One Shot Away (25 page)

“Jimmy, why are you being like this?”

Where should he start? The perfect picture she had of him has already been trashed. One thing is for sure—she never made a midnight trip with her father to steal building supplies. And, the truth is, Jimmy did know, he knew his father was stealing them. He covers his face with his hands.

“I think I know what's bothering you,” she says in a matter-of-fact way. “You're in big trouble, aren't you?”

They stop at a red light in front of the Starbucks that replaced an Italian deli. “You want to get a mocha, my treat?” asks Roxanne. Jimmy doesn't answer. The light changes and the car behind beeps. She takes off.

“Do you remember when I told you I was going to be a gym teacher? You laughed and just about told me I was wasting my time.”

“I wasn't trying to be mean.”

“Why are you going premed, to make money or to help people?”

“Fine, become a teacher,” she snaps. “Maybe you could write a book on volleyball.” Her words are thick with sarcasm and they cut into him.

“I want to go to school and actually learn something, be something. I'm not going to college because my daddy is making me!”

“I wouldn't call a gym teacher being something. Besides, you're going to college to escape Molly Pitcher. You told me that yourself.”

“Why are you dating me?” asks Jimmy.

“I thought we'd have a good senior year. I thought we'd be going to the prom together.”

“That's pretty weak,” he says.

“Why are you dating me, if I'm so horrible?” She faces him.

“I thought you had everything I wanted.”

“But not anymore, right? Is that what you're saying?”

“Something like that.”

Hurt fills her face, but he doesn't take the words back. “My parents don't want me to date you. Just last night they asked me not to see you anymore.”

“What did you say?”

“I told them we'd cool it for a little while.”

“So you agreed with them?”

“My father talked to Detective Barnes.” Her mouth twists with this fact like she's eaten something bitter. “You shouldn't have lied to me about it. Maybe if you trusted me, I could understand this.”

“I don't understand it!” he shouts.

“I think you do!” She turns into Puny Town and brakes. An overturned recycling barrel has strewn plastic milk containers and bottles over the road like bowling pins in an alley. “Just tell me the truth!” A tear rolls from the corner of her eye.

“You never had your father in your room at midnight asking for a favor. You never had to do anything for your parents. They do everything for you.”

Roxanne shakes her head like it's swarming with insects. “I defended you. I called my father a liar!” She's crying now, with tears coming down her cheeks; she pulls to the curb. “I'm not mad at you, I'm worried about you.”

Jimmy looks at the garbage scattered across the street. “I'll get out here. I wouldn't want you to hurt your precious Volvo,” he says. “You might get dirt on your tires, or worse, get a flat and have to actually get out of the car in this bad neighborhood.”

“Why are you being like this!” she yells.

“Because, deep down you think your father's right about me.” He pops the door lock and opens the door. “And you're just like him.”

D
IGGY'S BLOWN OFF TWO PRACTICES AND CUT MOST OF HIS
classes today. He's passing the gym when Greco calls him into his office. Greco shuts the door and looks at him as if he's examining a dead bug. “Sit.”

Diggy lowers himself to a chair and puts his hands between his knees, waiting to get blasted.

“Do you have anything to say?” Greco's eyes are fixed on him, drilling into him.

His mouth goes dry. How can he say anything, or try to explain?

Greco leans in closer. His breath comes across his small, straight bottom teeth. “Because this isn't over for you. You're not going to do this and just walk away from it like it never happened! Do you understand me?” Veins in Greco's neck pulse.

“Yes, sir.” The hairs on the back of Diggy's neck begin to prickle.

“All of a sudden you're ‘yes sirring' me?” Greco backs off, shaking his head. “Diggy Masters, you are some piece of work.”

Diggy peers through the blinds at the empty gym, wishing someone would come in and save him. “Am I off the team?” he asks.

“Did I say you were off the team?”

“No.”

“Then you're still on the team!” shouts Greco. “Got that?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, Coach.”

Greco huffs. “Now, let's discuss a few things you're going to do for the team, which you are still a member of.” He raises his finger at Diggy. “I want you in the wrestling room on Monday. You're going to apologize. I don't want a two-second ‘I'm sorry.' I want you to write it, rehearse it, mean it!”

“To the whole team?”

“If it doesn't suit me, then you'll do it again on Tuesday, and every day after until you get it right. Principal Anderson has asked me for my input on this incident. So don't disappoint me.” Greco pokes Diggy's chest. “Understand?”

D
IGGY LEANS CLOSE TO HIS BATHROOM MIRROR, EXAMINING HIS
eye. The lid is blue and purple. He looks over; Randy is in the doorway. “Can we talk like two human beings for a minute?”

Diggy smells alcohol on his breath under a layer of cologne. Randy lowers the toilet seat cover and sits on it. “I should have locked the door,” says Diggy.

“Could you lose the attitude for ten minutes?”

Diggy sucks in a breath, holds it, and when he knows he can release it without cursing, lets it go. No good can come from talking with Randy because he doesn't have conversations. Randy talks. All his life, Diggy has been ordered to listen. But he doesn't feel like listening anymore.

“Why didn't you come to me?” asks Randy in his car salesman voice, so reasonable and convincing that Diggy blinks in disbelief. “Your mother told me about the dog at the motel, chained in the cold. I don't approve of that sort of treatment of animals either. I could have contacted the ASPCA and had the dog taken away from the boy. It would have been a lot cleaner.”

Diggy studies his father's face in the bright bathroom. “The ASPCA?”

“Oh, and you're grounded,” says Randy.

“I didn't get caught smoking or cutting a class,” mumbles Diggy.

“Grounded until I say otherwise. Got it?”

“Trevor could have died! I almost killed his dog.” These are undeniable truths and no one seems to get it. He and Jane brought Whizzer to a veterinary office. Somehow, Whizzer didn't have any broken bones. The vet listened to his heart with a stethoscope, then felt his body and said, “He's lucky he didn't break his neck.”

“Your mother told me Coach Greco wants you to apologize to the team.”

“Go away,” groans Diggy.

“Apologizing is admitting you're guilty. You shouldn't admit anything. This is already being handled by my insurance company.” Randy's voice is hard and flat. “You know I have contacts in the police department. Perhaps we'll have some cruelty-to-animal charges against Mr. and Mrs. Crow.”

Diggy stomps across the bathroom, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. “Mr. Crow is dead and the dog was run over! I took Trevor's dog. I did it! I don't want your help. I'm sick of the way you think.”

“Let me tell you something, mister, the police could have pressed charges against you. I'm the one who made the phone calls!” His booming voice echoes off the tile walls.

“Leave me alone!” Diggy pushes him in the chest. “Like, now!” Diggy punches the wall, crunching the sheetrock.

“You spoiled punk-ass little—” yells Randy.

Diggy hurls his mother's electric curler set. The curlers bounce off Randy and clatter to the floor. Diggy races down the stairs, heading for the front door.

“Grounded!” yells Randy. “Grounded!”

D
IGGY PARKS AT
J
ANE'S APARTMENT WITH HIS HEART STILL
drumming from the argument with Randy. She's dressed funky, wearing his varsity jacket and a denim skirt with knee-high socks and black lace-up sneakers. Her face is funny, sort of gloomy. She gets in and pulls her skirt over her thighs. “What's with the getup?” he asks.

“It's a look, not a getup.” Her eyes are raw. “I just had some major drama with my mother,” she says. “She's on her third mojito and she's drinking them from a milk glass.” Her gaze falls into her lap.

“Randy, the moron,” says Diggy, “he tells me I'm grounded, like I'm twelve and that's going to prove something.”

“What did you expect him to do?”

“I don't know. I just wanted him to understand....” Diggy can't finish the sentence. Because what is there to understand?

“Are you sorry?”

He nods.

“Really?” She blows her nose in a tissue and balls it in her hand.

“Yeah, I am.” They sit in silence, looking at her green apartment door and the dead poinsettia. The bow is gone from the pot. “Can we go in your room?” he asks.

“I don't think right now is a good time. Gloria told my mother about you, what happened, the dog, everything. That's what we were fighting about.”

“What'd she say?”

“Say? You mean, what'd she scream? Nothing wonderful.” Jane shakes her head. “She called you a spoiled rich brat.”

“That's it?

“And a parasite.”

He rests his forehead on the steering wheel. “What'd you say?”

“I stuck up for you.” She shrugs. “At least, as much as I could. This whole thing is ugly. The little puppy almost died right in front of our eyes. That's the first time I've ever seen an animal get run over like that.”

Diggy pictures the dog rolling under the truck.

“All you guys and your precious manhood. Why do you think my brother's in jail and my other brothers can't keep jobs? All this manliness junk. You all have something to prove. Ya ever see what happens when you put two of those little fighting fish in the same bowl? They rip each other apart.” She rests her head on his shoulder. “And they both die.”

“Maybe I was never supposed to wrestle,” he says softly in her ear. “Maybe that's what this whole mess is about.”

“Maybe your father's an asshole and he had you believing his bullshit.”

She's right, but I did it, he thinks. No one told me to take the dog.

She guides in a CD she made him, lots of bands he never heard of, and cranks it.

“I have to do something. I just can't leave it like this.” He rubs his eyes. Snow begins to blow across the windshield.

H
E SITS ON THE EDGE OF THE BED, A PILE OF LAUNDRY AT HIS
feet, stroking Whizzer's neck. The weather station shows a radar blob of snow over Molly Pitcher. He lies back on his pillow and shuts his eyes. Highway traffic and the dead, late-afternoon nothingness of the day rings in his head.

He could have gone to school today. Yesterday the family doctor listened to his chest and said his lungs were sounding better. “Anytime you feel ready,” he said. Out his window, snow falls under thick clouds. He shivers, remembering the ice-cold pool water, the panic, the fear, kicking, punching, and then that feeling of warmth. In the deep end of the pool, he finally gave up. He let go of the world, and it wasn't terrible. Dying felt as natural as that moment when sleep comes. Trevor hopes his father felt something like this.

He lifts Whizzer to his chest. “I'm going to have to leave you tomorrow,” he says. “You have to stay in here and be a good boy.” Whizzer licks his face. Trevor wants to get back to the mat, the mindless drills, the body heat, diet, and sweating. He misses it, and he's going to show his father that he would have been a Varsity Dad.

Trevor knocks on the connecting door to his mother's room, then pushes it open. The bed is unmade. London's Green Bay Packers hat lies on the night table. His leather sneakers are under the bed. London is spending most nights with his mother. There is a sudden tightening in Trevor's gut. He closes the door and goes back to his bed.

He feels as if he's traveled a long distance and finally arrived here. Everything is already familiar, as if he knew the shape of the motel and the dimness of this old room for a long time. The feeling that all this is a nightmare that he might wake from, that feeling is gone. It's as if he knew the refrigerator would be a light green, and the kitchen floor would be curled at the corners, and there would be traffic on the road in front, then a cornfield under a sky, dark with snow.