Cheated (2 page)

I blew on my ungloved hands; a cloud of white enveloped my paws. The cold didn't bother me as much as the wind crashing into my face, making my too-pink cheeks turn almost bloodred. When I stared at Whitney's bright, shiny smile and stylish new shoes, I felt more than ever like I no longer belonged in this neighborhood. In the divorce, Mom got the house, but little else. Ex-Dad left us surrounded by a nice life we see and seek every day, but can never again own.

I gazed down at my watch; some fancy model ex-Dad got me for my fifteenth birthday a few months ago. It was time to make a daily bet with myself on what would arrive
first: the yellow school bus or the long-brown-haired mountain known as Brody Warren. I saw the bus up the street just as Brody rounded the corner, running on all pistons. I wondered if he was late because he wanted to be noticed making an entrance or to avoid ex-teammates Rusty and Bob.

“Dude,” I said as I clicked off the music and came alive for the first time that morning.

Brody slapped me on the back. Ash from his cigarette sparked against the gray morning sky. “How you feelin', Mr. 151?” Brody asked as he offered me the smoke.

“Okay.” I waved off the cigarette, but Brody pushed it toward me.

“Better than ATM Aaron I bet,” Brody said with a grin. Like me, Brody was without a coat, any sense of fashion, or access to a hairbrush. His long brown mane surrounded his face, which was—unlike mine—sprouting a short jungle of whiskers.

“No doubt,” I told Brody, but my thoughts were with Aaron. We called him “ATM” because he'd loaned us money for the past three years. I wondered if last night we should've said,
Aaron, what's with you? Why are you drinking so much? Loan us some rum instead of cash
.

“Take it, dude,” Brody insisted, and I took the cig. The smoke tickled my mouth going in and burned my nose coming out. I finished it, then threw the butt to the pavement. Brody's heavy boot ground it into the gray asphalt like an ant that pissed him off. “You were so wasted last night,” he said in his volume-turned-up-to-ten voice.

“I guess,” I replied, almost in a whisper. The Whitneys of
the world already thought I was a loser. They don't need to know they're right. Everybody already knew about Brody.

“Wasted!” Brody yelled to Rusty and Bob, who gathered up their backpacks adorned with the bloodred Swartz Creek Dragon logo. They were like twins and part of a family of forty brothers, all of them alike in their game day pressed khaki pants and Red Dragon jerseys. They sported football-season short hair and a complex look of pity, sadness, and disgust as they glared over at the fallen angel Brody. Their lips never moved but their eyes taunted, then rejected, Brody's existence. “Assholes,” Brody mumbled as we fell last in line for the bus.

Nobody spoke when the bus pulled to the curb, a plume of exhaust briefly covering us all. Like lost explorers walking out of a jungle mist, we boarded the bus and took our unassigned but very much carved-in-stone seats. The Whitney World rode in the middle, while the Dragon True Believers sat up front like gatekeepers. We sank like stones in the back of the bus.

“Wasted,” Brody hissed at Rusty and Bob when he passed by them. Big though they were, the jocks balled their fists but never moved their muscles against Brody, their ex-teammate. Brody was a varsity starter as a freshman; an all-state sure bet at training camp two months ago; a kicked-off-the-team loser who stood before them that football-Friday morning.

“Dude, let's go.” But as soon as the words left my lips, I knew instead I should've said,
Dude, let
it
go
. I knew that was advice I should've given myself about so many things.

“Whatever, Pool Boy,” Brody cracked, but I didn't laugh. I like Brody's 151 nickname for me better. This was a put-down name: I'm a terrible pool player, while Brody ruled the green felt. The pre-rum-filled run of the table the night before at Space Invaders arcade was the usual with Brody winning six games to my zero. Aaron won against me, lost against Brody, but didn't care either way. Brody's more athletic than me, while Aaron's hand-eye coordination is honed with hours of Xbox expertise. I suffered the humiliation as the price of friendship admission.

Our seat in the back was near the stoners like Dave Wilson. Dave's sleeping face was pressed against the window. If it were ten degrees colder, his drool would've frozen on his chin.

“What time?” Brody asked as he pushed himself into the seat and tossed his backpack onto my lap. It didn't hurt since the nearly empty pack weighed so little. I took a few college prep courses, but Brody's college future vanished with his football banishment. He'd given up even caring about school.

I was puzzled by the question: what time for what? What time was it? What time would we get together later that night? I was still thinking when Brody grabbed my wrist.

“Nice watch.” Brody grunted, then kicked the seat in front of him. “Your dad, right?”

“Yeah, ex-Dad,” I corrected him as his eyes closed. I should've said,
Brody, your dad left your life because of an accident on the road. My dad's exit was no accident; it was because of the road I decided to take
.

While Brody slept, I put the headphones back on, then clicked on the jPod to drown out the noise surrounding me. I was lost in crashing music and imaginary conversations as the bus made one of its last stops. The stop was in front of the WindGate trailer park, where Roxanne Gray slithered on board. She wore a denim jacket with a white skull patch, a tan wool cap that pushed her brown hair out like the top of a chocolate muffin, and her usual crooked half smile. I ignored her that morning like I had done most every day for years; like I wished I'd done weeks ago at Rex's end-of-summer, life-ruining party. I wanted to ask her,
Roxanne, why did you choose me to fool around with? Why didn't you pick somebody else?
Instead, I listened to Zeppelin and stayed mute until the jolt of the bus stopping woke up Brody.

He coughed loudly, then looked outside as the bus lurched down Morrish Road toward school. “I wonder if the Scarecrow is out there yet?” Brody asked, then closed his eyes again.

“Too early, probably sleeping it off,” I replied. “Like I wish I could've done.”

“Well, you ain't no Scarecrow,” Brody said, then bounced his beefy paw off my knee.

“Guess not,” I offered, then looked near the entrance ramp to the expressway for the Scarecrow, a homeless guy with long, dirty blond hair, ratty clothes, and a straw hat, which was why Brody called him the Scarecrow. He held up a sign that said
HUNGRY VET, PLEASE HELP, GOD BLESS
, but few cars stopped. One day ex-Dad stopped, rolled down the
window, and yelled at him, “Get a job,” then drove away. I heard his reply. If ex-Dad did, he never reacted when the Scarecrow yelled back, “Where?” I'd seen the Scarecrow by the road other times and by the Big K Market.

The last part of the ride was as silent for Brody and me as it was noisy for the rest of the bus. The noise swirled with the force of a hurricane, but I acted calm as the bus pulled into the school's circular driveway. Whitney World and the Dragon True Believers seemingly sprang from the bus and rushed toward school, while the stoners, the waking wild man Brody, and I stumbled like zombies from the grave toward the building's front door.

Do you know what it's like to be paralyzed?

That's how I felt: I couldn't make my mouth open or my tongue move. All I could do was listen and watch. Listen to the sick sound of a brick smashing against a human skull, then watch the blood splatter like red rain. From across the few feet that separated me from the very real scene before me, I could hear the smack of brick against bone. It sounded like someone dropping a heavy book off a desk. My eyes were wide, gazing at his eyes, open to the world and closed off to life. My nose cut through the rancid smells already in the air and the rancid mess he made in his pants as life left him. Another hard smash of the brick right above those lifeless eyes left me with the image I'll never erase: his left eye swollen shut, the right one wide open, staring, it seemed, right into my soul. He was a nonliving answer to a question I had never asked: what did a dead body look like?

I headed straight for my locker, wondering if my lockermate, Aaron, would be there. I was supposed to share a locker with my ex-friend Garrett, but after this summer, those plans changed. Brody still had to share with Ben Rankin, one of his ex-teammates, so his locker was covered with Spirit Club streamers and balloons. I walked head down through halls ringing with wild laughter, flowing red crepe paper, and the sounds of happy couples laughing.

My locker was bare. Aaron's army surplus jacket sat on top of a stack of his magazines with video game cheat codes. I was surprised to see Aaron's stuff after last night's mix of rum, cola, and unexpected angry mood. I dropped off some books, so by the time I stepped through the doorway of Mr. Steinbach's noisy homeroom, the bell had gone silent.

“Please be quiet for announcements,” Steinbach said to little reaction.

I put my head down on my desk, closed my eyes, and made up my own announcements rather than listen to the endless list of clubs, events, and activities that touched my life not at all:
May I have your attention, please? Mick Salisbury would like to announce that he's sorry about what he did to Nicole, he wants her back, and he wants her to know it wasn't his fault. Mick also wants to announce that Roxanne Gray is a lying slut. Everybody have a great Dragon Day!

I loved homeroom last year; that's where I'd met Nicole. By the ninth day of ninth grade, I'd fallen for her. I remember how her long brown hair always fell in her face. I would see her in homeroom and long to reach over, brush it back, and see her brown eyes smile at me.

I got her attention last year by doing fake announcements:
Your attention, please! The Chess Club challenges the Mathletes to a geek-off. The horn section of the Marching Band would like to tell the school: blow us. If you've ever wanted to see France, join the French Club. If you'd prefer to see Jackson State Prison, then please join Dave Wilson and the stoners after school behind the bleachers. Finally, for all seniors wanting to graduate this year, the teachers would like to say “Good riddance, you losers.” Now, have a great Dragon Day!
She'd laugh, even at the weaker, unfunny ones. What she was really laughing at, I thought, was how hard I was trying to impress her and make her like me.

The only girl in this year's homeroom that interested me above the belt was the one Brody called Cell Phone Girl. Even though we had two classes together last year and homeroom this year, I still didn't even know her name. That fact said something, even if she never ever did. While I'm not one to volunteer to speak, I'd talk in class if the teacher called on me. But this girl never said a word to anyone, not teacher or student. The teachers rarely said anything to her, other than to tell her to put away her cell phone, which she never did for long. She used no makeup, had dirty blond hair that was either greasy or unwashed, and wore an oversized gray hooded sweatshirt. She'd put her head down on
her desk, when Steinbach wasn't looking, but somehow I could always see her peek at the phone buried in the sweatshirt's pocket. Her best move was to transfer the cell phone from the pocket and bury it in the sleeve. She'd pull down the sleeve or nudge the phone out every five minutes or so, look all sad again, and then put her head back down on the desk. As isolated as I felt, especially after Nicole dumped me, I couldn't imagine what was going on with Cell Phone Girl. I wanted to say to her,
Tell me what's wrong and I'll help
.

That morning, I was obsessed with wondering if people wondered about me. Were other people in homeroom thinking of things they'd like to say to me? Was Cell Phone Girl sitting there, in between phone peeks and sullen sighs, thinking, I wonder what's going on with Mick Salisbury? He's dating Nicole, and he loses her for a couple of seconds with Roxanne? What's wrong with him? Oh, right, his dad was like that, too. But Cell Phone Girl never spoke to me, and I never tried to know her. We sat just feet apart, but with miles between us.

By the time the bell rang for first period, I'd asked myself that same question: what
was
wrong with me? I knew that home was where the heart was broken. Always hovering over my life was how ex-Dad betrayed my mom, then I betrayed him. But two wrongs didn't make anything right. The base of this triangle of lies was ex-Dad's refusal to confess or repent. His brick wall of silence, of refusing to admit responsibility, stuck like a bone in my throat. Mom used to talk about it more, especially when she was in therapy after
the divorce. She always said that until ex-Dad accepted responsibility, then none of us would be fully healed. I didn't much care about ex-Dad's healing, I cared more about hearing his apology or explanation.

As I trudged slowly from homeroom out into the hallway, I thought not about school but about home. Thinking about Mom and ex-Dad made me walk slower, like a pile of bricks was on my back. Your family isn't just your family: it is your history, your future, and your burden.

Do you think about being famous?

Everybody I know does. Most won't come right out and talk about it, but it's always there underneath the surface. That's why I used to do those mock interviews with Brody. It made him feel like a star. But not just Brody; anybody who ever picked up a football, baseball, or basketball thinks one day they're going to end up on ESPN, on the cover of
Sports Illustrated,
or at the least in the local newspaper, the
Flint Journal.
Anybody who's ever sung a note, or played in the band, or acted, must think about cutting a CD, making a music video, or starring in a movie. I never did any of those things—I'm not a jock or some band geek—but that doesn't mean I didn't have dreams of being famous. Now I would dread seeing my name in the paper. I wouldn't be famous, but infamous. But I don't have to worry about reading the paper myself because they don't let you do that at the Genesee County Juvenile Detention Center
.