  Still.

  “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “But you don’t know that and . . .” Now I can tell that he’s not worried, but scared. And so I give him a hug. As soon as I do it, Bruns yells my name and says, “If you’re going to be a meaningful member of society and not just another member of the bourgeois elite, I need you in my classroom. Now.”

  It’s Bruns’s typical rant, but with enough teeth to take seriously.

  “I need to go to government, or else Bruns is going to have a stroke.” I give him one final squeeze before I pull away. “It’s going to be fine. Fuck those guys. Right?”

  “Maybe you could write that on a T-shirt for the game tonight,” Tyler says.

  “Oh, shit! Good idea!” And as I’m walking into the classroom, I turn around and whisper, “Find me a marker.”

  It gets a smile and that’s enough to get me through government, all the way to lunch, until I see him again. When he and Ben walk into the cafeteria, he looks better—normal. As soon as they get to the table, Ben starts talking immediately.

  “Your boy is about to fight the whole school,” he says, laughing.

  “What?”

  “Some guys with those fucking T-shirts,” Tyler says. “Telling me to tell you good luck tonight.”

  “Ignore them,” I say.

  “That’s what I told you,” Ben says.

  “Yeah, super helpful. Thanks so much.”

  “It’s just who I am,” Ben says. “Now, I’m about to see the lunch lady about some pizza.”

  When Ben leaves, I look at Tyler and he looks to the lunch line, because he already knows what I’m going to say.

  “Are you going to be able to handle being at the game tonight?”

  Tyler finally looks back at me. “I figure your dad and I will just keep each other company.”

  “God, that sounds like a terrible idea. Should I find another chaperone to make sure you both don’t start punching people?”

  Tyler laughs once and shakes his head. “Hey, so. I did something yesterday.”

  “You did something yesterday? What does that mean?”

  “I . . .” He laughs again, a different sort of anxiety or nervousness on his face. “I put in my application to NC State. I don’t know that I’ll get in. And even if I do, I don’t have to go if you don’t want me there. But, you know, I figured I should. Or would.”

  My instinct is to sit there and make him sweat a bit. To let him believe that I might have a problem with him following me to Raleigh, if that even happens. But either I’ve gotten nicer over the last year or I’m just too tired. So, I lean across the table and give him a kiss.

  Ben drops his plate on the table and sits down.

  “God, get a room.”

 
We’re walking out of the cafeteria when I hear my name and, forgetting everything for a second because I’m happy and holding Tyler’s hand—listening to Ben’s story about a girl he met on some website dedicated to tabletop gaming. A group of boys, all of them wearing the red T-shirt.

  “Good luck tonight,” they say in unison.

  Reflexively, I pull Tyler an inch closer to me. And then I can’t help myself.

  “I plan on putting on a show for you and the NC State scout who’s there to watch me play basketball. But you boys have fun with your little . . . things.”

  I motion at the T-shirts. And then I pull Tyler away as Ben laughs his ass off.

  Before Tyler lets go of my hand and we go our separate ways for the rest of the afternoon, he leans close and says, “Just be careful. Please.”

  “What’s going to happen?” I ask. And even though it felt innocent when it came out of my mouth, just being in this school is a reminder of what can happen. Still, these boys are literal sophomores. Literally members of the JV team.

  “I’ll see you after school. Okay?”

  And then I hurry to my next class, ignoring the next person who says my name—going on autopilot until the final bell rings and I walk down to the locker room, which is still full of girls who had PE last period and are taking their time getting to the busses. I drop my bag and pull out my basketball uniform. Before I’m dressed, the locker room is empty and I sit on the wooden bench and close my eyes, enjoying the silence for a few seconds.

  I open my eyes, grab a ball from my bag, and head into the gym. When I was younger, I would shoot for hours. Imagining the moment when the ball was in my hands and the clock was ticking down. Shouting three . . . two . . . one and launching the shot at the rim, making it or missing it, it didn’t matter, and then pushing myself to a different part of the court. A second chance to win the game. To be a hero.

  Today I put up a shot and watch it fall through the net, nearly soundless. I grab the ball, jump out to the three-point line, and put up a second shot. Nothing but net. The third, fourth—I begin to lose count—all drop with barely a sound, barely a movement of the net. By the time the rest of my team begins to show up, I’m sweating and ready. I haven’t missed once.