Crash (8 page)

She had to be in sixth grade, but she had the body of a third grader and the face of a drunken grandmother. She had on enough makeup for ten clowns. She must have put it on in the dark after her mother dropped her off. A splotch of rouge was so thick on one cheek it looked like a third eye. And her lipstick was smeared so bad it looked like she had four lips.

The three eyes gawked up at me like I was something in a zoo. Both mouths opened and said, “Huh?”

Behind me, the guys were squeaking with held-in laughter. Somebody was nudging me closer to the girl.

I was getting mad at them, at the girl. “Never mind,” I said, but at the same time, and louder, Mike butted in: “He said, do you want to dance.”

I cranked up a grin while I rammed my elbow back into my best friend’s chest.

Meanwhile the girl’s friends were squealing and pressing into her. One of them said, “Dawn, he wants you to
dance
with him.”

Another one whispered, “Are you gonna?”

They were all looking from her to me, me to her. Two of Dawn’s eyes kept blinking at me. Then her mouth opened again and let go its second syllable of the night: “No.”

Half the football team erupted. Before I could say something, the tots toddled off.

I turned. I put out both hands and shoved. Mike went back into Brill, Brill went back into three others, and then they were all lurching and howling backward into the lunch counter.

I headed straight across the floor. Maybe I didn’t know before what I was going to do. Now I did.

On the football field I don’t run around people, I run through them. Life is football. For a couple of minutes there, I had forgotten.

And then I remembered. I was the holder of the single-game touchdown record for Springfield Middle School. I was five foot seven and a half, one hundred and fifty-four pounds. I was wearing a ten-pizza shirt.
I was Crash Coogan.

No more messing around. No more cruising by with a dinky little wave and hoping she would smile at me. I walked right up to her like those girlfriends of hers weren’t there, like nothing was there but those brown eyes of hers, getting bigger and bigger, like the eyes of a free safety just before I plow him under.

“Hi, Jane,” I said. “How ya doin’? I thought you might come to the dance. Is that a new hairdo?”

One hand started up, like it was going to touch her hair, then stopped. Her face didn’t know what to do either, it was like
Gaaah.
She was totally off guard. The Crasher was in charge. The Crasher loved it.

“Not really,” she said at last.

“No?” I said, rolling now, smiling, shedding tacklers. “Well, it looks different. Anyway, it looks real nice.”

She was ready to say thank you, but I just rolled on. “Tell you one thing that is new”—I patted my chest—“this shirt. Got it at Jackman’s. Maybe you don’t know, ’cause you’re new here, but that’s a
men’s
store. I can wear men’s sizes.” I gave her a wink. “I guess you could wear women’s sizes, huh?”

Those big browns were looking up at the Crash Man. Before she could grin and say you better believe it, I went on, “I hope you like all those TDs I’m scoring. Tell you what, next game my first TD will be just for you, okay?”

I was remembering how the big-time jocks in high school and college get all the girls they want, and I was thinking, Hey, it’s true, and I wanted to say, I really like how you hardly use any makeup. But I didn’t know how to say it, at least with words. But my hand knew how to do it; my hand was reaching out to say it, to touch that perfect unmade-up face, the most beautiful face I ever saw…

My fingertips never reached her cheek. She slapped them away.

It didn’t make sense, so I ignored it. I smiled bigger than ever and took her hand and started towing her away. “Hey, let’s dance, okay?”

She jerked her hand out of mine, and for the second time in five minutes I heard that word: “No.”

I said, “Huh?”

She jabbed her hands into her hips. She glared. “Who do you think you are?”

I grinned. I don’t know if I got the words from a movie or what, but they were there: “I’m the answer to your dreams, baby.”

Stone-cold silence. Frozen face. For the first time ever, she was looking at me, really looking. And then she laughed. Not giggled, laughed. Her friends laughed. They kept on laughing. Jane had her hand over her mouth, another had tears, another was doubled over, cramping up.

I knew they were laughing at me, but if they thought I cared, they didn’t know me. Crash Coogan never—got it?—
never
gives up. So I just cranked up a chuckle of my own, reached out and took her hand again, and headed back out to the dance floor.

This time when she tried to yank herself free, she couldn’t. The Grip of Iron had her. And then she kicked me, right above my heel in my Achilles tendon. My leg buckled. I let go of her.

I turned. I was about ready to stop being nice. “Hey,” I said, “what’re you trying to do? You know what you just did?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “You just kicked my Achilles tendon. Do you know that’s about the worst thing you can do to a running back? If you snap your Achilles, you’re out for a year—
minimum.
Maybe two years. And even after that, you might never be the same.”

I glared at her, letting it sink in. Girls, even cheerleaders,
don’t know anything about football. They couldn’t care less about what it takes to be a pro.

She finally said something. “You—” Her lips curled, showing her teeth.

“Hey, don’t do that,” I warned her, “it ruins your looks.”

Her lip went higher. “If
ee-yew ever
touch me again, I’m going to scream and get you kicked out of school.”

“You ever kick my Achilles again and you won’t have any mouth to scream with,” I told her.

She looked like she was going to laugh again, but she just gave an unladylike snort and wagged her head. “You are the biggest jerk I ever met in my life.”

“Thank you,” I said pleasantly.

She went rambling on: “You think you’re so great—”

I bowed. “Thank you.”

“—but you’re just pathetic. You have a big mouth. You bully people around. You don’t care about anybody’s feelings. You’re just a big, dumb, obnoxious jockstrap.”

I didn’t really care about the words. What I cared about was that finally Jane Forbes was standing still and facing me and talking to me. I think I was about to reach out and take her hand for a third time when who shows up but Spider Webb.

He was wearing his usual thrift-shop rags except for the shirt.

It was a T-shirt that had been printed up to read:

STALL
THE
MALL

You believe it? And as usual he didn’t have a clue about what was going on. He just barged in from his own little universe, all perky: “Greetings, fellow students.”

“Hi, Penn,” said Jane. I would have given my left nostril for the smile she shot him. “Did you get it?”

Webb held up a plastic bag. “Yep.” He took something from it, a T-shirt. He shook it open, displayed it. It said the same thing as his.

Jane squealed and snatched it, and right there she pulled it on over her other shirt. She modeled it. Webb and her girlfriends clapped.

“That’s really stupid,” I said. “What makes you think you can stop a mall with a couple of T-shirts?”

“Not just a couple,” said Webb. “We’re going to try to get everybody in school to wear one. Everybody in town.”

I laughed. “You’re crazier than I thought if you think all these
kids are gonna wear that thing. Whoever heard of trying to stop a mall? Anybody who doesn’t want a mall is”—I wasn’t sure what the word meant, but Jane had used it on me and it felt right— “obnoxious.”

“Well,” he said, “somebody in your own family is joining in. Abby has one.”

I poked him in his skinny, sunken chest. I kept poking him backward till he was against the wall. “You let my family outta this. If I ever catch you doing this stuff around my house, I’ll have your butt for breakfast. And stay away from my sister, y’hear? She’s little, so she doesn’t know any better.” I gave him a final poke. “Understand?”

I had him nailed to the wall with one finger. Behind me I could hear kids rushing over. Whispers of
“Fight!”
mixed with the music. I was waiting for an answer when Jane reached in and pulled my finger away. Anybody else, I would have clubbed them.

“Want to dance, Penn?” she said. She took his hand and pulled him away through the mob.

Mike came over. We just stood there, watching them dance. When the song was over, I said, “Come on, let’s get outta this dump.”

As we left, I made sure we passed Webb and Jane coming off the dance floor. I took a quick half step to the left, set my legs, and rammed into him with my shoulder. He went flying on his rear about ten feet across the floor.

“Oh,” I said, really sorry-like, “excuse me.” And we were out the door.

N
OVEMBER 5

I can’t stop laughing.

I keep picturing Webb doing his butt slide across the floor, and the look on Jane Forbes’s warthog face. I’ll tell you, it was worth every minute of the three-day, in-school suspension I got for it, and the one-week grounding when my parents got the letter from the vice-principal. Hey, with Scooter around, I hardly noticed.

I’m so popular I could probably be school president. I’d get the vote of everybody who was glad to see Little Miss(ter) Cheerleader get dumped by a real man. My hand still hurts from all the high fives I got the Monday after the dance.

It gets better.

Guess who got kicked off cheerleading?

It all had to do with that mall business. It seems that Webb and Forbes started missing cheerleading practices and meetings. Then they started missing actual games, like field hockey and soccer.

What they were doing, they were spending all their free time selling those stupid T-shirts and parading their signs
around and wallowing in the mud over on Route 31, where the mall is going to be.

The cheerleading coach told them, Okay, enough is enough. You want to be cheerleaders or you want to be crusaders, it’s up to you. But if you want to keep being cheerleaders, just don’t miss any more games. And especially don’t miss any football games.

So yesterday we played Upper Milford. Rotten day. Never stopped raining. The whole game long you hear these rain-drops like on a roof, except they’re landing on your helmet (which I guess
is
your roof, right?).

Anyway, all the cheerleaders were there, including the two mall-stallers. In fact, the cheerleaders outnumbered the spectators. There were exactly four people in the stands. One of them was Scooter, of course. A little water never bothered the old swabbie. And the cheerleading coach and two others. But not Webb’s parents. That should have been a clue.

The cheerleaders had on these little see-through plastic raincoats with hoods. Webb looked just adorable in his.

I’m sure they all (except Scooter) wished the game would be called off. Football isn’t for fruitcakes. Football doesn’t take any crap from the weather.

I have to admit, though, it was hard to play right. Slipping, sliding all over the place. Passing, forget it. Fumbles galore. Even I fumbled once. The first half ended with no score. When we came out for the second half, there were two less cheerleaders. Webb and Forbes were gone.

Late in the fourth quarter, on a third-and-ten from our own eleven yard line, we sprang a double reverse, and I took it all the way for an eighty-nine-yarder. That was the game, 6-0. But afterwards, nobody was talking about me. They were talking about Webb and Forbes and how the cheerleading coach fired them on the spot for leaving at halftime.

It gets better.

Where they were was over at Route 31, at the mall place, which is just a big old weed field now. Somebody had found out the bulldozers were coming, so the naughty cheerleaders stayed for half the game and rushed over.

That’s all I knew at the time. Scooter was waiting outside with two umbrellas. We walked home.

Fast-forward to six o’ clock. Scooter and I are eating. Abby comes bursting in, streaking for the den, yelling, “TV!”

By the time we get in there, she’s got the TV on, punching buttons, muttering, “Channel Ten…Channel Ten…”She turns up the volume. She sits cross-legged on the floor, her face an inch from the screen. She’s panting like a dog. She’s totally drenched and muddy all over.

Scooter gets a throw rug and some newspapers and makes her sit on them. He pulls off her shoes and socks. “You’re wetter than a wharf rat,” he says, but she just mutters, “Keep watching…keep watching…”

After the first commercial, we see. They show the Route 31 mall location. They show the bulldozers coming down the pike
in flatbed trucks. And then they show the looneytunes: Webb and Forbes, a couple of other students, a couple grown-ups, and (“There I am! There I am!”) the Wet One herself.

They’re all standing at the entrance to the weed field, waving their signs and chanting, “No more malls!…No more malls!”

The truck stops. Traffic ties up. Cops come. The TV lady puts a mike in the face of some white-haired geek—it’s Webb’s father. He says, “How can we criticize others for burning down the rain forests when we’re covering the earth with asphalt?”

And then (“There I am! Me! Me! Listen! Shhhh!”) the mike is in dear little Abby’s face, and she’s saying, “We don’t need more stores. We should take better care of what we have. My mother buys my clothes at Second Time Around!”

And then the camera shows the flatbed drivers parking alongside the road and getting out and going home, and the news switches to a fire in the city.

Abby jumped up. “We stopped them! We won! Didja see me?” She did a cartwheel out of the den. “That was me!” She threw open the front door and shouted to the world: “I’m on TV! I’m a star!”

I looked at Scooter. “Why doesn’t she get a little excited?”

That was yesterday, Friday. The whole story didn’t catch up with my mother till today. She came storming home in the middle of the morning and herded Abby upstairs. I went up to my room. I left my door open.