Leverage (19 page)

“You okay?” he asks me, tossing the question behind him as he moves.

“Yeah.”

“Where's Ronnie?” he asks, but seems to already know the answer from the direction he's heading.

“In the storage room,” I say, still trying to undo his wrists. They used so much tape that it's formed a thick rope that can't be peeled away. I leave him and fetch a Swiss Army knife out of my gym bag. By the time I scamper back, Bruce stands inside the storage room, not moving, taking it all in, trying to understand the crime scene. The acid stench of Kurt's vomit rises up in warning. I go back to work on Bruce's handcuffs. The Swiss Army knife's miniscissor is no match for the gummy strands and Bruce loses patience. Still cuffed, he kneels beside Ronnie, while my puny scissors gnaw frantically at his gluey bindings. The mop handle rests only a foot away, its tip stained dark. The smell of crap and copper and vinegar mix over the sour fumes of puke. Ronnie's sweats aren't pulled up all the way. The elastic of his underwear bunches above the drawstring.

Kurt groans. Bruce casts an eye at him but stays with our downed teammate. “Hey, Ronnie? Ronnie? Hey, man . . . you okay?” Bruce coos. Then he snarls at me. “God
dammit
! Danny, get this shit off!” I finally snip through the last strands and Bruce's arms snap forward and grab Ronnie's shoulders and try to sit him up. Ronnie's somewhere between living and dead. His white skin now superwhite. His purplish lips barely move as they recite something—a prayer, maybe—too soft to hear. He shudders for a moment and Bruce pounds his back like maybe he's choking. He's not choking.

“What happened?” Bruce asks, locking me in a stare, accusing me of all this. I feel my mouth go dry, unable to speak a word of what I witnessed. I shake my head and glance toward Kurt, now slowly dragging himself up to his feet, using the wall for balance, as if he holds the explanation.

“I'm suh-suh-sorry,” Kurt whispers. “I'm suh-suh-suh . . . I . . . I guh-guh-gotta go. I gotta get the car buh-buh-back. Patti wuh-wuh-won't let me . . . I'm suh-suh-sorry,” Kurt keeps repeating. He places a hand on the doorframe to steady himself, then wobbles out of the storage room.

“Wait!” I shout. I leave Bruce and Ronnie and follow Kurt, circling him like a toy terrier does a bulldog. “You sure you'll be okay? You don't look so good. I can drive you. I got my license.”

“I'm fuh-fuh-fuh-fine,” he says, then trips over the edge of a mat but manages to stay on his feet. He keeps his right hand cupped to the side of his head where Tom kicked him. His left hand juts forward as if feeling its way in the dark. His eyes are half shut and half watching his footsteps.

“But . . . but what about what happened?” I ask. “What do we do?”

“Got to guh-guh-get the kuh-kuh-car back,” he repeats, zombie-plodding into the locker room, leaving me stranded with the nightmare back in the gym. When I return, Bruce has one of Ronnie's arms slung over his shoulder while he holds him up around the waist, walking through the gym, trying to collect both their bags and shoes. Dark stains bleed through the seat and back left leg of Ronnie's gray sweatpants. I feel sick and gross for even noticing.

“Ronnie, man, you're going to be fine. Just fine. We get you home, you'll be fine,” Bruce semi-yells while propping Ronnie over his shoulders, pacing him across the floor, like he's only drunk and all he needs is some coffee and time to sober up. “You'll be fine. Those guys are gone. It's over, man. Over. You take a long, hot shower and you'll be right as rain.”

Ronnie's glassy eyes tell me only one of them is hearing Bruce's words.

“Danny!” Bruce calls to me.

“Yeah.”

“Do me a favor and wipe up Kurt's mess. Use paper towels and, hey, go ahead and use my towel if it's easier. Just throw it all away. Then lock up, all right? Keys are by the door. My towel is by the rings. We'll be up at the car waiting for you. Do it quick, all right? Real quick. I wanna get Ronnie back home. Let him shower. Forget this ever happened.” Bruce's version of a reassuring voice is to talk real loud and not bother waiting for a response.

Ronnie isn't doing much of anything but letting himself be led around on his feet. His head droops, and he continues muttering words impossible to make out. It scares me how lost he seems. I grab the gym keys out of Bruce's bag and speed back into the locker room, then pull out a brick of paper towels from the steel dispenser. I soak half of them under the sink faucet, whiffing the odor they give off when wet, like the paper company mixes garbage with mouse poop to create them. I run back into the gym and grab Bruce's towel off the ring frame and head into the storage room.

Kurt's vomit is mostly clear spit-up, but it reeks. I drop Bruce's towel on it and push it around with my foot to soak it up. I follow that with the wet paper towels and then finish with the dry towels. Good enough. The cube-mat squats in the storage room like a trunk bomb. A white flash—Studblatz lying on top of Ronnie—burns behind my eyelids, won't be blinked away. I approach the cube-mat like it might go off, wondering if what just happened really happened, if evil can just blow up like that, out of nothing, out of a day that starts so good. As I stand over the block, taking in the mess they've left on it, my legs begin to shake. I back out of the room and then shut the big storage door, holding both Bruce's towel and the paper towels as far from my body as possible. I chuck them into the wastebasket in the locker room, then return for my bag and lock up the gym.

Ronnie sits in the front passenger seat of Bruce's old beater Volvo when I dash across the parking lot. His forehead presses against the passenger window while he chews on a fingernail. With the engine already running, I open the back door and drop into the seat.

We pull up into Ronnie's driveway and jerk to a stop as Bruce throws the Volvo in park before braking completely. He doesn't turn off the ignition. Ronnie's house is a brown L-shaped ranch almost identical to mine.

“You want me to come in?” Bruce asks Ronnie. The way he's leaving the car running, he doesn't want Ronnie to say yes. Neither do I. The key, right now, right this second, is to get as far away from here as possible, get home, and maybe help my dad mow the lawn or rake leaves or put up a new porch or reshingle the roof or walk the neighbor's dog or just about anything else in the world that takes place outside in clean air. The key is to do anything but sit next to Ronnie, thinking about what he went through this afternoon.

From the backseat, I will Ronnie's head to stop leaning against the window and for him to get out of the car.

“Ronnie?” Bruce tries again.

“No,” Ronnie finally answers, his voice barely a whisper. “Thanks.” He stays put, though, making no move.

But he just sits there. He sits for a long time and no one says anything until Bruce speaks up again.

“Ronnie, take a long, hot shower,” Bruce says. “Tomorrow's a new day.”

“Yeah,” Ronnie answers. The sound of his voice makes me want to tear off my ears. I'm sure, now, I can smell him, smell what they did to him. I have to get away from him.

I'm about ready to bolt from the car when Ronnie finally opens his door and gets out like he has a date with the electric chair. He never bothers looking back at us. Going up the two stairs to his front door seems to exhaust him. He just stands there in front of his house.

We waste no time waiting for Ronnie to finally go inside. I stay in the back, not wanting to delay our escape by taking over the prized shotgun seat. Bruce jams the gear into reverse, backing his car up, then gunning the Volvo until it screams and lurches as he slams the gear back into drive. I roll my window down, trying to get the wind through my hair. When Bruce swings into my driveway I already have the door cracked open. My right foot plants on the pavement before we've completely stopped.

“Danny?” Bruce calls.

I get completely out of the car, unable to sit for even a second longer. Only then do I turn around and lean in through the back window, forcing Bruce to twist around, his right arm wrapped around the back of the passenger seat, his seat belt stretching out to contain him.

“What, exactly, happened?”

The question makes me shift my feet, makes me want to hurl my bag out into the street and never go back in that gym—or the school, for that matter—ever again. How am I supposed to walk the halls knowing those three are roaming them?

“You saw his pants? The stains?” I ask, unable to explain it and not wanting to. “They did all of that to him. Laughing the whole time.”

Bruce only blinks at me. I push away from the car door without saying good-bye. The old Volvo backs out. Its tires give a weak screech as Bruce leaves.

I
return Patti's car keys to the glass candy dish stationed beside her Great Lanes Bowling ashtray on the kitchen counter. Upstairs in the bathroom, I open the bare medicine cabinet and then search under the sink cupboard for aspirin or anything else to help my headache. I find a packet of powdered flu medicine that says it treats aches and chills. Close enough. I rip it open and tip it into my mouth, then cup water under the faucet into my hand. I gulp back the lemony grit.

“Kurt?” Patti calls up the stairs. “Expected you home earlier. Thought we agreed on one o'clock.”

“We did,” I call back, voice rattling my brain. “Coach guh-guh-gave extra duh-duh-drills for next game.”

“Can't lend you the car for practice, hon, if I don't know when you'll bring it back.”

“Wuh-wuh-won't happen a-guh-guh-gain.”

“I don't want to upset Coach Brigs, though. If he thinks you need to stay longer, that's fine. It's just that I'd like to know, is all. You coming out of that bathroom anytime soon?”

“Yes, muh-muh-ma'am.”

“You wanna watch TV with me?”

“Tuh-tuh-took a good hit tuh-tuh-today. Head's ruh-ruh-ringing. Gonna lay duh-duh-down.”

“You okay, hon? Did Coach Brigs look at you?”

“It's nuh-nuh-nothing. I juh-juh-just need ruh-ruh-rest.” Stuck words clang around my skull. Tongue thick, lips swollen, the stutter wears me out. Down the hall I enter my room and collapse on the junior-size cot, ignoring that my feet dangle over the mattress, and double up the pillow under my nonthrobbing ear. Bleached cotton prickles my face as I pull the sheets up over my head. I try not to think about the afternoon. I try to think good things instead: think about the party, think about kissing Marcia, think about the smell of hot popcorn as our team marches past the concession stand during home games. But somehow my thoughts keep coming back to Scott and Mike and Tom . . . which leads back to that boy, Ronnie, and what they did to him. Or I travel further back to Crud Bucket and what he did to Lamar and me. Finally a sort of dying laps across me little by little, until all thoughts disappear under a rising tide of black.

 

“Kurt?”

“Huh?”

“Kurt, hon. Can you wake up for me? I'm about set to call the doctor pretty soon if I can't get you out of this bed. You need to get up. You been sleeping long enough.”

“Wh-what time is it?”

“It's time you got up and got to school. 'Course you ain't gonna make it today and you got me more than a little worried.” Patti's raspy voice salts the wounded slug meat of my brain. I squint against the sunlight streaking through the open blinds. Why sunlight? I went to sleep an hour or two ago. It should be evening.

“It's been two days, now, since you got up out of this bed.”

“Tuh-tuh-two days?”

“That's right. You doing drugs?”

“No.” I try shaking my head but that kills. “No duh-duh-doctor. Must buh-buh-be the fuh-fuh-flu. I'm buh-buh-better. Need ruh-ruh-rest is all. Will you kuh-kuh-call suh-suh-school?” I ask.

“Sure, hon. I will. But I'm gonna call the doctor for an appointment if I don't see you up by tonight, okay?”

“Okay.” I shut my eyes again, my head still throbbing where that last kick hit me. Sheets don't smell like bleach no more. Smell sour with my sweat and breath. I pull them back over my face, pretend it's a tent, pretend I'm camping with Lamar out on a mountaintop, under the stars, feeling a million points of light glittering down on us, a million worlds around those points of light, all of them offering to take me away.

D
ad's snoring in the bedroom when the house phone rings. I've got
The Late Show
on TV, the radio's “Party Rock” DJ chattering at low volume, and
Grand Theft Auto
playing on the laptop resting on my knees. Lights burn in the living room, kitchen, bathroom, hallway, and dining room—basically everywhere but Dad's bedroom and the basement. I've never liked nighttime much, especially in the fall and winter when it keeps erasing more and more life from the world. Since the attack, it seems like nighttime's always hanging around, never quite going away.

Since I'm supposedly sick, I can't let Dad wake up and discover me living like a frat boy back from college. So I grab the phone on the second ring and listen for his continuing snore. It's late. Too late for telemarketers. Fish or Bruce would text my cell. The phone call has to be bad.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Danny?”

I can barely make out the voice on the other end. It's wispy as my grandma's the year she died. I remember her skin was thin and crinkly as cellophane.

“Hello?” I repeat.