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Once I made the team, though, I figured we’d finally be able to pick up where we left off. I got into football and would’ve wanted to play anyway, but I didn’t see how Orlando’s mom could keep us from speaking to each other if we were teammates, even if she told the coaches to make sure we didn’t, because teammates had to communicate to be successful. And if she tried to make Orlando quit on my account, then Coach Rose would probably kill himself on their front lawn in protest, and I was pretty damn sure she wouldn’t want to clean up a mess like that.

There was one final ace up my sleeve. I knew football was part of Orlando’s therapy, just like it was part of mine, so there was no way in hell his mom was gonna make him quit. Like I said, we couldn’t have been more different, but that didn’t matter to our counselors. Since Orlando’s family didn’t trust the new pills some kids were getting and my family couldn’t afford them, we both got the same fallback prescription: sports—to bring him out of his shell and give him
some confidence, and to provide me with some nondisruptive, non-criminal outlet for all that violence. Shit, our counselors had to make it look like they were doing something to collect their pay, and they probably figured that if slamming into people didn’t straighten us out, then nothing would.

We walked through
some offensive and defensive formations, whistles blowing now and then, and Wally, this fat kid who loved to talk tough, got bumped into, swung his arms in slow, giant circles, fell backward onto his ass, and started to cry. After everybody finished laughing, we lined up for special teams, punt coverage. Coach Rose told me to return it, wanted to see what I was made of. Fuck him. Greg, the punter, was supposed to be this awesome Dungeon Master, but that didn’t make his kicking leg any stronger, so I lined up about twenty-five yards from the line of scrimmage in the defensive backfield. It took a while for the coaches to get everybody into place and explain to them what a punt was all about: snap the ball to the punter, block the man in front of you, wait for the punter to kick it away, and then break your ass down to the guy who catches it (me) and drill him.

I was visualizing catching the ball—punts could be tricky—when I saw Orlando lining up at the end position on my left-hand side, his sports goggles making him look like Eric Dickerson without all that slimy Jheri curl. That could be good, I thought. Unlike the other players on the punt team, the ends released with the snap, running downfield as fast as they could to cream the guy fielding the punt as soon as he caught it. That’s why they were called headhunters, because their only mission was to get to the guy returning the ball first and knock his block off. It was good because I was every bit as fast as Orlando, maybe a little faster now, and if I caught the punt, gave him a juke, and dusted him, then I’d be practically guaranteed a starting position.

After about five minutes of the coaches explaining and yelling, we were set to go. I looked at Orlando just before the ball was snapped and nodded at him. He saw me but didn’t nod back. That should’ve told me something was wrong. But the ball was already in play, and the next thing I knew it was in the air, a low, wobbly duck drifting to the left. If I wanted to catch it on the fly, I had to get moving. I had plenty of wheels to cover the ground, all I wanted and more, but I had to be careful. Even when I thought it wasn’t possible to run any faster, I always had something in reserve, like a few more horses or an extra gear. The final burst into that higher register of motion felt like ripping through a barrier, or taking flight, but I couldn’t control it for more than a step or two. Every time I hit it, it was like I outran myself, lost the rhythm, and crashed to the ground. Someday I might learn the trick of toeing that line between velocity and disaster, but I couldn’t risk it now. The ball was sinking fast, so I leaned down into my sprint, pumped my knees, not up but forward and back, staying low to the ground, my eyes fixed on the ball. I got there just before it hit the turf, stuck my hands out, and snared it about six inches above the grass.

I didn’t even hear him coming.

I wasn’t afraid
. Then again, there was nothing to be afraid of. There was only darkness, as if this dense black curtain had suddenly snapped down and blocked everything out, covering my whole brain and the rest of me with it. It was so dark and silent and numb that I couldn’t feel a thing, and I guess I probably could’ve stayed that way forever without knowing it or caring. But as soon as that darkness began to break, I started to feel again. I didn’t feel fear, though. I felt pain, lots and lots of pain, and this sadness like my heart was dying. It seemed like something was really wrong with the world lighting up around me, as if it were more sinister somehow, or less complete.
I’d walked right
into a trap and I knew it as soon as my eyes finally blinked open. Although the rain had started to fall and was stinging my face as I lay there on my back, I saw Orlando standing over me. It took a few seconds for me to recover consciousness, focus, and draw a bead on his face, but as things started to sharpen I could see his mouth was all twisted and that there were tears welling up behind his goggles. Shit, I knew exactly how he felt.

“What in holy hell was that!” Coach Rose bellowed as he dashed over blowing his whistle. “Goddamn it, Orlando! Bump and wrap!
Bump and wrap!
Goddamn it! You tryin’ to kill somebody? Goddamn it!”

Coach Rose ran up and grabbed Orlando by the shoulder pads and started shaking him, screaming in his face and slapping the sides of his helmet. The words came out of his mouth so loud and so fast and I was still so woozy that I didn’t get most of it, but he was laying into Orlando like he’d knocked Coach’s mom out instead of some kid he didn’t give a wet fart about anyway. The only part I caught was “gonna run till you puke,” and then he pushed Orlando away. Before he started off on the torture that was supposed to teach him a lesson, Orlando leaned over to me.

“I… I’m sorry, G,” he whispered, his voice thick and breaking. “I didn’t… I mean, I wouldn’t…”

There was a sound like distant waves crashing in my head and my thoughts were patchy and loose, but somehow I knew what he was going to say. “No, I know you wouldn’t,” I stammered, trying to prop myself up on my elbows. “So who made you do it?”

Orlando’s teary eyes grew tense and frightened.

“Who put you up to it, O?”

“Orlando!” roared Coach Rose from halfway across the field. “Why in the hell aren’t you running? You want twenty
more
laps? Answer me, boy!”

“No, sir.”

“Then get your ass moving this second!”

“Just a name,” I asked as Orlando stepped back nervously, “that’s all I need.”

“I’m sorry, G … I can’t.” He turned and sprinted off.

Yeah, it was just what I’d thought. Somebody had gotten to him, forced him to send a message, and this was it. I’d only just started and already I was too close.

Coach Rose sent the trainer over to have a look at me, and he must’ve trusted the diagnosis completely, because he never checked on me himself.

FOUR

By the time I got home, I was soaked. The heavy
slates of green-gray sky had cracked and burst, tossing streaks of light and biblical floods down on the Cruiser and me. My head was pounding, and all I wanted was a shower, dry clothes, something to eat, and a little time in front of the tube to clear my thoughts before Thrash and I got back to work. But as the old man told me before he split, the less you wanted, the harder it was to get. And the way things had gone so far, I should’ve known I was in for another surprise.

My mom, sister, and I lived in a two-story, three-bedroom house with meager lawns in front and back. Slapdash construction, aluminum siding, neighbors right up in your face, close to the trailer park, the Circle, and the crappy strip mall. In other words, a place cheap enough for my mother to afford on the tips she made waiting tables at the diner in the day and tending bar at night. It wasn’t the best part of town, but it wasn’t the worst either, and it sure as hell wasn’t a dump like some people said. It was home, and I was lucky enough to have one, so I wasn’t complaining.

As I pulled up out front, I couldn’t help noticing the moped parked in the back, a red Puch that looked brand-new. My first thought was, What kind of jerk-off would leave a brand-new moped out in a downpour like this? But I didn’t have to wonder about it for long. I hopped off the Cruiser and started walking it toward the back of the house when the jerk-off came rushing out, helmet on, visor down. He jumped on, cranked the pedals, revved the engine, and drove off. Ray “the Razor” Tuffalo had just been at my house, and the way he avoided looking at me made me fear the worst about what he’d been doing there. I chained the Cruiser underneath the sheet of tin hanging over the concrete slab that we called the back porch and went inside to see if I was right.

Like I’d thought, the water was running in the upstairs bathroom and Led Zeppelin was rumbling the walls. Neecey was so predictable it was almost funny. Whenever she got laid, she’d crank “Kashmir” on the stereo and jump in the shower, like punching a clock after work. I should’ve been used to it by now, but it still annoyed the shit out of me. Even though her boyfriend Gary hadn’t been around for a while and Darren only came over now and then, that song was starting to feel played out. Not that I had anything against Zeppelin; they rocked all ass and I had a patch with their logo on my backpack to prove it. But I was worried about my sister and what people might say, and although she was playing “Fool in the Rain” now and not “Kashmir,” so I couldn’t be sure about what, if anything, she’d done with Razor, it still bothered me, not only because it was a Cro-Magnon like Razor, but because I didn’t know how much Zeppelin was too much.

I went upstairs, tossed my backpack in my bedroom closet, and then banged on the bathroom door.

“I’m in the shower,” Neecey called.

“I need to get in,” I shouted back, though I knew it was pointless.

“What?” she replied. “I can’t hear you.”

Typical. “I said I have to get in there.” I yelled that time.

“Whadyasay? I can’t hear you. Just open the door.”

I hated this fucking game. Whenever she was in the shower, she pretended she couldn’t hear me through the door, even though I knew she could. If I wanted to tell her something or ask her a question, I either had to wait until she got out, which could take forever, or I had to go in. She wouldn’t just let me open the door a crack and talk through it, I had to step all the way inside, so I had to turn my head or keep my eyes down to avoid seeing her through the clear plastic shower curtain. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d gotten the timing down so perfect that no matter how long I was in there, even if it was just a second or two, she’d already be finished, have the water turned off, and her hand out waiting for a towel. Then she’d keep talking to me as she dried off behind the curtain, real casual, taking her time.

The point of this fucking farce was to force me to be in the room with her while she was naked, and she’d started doing it a little over two years ago when she started filling out. She wasn’t quite fourteen at the time, and mom said that while Neecey had been slow to get going, she was quick to catch up. In a few months she’d gone from being a flat, ugly stick that guys didn’t notice to the kind of teenage girl that made men and boys mutter curses beneath their breath. She had long brown hair, glossy and straight, huge, sad eyes so dark brown they were practically black, a wide, pouting mouth with full lips, curves all up and down her figure, and breasts that would’ve been totally killer if they’d been on someone else.

Yeah, I knew it was completely twisted that I’d seen her naked or half-naked as much as I had, and I was worried that it was just a matter of time before I turned into a pervert. But that’s why she made me come into the bathroom, or called me into her room from time to time when she was wearing only a bra and underwear, which she said was no different from a bikini. I never really said anything to her about it, but she must’ve realized it made me feel weird and gross, because she told me she didn’t want me to feel embarrassed or ashamed about nudity the way she had when she was my age, and that if we couldn’t be comfortable in front of each other, then how
would we ever be comfortable in front of anyone else? Even though Neecey got that kind of crap from all the books on puberty, self-esteem, and sex she read, it still sounded flimsy to me. I thought it was just another way of torturing her younger brother, of showing me how grown up she was and making me aware that there were some things in this world I wasn’t ready to handle. As if I needed to be reminded that she was hot, or that she probably didn’t put up much of a fight for the few guys she’d liked. Shit, I knew that. And even if the whole town found out and started saying my sister was a slut, I still wouldn’t want it rubbed in my face all the fucking time.

I stepped into the bathroom and said, “I just got back from football. It’s pouring. I’m soaked. I need a shower. Get out.”