One Shot Away (19 page)

With the arm bar locked in place, Hunter works an Excalibur. Diggy knows the move. He's executed it a hundred times. The arm becomes the sword, Excalibur. The idea is to drive the arm across your opponent's back until he flips over on his stomach. Diggy can only suffer the pain, experience the burn, the humiliation. He fights, but knows Hunter will never release his arm. Instead, Hunter pushes it higher and higher, so that it feels like his arm will pop like a cork from a bottle. If Diggy fights, he could rip his arm from the socket. He's trapped. Hunter ratchets the torque on his arm. “The move is all physics,” Greco explained. “There's only one place to go—on your back.” Hunter is forcing Diggy over. Get pinned and the team loses. But Diggy can't stand the pain. In an instant, the ceiling light is in his eyes. A glaring, ugly white sun. Diggy's on his back.

“Bridge,” yells Greco. “Bridge!”

Diggy's neck and feet brace, lifting his body off the mat, holding his shoulders inches away from a pin. The referee is on his knees, waving his open palm. The buzzer could save him. But how long can he hold this bridge?

The gym grows quiet. No one, not Randy or Greco, screams directions, because there's no way out. The clock ticks down from 50 seconds. Diggy shoves his fingers into Hunter's face. He gives Diggy a quick jerk and scoops his head with his arm, taking any hope away. Diggy rocks his shoulder blades. The seconds tick. 45, 44, 43 … The referee watches for that moment when his shoulders are in contact with the mat for two full seconds.

Randy's standard speech goes through Diggy's mind. “You may occasionally lose, but you don't get pinned. A pin is a complete breakdown in discipline and will. It means that you have lost your concentration, your desire, and given up on your technique.”

40, 39, 38 … Diggy squirms from side to side. Hunter is in good position. Chest on chest. On his toes. Head up. The fans in the visitor's bleachers stamp their feet on the wooden planks and chant, “Hunter, Hunter.”

The clock's upside down seconds fall, 35, 34, 33. Diggy thinks of Trevor's dog in the pool house. It's time to return him.
I shouldn't have taken him
.

The referee slaps the mat and blows his whistle. Pinned. The audience roars, hoots, and claps. The scoreboard moves the Colts up 6 points. Hunter stands and pumps his fist. Diggy scrambles to his feet. He shakes Hunter's hand. The referee raises Hunter's arm by the wrist.

Diggy pushes through his teammates toward the locker room.

Randy blocks his way. “Pinned! Pinned! You could have just lost,” he fumes. “You had to get pinned like a cheerleader on prom night!” He shakes his head. “Fer Christ's sake, Diggy, come on!”

The guys hear him, everyone hears him.

Diggy shoves Randy aside. He hurls his headgear into the locker room and peels the straps of his singlet off his shoulders. Hunter overpowered him. First Crow and now Hunter.

“What was that?”

Diggy recognizes the voice and looks up. Nick is smiling under the brim of a beat-up Mets hat. He's wearing an untucked buttondown shirt, threadbare around the collar. The brothers hug hard. Nick feels like concrete, still larger than me, thinks Diggy. He smells like Diggy remembers. Aftershave and the woods. “What the hell was that?” asks Nick.

“That was me at one-seventy.”

“I don't think you went balls out. I mean, who was that on the mat?”

Diggy can't answer.

“You've got to go back to basics.”

“What are you doing home?” asks Diggy.

“It's a surprise. I came to see you wrestle.”

“To see me get slaughtered.”

“Don't worry. It's one match.” He grabs Diggy around the shoulders.

“Does Randy know you're home?” he asks.

“Sure, he knows,” says Nick.

“You gained weight.”

“I'm lifting, even with a bad back.”

They sit on a bench. The crowd in the gym continues to roar. “You don't know how good it is to see you,” says Diggy. “Randy's out of control.” He thinks of stealing the dog.
I'm out of control too
, he'd like to say.

T
HE GAS LAMPS IN FRONT OF
R
OXANNE'S HOUSE REFLECT OFF
the snow. Jimmy cuts across her lawn, then up her driveway, past her Volvo, her father's Mercedes, her mother's Pathfinder, and climbs the stoop. He needs to see her, hear her voice, and hold her. At practice today he waited for the guys to say something about his loss. No one said a word. Everyone was mumbling that Diggy shouldn't have been pinned. Jimmy felt for him, but what could he say?

Greco met Jimmy's eye and said, “That's your last loss, you got that?”

Jimmy nodded.

It had to be the last loss. He couldn't recover from two losses at the beginning of the season. He could kiss his hopes of a scholarship good-bye. Diggy is the only one who knows what's really bothering him. And Jimmy has to keep it that way. If word spread, he'd be looked at like, what? A criminal?

Mr. Sweetapple holds the doorknob. His wide belly pulls his shirt stiff at the shoulders. He removes his glasses.

“Hi, could I talk to Roxanne?” Jimmy enters their foyer. Instead of his mother's supermarket calendar and half-dead houseplants, the Sweetapples have real paintings on the walls and a tree with tiny yellow fruit growing in a ceramic pot at the foot of their oak staircase.

“Jimmy!” Roxanne leans over the rail on the second-floor landing. She hurries down the staircase in sweatpants turned down low on her hips, a tight shirt, and suede mid-calf boots. Her large green eyes shine.

“Jim, let's talk for a moment.” Mr. Sweetapple's voice is deep and sure of itself, like one of the Republican fatheads on talk radio that Jimmy's mother listens to when she irons.

“Dad, Jimmy came over here to see me,” says Roxanne.

Roxanne's mother comes in drying her hands on a dish towel.

“Hello, Mrs. Sweetapple,” he says.

“Hello, Jimmy.” Her words sound like ice water.

“Why can't we talk? Right, Jim?” Mr. Sweetapple cracks a smile.

Jimmy sits on the edge of their couch. He's wondering if he's being set up for an ambush. Maybe her father had a camera planted in his office.

“Dad, could I at least talk to Jimmy first?” asks Roxanne.

“We're all here, we might as well talk.” He sits opposite Jimmy wearing this phony smirk. Between them is a coffee table with a cut-glass dish filled with clear marbles with ice-blue centers.

“Dad!” says Roxanne loudly.

“For once, no,” he snaps. “I'm the one who is going to be paying over forty-three thousand dollars a year in tuition.”

“That's not fair,” she says.

“Jim, Roxanne is turning eighteen next month,” says Mrs. Sweetapple. “She's on the way to college in the fall.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” asks Roxanne.

“It means exactly what your mother said,” says Mr. Sweetapple.

“That's not an answer.” Roxanne throws up her hands in protest.

“Your mother's saying that you need to concentrate on school and studying.”

“No, she's not,” argues Roxanne. “You're both being horrible.”

Jimmy holds his breath.

Mr. Sweetapple glances at his wife. “Jimmy, I received a telephone call from the police department.” He arches his eyebrows. “They told me you and your father were under investigation.”

For a second, it feels like he's having a heart attack. He lowers his head.

“And,” he continues, “the police were over at your house when Roxanne was present.”

“Jimmy, I didn't tell anyone!” Roxanne clenches her teeth. “I swear.”

“I'd like to hear Jim's explanation,” says Mr. Sweetapple. “Go ahead son, you should tell us. I just want to get to the bottom of it.”

“It's getting taken care of,” says Jimmy.

“What is getting taken care of?” Mr. Sweetapple levels his gaze.

“You don't have to answer him,” says Roxanne.

“It's something with my father.”

“He's in trouble?” asks Mrs. Sweetapple softly.

“He could be. I don't know.” Jimmy lowers his eyes. How can he tell them? They wouldn't understand. But the truth is, he'd like to tell them. He'd like them to be on his side.

“You must know more than that,” says Mr. Sweetapple.

“Mom,” pleads Roxanne, wiping a tear from her eye. “Make him stop.”

“It's all right,” says Jimmy. “It's something that happened at my father's job. He's in construction and … some building materials went missing. It happens a lot.”

“Jimmy, you don't have to tell them.” Tears run down her cheeks.

“Roxanne, it's all right,” says Jimmy. “Really.”

“And what's your part in all this?” asks Mr. Sweetapple.

“Nothing,” says Jimmy.

“Nothing?” Mr. Sweetapple waits.

“My father has hired a lawyer. The whole thing is getting taken care of.”

“Did you know that Roxanne was accepted to Villanova University? She's going bio-medical,” he says.

“Premed,” adds Mrs. Sweetapple.

Jimmy looks at Roxanne's face. It's burning red.

“She found out last week,” says her mother. “So you can see she has a lot on the line here.”

Why didn't she tell him?

“Roxanne's mother and I made sure our daughter had a plan, and we don't want”—he searches for the right word—“complications. No one's saying you're not a good-hearted person. We're not saying that. It's just that …” He looks at his wife.

Jimmy stands. “I've got to get going.” His voice is flat. He keeps his eyes to the gleaming floor. “My mother has supper waiting.”

Roxanne follows him to the front door, then to the stoop. She closes the door. “Jimmy, I'm sorry,” she says. “He's a control freak and I hate him.” She touches his shoulder. “An obnoxious jerk. He started on me, like he started on you.” She moves her hand to his cheek.

“You could have told me about getting into Villanova.”

“I thought it might be better to wait. I didn't want to make you feel bad.”

“Feel bad?” He can hardly believe it. “Like I'm
not
going to college?”

“That's not what I meant. Look, I was going to tell you. You're my prom date, remember?” Her face brightens. “I just thought I'd wait until you get accepted to—”

“East Stroudsburg.” He shuts his eyes and kisses her. “You still want me to call you?”

“Of course. My parents can't stop me from seeing you.”

He leaves her on the stoop and takes long strides down her driveway, then up her block. He knows if the police called Roxanne's father, Coach Greco could be next.

T
HEY ARE CHILLING IN
N
ICK'S BEDROOM
—N
ICK ON HIS BED,
Diggy on the floor with his hands behind his neck. Diggy wonders what Nick would say if he told him about Whizzer, still locked in the pool house.

“Seems like a waste,” says Nick.

“What does?”

“The trophies, the medals, all of it. I'd like to put them in the attic.” Around the room, trophies gleam with chrome or gold-colored wrestlers in their stances, or with a hand raised in victory.

“Randy would have your ass,” says Diggy.

Nick grabs a trophy and snaps the head off a plastic wrestler. He flicks it at Diggy. “Heads up.”

Diggy catches it and throws it back. Nick crawls across the bed and topples onto Diggy. They turn over in slow motion, each trying to execute a wrestling move. Nick has his old strength. “You've got to get into a zone,” he says. “Your last match you looked like spaghetti.”

“What are you talking about?”

“All over the place. My college coach used to say that.”

They roll across the carpet, folding their arms and legs into wrestling moves, half speed, half strength, until Nick bangs his head into the wall. Diggy laughs. Nick rubs his head. His brown eyes smile.

“Remember our old room in the old house?” asks Diggy.

“You mean the Legos?”

Diggy's eyes shine. Their room was covered, one side to the other, with Lego building blocks. They could barely walk without demolishing a pirate's ship, a castle, or a rocket launch. There were tiny knights on Lego horses in Lego castles. Lego spaceships with control towers.

“Remember Mom?” asks Nick. “Every time we finished constructing, she'd tell us to clean it up. Then we'd have to start over.”

“Starting over was the best part,” says Diggy.