XGeneration 1: You Don't Know Me (17 page)

Scott stopped struggling and sagged in relief.

“What in the hell is going on in here?” Mr. Shine yelled, eyes blazing. He marched Tyler toward where Creed had leaped back down to the court. Tyler winced and staggered to keep up with his hair.

Creed showed his glove with the twin blades and began circling to Mr. Shine’s left. “There’s no trash in here, Geech, which means it ain’t none of your business. You follow?”

Still holding his hand, Jesse stood to his full height. “Yeah, go home.”

“Looks like I a’ready done made it my business,” Mr. Shine said, “and I’ll go home when I’m damn ready.” He shoved Tyler toward Jesse and, with as much speed as he’d reappeared Scott’s quarter the other day, produced a garbage pick from behind his back. Except this one looked longer than the one Scott had seen on his cart, sharper. Of course, last week the pick wasn’t being wielded like a spear. Mr. Shine’s teeth flashed white as he pointed it toward Creed.

Creed looked cross-eyed toward the pick’s tip as he retreated to Jesse’s side. Both held their palms out now, as if trying to placate a lunatic. A fresh pink line seared one of Jesse’s hands.

“We weren’t doing nothin’.” Jesse’s voice was suddenly high. “Just trying to help our friend.”

“Yeah, dummy was goofing around up there and got stuck,” Creed put in. “We kept tellin’ him not to—”

“Don’t story me, boy!” With the pick, Mr. Shine motioned toward the gate. “Git on out o’ here.”

Jesse and Creed looked at one another. Tyler stood at their backs, rubbing the side of his head.

“Git, I said. This ain’t no place to be horsin’ around.”

Creed swiped his bowler hat from the ground, then sauntered toward the exit. Jesse grumbled and followed. Tyler took up the rear. Mr. Shine held out the pick as if he were herding cattle, and Scott had no doubt he would prod any that went wayward. The three didn’t appear to have any doubt either. They were almost to the gate when Jesse turned his head. His pitted gray eyes found Scott’s.

“Help’s a funny thing,” he said. “I wouldn’t count on it showing up the next time.”

“Go on!” Mr. Shine said.

When the three were outside, Mr. Shine retreated toward Scott, then slid the pick through a strap on the back of his coveralls. Scott unhooked his pants easily now that he wasn’t being pursued, and he scaled down the fence.

When he dropped to the court, Mr. Shine supported him around the waist. “You all right?” His eyes were dark with concern.

“Just shaken up.” Scott wiped his nose. He hoped Mr. Shine couldn’t see that he’d wet himself.

“I don’t know what you did to get them riled,” he said, looking on the destroyed section of fence. “But them’s some ba-a-ad company. Need to watch yourself. Keep to you own business, hear?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. You got someone coming for you?”

“My dad.” He retrieved his backpack and pushed his sopping foot into his tossed-off loafer. “He’s going to pick me up in front.”

“Well, c’mon then. I’ll walk you over.” Mr. Shine clapped his large hand on Scott’s shoulder. “But remember now what I said ’bout your business. Them boys is nobody to be messing with.”

Scott nodded. He didn’t need to be told a second time.

14

Thirteenth Street High practice fields

Friday, September 28, 1984

3:34 p.m.

Janis bounced on her toes and then paced in front of the goal line. Cinching up her gloves, she flexed her fingers and bounced again. She felt like Tigger. She felt good. If it weren’t for her damned nerves…

“Ready?” one of the assistant coaches asked, bringing a whistle to her teeth.

Janis nodded, blowing a strand of hair from her eye. She crouched and surveyed the four players about fifteen yards out from the goal. That afternoon marked the end of the first week of tryouts, and the coaches had opened the varsity tryouts to all grades. Janis rocked from one leg to the other. She had dominated the junior varsity tryouts that week.

The whistle blew.

But these weren’t junior varsity players.

The first shot came low and hard to Janis’s left. She dove and punched it away, skipped to her feet, and scrambled back to the center of the goal line. The next shot came straight at her, a bullet. She watched it into her stomach—
umph!
—and rolled it off to the assistant. The third shot went high and to her right. She followed it for a step, then let it sail over the goal. The spank of the final shot sounded quickly—too quickly—and the ball was already on its way to the opposite goalpost.

I’m not going to get there.

But like a ghost image, so faint she might have imagined it, Janis saw the ball careening off the post and angling toward the other side for a score. The image came to her in an instant. Janis pulled up, and when the actual ball did careen off the post, she was there to collect it.

The assistant coach blew her whistle. “Good anticipation, Janis.” Then to the four girls, she yelled, “Reset!”

The drill continued for the next forty minutes. After set shots, the four girls dribbled and shot, seeming to come nearer the goal each time. Janis understood their frustration. They were aspiring varsity players, after all—some of them seniors—and a freshman was denying them goal after needed goal. But the truth was, Janis could anticipate them, sometimes seeing the ball’s trajectory, sometimes just sensing it and reacting, like a reflex. And with every shot she tipped up, punched away, or watched into her possession, her confidence grew.

A few got past her. But only a very few.

When the coach blew the whistle for the final time, Janis’s hands were numb. Her thighs burned with fatigue. The air didn’t scorch as it had in August, but her face still felt like it was on fire. She also had the beginnings of a headache, twin screws in her temples. The assistant coach dismissed the other players, then consulted with Coach Hall, who had walked over to observe the last few rounds.

Janis pulled the stopper on the Gatorade sports bottle she’d parked next to the goalpost and squeezed a jet of warm water into her mouth. Her thin gold chain and crucifix had wriggled out during the drill, and she tucked it back beneath her collar. The chain had been a gift from her father for her thirteenth birthday. She touched it through her jersey as she watched the two coaches confer.

At last, Coach Hall tucked her clipboard under her arm and walked toward Janis. Her red cap was pulled low over her aviator sunglasses, the rest of her face a bed of frown lines.

“Go on and wrap up today’s practice with the other freshmen,” she said when she reached Janis.

In the sunglasses’ reflection, Janis’s lips quivered once. She nodded. “Okay.”

“But I want you back here Monday. You’re going to finish tryouts with varsity.”

This time, Janis’s lips tried their hardest not to smile.

* * *

“It’s all the work you put in,” her father said.

Janis took another swallow of Coke, the syrup and cold carbonation mingling with her elated exhaustion, and rested her arm on the windowsill. The late-day air felt good billowing around her, stealing away her perspiration. Her father had had the celebratory can of soda waiting for her when he pulled in to pick her up. He’d never doubted the news would be good.

“But now isn’t the time to rest on your laurels,” he counseled. “If anything, you have to be more prepared than ever.”

They pulled up to a light. When her father looked over, a thin mesh of wrinkles grew around his eyes, which was how he smiled. He shook her dusty knee where, for the first time, Janis noticed a dark patch of blood.

“But I know you know that.”

“Yeah, don’t worry. I’m not expecting next week to be any easier.”

“Good, Janis.” He turned back to the road. “Not enough people think that way. There are far too many receiving perks in this country through no diligence of their own. Too many government programs enabling that kind of ethos. They’re well intentioned, I’m sure, but self-defeating. Motivation, initiative…” He waved his hand. “That’s all done away with. And now we’re facing skyrocketing debt and a workforce that can’t compete with the Germanys and Japans anymore. It’s why we’re supporting Reagan again.”

“Mom, too?”

Her mother hadn’t been crazy about staking the Reagan/Bush ’84 sign in the front lawn.

“Well, your mother’s coming around. The sixties left a bit of a stain on her thinking, I’m afraid.”

As Janis lowered the can from her lips, she thought of the way her mother had smiled that night when, in a low voice, she shared her plans to return to school. Janis glanced over at her father. For the first time, she felt a wall going up over the part of herself that had always accepted his opinions as holy writ.

“Star says the debt is because the Republicans are spending money on missiles we don’t need and giving tax breaks to their rich friends. They want us to believe it’s because of welfare spending, but it’s really not.”

“This Star is a friend from school?”

Janis made herself nod.

“What Star needs to understand is that her country is responding to an aggressor that has vast nuclear armaments and has sworn our annihilation more than once. Her country is doing its best to protect her.”

“She says that’s a lie, too.”

They were passing a short strip mall with a convenience store and Laundromat, and her father swerved in. The car bounced against the drive, its bottom scraping the cement incline. Janis gasped and held her Coke up to keep it from spilling. The car cut into a space at the far end of the building that fronted a cinderblock wall. When her father pulled the emergency brake and looked over, his face was so solemn that Janis feared for a moment he was going to slap her. Not that he ever had.

“What is it?” Her eyes felt huge above her quivering lips. The last mouthful of Coke had turned sour on her tongue. She watched her father’s nostrils dilate, his eyes boring into hers.

“We knew that in high school you were going to be exposed to people with different opinions, different views of the world. It was why your mother and I were so demanding of you and your sister growing up. We wanted you to develop the capacity to think for yourselves. And you’ve done that. Your mother and I are very proud of who you and Margaret have become.”

But even as he said this, his face remained stern, his wiry brows nearly touching.

“For some reason, people often get swept up in movements and ideologies that sound moral and righteous but that are, in fact, defeatist. Defeatist for themselves—defeatist for their country. This happens even to intelligent people.”

“I wasn’t saying I believed what Star said.” A lump swelled in Janis’s throat. “I was just telling you…”

“I know.” He closed his eyes and exhaled. His brows drew apart. “But now that you’ve heard your friend’s version, I think it’s important that you hear the truth, even if it scares you. You’re old enough now.”

Janis watched her father’s face, which looked gray and grave in a way she’d never seen.

“You’re familiar with the Cold War, of course. You’ve studied its history in school.”

“Yes,” she said, but wasn’t sure her father heard.

“In the late years of World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union teamed up to defeat Hitler and Nazi Germany. Americans advanced through western Europe, the Soviets through eastern Europe. They met at the River Elbe in Germany. Your grandfather was at the meeting point, in fact—your mother’s father. You were too young to remember, but he used to tell stories about sharing photos and hand-rolled cigarettes with the Soviet rifle division in the spring of 1945.”

Her father gazed through the windshield as he spoke, and Janis wondered whether he was thinking about his own service in Korea, something he rarely talked about.

“But it was an alliance of convenience, you see. After World War II, the Soviet Army remained in eastern Europe, which had been Stalin’s plan all along. Where he didn’t expand the Soviet border, he installed puppet regimes in countries like Poland, Hungary, half of Germany. It’s why there’s an East and West Germany and a wall dividing Berlin. Communist governments, Janis. No democracy, no free will. Everything controlled by the state. The United States, meanwhile, sent billions in Marshall funds to rebuild western Europe and bulwark its governments from the spread of Soviet influence.”

In the past, whenever her father used to lecture her like this, Janis would have to fight the compulsion to roll her eyes, but there in the car, she could barely breathe. Like stones being set on her chest, his words bore weight.

“An arms race followed. More and deadlier missiles. The advent of the hydrogen bomb, a thousand times more powerful than its atomic predecessors. By the 1950s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union had hundreds of nuclear weapons pointed at one another. Did you learn the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction? MAD? It was the idea that a massive launch from one side could be answered with a massive counter-launch from the other. Both countries would be obliterated, you see? Which meant neither country could strike first. And this has been the basis for our
peace
for the last thirty years. But that may be changing.”

“How?” The question caught in Janis’s throat.

“The Russians have more sophisticated weapons than was previously believed, for one. They pulled ahead in the arms race, and now Reagan is determined to catch up. But it’s not just a matter of numbers anymore. Something else is happening.”

Janis was barely aware of cars coming in and out of the lot, their headlights washing past them and illuminating the dark dumpster that seemed to be squatting in the weeds beside them in wait.

“There are voices in the Soviet Politburo talking now as if a nuclear war
can
be won. That could be bluster, of course. But it could also mean they’ve discovered a method for launching a first strike that would go undetected until it was too late. Or perhaps they have the means to neutralize a counterstrike. Either way, there would be no retaliation. No Mutually Assured Destruction.”

The cinderblock wall beyond their windshield was dingy and littered with graffiti: crude messages about what this or that person would do, complete with phone numbers—the sort of thing that would normally have turned Janis crimson, especially with her dad beside her. But now the messages barely registered. She didn’t think he was seeing them either.