Leverage (23 page)

“Last year,” Pete Delray, our team's other freshman, begins quietly.

“Go on,” Coach encourages.

Pete starts describing how he and Ronnie dressed as Aquaman and Superman for Halloween a few years earlier but some big kids jumped them and duct-taped them to a tree. Left them there all night. What kind of story is that? It's basically a version of what happened to him in the storage room. Did he have “victim” stamped on his forehead? Why did everyone pick on him? He suffered enough. Without realizing it, I've got my hands over my ears and I'm humming to block out the rest of Pete's memory. Gradley punches me in the arm to shut me up. When I unblock my ears, Pete's stopped talking, but I still want to smack him in the mouth for even bringing up the Halloween duct taping.

“He was a gentle soul,” Coach says, and I can tell he isn't very good at this type of thing because he pats Pete on the head like he's dribbling a basketball. “Sometimes others take advantage of that. But I don't think we should dwell on that part of him.”

He was weak,
I think.
ALL people will ALWAYS take advantage of that. Not just sometimes. Scott, Tom, and Mike smelled his weakness. Took advantage. Never be weak or gentle. You have to be strong to ward them off. Big and strong. Like Kurt!

“I killed him.” Bruce speaks so quietly it's barely above a whisper. “It's my fault.”

“No, son,” Principal Donovan corrects him as he lifts his coffee mug to his lips. “No one in this room killed that boy. That's preposterous.”
Slurrrrp
.

“Feelings of guilt are normal,” Coach adds. “I keep asking myself why I didn't spot signs in Ronnie sooner, why I didn't see what he must've been going through.”

Because you didn't stay to lock up the gym!
I fume.
You left us there, unprotected!
Anger overtakes me as the meeting continues. I feel no sadness, not even fear, just a white-hot rage at everyone around me.

“I've been racking my brain over the whole thing,” Coach continues. “But I . . . and you . . . and all of us must understand that Ronnie's death was not our fault. It's not your fault, Bruce.”

Wrong!
I think. Bruce started the whole thing the day he stood up for that stupid cross-country runner. Why'd he have to protect that dork? He wasn't on our team. He wasn't one of us. Let his stupid, skinny, cross-country teammates protect him.

“Funeral is set for tomorrow at noon,” Coach tells us. “You've all got excused absences to attend.”

By the time the meeting finishes, it's the beginning of third period. I don't feel much like going to algebra, so I skip. Schoolwork isn't really a high priority at the moment. I keep thinking about how easily Ronnie and I could've switched places that day and now he's dead. It could be me dead and not him. Just dumb luck separates us.

Those three still roam the hallways, laughing and shoving others around like nothing's happened. They know they're invincible. They can do anything they want. How am I supposed to go back into that gym? How am I supposed to ever go near that storage room again? Those three came in and they destroyed the one good place in school.

I skip practice that Monday. I find out later, so did Bruce.

C
rud Bucket first said Lamar's death was an accident. Then he tried blaming me. Everyone believed him in the beginning, just like he threatened they would. That's why Sergeant Schmidt, the same officer who pulled me out of Meadow's House soon as the ambulance left with Lamar's body, escorted me to his funeral with a firm grip on my elbow while I remained “under suspicion.” Because of the hype, Lamar's funeral was packed with people neither of us ever met. TV news vans with roof-mounted satellite dishes double-parked in front of the church steps. It took a real pretty coffin, but Lamar finally got people's attention.

So did I.

Men with big bellies aimed shoulder-mounted cameras and fired blinding beams of light at me. As I went up the church steps, my legs tangled with Sergeant Schmidt's and he yanked on me like a dog on a leash to keep the both of us from tumbling.

Orphan Killer Attends Victim's Funeral
.

That was the headline sticks most in my brain, but there were others almost as juicy.

After the service, Sergeant Schmidt escorted me over to my next residence—the Lake Ondarro Residence—a boys' reformatory where the windows had gates on them; large, unfriendly men in green uniforms patrolled the hallways; and at night our room doors locked us in from the outside. Sergeant Schmidt visited me once a week, bringing sprinkled doughnut holes to share with the other boys on my floor to help me make friends. I was the youngest one in there and under special protection. Sergeant Schmidt told me he believed in me, knew I didn't do nothing wrong. By then Crud Bucket was on trial and Sergeant Schmidt had driven me twice to a courtroom to testify what all Crud Bucket had done to me and Lamar. I used to hope maybe Sergeant Schmidt would take me home, let me live with his family. They transferred me to my next group home after three months, one without gates and guards. Sergeant Schmidt had stopped coming around by then. When they finally found Crud Bucket guilty, the news-people lost interest. No one wrote a headline stating
Orphan Kid Didn't Do It!

Ronnie Gunderson's funeral ain't much by Lamar's standards. Oregrove has almost three thousand students but I see, maybe, forty people at the service. That morning, when I go to the school office to get an excused absence, the same secretary that dumped me in algebra narrows her eyes at me, sure I'm using Ronnie's funeral as an easy chance to skip class. Eventually, she hands over the pass, speaking extra slow and loud as she gives me directions to the church. I start to understand her suspicion when I see all the empty pews. Suicide's not okay, I guess.

Short boys in suits—the gymnastics team—sit up front just behind what must be Ronnie's family. I stay in the back, unsure if I should even be here. The long scar tightens like a zipper up my cheek. Sitting alone at a funeral gives you lots of time to think. The thing I keep thinking is that Scott would've never bothered Ronnie, never even thought to come to the gym, if I had kept my mouth shut about meeting the gymnasts there that Saturday.

A line forms to file past Ronnie's open casket. I'm at the end of it, trying hard not to scratch the bubble skin on my jaw. The closer I get, the more it prickles. Inside the casket, someone's posed a wax-museum boy to make him look like he's asleep. Just like at Lamar's funeral. It's stupid. They aren't fooling anyone.

“I didn't know they'd follow me,”
I whisper to him.
“Didn't know you were hurting that bad. I swear. I didn't. I'm sorry
.
”

Scott should be here. Mike and Tom, too. I'd shove them in the coffin with Ronnie, shut the lid and bury them, ask them how they felt now.

“Sorry,”
I whisper again. I go back down the aisle, fiddling with the funeral program I rolled up into a tube during the minister's speech. I drum it against my thigh, let my hair fall over my face, and watch my shoes until I reach my seat. I see little Danny walking up the aisle toward me and stopping at my row. He signals me to slide over for him. The two of us sit quietly while an old woman with a cane stiffly hobbles up to the podium. She speaks but the microphone doesn't reach down to her mouth, so it sounds like soft owl hoots. Her free hand comes up to her old face and covers her eyes as her shoulders shake with grief.

Danny reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out my lost phone and hands it to me. “I meant to return this to you sooner, but . . .” Danny, speaking quietly, lets his voice trail off.

“Thu-thanks.”

A recording of “Amazing Grace” begins playing and we both sit listening to the hymn.

“It's good you came,” Danny says, speaking only after the song finishes. “What you did, how you tried to protect Ronnie,” he says, “you should be proud. I wish ... I wish I had done something like that, at least tried.”

Danny starts nibbling his lower lip while fiddling with the Bible in the pew pocket at our knees. “I was there,” he says out the side of his mouth while his face aims up toward the big stained-glass window bleeding deep violets, blues, and reds. “In the corner, behind the mat, scared they'd do the same to me if they found me,” he says. He switches lips, biting his top one now, as he starts sniffling. “I didn't do anything to stop them. I didn't even try.” Danny wipes at his nose with the back of his wrist. “But you came in and you didn't even think twice.”

“You suh-suh-saw what happened?” I ask, astonished. “All of it?”

“Yeah,” he says. “What they did to him . . . they deserved everything you gave 'em. And more. I wish they were dead, right now. Up in that casket. I'd spit on them and laugh. I swear I would. I swear.” His nose is leaking good and he wipes it again with his wrist, then pulls the Bible out of the pew pocket and starts flipping through it. He dips his head and a teardrop or snot drop hits the thin paper, staining the Bible page before Danny can turn it. “Ronnie didn't even pee on their uniforms. He didn't water-balloon them. He wasn't part of Coach's trick in the weight room. He didn't do any of it. But even if he did ... what those guys did back ... was. . . .” Danny brings the cuff of his suit coat up to his face and wipes quickly across his nose and eyes.

“They thuh-thuh-think it's only muh-me that knows,” I say. “They thuh-thuh-think they guh-got away with it.”
And they have,
I tell myself. After ten days, I haven't said anything to anyone. Even worse, I'm still their teammate, afraid to tell the truth and take them on. Afraid I'll somehow get blamed for things all over again. I'm a worse coward than Danny.

“I wish I was big as you,” Danny says, putting the Bible back in the pew pocket and pulling out the hymnbook, flipping through its well-worn pages. “I'd get them.”

“It's not suh-suh-so easy.”

“It is. You proved it.”

“How's Buh-buh-buh-Bruce?” I ask, changing the subject.

“Awful,” Danny reports. “He's convinced he caused it. Keeps saying it's all his fault it got this far.” Danny flips through more pages. “Actually, that's kinda true.”

The service ends and people are filing past us up the aisle to leave. I glance over at Danny and do a double take. Tina, the goth girl, is passing our row, offering me a small wave. Oddly enough, she dresses less goth for the funeral. The dyed-black hair with blond roots is combed back into a bun and the piercings in her eyebrows, nose, and lips are gone. The ones in her ears are still there. With the raccoon eyeliner scrubbed off, she almost looks alive. And kind of pretty.

“Hi.”
She mouths the word at me as she and her friend, the skinny girl with the big eyes and wavy hair, keep moving up the aisle to the exit.

“Make sure you sign the guest book so Ronnie's parents know you came,” Danny says to me as he stands up to leave. He takes a step and stops, turns back to me. In a lowered voice he says, “I won't forget what you did. You did your best to save Ronnie.” Then he leaves to join his teammates.

Even though I feel miserable and mostly like a fake, what Danny says means something to me. I sit in the pew, trying to take comfort in his words. I want to believe I helped, but what keeps returning is how I pushed Ronnie away when he came to Patti's house. The sight of him turned my stomach and I wanted nothing to do with him. I was grateful the moment he left my room and I never wanted to think about him or what happened ever again. There is no getting around any of that.

When I finally get up to leave, I find the minister in the aisle waiting for me. He holds a Bible in front of him, resting it on top of his left hand as if it's a serving tray.

“Excuse me,” he says. “We haven't met, but I believe I know you.” I'm waiting for him to see right through me and tell me I'm going to hell for abandoning Ronnie in his time of need.

“Were you a close friend of Ronnie's?” he asks.

I shake my head no.

“Well, that makes it an even finer thing that you came today and blessed the family with your presence and support.” With his free hand, he reaches out to shake. I wait for him to collapse when we make contact, like he's just touched the devil himself.

“Pastor Manning,” he says, not collapsing. “And your name is?”

“Kuh-kuh-Kurt,” I say.

“Kurt Brodsky?” he asks. “Oregrove's fullback?”

“Yesssssssir.”

“You're a fine athlete,” he chirps, his face lighting up. “It's a real ray of hope seeing you here on such a sad day. I'm sure it means a lot to Ronnie's loved ones that you showed up to offer your condolences.”

I shrug my shoulders, not really sure what to say.

“I'm one of the Knights' loudest fans in the stands. A certified ‘Bleacher Creature.' ”

“Thuh-thuh-thanks.”

“After a tragedy such as this, the community thirsts for events that help reaffirm their lives, reaffirm the goodness in others, reaffirm that we are all working toward a higher purpose. You and your teammates offer all of us just such a hope. I pray for your continued success. You know, I can't think of a more soothing balm for our community than a championship, something for all of us to rally around. It would provide such magnificent healing. May God grant you and your teammates glory.”

I scrunch the edges of my coat with sweaty palms and shift my feet.

“And may I add that it would be an honor to have one of Oregrove's stars attend our services on a regular basis. I pray we see you again in here.”