Leverage (31 page)

I walk into English class late, wanting to pretend it won't matter what Mike, Tom, and Scott say, but knowing better. At least Bruce and Danny know the truth and have the will, unlike me, to tell it. If and when my captains spread their lies, maybe Bruce and Danny will defend me, working their mouths in ways I never could.

 

On the field for practice, Scott, still out of pads and not practicing, walks over to me. He carries a football in his unslung hand, flipping it up a few inches and catching it over and over.

“Hey, man, you should know that Studblatz and Jankowski get a little worked up about stupid things,” Scott says, flipping the football again. “I told them you didn't write that stuff on our lockers. I also know you stick by your teammates. You wouldn't say something, or make up lies that weren't true. I told both of them that. You stick with your own. I know you, Kurt. Better than you think. I know you're loyal. They don't see that yet, but they will.” Scott peers through my face mask like he's having trouble finding my eyes in the shadows of my helmet.

“Now work on your cross-step,” Scott says. “I'll make sure Warner gives you smooth handoffs all game. But if Robbindale beats us while I'm on the bench, I'm holding you responsible, you understand?”

“Yeah,” I say.

The way Scott smiles at you, it can make you almost forget what he did. He isn't just popular because he's quarterback. He carries something in his face, a switch he turns on and off. When he turns it on and aims his beam at you, he can make you feel pretty important, like, of all his friends, it's you and only you who really gets him. He hits me with that beam now. It's strong as the sun peeking through the rolling clouds and it's hard to hold the line and hate him when that smile feels like the only source of warmth you got.

 

After practice I hole up in the one place offering me a little control over my life. The weight room. Pumping up in Oregrove's state-of-the-art weight room is like depositing another check in my security account. Coach's pills increase the payoff, I'm sure, as I pop the D-bols and switch into sweats. Lamar and I used to do push-ups in our bedroom because that's all we had. At the next group home, they had a creaky weight bench in the basement and a few dumbbells. I got too strong for those. The last high school, Lincoln, had no money for fancy stuff. Not until I got here did I know what the good stuff was.

Sometimes I come in early to have the whole place to myself. Nothing better than heaving up cold steel and feeling it submit. Now,
that's
power. That last set, pushing with all you got, watching that bar tremble above your head, knowing if you fail, that bar's going to slowly come back down on your chest and pin you—no better way to get your juices flowing. So you drive it up, partly out of fear and partly out of want, your arms vibrating with every last morsel of energy inside you cooking away. Your muscles boiling down all anger and hate into rivers of greasy sweat draining off through your pores until you're crispy burned and the winner in a not-so-small battle.

Under a helmet or alone in the weight room are the two places I can talk almost normal. “You got this,” I tell my reflection, curling the dumbbells, fascinated with how my muscles grow and bulge to master the weight. “One more,” I say. Or, “Bring it home, baby,” or “Come on, now, don't disappoint me.” I almost speak perfectly. It helps, also, to wear the headphones and play the music Tina copied for me. The recorder the school loaned me and that Tina upgraded cranks real loud, loud enough to blast away anything bad trying to grow between my ears. Rock the tunes at full volume and everything else—Crud Bucket, Lamar, Ronnie—disappears for a while.

By the time I finish in the weight room, my body is demolished. Exactly how I like it. I've got the showers and locker room all to myself. I walk down empty hallways still cranking my tunes, safe from having to talk to anyone, fumbling a hello or turning my scars away from a stare. I dial through my playlist, try some of the latest music Tina put on a new flash disk and slipped through the vent of my locker with a note attached.

I like Tina's playlists and her little notes. It can't hurt, I figure, dropping off requests back through her locker.

I still haven't used the recorder for its original purpose: to record myself speaking words off the list Ms. Jinkle gave me and play it back and try to correct my stutter. I hate the sound of my voice, hate hearing my tongue botch everything. I sound retarded. I sound stupid. It's way better listening to wailing guitars and stomping drums.

E
very year since fifth grade, I've gone to Oregrove's home football games, not to actually watch the game, but to run around with packs of friends on the big grassy hill near the bleachers. That's where we'd play catch with the mini-footballs that half the boys brought; spy on older teens making out under the bleachers or behind the concession stands; tease the girls we thought were cute; and toss peanut shells and popcorn into dangling coat hoods of anyone who looked like a parent. Friday night games used to be the best part of the week.

Not anymore.

For me, the carnival atmosphere around the games has vanished. Watching the tightly packed stands and the mob on the grassy hill, I think maybe everyone comes to Friday night games not because they're that great, but because there's nothing else to do around Oregrove. And yet I'm still here.

I've come to watch Kurt play and cheer him on while hoping the rest of his team gets hit by an asteroid or drops dead from eating bad lunchroom corn dogs. It's not easy rooting
for
Kurt but rooting
against
the rest of the team; I'm still refining my system. For instance, when the big new Jumbotron flashes KNIGHTS!!! KNIGHTS!!! KNIGHTS!!! I refuse to make a peep. But when Kurt punches into the end zone and the Jumbotron starts flashing KURT!!! KURT!!! KURT!!! I holler loud as anyone until his name rings the stadium. Our shouts are drowned out only by the huge stadium speakers booming with the sound of an approaching freight train that ends with a long, loud whistle blast. ALL ABOARD THE BRODSKY EXPRESS!!! the Jumbotron flashes. In the last couple of weeks, the local sports news has buzzed over Kurt. I spot a few homemade posters in the stands: GO, KURT, GO! and #27 IN THE HOUSE and NOTHING STOPS THE BRODSKY EXPRESS.

Scott Miller stands on the sideline wearing his game jersey over regular clothes with his left arm in a sling. Hopefully, it's arm cancer.

I tagged along to the game with Fisher, but he's off somewhere with his shop-class buddies. They usually pregame in the parking lot with Schmidt beer and vodka-laced Gatorade. Once inside the game fence, they head off to the far north corner of the field and smoke weed. To find them, I just look for the cluster of black leather motorcycle jackets. Doesn't matter how cold it gets, they still wear them. In the springtime, they switch to jean jackets with the arms cut off over hooded sweatshirts. Most of them carry brass knuckles drill-pressed out of scrap metal in shop class. Fisher's friends are also partial to butterfly knives and nunchakus ordered online or out of the back pages of
Black Belt
magazine. What I've noticed is the football team doesn't mess with them. That single fact makes me think maybe I should start hanging out with them. Problem is drinking makes me sick and weed just makes me cough.

I lean against the chain-link fence near the end zone. The leather sleeves of my letterman jacket squeak when I cross my arms for warmth. I lettered freshman year, which is almost unheard of in any sport. It still makes me proud. Without the jacket on, though, I'd probably be mistaken for one of the junior high kids tossing the mini-footballs on the grassy knoll. I hug my arms tighter and the leather scrunches more. Part of me feels like a fraud, like I'm faking being a high school student. Real high school students don't cower in a corner while their teammate is getting attacked.

Warner, Scott's replacement, barks loud and acts like a starter and doesn't seem nervous at all. But Coach Brigs isn't giving him an opportunity to make a mistake by throwing a bad pass. About every other play either Kurt or Terrence, the running back, gets handed the ball and grinds forward a few yards—enough to keep moving the chains and keep their offense on the field. The two teams slowly progress up the field near the end zone. The Jumbotron fills with a helmet cam view from one of the Oregrove players. Either Terrence or Kurt, I think, from the backfield angle on the screen. On the Jumbotron, the line of opposing bodies might as well be a mountain.

Warner's cadence sets loose the two sides. Picked up by the helmet mic, the collision explodes over the stadium speakers loud as an atomic bomb. Kurt breaks through the pileup like a firefighter charging through flames, thighs pumping almost as high as his chest, crushing his way into the end zone. The Jumbotron shows a blur of helmets sliding to the side or falling away to reveal open grass and black night beyond the chalk lines. It's Kurt's helmet, I realize. The only one in the end zone.

The stadium fans rise up together from the bleacher seats in a solid wave of adoration. Teammates jump on top of him, slapping his helmet, slapping his shoulder pads, whooping and hollering. Cartoon fireworks burst off the Jumbotron followed by a slow-mo replay of him smashing into the end zone. This makes everyone whistle and stomp even harder. For a moment it's as if every person in the world loves Kurt.

They'll pull him in, I think, twist him around, and make him believe he can be as cruel to others as he wants and still be adored.

The final score is 28-10. The Knights win again. Their record remains perfect. Both Kurt and Terrence score two touchdowns apiece. The entire team swirls around the two players—Terrence holding his helmet, Kurt still wearing his—on their way back to the lockers. Parents and grandparents step forward to glimpse and congratulate them. I pull back from the whole thing. I notice no one's swarming around Scott—or Studblatz and Jankowski, who escort him like bodyguards. The three talk among themselves, forgotten by the fans and the rest of the team as it marches on ahead. The three of them look angry. I'm glad for my distance from them.

Scott's promise nestles in my ear like a worm.
Rest up,
he instructs in the locker room after our victory over Robbindale.

Tomorrow, we turn you into a king
.

 

I lie in bed staring at the ceiling when the distinct growl of a V-8 prowls to the end of Patti's street, sniffing a trail up her driveway. The Camaro honks twice but I don't move, even when my new cell phone buzzes. Only after the doorbell rings do I finally sit up, bring my sore legs over the side of the bed, and plant my swollen feet on the cold floor. My toes curl protectively. A couple of the hits from last night's game rang my bell enough that I skipped the victory party and came straight home to sleep. Today, my head's still ringing. Scott's words might only be scraps from a dream until I hear his car.

“Kurt? Kurt, hon?” Patti knocks on my bedroom door and it slowly creaks open. “That boy, Scott, is downstairs. He says something about taking you on a Captains' Hunt. I never heard of a Captains' Hunt. He said it's a tradition.” Patti sticks her head farther into my room and stage-whispers, “I don't much care for Mr. Man's attitude, by the way.”

I nod at her while working up the energy to stand.

“He said only current and future captains are invited,” Patti continues, not whispering anymore but keeping her voice confidential. “Are you going to be captain of the team, Kurt? Why didn't you say something, hon? That's something to be real proud of.”

It feels like a hundred dentist drills are tapping holes in my skull. A Captains' Hunt? Did Scott mention that to me last night? Honestly, everything is fuzzy.

“Uhhh . . .”

“You get dressed, hon, and sort it out with Mr. God's Gift downstairs.”

“Kurt.” I hear Scott calling up from Patti's living room. “Come on, man. You're messing with a sacred tradition. We got to go. Can't be late. I told you to be ready last night.”

“That boy's too bossy for my tastes,” Patti says under her breath. “I don't care if he
is
the quarterback. Someone forgot to teach him his manners.”

“Coming,” I groan. “Puh-puh-Patti, wuh-wuh-would you mind getting me some aspuh-puh-prin?”

“Sure thing, hon,” she says. “I heard you were the reason we beat Robbindale. Two parents called me last night. Never even met them. They phoned just to tell me how good ‘my boy' was.” As she chuckles her lungs rattle with loose phlegm until it turns into a wet cough, then dies down. “I was planning a real breakfast for you today,” Patti says. “I went out and got eggs and bacon and toaster waffles and I even splurged and got the real syrup, the stuff from trees. I was going to give my star a lumberjack breakfast like he deserves.”

“Kurt!” Scott shouts up the stairs.

“Kuh-kuh-coming,” I yell back.