Nine Inches (15 page)

“Clay?” she whispers. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Keep going.”

SATURDAY’S A
home game against Mans
fi
eld, and I have to force myself to go to the stadium. I like to imagine that it would be a minor local scandal if I didn’t show up, that people would speculate about my absence in hushed and anxious tones:
What happened to Clay? Why isn’t he here?
But really, they probably wouldn’t even notice.
Th
e team’s doing just
fi
ne without me.

Coach Z. asked if I wanted to stay on the roster, which would have allowed me to travel on the team bus to away games and stand on the sidelines in my Cougars jersey. He said maybe I could do something useful — hold a clipboard, keep track of o
ff
ensive formations, make sure there were enough paper cups for the Gatorade — but I told him no thanks, that I’d just watch from the bleachers like everybody else.

So that’s what I do. I line up with the civilians, show my ID, plunk down three bucks for a ticket.
Th
en I make my way to the student section and take my place with the rowdy senior guys. I know a lot of them — varsity soccer and lacrosse players, mostly, hard partyers, loudmouths who like to give the refs and opposing players a hard time — and I do my best to blend in, show a little spirit. I clap my hands and join the chants, pumping my
fi
st like I’m not dying inside every time the ball gets snapped and the bodies crash together without me.

RIGHT BEFORE
hal
ft
ime I go for a hot chocolate. It feels like I’m trapped in a moving spotlight, everybody in the bleachers watching like I’m some kind of tragic celebrity.
Th
ere he is,
I can almost hear them whisper.
Th
ere’s Clay Murphy.
My face heats up; I can’t a
ff
ord to look anywhere but straight ahead.

I manage not to talk to anybody until I get on line at the refreshment stand and
fi
nd myself standing right behind Mr. Makowski, my old Pop Warner coach, a big bald guy with a belly hanging over his belt like a sack of cement mix. His son Bobby’s taking my place at right inside linebacker, doing a great job, really stepping up. Everybody says so.
Th
ere was an article about him in the
Patch
just the other day: “Makowski Making Waves, Getting Noticed.”

“Clay,” he says, smiling the way you do when you visit someone in the hospital. “How you doing?”

“All right, I guess.”

“Back to normal?”

“Almost.
Th
e doctor says it takes time.”

Th
ere’s a roar from our side of the bleachers. We both turn, a little too late to see what happened. It must have been a third-down stop because our defense is trotting o
ff
the
fi
eld, the punt-return unit heading in from the sidelines. Mr. Makowski pats me gently on the shoulder, like he’s afraid I might break.

“You’re a tough kid,” he tells me. “Keep your chin up, okay?”

PARTS OF
last year are pretty foggy, but I have a clear memory of the play that messed me up. It was a third-quarter goal-line stand against Bridgeton, the next-to-last game of the season. We were up 20–6, but a touchdown would’ve put them right back in the game. So our defense was pumped. We stopped them three times in a row from the two-yard line.

On fourth down, their tailback — a kid named Kenny Rodriguez — took the hando
ff
, and somehow I just knew what was gonna happen.
Th
at’s the beautiful part of football, those moments that unfold like a dream, a little slower and brighter than real life. You’re reacting, but it doesn’t really feel that way. It feels like you’re predicting, or somehow even controlling the action.

Kenny launched himself o
ff
the ground, trying to dive for the touchdown, and I did the same thing at exactly the same time. People said it was an amazing hit, two human missiles colliding in midair. I remember the
crack
of our helmets, the
oof
of air leaving my body as I slammed into the turf.
Th
en just a hum, like a refrigerator in a quiet house.

EVERYBODY ASSUMED
that Kenny got the worst of it. I was just dazed; he was the one who got knocked out, the one who le
ft
the
fi
eld on a stretcher with a collar around his neck. But he was back in the lineup the following week, even scored a touchdown. He shook it o
ff
, the way you’re supposed to.

I wasn’t so lucky. For months a
ft
erward, I had stabbing headaches and blurry vision; I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I missed a lot of school, but staying home was its own kind of hell, because there was nothing I could do to pass the time that didn’t make me feel worse. I couldn’t read or look at a computer screen, couldn’t watch TV, couldn’t play video games or make out with Megan, couldn’t even listen to music. A lot of the time, I didn’t even feel like eating.

I’d torn my ACL freshman year and had spent the whole spring recuperating, so I understood what it meant to be patient, to give my body the time it needed to heal. But when you hurt your knee, you know exactly what’s wrong and so does everybody else. You get the surgery, you get the crutches and the brace, you do the PT. You get a lot of sympathy from your buddies and attention from girls. When you hurt your brain, you don’t really know what’s going on, and nobody else does, either. One day you feel pretty decent, the next you’re a wreck. Some headaches come and go; others stick around and get comfortable.

“It’s a so
ft
ware problem,” Dr. Koh explained. “
Th
ere’s a glitch in your operating system.”

IT WASN’T
until springtime that I
fi
nally began to feel a little better.
Th
e headaches got less frequent and less intense, and my short-term memory started to improve. I had fewer blackouts in class, and found that I could read for
fift
een or twenty minutes at a stretch, do a handful of math problems, even play
Call of Duty
without feeling like I was going to throw up every time something exploded.

I started hitting the weight room a
ft
er school, trying to make up for lost time. It was such a relief to be back in the
fl
ow, pumping iron with my boys, swapping insults, laughing at stupid shit. It was all good — the soreness in my arms and chest, the occasional dizzy spells, the sweaty clothes in my gym bag, the familiar BO funk of the locker room. Even the return of my athlete’s foot felt like cause for celebration.

I knew my mom didn’t want me to play anymore, but I wasn’t too worried about that. She’d tried to make me quit a
ft
er my knee operation, and I
fi
gured I’d win this battle the way I won that one, by wanting it so bad she wouldn’t have the heart to say no. And I honestly didn’t think I was asking for all that much. I already knew I wasn’t gonna play in college — I’m too small to be a linebacker at that level, and too slow for defensive back — so all I had le
ft
was one more season. Ten games, maybe a couple more if we were lucky and made it into the playo
ff
s.

“You’re not serious,” she said, when I handed her the permission slip for my senior season.

“I’m better now.”

“You still get headaches.”

“Just little ones.”

“You’re not yourself, Clay. I can tell.”

“I’m
fi
ne.”

“Let’s see what the doctor says.”

Dr. Koh didn’t come right out and say I couldn’t play.
Th
at’s not how they do it. He just said we needed to weigh the risks and bene
fi
ts and make an informed decision based on the available scienti
fi
c evidence, blah, blah, blah. According to Dr. Koh, there were a lot of risks: cognitive impairment, academic problems, chronic fatigue, serious depression, paranoia, early dementia, stu
ff
you don’t even want to think about. He showed us an article about ex-NFL players living with post-concussion syndrome, guys who couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, couldn’t spell their names or remember the way home from the grocery store; guys who jumped out of moving vehicles or tried to
fi
x their teeth with Krazy Glue. One guy killed himself by drinking antifreeze.

Th
ese were athletes in the prime of their lives,
he told us.
But they had the brains of old men.

“It’s okay if you hate me for a while,” my mother told me on the way home. “I’m pretty sure I can live with that.”

I TOOK
the permission slip to my father, wondering if there was anything he could do. We were sitting on his front stoop, watching my stepmother and the twins blow soap bubbles in the driveway.

“I’m not your legal guardian,” he reminded me. “I couldn’t sign this if I wanted to.”

“I just thought maybe you could talk to Mom.”

“I already did.” He folded the slip and handed it back to me. “I think she made the right call.”

Th
at wasn’t what I was expecting. My dad loves football just as much as I do, maybe even more. It’s our thing, the glue that held us together through the divorce and all the weirdness that came a
ft
er, when he moved out of town and started a whole new family without me. In all the years I played, he never missed a single game, not even the one that took place twelve hours a
ft
er the twins were born. My stepmother still hasn’t forgiven him for that.

“I’m sorry, Clay.”

He put his arm around my shoulder and le
ft
it there. I knew he still loved me, but I couldn’t help wondering what we were gonna talk about for the rest of our lives.

WHEN MEGAN
fi
nally breaks up with me, she does it by text, on a Sunday a
ft
ernoon in early October:
i tried really hard but im tired of being the only one in this relationship xxoo m.
She’s mad because I skipped last night’s victory celebration at Amanda Gill’s, which turned out to be the best party of the season so far. Something must’ve been in the punch: there were stupid
fi
ghts and scandalous hookups; on the dance
fl
oor, girls were
fl
ashing their boobs like it was spring break.
Th
is morning, a bunch of bras were hanging from the apple tree in Amanda’s front yard. I saw a picture of it on Facebook.

Megan’s not the only one who missed me. My football buddies — Rick, Keyshawn, and Larry — kept calling my cell, telling me to get my ass over there.
Dude, it’s unbelievable! It’s gonna turn into an orgy any minute!
Th
ey actually came to my house around midnight, waking my mom with the doorbell. She wasn’t as mad about it as I thought she’d be. She just came down to the bottom of the stairs, squinted at the guys for a few seconds, then went back up to bed.

“Come on, bro,” Larry told me. He’s the le
ft
inside linebacker, my former partner in crime. “You gotta come to this party.”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“We miss you,” Keyshawn told me. He’s a wide receiver, one of our captains. “It’s not as much fun without you.”

I didn’t know what to say.
Th
ese guys have been my posse since we started playing Pop Warner in middle school. We still hang together when we can, but it’s not like it used to be.

“What’s the matter with you?” Rick asked. He was smiling, but in a mean-drunk kind of way. He used to be starting nose tackle, but a sophomore took his job a couple weeks ago, and it’s killing him. “You’re not the only guy who ever got hurt, you know.”

“I guess I’m just a douchebag,” I said, smiling right back.

FOR A
while a
ft
er she dumps me, Megan stays in pretty close touch. She texts me on a regular basis and stops by my locker at least once a day to see how I’m doing.

“I’m worried about you
,
” she tells me, but she sounds more annoyed than concerned, like she doesn’t have time for this, but is going to do it anyway, because she’s a nice person. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m
fi
ne.”

“We should talk, Clay.”

“We’re talking now.”

“No, I mean really talk. You want to get co
ff
ee or something?”

But I don’t feel like talking. Not to Megan, not to my mother, not even to my buddies. All I want to do is hunker down and get through the rest of the fall. I’m pretty sure I’ll feel a lot better when December comes and I don’t have to think about football anymore.

It’ll be over soon.
Th
at’s what I remind myself when I can’t sleep, when I’m just lying there in the dark, feeling cheated.
Just a few more games and it’ll be over for everyone.

HALLOWEEN CATCHES
me by surprise. Not because I don’t see it coming — pumpkins and skeletons and fake headstones are all over the place — but because it doesn’t seem like anything I need to worry about.

It’s just not that big a deal in our school. People are allowed to wear costumes, but hardly anyone does except Mr. Zorn, a chem teacher who puts on a Superman suit and gives a supposedly hilarious lecture about Kryptonite, and a handful of freshman and sophomore girls who can’t resist the chance to dress up as sexy kittens and French maids. Also, the girl cheerleaders come to school in football uniforms.

Th
at’s the thing I forgot about.

It’s pretty funny, actually.
Th
ey don’t just get jerseys from the varsity guys, they borrow shoulder pads and helmets, too. Everything’s way too big — the shirts hanging past their knees, the pads askew, the helmets loose, with lots of pretty hair spilling out. Most of the girls are grinning behind their facemasks, like they know exactly how cute they are, but a few try to scowl and swagger like tough guys, holding their arms out like they’re carrying buckets of sand, and grunting at everyone they pass.