Dunk (17 page)

Jason's mom came by at lunchtime. She gave me the same look she might have used if she'd discovered that the neighbor's dog had dropped a load in the middle of her porch. As I left the room, I heard her follow me into the hallway.

“You don't have to visit him every day,” she said.

“I like seeing him,” I said. “He's my friend.”

She shook her head. “Let me make this clear. You're bad for him. I never could understand what he saw in you. Right now it's not his choice to make. It's mine. He needs rest. He doesn't need some little thug hanging around getting him all worked up.”

A million answers flashed through my mind. But beneath them all, the fear that she was right sealed my lips. I turned away and left the hospital, promising myself I'd visit Jason again in a couple days, after his mom had more of a chance to cool off. I thought about just going home, but I couldn't let my other plans die. The day had started out badly enough. I needed to do something I could feel good about.

I headed for the boardwalk. The Cat-a-Pult was crowded, so I said hi to Gwen but didn't hang around. If I bugged her too much when things were busy, she might start thinking I was a nuisance. Last year Corey'd had this crush on Beverly Buckley. He kept talking to her every chance he got. One day during lunch she blew up and shouted at him to stay out of her face. It wasn't a pretty scene. Corey was devastated. If Gwen did that to me, I think I'd die.

I ran errands for a couple places near the Cat-a-Pult, just to help kill the time, and then returned to my spot behind the players. Whenever things were slow there, I talked with Gwen, but I backed off as soon as it got busy.

She took a fifteen-minute break at two o'clock. We walked and talked. She wanted to study art when she went to college. “Maybe in Chicago,” she said. “But I'm not sure if I could live in a big city. Our town's real small. I know just about everyone.”

“I don't even know half the people on my block,” I said. “People are always moving in and out around here.”

“If someone moves into our neighborhood,” she said, “my mom bakes them a cake.”

“Sounds nice.”

She nodded. “Sometimes it's the little things that you'remember. Even years later.”

That was sure true. I wondered if she remembered the first time we'd met. But I didn't want to bring up the past right now, especially since I'd spent so much of it doing stupid things. Instead, I turned our conversation in other directions, trying to learn all I could about her.

She liked pistachio ice cream. She thought football was okay but would rather watch soccer. She didn't have a favorite video game. We both liked the same rock bands. She wasn't a big fan of sea gulls. She'd read
Of Mice and Men
, too, and suggested a couple books I might enjoy. She also mentioned a short story called “Araby.” She said it was her favorite and I could borrow her copy of the book it was in. She thought I was lucky to live near the ocean all year round. I filed each scrap of information.

Part of me wanted desperately to spend every moment with her. Another part kept whispering that I didn't deserve even an instant of pleasure while Jason was lying in the hospital, wasting away. I looked for a chance to ask her out but kept finding reasons to wait. Then, all too soon, she went back to work. And I went back to hovering.

Around four, she glanced at her watch and said, “One more hour.”

“You get off at five?” I asked.

“Yeah. Then I come back at seven.” She nodded over toward the boy working the booth with her. “It's slow enough between five and seven for one person to handle it.”

No more excuses
, I told myself. I'd ask her out when she left the booth. Make the whole thing casual. Just stroll along with her. Mention food. Mention that I was hungry. Wait for her to say something, then take it from there.
Hey, I know a good place around the corner. Want to grab a bite? My treat
. I could do it. She'd be really surprised when she found out that “the place around the corner” had awesome lobster dinners.

I stepped away as a group of players came by. Then I went for a walk because I was too nervous to stand around and wait. When I came back, I stopped at a railing a half block south of the Cat-a-Pult. To my right, the Sea Devil coaster roared past on a corkscrew curve banked so steeply all I saw was the bottom of the cars. The screams of the riders barely rose above the clatter of the wheels.

I thought about the first drop on that ride. The worst part was the long wait while the cars crawled 120 feet up the slope. Then, after you crested the top, everything plunged toward the earth—everything except your stomach, which rushed to catch up. Before you knew it, you were at the bottom and shooting into the first corkscrew. The rest was easy.

One time
, I thought. I just had to get through asking Gwen out one time. Climb that first steep hill and take one stomach-wrenching plunge. After that it would be easy.

A couple minutes before five, I headed toward the Cat-a-Pult, ready to step free from the safety of silence.

Gwen was chatting with someone. His back was to me, but as I got closer, I recognized him with a jolt that felt like a knife slicing straight through my body. Slicing and twisting. Oh, man, not him. What was
he
doing here? I hesitated, wondering whether to wait for him to leave. But Gwen's shift would end any minute now. I had to talk to her before she went off.

As I reached them, Anthony glanced at me and grinned. “Hey, Ballzo! What's up?”

I managed to nod, then looked at Gwen, wondering what in the world was going on.

“Chad, do you know Anthony?” she asked. There was something odd in her voice.

“Yeah . . .”

“Chad and I go way back,” Anthony said. He slapped me on the back. “So you know each other? Small world. I just met Gwen a couple days ago. Right before the big storm.”

When I was sitting in jail
, I thought.

“Hey, man,” Anthony said, “I heard your friend's in bad shape. Tough break. Sometimes life really sucks.” He seemed amused. I wanted to smash his face.

Gwen glanced at her watch. “Five o'clock.” She sat on the ledge between two of the catapults and swung her legs over the counter. “Anthony asked me to go get something to eat,” she said. She looked at me, and then at Anthony. “He asked me yesterday, before you stopped by.”

Anthony grinned. “Hey—I'd invite you to join us, but I got a table for two at
La Tratoria
. You know how it is. These classy places don't like changing reservations. Besides, it wouldn't be any fun for you, since you don't have a date. Maybe some other time.”

“Well, see you later, Chad,” Gwen said as she left with him.

Anthony walked a couple steps away, then looked back at me and winked. “Stay out of trouble, Ballzo.”

I watched them go off together. Anthony and Gwen. Anthony, with his bottomless supply of drug money and his ability to ruin every decent thing he ever touched. Gwen, with her smile and her grace, and my heart.

It couldn't be happening.

I wanted to sink down through the boardwalk, and then through the sand, and keep sinking down through whatever else lay between me and the center of the earth. Not him. It was unbearable that she was going away with someone else. It was beyond unbearable that she had chosen Anthony. Couldn't she see he was nothing but trouble?

“
I won, Mommy! Look! I won!
”

A little girl with bright blond pigtails and a sunburned face shouted and jumped as she pointed to where her cat had landed head down in the bucket.

“That's wonderful, dear,” her mom said.

“I'm so proud of you,” her dad said. He bent and gave her a hug as a cat yowl blared through the speakers. “You're my special little girl. I'm so glad the three of us came here.”

I wanted to go see Jason. But his mom would be there. My mom was off at school. Alone, I turned and shuffled toward my house, walking into a gray place and time that sealed over me like the lid of a coffin.

S
OMEONE HAD DRILLED A LARGE HOLE THROUGH EVERY VITAL
part of me. All spirit, all life, had drained out, leaving a shell that might have blown away in the wind if I'd stepped from the house. There was no danger of that. My universe shrank to the size of the couch. I sat there, or slept there. With or without the drone of the television. Sometimes I just stared at the wall. Mom came and went. I guess, at first, she assumed I was tired. We must have talked. I remember conversations. But they were like old movies, black-and-white—the sound faded to the point where the words themselves were nothing more than another part of the fog.

Mom's voice grew worried at some point. I told her I was okay. Just sad about Jason. She'd spoken with his folks. The doctors had a name for the disease. But that didn't help. They were trying everything they could think of. Mike or Corey called once in a while. I stopped answering the phone. They dropped by. More gray images I couldn't sort out.

June gave way to July. It was all the same to me. Nothing changed but the page on the calendar that hung near the clock. It had been a photo of a sunrise. Now it was a lighthouse. The tournament came and went. That must have been a rough day for Jason—rougher than the others—but I didn't have room for other people's losses in the dead world I'd entered. More days. More visits. Mike, Corey, and Ellie. The voices blended. The message remained the same.

Chad, man, you've got to get up
.

No, I don't.

You can't spend the rest of your life on the couch
.

Why not?

Get off that couch or I'll kick your butt
.

Go ahead. . . .

They talked, shouted, pleaded, joked. It was all nothing but a murmur. Corey tried to give me a sheet of paper. I wasn't interested. He ended up tossing it across the room. It fluttered to the floor. Finally, they left. Friends. I had friends who cared. That wasn't enough to lift the weight that crushed me down. Not even close.

A couple days later, freakin' Malcolm showed up. Maybe Mom had asked him to talk to me. Maybe not. It didn't matter. I ignored the knock. He came in anyhow.

“I've got a wake-up call for Chad Turner,” he said in a sickeningly cheerful voice.

The light spilling through the open door made me flinch. I turned face-down on the couch, wishing he'd just go away.

Another voice. This time a little boy. “Can Chad come out and pway? Pwease?”

I ignored him while he chattered away, switching from one cartoon character to another. Then he started talking in his normal voice. “Hey, Chad, I just spoke to Bob. He's going to have an opening in early August. One of the guys is quitting.”

I didn't care. I didn't want to listen. But Malcolm kept jabbering. “I think I can get you his spot. It'll take some work. There's a lot to learn. You only have three weeks to get ready. What do you say?”

I just lay where I was, sucking dusty air through the couch cushions.
Keep your charity
, I thought, but it wasn't worth the effort to speak the words.

“What do you say, Chad?”

I didn't say anything.

“Chad, this is a great opportunity.”

I lifted my face half an inch from the cushions and told him to leave. I added a couple words I'd never say around my mom.

I put my head back down and waited for the sound of footsteps and a closing door. Instead, I heard a loud grunt. An instant later, the world jolted on its side and I rolled across the floor. Malcolm had tipped the couch over.

He stood there, panting from the sudden effort. Maybe panting from the rush of anger he'd have needed to move the couch. It weighed a ton. He'd actually flipped it over.

“You're crazy!” I shouted.

“You make me sick!” he shouted back.

I stood up and pointed at the door. “Get out.”

He didn't move. “You really make me sick. Just give up and hide. Is that your plan? Sit in the dark and rot away while your mom works her butt off? You make me want to puke.”

I'd had enough. I lunged forward and shoved Malcolm with both hands. He staggered back, crashing into a chair. “You don't know anything,” I said.

He stepped toward me, like one of those damn clown dolls that bounce up when you punch them down. “Sure. Nobody knows anything but you. Poor Chad. Life is so rough for him. Everyone else gets all the breaks. Let's feel sorry for poor little Chad.”

“Shut up.” I pushed him again. He stumbled against the table, sending it into the wall with a hollow boom. “My whole life sucks!” I shouted. “My best friend is dying. You understand?” Once I started, it spilled free. “The only girl I ever cared about is going around with a druggie because I didn't have the guts to ask her out. I've got nothing ahead of me. It's all a big zero.”

“Well, boo, hoo.” He wiped at an imaginary tear.

I swore and threw a punch at his head, but he shot up his left hand and grabbed my wrist.

I let out a scream of rage and frustration as I swung with my free hand, hoping to smash his stupid face. Knock his teeth out. Break his nose. But he grabbed that hand, too, and whipped me around, slamming me into the wall so hard a picture fell down. He stepped forward, pinning my arms against the wall on either side of me.

“You've got so much,” he said. “You don't have a clue. And you're just giving up on all of it. Your mother deserves better.”

“Leave her out of it!” I rammed my knee up, catching him in the crotch. It wasn't a solid shot, but it was enough to hurt him. His hands dropped from my wrists and he bent down. I pushed his shoulders as hard as I could. He toppled over a chair. “Stay away from her.” I rushed toward him.

He rolled to a crouch and tackled me. His shoulder jammed into my gut, knocking the air from my lungs. We crashed to the ground, him on top. I started swearing, spewing out a stream of filth I didn't know was in me. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to stomp him under my feet until every bone in his body snapped.