SYLO (THE SYLO CHRONICLES) (7 page)

I took off sprinting along the shore. The pain from the punishing practice was a dim memory. I felt the suddenly powerful muscles in my legs flex quickly, driving me forward, pushing me faster than seemed possible. Within seconds I was standing next to Feit at the lifeguard tower. I wasn’t even out of breath.

“And that’s the Ruby,” he declared with a proud smile as he stood leaning against the tower with his arms folded.

I stood there, flexing the muscles in my arms, making a fist, experiencing my newfound strength. It was exciting…and frightening.

“This is…this is wrong,” I said.

“Wrong?” Feit said with a scoff. “What could be wrong about unlocking your full potential? Now you can show the team what you’ve really got…and Olivia too.”

I snapped a look at him. How did he know about Olivia? My blood was racing and I didn’t think it was only because of the Ruby. It was like the salts had increased my brain power as well as my physical ability…which was probably why a thought came to me.

A horrible thought.

“Did Marty take this stuff?” I asked, though I feared the answer.

“No,” Feit said quickly. “I told you, I didn’t get the chance to give it to him. Who knows? Maybe if he had used the Ruby he’d still be alive.”

Nothing felt right. I didn’t like what was happening to my body and I didn’t want to be hanging with this stranger who had seduced me into taking a substance I knew nothing about.

“I…I don’t want it,” I said, backing away.

“Really?” he asked. “You don’t want to be a star?”

“I…I don’t know what I want, but I don’t want to feel like this.”

“That’s your choice,” he said with a shrug. He wasn’t laughing anymore. “If you change your mind, I’ll be around.”

I turned and ran up the beach, headed for town, sprinting impossibly fast. I tried to slow myself down but my body had the throttle, not my mind. I made it off the sand and kept going until I reached the small park at the end of Main Street. Thankfully nobody was around. I lay down on the grass and stretched out, willing myself to relax. I don’t know how long I lay there. Five minutes? Twenty? Eventually I felt the effects of the Ruby leaving my body. The first sign was that the soreness in my legs returned. I never thought I would be relieved to feel pain. A weariness then washed over me as if the effort I had been putting out had sucked every last drop of gas from my tank. I sat up and rubbed my face. What had happened? Whatever the Ruby had done, it was wrong and I knew that I would never use it again…no matter how great a player it could turn me into.

I got up and jogged home at a normal pace and went straight to my room. I didn’t want to talk with my parents because I didn’t
know what I would tell them. I don’t claim to know how the human body does what it does, but I didn’t believe for a second that what those crystals did was natural or legal, no matter what Feit said. I laid down on my bed in the dark, flexing the muscles of my legs and my arms, trying to sense any lingering effects.

After convincing myself that I would live, I went to my computer and feverishly Googled any key words that might lead me to answers: ruby, Feit, fight, “fite,” sea salts, steroids, even ergogenic aids. The last search gave me some information about increasing athletic performance but I couldn’t find anything about a red sea salt that could instantly transform someone into Superman, let alone a company that manufactured the stuff.

I decided to keep my adventure on the beach to myself. I didn’t want anybody to know I had been stupid enough to take a strange substance from a complete stranger. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about what those red crystals had done for me. For those few moments when I was under their spell, I was invulnerable.

I wanted to know more about it…for all sorts of reasons.

“W
hat’s wrong?” Quinn asked.

“Why? What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong.”

I answered too quickly, which was a sure tip-off that something was, in fact, wrong. My adventure with the Ruby had been the night before and I could hardly think about anything else.

“Whoa, easy,” he said defensively. “I was just wondering why you were letting Kent move in on Olivia without a fight.”

“Olivia?” I asked, momentarily baffled. “Oh. That. Sorry.”

“What did you think I meant?” he asked with confusion.

“Not that. I mean, not that there’s anything else wrong but, I mean, there’s nothing wrong. Why do you ask?”

Quinn stared at me suspiciously as we walked along Main Street toward school. He knew something was up and it bugged him that he couldn’t put his finger on it. I had to get him thinking in the wrong direction, which wasn’t easy to do.

“There’s nothing between me and Olivia to fight over,” I added quickly.

“There could have been,” he said sternly. “But you blew it.”

I shrugged. “Kent’s an all-star.”

“And rich,” Quinn added. “Don’t forget rich.”

“Jeez, are you trying to make me feel bad?”

“Yes!” he shouted. “You can’t let that guy intimidate you just because he’s smart and good looking and athletic and—”

“Rich. Don’t forget rich.”

“Doesn’t matter!” Quinn snapped. “The only real difference between him and you is that he gets what he wants because he believes he can.”

“And he can brutally dominate me on the football field.”

“You’re making me nuts, Tuck. Where’s your head? Good stuff doesn’t just happen. You have to fight for it. But you don’t. You don’t even have the guts to talk to Tori Sleeper.”

“Forget Tori! Who says I want to go out with her anyway? That’s just you pretending to know everything about everything.”

“But I do.”

“No, you don’t. Why are you so obsessed with me getting a girl anyway? Worry about yourself.”

“I’ve got a girlfriend.”

“Who?”

“Neema Pike.”

I laughed. “Really? Just because she friended you on Facebook doesn’t make you a couple.”

“Whatever. This isn’t about me. We’re talking about you and Olivia.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. She’s leaving the island soon anyway.”

“Irrelevant, but go on.”

I took a breath to calm down, then said, “I like Olivia. I liked hanging out with her this summer. But if she only likes guys who have a boatload of money and can wreak havoc on a football field, I’m not interested.”

Quinn shook his head with disappointment. “Typical. Whenever you think something’s out of reach, you back off and say you didn’t want it anyway. What are you afraid of? Losing? Looking bad? That hasn’t stopped you from playing football.”

“Yeah, well, I’m quitting the team,” I said softly.

“What!” Quinn shouted. He hadn’t expected that. I thought his head was going to explode. “You’re giving up on that too?”

“What’s the point? I’m getting killed out there. I’m telling the coach today that I’m done.”

“This is so typical. You were fine when nobody expected you to be any good but now that you’ve got to step up you just…give up.”

“I’m being a realist.”

“Realist?” Quinn spat as if the word left a bad taste in his mouth. “What does that mean?”

“It means I pick my battles.”

“It means you’re afraid of failing,” he said with disdain.

“What makes you such an expert on football anyway?” I asked. I was losing patience with Quinn’s accusations. “And girls?”

“This isn’t about football or girls. It’s about vision. You gotta have a vision.”

I laughed. “Really? What’s
your
big vision?”

Quinn went uncharacteristically silent. That threw me. I was expecting another quick, cutting comeback.

“I don’t know yet,” he said with total sincerity. “I’m being honest. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you something I absolutely believe: One day I’m going to leave this island and do something that people will remember me for. Something important. Bet on it, and don’t laugh. I see you starting to laugh.”

“I’m not laughing,” I said, suppressing a laugh.

“My parents want me to go into medicine but I’m thinking politics. I’m smart. I could run things as good as the next guy. Or maybe research. There’s a lot of undiscovered stuff out there waiting for somebody like me to uncover. Big stuff. But whatever happens, the one thing I will
not
do is stay here and grow old on this chunk of sand.”

I wasn’t sure how to react to that. So many thoughts flew through my head, not the least of which was the odd reality that Quinn had given me a straight, heartfelt answer for a change. The other was that I was somehow a loser for being happy on this “chunk of sand.”

“Then go for it,” I said. “I’m sure whatever you do, you’ll be brilliant. But just because you feel that way doesn’t mean I have to. There are lots of important things you can do. They don’t all have to be written about in history books. It’s just as important to take care of the little things.”

Quinn let that roll around in his head for a while, then nodded thoughtfully and said, “Okay. I buy that. So do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Start taking care of the little things.”

Arguing with Quinn made my head hurt. He had turned a simple debate about whether or not I should compete for Olivia into a
philosophical speech about our futures. He was thinking years ahead while all I wanted was to get through the day.

I didn’t quit the team, and not because Quinn had shamed me out of it. The idea of facing the coach to tell him I was quitting was actually more daunting than getting pounded in practice. Maybe Quinn was right. I was even afraid of failing…at failing.

Practice was marginally better because I knew what to expect. I felt as though I was finally earning some respect from the other guys if only because I didn’t whine about getting hammered on every play. By Wednesday we stopped hitting and concentrated more on timing and getting me to execute the plays without thinking. By Thursday I was actually starting to have some fun. We wore our game uniforms and basically ran through plays at half speed. There was a moment where I stood back, took a breath, and thought about how cool it was that I was going to play a major role in the spectacle that was Friday night football.

Then a harsh reality hit: I was going to play a major role in the spectacle that was Friday night football. Meaning, we had a game. If my own team wanted to take me apart, I couldn’t imagine what would happen playing against guys who actually had a reason to want to destroy me.

We were playing Greely High in Cumberland on the mainland. Living on an island made it a challenge to travel to away games. As soon as school got out, we boarded a bus and the bus boarded the ferry. I’d made the crossing a hundred times and never felt so seasick. It probably had more to do with nerves than ocean swells but either way, I felt like ass. The bus ride to Cumberland took another half hour.

The best thing about that night was being introduced before the game with the starting offense.

“At tailback…number fifteen…Tucker Pierce,” came the announcement and I ran through the gauntlet of cheerleaders and onto the field. Only a handful of fans from Arbortown had made the trip but it didn’t matter. To me it was as good as running onto the field at Gillette Stadium.

There was a moment of silence for Marty, after which a couple of guys came up to me, pounded my shoulder pads, and said things like, “We’re with you, Rook” and “Let’s get ’em.” I was over the moon. These were my teammates. We were in this together.

Kent grabbed my face mask, pulled it close to his, and hissed, “Don’t screw up.”

Not exactly a “win this one for the Gipper” speech but I didn’t let it get to me. This was football and it was game time. The ref blew his whistle, the ball was kicked to us, and we returned it to the twenty-five. The impossible then became reality as I trotted out onto the field and into my first official huddle.

And that was pretty much where the fun ended.

The game was brutal. The Greely guys were like hungry sharks and I was bloody meat. It was much faster than in practice and I was one step too slow—not good for a guy who was carrying the ball. Fortunately we had a solid defense, so the game wasn’t a blowout, but I was fairly useless. When all was said and done my stats showed fifteen yards gained on twelve carries with one fumble lost and two dropped passes. We lost by ten points. Brutal.

When the game ended, I jogged off the field trying not to look as beaten as I felt. I glanced into the stands to see my parents cheering
gamely. I didn’t know if I should be grateful for the support, or embarrassed that they were there.

Behind them was another fan who stood out from the crowd because he wasn’t cheering. Mr. Feit had come to the game. Seeing him made me stop short. He gave me a sympathetic smile and a shrug as if to say, “Hey, don’t blame me.”

I briefly imagined how differently the game might have gone if I had taken him up on his offer to use the crystals he called the Ruby, but there was no way I could use that stuff again.

Could I?

The next day I was so sore I could barely move. Luckily it was the weekend of the annual Lobster Pot Festival and Dad had given me the day off. I took advantage and slept until noon.

“You gonna sleep all day?” Dad asked, poking his head into my room.