Cornered (11 page)

At dances you'd stand in the corner with the non-sports-playing nerds and talk about video games. This was frustrating not because you wanted to be hang out with Luke and Co., but because you of all people had fallen head over heels for girls, maybe more so than the rest of the boys in your grade. On weekends you'd sit at your desk and write pretty girls' names
down in your secret notebook. You'd open your bedroom window even though it was snowing, imagining what was happening at Luke's party across the street. You strained to make out music, laughter, and anything else for your imagination to feed off of.

Going out for the soccer team freshman year was your parents' idea. Or so they thought. You'd quit the middle school soccer team midway through eighth grade and retreated into your video games. It hurt less to pretend you wanted to be by yourself than to pine for more of a social life—jutting your neck out the window in the freezing cold—wishing you were at the party across the way. Your parents were worried about you. They could plainly see that you'd become withdrawn and kept badgering you to “engage with life,” a phrase your mother had read in an article regarding depressed teens.

Even though you hadn't played in almost a year, they hoped physical activity would replace the dark hours of video games behind a locked door and even rekindle friendships with your former youth soccer teammates. You knew even before you stepped off the bus for the first practice that their reasoning was wrong on all counts, but you decided to try out anyway, for different reasons. You weren't doing it for them.

It was for the girls. You figured the solution to your problems was to get a girlfriend, whereupon you wouldn't have to have a social life or care about being invited to parties, because you could just hang out with her. And the key was to become popular by association as a soccer guy.

And so you endured all this for one simple reason. You dreamed of eventually being a varsity player, which held serious cachet among the ladies. The varsity boys' soccer team had amassed five class “L” state championships in as many years, prompting newscasters and journalists in the state of Connecticut to regard Midway's soccer team as a “dynasty,” which, in all truth, it was.

It was a status symbol to date a soccer player. It was a status symbol even to be
seen
talking to a soccer player. It was especially a sign of status to wear a soccer player's varsity jacket. It was dark blue with the Umbro insignia on the sleeves and the right chest, far cooler looking than the outdated traditional varsity jacket with leather sleeves and striped collar that the football, wrestling, and track teams wore.

Soccer players were “chill” and casual at weekend parties, but if a fight broke out they always won. It was this combination of coolness and sudden, efficient viciousness that was all part of the appeal. Soccer players were the high school's version of 007. Every night you'd stand in front of your closet mirror wearing your JV uniform and wonder when you'd start looking tough.

The advantage of being a frosh on the varsity traveling squad was that you were exempt from random bullying in the hallways during school. Other freshmen guys were envious. They also feared Frankie, who was barrel chested and looked impervious to pain. He regularly punched random freshmen in the shoulder when he walked by, so hard that even the meatiest
of them couldn't help but emit an embarrassing moan, resisting like hell the urge to cry. Immense, unannounced pain sometimes provoked tears beyond one's control. They would look up and see you standing there, unscathed, and the expression in their eyes conveyed hatred, as if you had punched them. They were jealous you were excused of such mindless torture. If only they knew.

• • •

Although the taboos against seniors were dropped once Hell Week ended, it was still an unspoken rule that frosh soccer players could never retaliate against a senior. It was the end of September, and after practice you stood next to the bleachers drinking water when suddenly, Frankie picked you up from behind and dropped you on his knee. The pain in your tailbone was so searing you saw red. Tears flooded your eyes and you momentarily lost all sense of reason. You whipped around, pulled his red mesh practice pinnie over his head and grabbed for the nearest soccer ball, hurling it at his blind head with all your might. That was a mistake, and you secretly blamed the courage Jason had instilled in you. Frankie looked stunned, but only for a moment before turning cool again. Luckily the whistle blew and he was called onto the field for a new drill. The rest of your teammates, stunned by your actions, looked at you with eerie expressions on their faces, as if they were staring at a ghost.

Frankie visited your locker the next day before third
period. “Go outside now,” he said quietly but firmly. It didn't matter that you had a class, so you began walking down the hallway toward the exit. You were in school and had nothing to fear, at least for the moment, but still you winced slightly as you walked away—half expecting him to lose patience with his plan and punch you in the back of the skull. At this point your brain and body had resigned itself to accept that the back of your head would never quite feel solid again, at least not till the end of the season.

The doors creaked when you pushed them open, then slammed behind you.

You moved down the stairs, out the second set of exit doors and into the sun; it graced your forehead with gentle heat. Your feet were unsteady, and you walked like Bambi out into the sun. It was a beautiful day. Blue skies, no clouds, the sound of the town fire alarm wailing in the distance. A bird chirped in a tree to your left. You considered your options as you walked through the parking lot. You could make a break for it when you reached the edge of the blacktop and cut through to the path that led to West Midway Street. You could beg your parents to homeschool you or run off and join the navy. But you knew you'd do none of those things because Frankie loomed behind you, leading you to the woods behind the school. Finally he told you to stop.

“Do you want to fight me now?” you asked.

“You're whispering. You weren't this pansy in front of the team yesterday.”

“I've had time to think it over.”

He took his shirt off and held his arm up to display a hairy armpit.

“Smell it.”

You leaned in and he pressed your face inside his armpit, which was remarkably wet given that it was so chilly out. The smell was awful, accentuated, powerful. You could feel his odor on your lips and gagged. He smiled appreciatively.

“Turn around.”

But you didn't. He reached around and hit you softly in the back of the head. It was just a slap, but it felt worse because you'd cringed, expecting more, and the phantom pain from previous punches rose to the surface.

“You fucked with me yesterday at practice,” he said.

“I didn't mean it.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I'm sorry.”

Typically bullies are bullies because someone did the same to them in the past. But Frankie was rich. Popular. He had a girlfriend, and all the guys on the team wanted her. No one else saw this side of him.

“Take them off,” he said, motioning to your pants. For a moment you considered the possibility that he was gay. “You know the drill. Turn around and grab your ankles.”

“No.”

He spat in your face. The ugly fire in his eyes convinced you to accommodate him.

“Take them off. Turn around. And grab your fucking ankles.”

You did. You didn't understand what he meant at first and clenched your sphincter muscle. This was the line. You'd convince your parents to transfer you to a private school. Even a military school sounded promising. Or you could drop out of high school and become a janitor. You looked up, surprised to see the double glass doors to the cafeteria directly ahead, but then you heard the sound of the second bell, signaling second lunch, and the windows filled with shadows of students sitting down at round tables. Suddenly you understood how this was all going to play out.

“Walk,” he said.

Warren Feldman is standing against the goalpost because you've placed him there. He looks like a soldier standing before the firing squad—quivering, his eyes shut and his hands at his sides. His shin guards lay useless on the grass next to his feet. Warren is the least promising freshman on the very disappointing freshman squad. You're now a sophomore, and like the rest of the returning soccer players, you're pissed that the once mighty Midway Express is heading into the latter stages of the season with a mediocre record of 9–5. It's the first time in years Midway High failed to go undefeated in the regular season.

The problem is that last year's team was top-heavy, with
practically every significant player lost to graduation. The team is now in rebuilding mode, with only three juniors and seniors on the roster. All hope rests with your now sophomore class. Last year's seniors won State their sophomore year, as well as the two years after that, and it's expected that your year is due for similar glory.

Your year has turned out to be an athletic disappointment, and the crop of freshmen this year—featuring kids like Warren Feldman—are so depressingly talentless that locals whisper the dynasty is over. This is just part of the reason why, on this uncharacteristically sweaty day in October, he's lined up against the goalpost.

• • •

Tenth grade began poorly. You figured things would finally come full circle with the girls and with your general social standing, but you were wrong. Perhaps you were deluded as a freshman, patiently waiting for sophomore year because you figured being on the soccer team would magically solve everything. You thought that your status as a soccer player would trump the fact that though you were a year older and a few inches taller, you were still essentially the same person you were before: a loner, painfully shy and quiet.

You weren't even on the same level as your fellow sophomore teammates, who in fact were the most popular guys in school by virtue of their varsity soccer jackets. Everyone worshipped them, and Luke, the de facto leader of the crew, still
had huge house parties all the time because his parents seemed to go away every weekend. You were the lone nonfreshman on the varsity squad who never attended. It would be doubly embarrassing if everyone knew that you lived directly across the street, but you were so invisible most students weren't even aware of this fact. Technically, Luke hadn't NOT invited you, but clearly you weren't part of the group—you didn't sit with them at lunch or hang out at the mall with them. The thought of showing up at one of those parties, and having your fellow soccer guys look surprised, was enough to make you never want to try.

Which is not to say you didn't pine for a golden ticket of sorts, because you wanted desperately to go. You just wanted an invite from Luke and for the group to accept you. Sometimes you almost forgave them for not including you—it was survival of the fittest, and you knew they weren't doing it maliciously. They were just trying to survive, socially, themselves. And they did; they were now the kings of the school.

Lucky them.

Despite knowing this, it was still something of a shock to realize a few weeks into sophomore year that this, your only plan to improve things, had officially failed. Who would have guessed that being a sophomore on the varsity team would actually be worse than being a lowly frosh? It was better back then because you were expected to be a loser at the bottom of the food chain. Far worse and far more embarrassing to be even more of a loser than you were freshman year. Your
absence didn't even register with anyone. You practically didn't exist. You were a ghost.

It was all your fault, you'd reason in your head as you sat in your locked bedroom on Friday nights. Why couldn't you be more outgoing? Why couldn't you casually try to be more chummy with the guys during practice drills? Maybe that would have led to more conversation and an eventual invite to Luke's parties? But you were so overwhelmed with sadness that you couldn't help but look and feel morose at all times. “Debbie Downer,” one of the guys called you out now and then, as you unsmilingly sipped from a water cooler and stared blankly at your teammates. In your head you were screaming at yourself,
What the hell is wrong with you? Engage, damnit!

At night you'd sit at your desk, having completed your homework, and that invisible hand clenched your heart so hard you felt like you were experiencing cardiac arrest. You wondered what could possibly be more painful than this abject loneliness. You fantasized offing yourself, but even that failed to give you a grim sort of satisfaction. In your head, hardly any students would show up to the funeral, and nobody fell into a deep depression as a result of your shocking act. You'd be quickly forgotten.

So what, then, you wondered? Wait till college? Yes, turn a new leaf in college, where nobody would know you. Show up the first day of college as a different person. Engaging. Outgoing. Funny. With everyone starting out on a level playing field, it would be your chance to climb out of your shell. It was
impossible, you reasoned, to right the ship now because everyone knew you.

It was simply too late.

• • •

On Friday during the bus ride to the practice fields, the sophomores made the eight frosh players sit in the aisle and sing Christmas carols. Over and over the new frosh recruits were forced to sing “Jingle Bells” and every time the “Ha-ha-ha” part arrived the sophomores gleefully shouted it and slapped the freshmen on top of their heads, which was called an “itchy.” Itchy because if you slapped them hard enough on the head, they couldn't help but furiously rub it, as if they were itchy. You shouted “Ha-ha-ha” along with the rest of the sophomores but restrained from slapping the nearest freshman, Warren Feldman. He stared unblinking at your thigh, which was face-level and visibly winced every time the itchy was supposed to come. That seemed enough torture, you reasoned.