Leverage (22 page)

I dawdle on the field, pretending to work on some blocking techniques and lateral steps so I won't have to change alongside those three guys. Once in the shower, I take my time, letting the water scald me, hoping it might help clear my head. I put off the meeting in Coach's office long as possible.

“You squeaky-clean, now, Kurt?” Coach asks, closing the door behind me. “I support good hygiene as much as the next guy, but let's not go overboard with the prima donna routine. It leads to softness. And softness is something I can't tolerate in my players.”

Scott snickers while Tom grins knowingly like they've been discussing my softness with Coach the whole time. Along with Studblatz, the three captains sit on Coach's couch, their bodies packed tight between the armrests.

“Softness leads to problems, leads to trouble,” Coach continues as he settles into the chair behind his desk. “Hell, that confused boy, Ronnie Gunderson—God have mercy on his soul—I heard was troubled with that problem. Soft.” Scott and Tom, I notice, lose their smiles.

“It's a damn shame what that boy did to himself,” Coach says, staring up at the top shelf of trophies in his office. “What a selfish,
selfish
act it is to take your own life. Can you imagine what his poor parents must be going through? I'm sad for his parents. I'm sad for his family. I'm not sad for him, though. For him, I feel only anger. I feel
contempt
. I don't have an
ounce
of pity for such a
cowardly
act.” Coach squeezes his eyes shut as he stresses the words, then suddenly opens them again. “Maybe it's just as well he got culled from the herd early. Lord has a plan. He always has a plan. Bet on it.”

I shift my weight in the small wooden chair, the only seat left in Coach's office.

“Now, boys, I bring up Ronnie Gunderson for a reason,” Coach says. My eyes shoot over to Scott. He's holding his breath, same as Tom, same as me. Mike looks like he's just chomped down on his tongue. “What that kid did tore a hole in the fabric of our community. Do you understand? And what we provide our community on Friday nights is more than a ball game. It's a time for restoring faith in our future, of passing the baton from the strong of one generation to the next. So this ball game coming up is not just about winning and improving our record. It's about healing our community after suffering a serious blow, about giving our community something more than the failure of one soft, misguided boy to dwell upon.”

I gaze down at my knuckles, examining the scabs left on them from the punches I threw in that storage room.

“You all might be asking yourselves why I'm not giving this speech to our whole team, why I'm privileging you boys with it all by your lonesome.” Coach leans back in his chair until I'm sure the springs will snap and send him toppling over. He stays upright, though, drumming his finger on his belly, taking his sweet time shifting his gaze to each of our faces. “You boys, you did something weekend before last.”

This is it. Here we go. It's all about to burst open.

“I don't know what happened or what you did, but I find it more than a coincidence that my four best starters all come down with the same bug that lays them all out for a week, risking an away-game loss to
Farmington High
, of all teams!” He keeps drumming his fingers on his belly. “Meanwhile, not one other boy—not a single player on the team—missed class or is even remotely sick.

“You want to know what I think?” Coach asks us.

The only thing that calms me is watching Scott, Tom, and Mike actually squirm on the couch, waiting for Coach's next thought.

“I think you boys had yourselves a little party,” Coach continues. “Maybe drank a few too many beers and decided to go for a joyride and got banged up enough that Brodsky was out with some sort of concussion, Studblatz now has bruised ribs, Scott has a bad arm—you real lucky, boy, it's not your throwing arm—and Tom's been limping during sprint drills.”

Coach rocks forward in his chair, the springs creaking, and jumps up to attention. He leans over his desk, planting both arms on it like cannon supports. “I'm not even going to begin lecturing you all on how stupid it is to drink and drive and how lucky you boys are that you didn't—God forbid—hurt anyone other than yourselves and how lucky you are that you got by with a few scrapes, near as I can tell. I'm not going to start lecturing on how badly you let this team down when your own selfish need to party gets in the way of performing on that field with the body that you were fortunate enough to be gifted from the good Lord himself. I'll leave all that for now.

“What I
will not stand
”—and now Coach's face turns crimson—“is being lied to and told you were sick with the flu. I will not allow that type of deceit and disrespect, you understand? We are a team. We are a family. The whole community looks up to us and what kind of example are we providing when our own family is lying to its coach? Huh?
Look at me!
You boys aren't even smart enough to come up with a good goddamn lie!”

“Coach, we—” Scott starts, but Coach cuts him off.

“Don't you start jawing that oily mouth, boy!” Coach pounds the top of his desk. “You may be the quarterback—for now—but I'm the coach, you understand? You want me to keep talking nice to those recruiters—telling them all how you're such a great kid and asking your teachers to bump up your sorry-ass grades—then you better shut your mouth and listen up. I don't want to ever have another game where my four stars are out. We got a chance at going all the way to state this year and winning the whole shebang! The whole enchilada! You understand that? I don't want anything standing in the way of our team forming into a cohesive unit, like soldiers under fire.” Coach lifts a hand and drags it across his mouth before planting it back on his desk.

“I will not tolerate your lying to me,” he says. “Do you understand?!”

We nod our heads yes.

“I can't hear you.”

“Yes, Coach,” we say.

“Good,” he says, taking his hands off his desk, standing taller. “And you better hope, for your sakes, that you heal real quick. I don't want to hear a single excuse about you getting hurt on the field and it turns out it's one of these injuries that came from goofing off when you should've been in bed.”

We nod again in unison.

“Now get out of here,” Coach growls.

I stay sitting in my chair while the other three get up to leave. I can tell Coach what really happened. Tell him Ronnie wasn't soft. That he was destroyed by Coach's captains, tortured in that storage room without mercy until they broke him. There was no car accident. Just a fight to stop them. Stop evil. And I lost.

I sit there, mind scrambling, trying to come up with a way to get my mouth to talk fast and smooth, form the first words that'll lead down that path. Maybe if I was wearing my helmet, I could get the words out.

“Cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-Coach?” I start. Tom and Mike have already stepped out of the office. Scott waits, though, like he knows what I'm thinking.

“You coming, Brodsky?” Scott asks, interrupting me. I glare up at him, then glance desperately at Coach, hoping he'll read my eyes, see I need to confess. “You heard the man,” Scott drones like a radio ad, filling every moment with his voice. “He said get out of here and leave him alone.” Forced laughter pummels the small office space, leaving no room for my voice. “We've given him a big enough headache for one day. He's sprouting gray hair even as we speak.”

“You're a real comedian, Scott.” Coach grunts, then waves the back of his hand at us. “Yeah, all of you, git!”

I feel my chance evaporate while Scott stands in the doorway, ready to keep talking, if need be, waiting for me to exit. When I do, he pulls Coach's door shut behind us. I move to get away from him but he stays in step with me.

“You better rest that head of yours, Kurt. We need you ready for Friday. Ashville won't be easy. They got a monster defensive linebacker, Jackson. He's going to try and eat all of us for dinner. We need to pull together, not let anything get between us.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There's no going solo on this team, Kurt. We got your back. You need to have ours.”

“I've guh-guh-guh-got to guh-guh-go.”

“You want a lift?” he asks. “I'm giving Tommy and Mike a ride home.”

“No.”

“All right.” Scott shrugs, then dusts my shoulder like I might have dandruff, which I don't. “Now don't go making up stories about us, okay?”

I'm unable to speak, betrayed by my mouth, again, hating myself, hating my weakness, more than Scott, wishing Lamar, just for ten seconds, could come back and speak for me.

“'Cause you know me, Mike, and Tommy would never, ever lie to Coach or anyone else about what happened,” Scott murmurs in my ear. “Tommy's car got banged up when all of us went drinking. Coach is too smart to trick. He saw right through us. Saw that we tried to cover up a car accident by pretending we had the flu.”

Then Scott walks away, leaving me stalled there like a fool.

T
hat first Monday back in school since Ronnie's suicide, I've just sparked the Bunson burner in first period chemistry—pretty much the coolest part of the class is getting to play with fire—when the PA system's angry squawk interrupts my brilliant new scheme to melt Studblatz's face off.

“Please send Danny Meehan to the principal's office.”

The students around me titter in unison.

Any student unlucky enough to get called in front of Oregrove's school secretary will meet a stout old woman with an Aqua Net hair dome and puffy arms swollen up like boiled bratwurst. Mrs. Doyle harrumphs at you in greeting because she knows if you're standing before her, chances are you've been up to no good. Fisher brags that he's called down so often Mrs. Doyle now lets him address her by her first name.

Today Mrs. Doyle comes around her desk and welcomes me like a long-lost relative from the old country. She lays cocktail-sausage fingers on my forearm and pulls me into her pork-roast bosom.

“Oh, Danny, such terrible news. Such terrible, terrible news,” Mrs. Doyle repeats, hugging me tightly. She stuffs me into her chest, blocking out all sound and light. She releases me and then leans down to look me in the eye as she cups my neck. Tan makeup flakes her downy jowls and fills the crinkles around her eyes and mouth like flour, like she just baked a flesh-cake. “Principal Donovan and Coach Nelson wanted to meet privately with the team and see how you're all handling things since the announcement last week.”

Mrs. Doyle leads me into Principal Donovan's office and then into a side room I've never had the honor of entering. The room contains a large circular conference table. My teammates are seated around it like morose hobbits. Coach Nelson and Principal Donovan talk in low voices at the far corner while sipping out of “I'd Rather Be Fishing” and “Is It Friday Yet?” coffee mugs. Fisher glances up at me and for once he isn't smiling. Gradley and Menderson doodle in their notebooks while Paul tattoos the side of his sneakers with a ballpoint pen. Steve picks out thread at the knees of his jeans. Pete Delray chews off a hangnail while training his eyes on the door as if waiting patiently to be excused. Only Bruce sits stone still, head dipping forward from the neck, awaiting a hangman's noose. The rest of the guys all seem to be pretty focused on their laps.

“You okay, kiddo?” Mrs. Doyle asks Fisher, laying a hand on his shoulder as she stands behind him.

“Yeah, Maude, thanks.” Fisher reaches up and squeezes her hand as if she were his grandma.
Maybe detention isn't so bad,
I think.

After Mrs. Doyle exits, Principal Donovan begins his spiel talking about “tragic event” this and “sudden loss of life” that and how sad we all must be feeling. His speech sounds practiced and fake and I tune him out. Instead, I concentrate on Bruce and his glazed, vacant eyes sunk into bruised sockets. A squadron of pimples sets up camp in the hollows of his cheeks while an oily nose shines with the cold fluorescence of the room. Greasy bed-head mats thick, black hair against his left ear while the right side swells up into a frozen tsunami. Basically, Bruce looks like shit. He looks like he's been awake for the last four days, hasn't showered or slept, and is surviving on Coke, chocolate bars, and corn chips.

Like me.

Principal Donovan punctuates his speech with loud slurps of coffee. He finishes with something about “persevering in the face of adversity” and “continuing to be strong.” I glance at Fisher, half expecting and half hoping he'll mimic Principal Donovan under his breath, but Fisher just sits there, bobbing his head in agreement with the principal's words.

“Guys, this is a hard, hard thing to grasp,” Coach Nelson takes up where Principal Donovan leaves off. “I encourage any and all of you to say something at the service, to let others know how special Ronnie was and how much we'll all miss him. In fact, I think that might be something we'd like to do now, in this room, among friends and teammates.”

I look around the table at my teammates, knowing none of them—none of us—knew much about Ronnie except what he brought into the gym. He was a freshman and pretty shy and into reading quietly by himself. He'd worked hard, a lot harder than Pete, a lot harder than Fisher, and never complained about doing strength sets. He could've made a good gymnast in a couple years but who really cares about any of that stuff? He's dead. I mean, he's dead! That won't change tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. He's dead. Forever. No one knows him because his chance to show us is gone. And if it was me dead in his place, people would have the same problem trying to say anything special about me. What have I shown the world? Maybe Ronnie was a good friend to someone out there. His future, his promise, his potential had been taken away.