Losers Take All (14 page)

“And the last,” I told her. “Muhldinger's pulling the plug on us. We stank it up today.”

“You'd never played before,” she pointed out.

“That must be why we were destroyed by a bunch of junior high school girls.”

“Your team will get better,” she promised. “Just stick with it.”

“The team is finished,” I told her. “Muhldinger was at the game, standing with Dad. They were both disgusted, and Muhldinger canceled our whole season. He told us we were turds and he was flushing us.”

“That's a side of Brian I never liked,” she said. “He can be a real bully. Will you have to join another team?”

It was strange to hear her use his first name. “I don't know,” I said. “This has never happened before at Fremont.” I paused, and couldn't stop myself from asking, “Mom, how could you ever date that jerk?”

She lowered her sponge. “Who told you about that?”

“Dad.”

She looked surprised, and not particularly pleased. “It was a very long time ago.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but he's horrible.”

“In some ways he was always a jerk,” she agreed, “but he was a sports star and super confident, and when I was eighteen I found that attractive.”

“Was it just a few bad dates?” I asked hopefully.

Mom hesitated. “No. It was serious. We even talked about getting engaged. But then your father came home and that was the end of that.”

I stared at her. “You almost married Muhldinger?”

“I'm not sure I was thinking so clearly when I was in high school,” she said, a little defensively. “Would you say you're always thinking clearly?”

“No,” I admitted. “Sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up.”

“That's okay,” she said. “I married the right guy in the end.” A punch thudded from below like a cannon going off. “Even if he gets a little hotheaded sometimes.”

I glanced toward the basement stairs. “He's on full boil. What should I say to him?”

“You don't have to say anything. It's not your fault that you're on a lousy soccer team,” she told me. “He'll get over it.”

“No, I owe him an apology. I let him down today.” I headed for the basement stairs. They were steep and narrow.
BAM
,
BAM
, a one-two rattled the walls. The lightbulb blinked. It felt like I was descending into the lair of an angry monster.

Then I saw him in his black shorts and sweaty T-shirt, the muscles of his arms and back standing out as he circled the bag, feinting and pretending to search for an opening. He was concentrating hard, his eyes sharp with fury. I wondered who he was pretending to hit. I reached the basement floor and walked toward him.

Dad darted forward, his weight balanced, and his right fist flashed out—
thud
. The iron supports groaned and a dusting of plaster came down from the ceiling. He saw me and lowered his fists.

“You're going to wreck the house,” I said with a cautious smile.

He hadn't said one word all during dinner and clearly wasn't in a talkative mood now. Without acknowledging my presence he walked to a stool, sat down, and started taking off his gloves.

“Need help getting those off?” I asked.

Dad shook his head and used his teeth to bite the gloves off, then set them carefully on a shelf. He still hadn't looked at me. He grabbed a towel and wiped some sweat off his face. “You and your girlfriend asked me to do you a favor,” he said. “Against my better judgment, I made the call. But I asked you something in return—not to embarrass me.”

The heavy bag was still swinging from his last punch. I watched its shadow move slowly back and forth across the cellar floor. “That's true,” I admitted.

“I can't tell you exactly what I felt today,” he went on, “because I've never felt that way before. But it didn't feel good, Jack.”

“I scored,” I told him. “Near the end of the game. I kept us from getting shut out. I looked for you but you'd left. I guess you were too disgusted to stay.”

“It wasn't disgust,” he said. “I was afraid.” He finally looked right at me, and his words came out fast and angry. “Afraid I might run onto the field and grab someone and shake them and say, ‘Stop joking around and fight!' I went for a drive and tried to calm down. I stopped up near Highland Lake and walked through the woods down to the water, and I kept thinking about my own father. He came to every game I played in. He was a damn good athlete and he gave me lots of coaching advice, but it always boiled down to the same four words:
Have pride in yourself
.” Sweat ran off Dad's chin and dripped onto the floor as he looked at me piercingly. “What the hell?” he demanded. And then, with real fury: “I MEAN, JACK, WHAT THE HELL?”

“I'm sorry,” I told him. “My friends do have pride in themselves, but they don't care about winning. Some of them even enjoy losing.”

“How can anyone enjoy losing?”

“I guess they're in it for laughs,” I admitted.

“Yeah,” he agreed bitterly. “It was hilarious when Frank fell asleep in the goal. And your girlfriend also thought it was all one big joke.”

“Becca's going through a tough time at home,” I told him. “This is her release.”

“We all go through tough times,” Dad muttered. “But she's the one who came up with the idea of asking me to call Brian and get you your team.”

“I already tried to apologize for that, but I'll say it again. I'm really sorry we embarrassed you. It's not what I wanted.”

It was as if Dad hadn't heard me. He kept right on: “I had to stand next to Brian and watch that display that I had caused. It was stomach-turning for both of us. I understand that your friends want to make a mockery out of Fremont athletics. But what I don't understand is … why
you're
doing this.”

“You mean why I'm doing this to you?”

“No,” Dad said, “why you're doing this to yourself. I'm not surprised that you scored a goal. It was clear from the first whistle that you were the best athlete on the field.”

“They had a couple of players who were way better,” I said. “You're seeing something that's not there—”

“Jack, you have speed that's God-given. I think you might have a step on your brothers, and they were quick. Do you think Brian was putting you on his varsity just as a favor to me? He's no fool when it comes to football—he needs speed like that! You can burn.
You don't know what you could have done for them, or how far you could have gone.
” Dad's voice had gotten louder and faster, as if these thoughts had been tearing him up for weeks. “You earned a spot on varsity, and then you gave it away.”

“I earned a spot in a hospital room,” I fired back.

“I'm talking about pride,” he said.

“And I'm talking about my teeth.”

“Accidents happen in sports and in life. Part of becoming a man is facing them.”

And that was when it suddenly got much more serious and personal. “So you think I'm a coward?” I asked.

My father stood next to the heavy bag he had been walloping, and when he spoke he let me have it as if putting his full weight into a right hook. “I think you got hurt and it spooked you and you walked away from a great opportunity. And now you're pissing away your senior year joking around with a bunch of jerks.”

“Don't call them that. They're my friends.”

“They enjoy losing. They don't care about what we care about.”

“What
you
care about,” I told him.

“You're part of this family, unless you make yourself not a part of it. The Logans aren't the smartest family in the world, or the richest. But we've always been proud athletes and that's our tradition.
Why do you have to make a joke out of it?
” He slammed the bag with his fist.

My first instinct was to back away, but now I was a little out of control and instead I took a step toward him. “You're absolutely right,” I heard myself say. “Accidents do happen. You can't let fear take over or you're a coward. I'm sorry your knee got messed up and you missed your chance for a pro career—”

It was like a cold wind suddenly swirled through the basement. “That has nothing to do with this,” he tried to cut me off.

“It happened years before I was born, but it was right there today on the sideline when you were standing next to Muhldinger looking so furious, like you wanted to kill someone—probably me. You've always been angry with me. What have I ever done to you?”

“Stop,”
he told me in a warning tone.

But I stepped forward and slammed the heavy bag with my bare fist. “When I got my teeth bashed in you said I'd made you proud. That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Watching me get my clock cleaned makes you proud? If you want to talk about who's a coward in this family, why can't you face the fact that you're trying to live out the big-shot NFL career you never had through me and my brothers and the players on your stupid TV set—”

I'm not sure if he was trying to silence me or grab me and shake me, but he pushed me and I ended up flying backward. I crashed into a wall and went down hard, and lay there for a half second, stunned. He had never put his hands on me—or either of my brothers—before, and I couldn't believe he had done it. He looked a little shocked, too, and reached down to me, but I knocked his hand away.

Then I was running up the stairs, bursting past my mom, who must have been listening from the kitchen. She called out and tried to grab my arm, but I ran past her and sprinted out the back door. I heard my father coming after me, but I turned on the speed he was so proud of and even the fastest miler in the history of Muscles High couldn't catch me as I sprinted away into the darkness.

 

19

Dark streets twisted into each other, and the night shadows of houses flew by. I ran blindly, with no idea where I was heading. I kept seeing the narrow stairs to the basement, and hearing furious punches thudding into the heavy bag. Those angry punches became the desperate footsteps of my father running out of the house after me, and even though I was already far from home I imagined hearing his voice calling my name, and I sped up to a wild sprint, my arms pumping madly.

I finally fell on my knees, gasping, before a big house. After I caught my breath I looked around and realized I wasn't far from someplace I really wanted to be. I got up and started walking.

Becca's house was set back from the street, and above the trimmed bushes I could see that the upstairs windows were dark. I headed up the walk and climbed the steps. When I pushed the doorbell no one answered, so I rapped on the brass knocker. I turned and started back down the steps, and then I heard the door open.

Becca stood in the doorway, peering out at me. “Jack?”

I walked up to her.

She took one look at my face and pulled me inside. The door shut and then somehow we were standing in her kitchen and her arms were around me.

“Let me guess. Your dad was not pleased with what he saw at the game today.”

“He wanted to use me as a punching bag.”

“What! Did he hit you?”

“No, but he wanted to.”

Her house was warm and silent.

“Where's your mom?”

“Upstairs in her room,” Becca told me. “Watching TV. Sometimes it's hard to tell when she's awake or asleep. Want some cold water?”

“Sure,” I said.

She got me a big cup of ice water, and one for herself, and said, “Come. There's something you have to see.”

I followed her up a flight of stairs and we turned down a hall, past several closed doors. The upstairs was as neat as the first floor, and there were antiques everywhere. We passed an old grandfather clock, elegantly marking the hours. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“My room,” she said, and pushed open a door. “Voilà.”

I walked in after her and she pulled the door closed. There was a four-poster bed with a few stuffed animals on the pillows. School textbooks were neatly arranged on a shelf above her desk, and on higher shelves was an impressive library of novels, nonfiction, and plays, not to mention dozens of horse-riding ribbons and a photo of Shadow. I ran my eyes over the titles. “Have you read all of these?”

“No, I just looked at the pictures,” she said.

I couldn't remember ever being in a girl's bedroom before, not to mention alone and with the door closed. It smelled the way Becca's hair smelled—clean, sweet, and tempting.

“Did you get my texts about what's happening with the team?” she asked.

“You mean that we've been terminated?”

“Check it out,” she told me, pointing to the laptop on her desk. I sat down and clicked the screen to life. Her browser was already open to a YouTube page. Someone had posted a video called “The Losers at Muscles High—America's Worst Soccer Team and Meanest Coach.”

I pressed Play. It started off with a close-up shot of Muhldinger standing on the back of the bus, spewing insults at us. Someone must have secretly filmed him with their phone. His face was scarlet and he was jabbing his finger into the air as he vented: “That was the single most embarrassing thing I have ever seen in my entire life. The word ‘losers' doesn't do it justice … The word ‘vomit' comes a little closer.”

The video cut to a quick shot of Pierre running after a ball and then pulling up suddenly and puking on the sideline while Marion girls shrieked. With background music added it was pretty funny to watch.

Back to Muhldinger: “You're wastes of your parents' genes. Spastics. Morons. Garbage.”

Interspersed with his insults were quick shots of various players screwing up in horrible but hilarious ways. Chloe and Zirco's collision looked like a clown routine, and there was a great shot of Frank sound asleep in the goal, with Percy trying to wake him. It was more than just the ultimate sports blooper video—it was a “we're lousy and we don't care” statement, and whoever had made it was really good at editing. Taken all together, it made our team look hopeless but hilarious, while Muhldinger came across as the ultimate jerk.