Truth & Dare (28 page)

I want to give Kenny a lick. If he licks my lollipop then it’s
kind of like swapping spit. And swapping spit is just like kissing. And I want to kiss Kenny so badly.

“You should give me a lick ’cause I like orange best,” Kenny says.

I can feel Shoshanna nearly losing it next to me.

“If you give him a lick, Donna, then we are no longer friends,” Shoshanna warns me.

Now I am looking at Kenny right in the eyes and he’s looking back at me. We are locked in a moment together that I don’t ever want to end.

I give him my Tootsie Pop.

Kenny licks it a bunch of times and then hands it back to me.

Shoshanna gets up and puts her hands on her hips.

Eddie and Jonathan are trying not to laugh, but they are. They are laughing at Shoshanna.

Shoshanna knows it, too.

“Brooke, come on,” she says.

I notice that Brooke is still sitting down next to me. She looks stunned. Like she doesn’t know what’s going on.

“BROOKE!” Shoshanna yells.

That gets her attention and Brooke stands up.

“Donna, don’t ever talk to us again,” Shoshanna says.

She turns her back on me and Brooke follows her, trailing behind a little, like she doesn’t want to leave the courts but wants to stay with us. Brooke even looks back wistfully when they leave the school grounds.

I’m surprised that I’m not running after them begging for forgiveness.

I’m surprised that I’m still sitting by the fence.

It dawns on me that the price for one moment of being the center of Kenny Kamil’s attention is losing my only friends.

Eddie, Jonathan, and Kenny are all laughing. I want to cry
because I think they are laughing at me. Because I figure that they know like I do, for sure, that I am the biggest loser in seventh grade.

“I heard she let Danny McGowan finger her this summer in the pool,” Eddie says.

“She’s a slut,” Jonathan says.

“Hey, Donna,” Kenny says. “You never said what kind of underwear you wear?”

I look up at him.

They’re not laughing at me at all.

“Bikini,” I say and then I stick my hand in my jeans and pull out a piece of my cotton pink underwear for him to see.

“Nice,” he says. “Okay. I gotta roll. I’ve got karate.” Then he makes his hand into a fist and knocks it with Eddie and Jonathan’s.

Then he turns to me and gives me his fist to knock with.

“See you, tomorrow,
Pinky
,” he says.

I make my hand a fist and knock knuckles with him.

“Right on,” he says and then he leaves the playground and walks home.

Jonathan and Eddie go back to the court and keep playing basketball and they don’t seem to mind at all that I am still hanging out with them.

I suck the rest of my lollipop and contemplate my fate.

I know one thing for sure.

Orange is definitely my new favourite flavor.

T
HAT WAS THE
kindest thing Saul could say about anyone, that he was a real team man. “Jonathan,” he used to tell his son over their bacon, eggs, sausage, and beans, “a striker’s not put up front for personal glory. You’ll only end up a star player if you keep your mind on playing for the good of the team. Them as tries to be first shall be last and vice versa.”

Jon just kept on eating his toast.

Saul King believed in fuel, first thing in the morning, when there was plenty of time ahead to burn it up. “Breakfast like a legend, dine like a journeyman, and sup like a sub.” That made him cackle with laughter.

The boy was just sixteen and nearly six feet tall. Headers were his strong point. When the ball sailed down to him he could feel his neck tighten and every bit of force in his body surge toward the hard plate at the front of his skull. The crucial thing was to be ready for the ball, to meet all its force and slam it back into the sky. On good days Jon felt hard and shiny as a mirror. He knew that if the planet Mars came falling down, he could meet it head-on and rocket it into the next galaxy.

But by now he had learned to pay no attention to his dad before a game. If Jon let the warnings get through to him, he couldn’t swallow. If he didn’t eat enough, he found himself knackered at halftime. If he flagged, he missed passes, and the
goalmouth seemed ten miles away. If the team lost, his dad took it personally and harder than a coach should. Once when Jon fluffed a penalty kick, Saul hadn’t spoken a word to him for a week.

“Nerves of steel,” the graying man had said finally, as they sat at opposite ends of the table waiting for Mum to bring a fresh pot of tea.

Jon’s fork clinked against his plate. “What’s that, Dad?”

“If a striker hasn’t got nerves of steel when they’re needed, he’s no right to take a penalty kick at all.”

His son listened and learned. As if he had a choice.

The lads were already having a kickabout on the pitch when the Kings drove up. Saul got out; the car door in his hand as he watched the lads over his shoulder. “Well, well,” he said, “who have we here?”

One unfamiliar coppery head, breaking away from the pack.

“Oh, yeah, Shaq said he might bring someone from school,” Jon mentioned, hauling his kit bag out of the back seat.

“Now there’s a pair of legs,” breathed Saul. He and his son stool a foot apart, watching the new boy run. He was runt-sized, but he moved as sleekly as cream.

“A winger?” hazarded Jon.

“We’ll see,” said Saul mysteriously.

The new boy, Davy, turned out to be seventeen. Up close he didn’t look so short; his limbs were narrow but pure muscle. The youngest of eight—one of those big rackety Irish families. His face went red as strawberries when he ran, but he never seemed to get out of breath—his laugh got a bit hoarser, that was all. He was a cunning bastard on the pitch. Beside him Jon felt lumbering and huge.

In the dressing room after that first practice, Davy played his guitar as if it were electric. He sang along, confidently raucous.

“Best put a bit of meat on those bones,” observed Saul, and
loaded Davy down with five bags of high-protein glucose supplement. It turned out Davy lived just down the road from the Kings, so Saul insisted on giving him a lift home.

After a fortnight Davy was pronounced a real team man. He was to be the new striker. Jon was switched to midfield. “It’s not a demotion,” his father repeated. “This is a team, not a bloody corporation.”

Jon looked out the car window and thought about playing on a team where the coach wouldn’t be his dad, wouldn’t shove him from one position to another just to prove a point about not giving his son any special treatment. Jon visualized himself becoming a legend in some sport Saul King had never tried, could hardly spell, even—badminton, maybe, or curling, or luge.

The thing was, though, all he’d ever wanted to play was football.

Jon was over the worst of his sulks by the next training session. He had every reason to hate this Davy, but it didn’t happen. The boy was a born striker, Jon had to admit. It would have been nonsense to put him anywhere else on the pitch. He wasn’t a great header of the ball, but he was magic with his feet.

And midfield had its own satisfactions, Jon found. “You lot are the big cog in the team’s engine,” Saul told them solemnly. “You slack off for a second, the game will fall apart.”

Pounding along with the ball at his feet, Jon saw Davy out of the corner of his eye. “With ya!” Jon passed the ball sideways, and Davy took it without even looking. Only after he’d scored did he spin round to give Jon his grin.

“Your dad’s a laugh. I mean,” Davy corrected himself in the shower, “he’s all right. He knows a lot.”

“Not half as much as he pretends,” said Jon, soaping his armpits.

“Is it true what Shaq says about him, that he got to the semifinal of the 1979 FA cup?”

Jon nodded, sheepish.

Davy, under the stream of water, sprayed like a whale. “Fuck. What did he play?”

“Keeper.” On impulse Jon stepped closer to Davy’s ear. “Dad’d flay me if he knew I told you this. He’s never forgiven himself.”

“What? What?” The boy’s eyes were green as scales.

“He flapped at it. The winning goal.”

Davy sucked his breath in. It made a clean musical note.

In October the days shortened. One foul wet afternoon, Saul made them run fifteen laps of the field before they even started, and by the time he finally blew the whistle, they had mud to their waists and it was too dark to see the ball. Naz tripped over Jon’s foot and landed on his elbow. “You big ape,” moaned Naz. “You lanky fucking ape-man.”

The other lads thought this was very funny.

“You can’t let them get to you,” Davy said casually,
afterwards
, while they were cooling down.

“Who?” said Jon, as if from a million miles away.

Davy shrugged. “Any of them. Anyone who calls you names.”

Jon chewed his lip.

“I’ve got five big brothers,” Davy added, when he and Jon were sitting in the back of the car, counting their bruises. “And my sisters are even worse. They’ve always taken the piss out of me. One of them called me the Little Stain till she got married.”

A grin loosened Jon’s jaw. He stared out the window at his father, who was collecting the training cones.

“Just ignore the lads and remember what a good player you are.”

“Maybe I’m not,” said Jon, looking down into Davy’s red hair.

“Maybe you’re what?” Davy let out a yelp of laughter. “
Jon-boy
, you’re the best. You’ve got a perfect footballing brain, and you’re a sweet crosser of the ball.”

Jon was glad of the twilight then. Blood sang in his cheeks.

Davy came round every couple of days now. Mrs. King often asked him to stop for dinner. “That boy’s not getting enough at home,” she observed darkly. But Jon thought Davy looked all right as he was.

Jon’s little sister, Michaela, sat beside Davy at the table whenever she got the chance, even if she did call him
Short-arse.
She was only fifteen, but she looked old enough. As she was always reminding Jon, girls mature two years faster.

Davy ended up bringing Michaela to the local Halloween Club Night and Jon brought her friend Tasmin. While the girls were queuing up for chips afterwards, Davy followed Jon into the loos. Afterward, Jon could never be sure who’d started messing round; it just happened. It was sort of a joke and sort of a dare. In a white stall with a long crack in the wall they unzipped their jeans. They kept looking down; they didn’t meet each other’s eyes.

It was over in two minutes. It took longer to stop laughing.

When they got back to the girls, the chips had gone cold and Michaela wanted to know what was so funny. Jon couldn’t think of anything, but Davy said it was just an old Princess Diana joke. Tasmin said in that case they could keep it to themselves because she didn’t think it was very nice to muck around with the dead.

After Halloween, some people said Davy was going out with Michaela. Jon didn’t know what that meant exactly. He didn’t
think Davy and Michaela did stuff together, anyway. He didn’t know what to think.

Saul King expressed no opinion on the matter. But he’d started laying into Davy at practice. “Mind your back! Mind your house!” he bawled, hoarse, “Keep them under pressure!”

Davy said nothing, just bounced around, grinning as usual.

“Where’s your bleeding eyes?”

“Somebody’s not the golden boy anymore,” commented Peter to Naz under his breath.

Afterwards, Saul said he had errands to do in town, so Jon and Davy could walk home for once.

“Your dad’s being a bit of a prick these days,” commented Davy as they turned the first corner.

“Don’t call him that,” said Jon.

“But he is one.”

Jon shook his heavy head. “Don’t call him my dad, I mean.”

“Oh.”

The silence stretched between them. “It’s like the honey jar,” said Jon.

Davy glanced up. His lashes were like a cat’s.

“I was about three, right, and I wanted a bit of honey from the jar, but he said no. He didn’t put the jar away or
anything
—just said no and left it sitting there about six inches in front of me. So the minute he was out of the room I opened it up and stuck my spoon in, of course. And I swear he must have been waiting because he was in and had that spoon snatched out of my hand before it got near my face.”

“What’s wrong with honey?” asked Davy, bewildered.

“Nothing.”

“I thought it was good for you.”

“It wasn’t anything to do with the honey,” said Jon,
dry-throated
. “He just wanted to win.”

Davy walked beside him, mulling it over.

They went the long way, through the park. When they passed a gigantic yew tree, Davy turned his head to Jon and grinned like a shark.

Without needing to say a word, they ducked and crawled underneath the tree. The branches hung down around them like curtains. Nobody could have seen what they were up to; a passerby wouldn’t even have known they were there. Jon forgot to be embarrassed. He did a sliding tackle on Davy and toppled him on to the soft damp ground. “Man on!” yelped Davy, pretending to be afraid. They weren’t cold any more. They moved with sleek grace this time. It was telepathic. It was perfect timing.

“For Christ’s sake, stay onside,” Saul bawled at his team.

Davy’s trainers blurred like Maradona’s, Jon thought. The boy darted round the pitch confusing the defenders, playing to the imaginary crowd.

“Don’t bother trying to impress us with the fancy footwork, Irish,” screamed Saul into the wintry wind, “just try kicking the ball. This is footie, not bloody Riverdance.”

Afterwards in the showers, Jon watched the hard curve of Davy’s shoulder. He wanted to touch it, but Naz was three feet away. He took a surreptitious glance at his friend’s face, but it was shrouded in steam.

Saul never gave Jon and Davy a lift home from practice anymore. He said the walk was good exercise and Lord knew they could do with it.

“I don’t know why, but your dad is out to shaft me,” said Davy, on the long walk home.

“No, he’s not,” said Jon weakly.

“Is so. He said he thought I might make less of a fool of myself in defense.”

“Defense?” repeated Jon, shrill. “That’s bollocks. Last Saturday’s match, you scored our only goal.”

“You set it up for me. Saul said only a paraplegic could have missed it.”

Jon tried to remember the shot. He couldn’t tell who’d done what. On a good day, he and Davy moved like one player, thought the same thing at the same split second.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance he knows about us?”

Jon was so shocked he stopped walking. He had to put his hand on the nearest wall or he’d have fallen. The pebble dash was cold against his fingers.
Us
, he thought. There was an
us
. An
us
his dad might know about. “No way,” he said at last, hoarsely.

Jon knew there were rules, even if they’d never spelled them out. He and Davy were sort of mates and sort of something else. They didn’t waste time talking about it. In one way it was like football—the sweaty tussle of it, the
heart-pounding
thrill—and in another way, it was like a game played on Mars, with unwritten rules and a different gravity.

The afternoons were getting colder. On Bonfire Night they took the risk and did it in Jon’s room. The door had no lock. They kept the stereo turned up very loud so there wouldn’t be any suspicious silences. Outside, the bangers went off at intervals like bombs. Jon’s head pounded with noise and terror. It was the best time yet.

Afterwards, when they were slumped in opposite corners of the room, looking like two ordinary post-match players, Jon turned down the music. Davy said, out of nowhere, “I was thinking of telling the folks.”

“Telling them what?” asked Jon before thinking. Then he understood, and his stomach furled into a knot.

“You know. What I’m like.” Davy let out a mad chuckle.

“You’re not …” Jon’s voice trailed off.

“I am, you know.” Davy still sounded as if he were talking
about the weather. “I’ve had my suspicions for years. I thought I’d give it a try with your sister, but
nada
, to be honest.”

Jon thought he was going to throw up. “Would you tell them about us?”

“Only about me,” Davy corrected him. “Name no names, and all that.”

“You never would?”

“I’ll have to sometime, won’t I?”

“Why?” asked Jon, choking.

“Because it’s making me nervous,” explained Davy lightly, “and I don’t play well when I’m nervous. I know my family is going to freak out of their tiny minds whenever I tell them, so I might as well get it over with.”

He was brave, Jon thought. But he had to be stopped. “Listen, you mad bastard,” said Jon fiercely, “you can’t tell anyone.”

Davy sat up and straightened his shoulders. He looked small, but not all that young; his face was an adult’s. “Is that meant to be an order? You sound like your dad,” he added, with a hint of mockery.