Cheated (6 page)

I was lost in my imaginary words when very real ones came from the front of the room. “Mr. Salisbury, please entertain us with your thoughts about the poem,” Mrs. Kirby bellowed. We'd handed in our papers at the start of class, so I was trying to remember what I wrote.

“What I thought?” I mumbled, stalling for time, and kicking myself under the desk. I'd forgotten this was one way Mrs. Kirby tried to catch people who didn't read the books, stories, or poems. She would make them talk out loud, then compare what they said to what they wrote. I hoped against hope that Brody at least read what I wrote, but the look in her eyes made me think he hadn't. Her expression told me she thought I'd done something wrong. No doubt she'd glanced at the paper Brody handed in last period and figured out he didn't write it, which made me her number one suspect.

“We're waiting,” Mrs. Kirby said.

“Um, it was okay, I guess,” I said, to much laughter.

“Yes, continue,” Mrs. Kirby replied, sounding bored.

“To be honest, I thought it was stupid,” I said as hands shot up amid much laughter.

She ignored the hands and instead asked me, “And what is stupid about it?”

I paused and looked around the room until I spotted Terri. Her eyes darted away like a deer hearing a gun shot, but I knew this was an open door. “Well, the guy's saying
something about making choices,” I mumbled, unsure of myself at first.

“Oh, you mean he's not talking about roads,” Mrs. Kirby added, sounding amused. I was distracted by hands going up all around the room, but I was the one drowning, not them.

“Right, he's talking about choices,” I said, this time a little louder. I'm smart, but I know I don't have that “look,” the one that would make teachers think I was a good student. I often wondered if that was really what made all the difference. Not who you are, but what you look like. If I was as good looking or preppy as Kyle, no way would Nicole have dumped me. Just thinking about Kyle was like gasoline poured on a fire. I know I cheated on Nicole, but the world cheated me first, so I said, “It's about a guy who gets cheated and feels bad.”

“Cheated?” The tone in Mrs. Kirby's voice was one of disbelief. “Explain, please.”

“Frost seems to be saying that in life you come to forks in the road and make decisions about what to do.” I could barely get the words from my throat. “I don't think it works that way.”

“What way?” Mrs. Kirby asked like she was actually interested.

“Well, you know, I think the majority of your decisions are mostly made for you,” I said, my confidence growing. “It's not what choice you make, it's who you are.”

“But doesn't everyone have choices?” she asked. Hands shot up again, but I wouldn't surrender.

“We don't know anything about this guy in the poem.
I don't think everybody gets to make the same choices.” My mind flashed back to ex-Dad in his new SUV; the Scarecrow in his straw hat. “Before you make a choice, all this stuff happens, and Frost doesn't talk about it.”

“You said ‘cheated'—you still have to tell us what you mean,” Mrs. Kirby said.

“That's what I'm saying.” I paused but wanted to scream in frustration because I couldn't make people understand me. “You hear how everybody is equal, but that's a lie. If somebody's rich, then somebody else is poor. And if you don't have stuff …” I paused again. I couldn't bring myself to list the things I didn't have that the Kyle and the Whitney World have; I couldn't bring myself to tell everyone how inadequate I felt even in an unfair world.

“And?”

“And if you don't have stuff, it's like somebody cheated you out of it,” I said.

“Stuff?” She tried not to laugh at my use of such an un-poetic word while discussing poetry.

“But it's more than that,” I said and I wondered if people actually saw the lightbulb go on over my head like in some cartoon. “Who you are determines which choices you get to make. So, while everybody has choices, the less stuff you have, the fewer choices you get. That's what I mean by cheated.”

“Very interesting,” Mrs. Kirby said. I believe she smiled at me for the first time ever.

“Um, one more thing,” I said. Mrs. Kirby looked amused again, no doubt wondering who had taken over my body.

“Continue, please,” she said, then motioned for others to put down their raised hands.

“I think the poem's also about regret,” I said, then turned away from the teacher to look right at Terri, so she could tell Nicole. “I think the poem is about when you make the wrong choices, feel bad, and wish you could just undo it. Wish you could make things right.”

“Very interesting, Mick, I look forward to reading your paper,” Mrs. Kirby said. I stood there for a moment before sitting down, wondering if Terri would deliver the message to Nicole. But she just looked bored and her eyes were like a vacuum pulling every single soul out of the room. Only I was left, feeling totally alone in the world. Mrs. Kirby saw me maybe for the first time as a bright and engaged student, but as I caught a glimpse of myself in Terri's soul-sucking stare, I saw something different. I wasn't Mick Salisbury, I wasn't even Pool Boy or 151. In her eyes and those of Nicole, I was a pathetic, lonely, and hopeless figure; I was a scarecrow.

Do you have a nickname?

I guess you could say that Mick is a nickname, but that's not what I mean. I'm talking about nicknames like 151 or Pool Boy, tags Brody stuck on me. I don't mind 151, although I don't really like that other people in school know about it. It's funny, in junior high, you wanted everyone to think you were cool enough and old enough to get drunk, but now, it's not something you share, it's something you do. Pool Boy I don't like because it is kind of a put-down name, but Brody's the only one who uses it, so I guess that's okay. Worst nickname I ever heard was one this kid back in seventh grade, Robert Smith, had. I didn't really know him well, most people didn't. He was one of those kids who just shows up at school every day, nothing special about him. One day in history class, we're taking a test about Indian tribes. It's really quiet in the room, and he farts really loud. Everybody heard it. Somebody asked, “Who did that?” Brody, who was sitting right next to him, points at Robert Smith and says, “It was Chief Brown Cloud.” Everybody laughed, maybe even the teacher. Smith looked like he wanted to die right then, and for the rest of the school year everybody called him Chief Brown Cloud, even me. I knew it was mean, but he just seemed so hopeless that it was easy to do because he couldn't do anything about it. He transferred schools at the end of the year. Thinking about him now, what strikes me is this: in one second, his life changed forever. It wasn't something he did on purpose, just an accident. But from that moment, his life spun
in a different direction. Every day you live through exactly 86,400 seconds, but a stupid mistake or accident or bad judgment in just one of those seconds can change every other second of every minute of every day for the rest of your life. And it can happen to anyone: it doesn't matter if you're the president of the United States, Chief Brown Cloud, Mick Salisbury, Brody Warren, Aaron Bishop, or the Scarecrow
.

Looking down from the rocking bleachers filled with Dragon pride, I couldn't care less as the cheerleaders proclaimed, “We've got spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit, how about you?” The football players ran out onto the gym floor while the band played the school song. I wished I could slip on my jPod to drown them out, but instead I waved for Brody to join me in the last row of the bleachers closest to the front door. I hated pep rallies, but I didn't mind missing my seventh period computer class where Mr. Scott insisted on teaching us things we all already knew.

“Dude, what's up?” I asked, and then tensed for Brody's hard backslap greeting.

“Nothing,” Brody said. He looked glum and kept his hands at his sides.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

Brody just stared at his beat-up boots. “Kirby nailed me for cheating!”

“Shit!”

“Don't worry, man, I didn't rat you out,” Brody said as he jammed his finger into my chest. “I'm gonna blow her tires or something.”

“Dude, don't make it worse,” I said, but I wanted to say,
Brody, it's not her fault that you decided to cheat. Take responsibility for your own actions, be a man
. But I said nothing. I knew there are two kinds of friends in the world: those
who tell you what you want to hear, and those who tell you what you need to hear. Brody's all about want, never about need.

“It's not like other people don't do it too,” Brody said as he flipped Mrs. Kirby the finger from a distance. Ever since I got kicked off the football team, if I do something wrong, I get in trouble.”

“I know,” I mumbled as I spotted Nicole and Kyle on the other side of the gym. I wondered what would happen if Kyle cheats on Nicole. I also wondered how Kyle and Nicole got together so soon after our breakup. Had she cheated on me first? Maybe he had already had his taste. Kyle, that sad bastard, doesn't know that a little taste is all he's gonna get.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Brody punched himself in the head through his long, tangled hair.

“Dude, don't worry about it,” I said. “Tonight around seven, it's all forgotten.”

“Right,” Brody said, then raised an invisible glass. We stayed silent for a while, letting the noise of the pep rally surround us. When Coach Simpson spoke, Brody looked agitated.

“You miss it?” I said, as I stared up at last year's division banner hanging from the gym ceiling.

“What? Football?” Brody responded.

“Yeah, playing football.” Brody never talked about it much after he got kicked off the team other than swearing revenge on whoever ratted him out for breaking the Words of Honor oath.

“I miss playing,” Brody said. “I miss making those tackles, smacking pads, yeah, I miss playing the game, but I
don't miss being on the team. Don't miss rules. Don't miss practices.”

“Bet you miss the cheerleaders,” I said as I pointed to Lita Gomez. The only Latino girl on the squad, she's the odd one out, so I suspected she would be Brody's favorite.

“Maybe,” Brody said, then laughed. “I miss getting As, not getting in trouble. No way Kirby would have called me out if I was still on the team. People kick you when you're down.”

“True,” I said as I felt all of Brody's resentment wash over me. I didn't hate the jocks, like the stoners or the artsy kids in theater did. I don't like sports much, but ex-Dad was always taking me to games or making me watch them with him on TV, and I accepted it as my manly duty.

“Well, we'll have our own celebration tonight, right, 151?” Brody said with a hard backslap.

“Dude, I'm so ready. I bet Aaron's ready to go again, too.” My eyes scanned the crowd for the third member of the Rum Drinker's Local 151, but Aaron was nowhere to be found.

“Something was seriously wrong with ATM last night,” Brody said, then rose.

“The dad thing,” I muttered, kind of half-hoping Brody didn't hear me.

“Come on, let's sneak out of here,” Brody said as he gestured for me to join him. We started down the bleachers through the sea of red Dragon jackets worn by football fans who'd once cheered for Brody and now turned their back on him, which is something I knew I'd never do.

Just as we hit the last step, the cheerleaders got the
crowd fired up again. Brody looked like he wanted to spit, but instead he said, “It's just a stupid football game. It's not like it's life or death.”

I grunted and thought then how most decisions were never that simple: life or death.

What do you think death feels like?

I read once that the difference in weight between a living body and a dead body is 21 grams. It's not like I know what that means, but it doesn't sound like a lot. What is in those 21 grams: your soul? Where does it go? Is it like a puff of smoke? Do you go toward a light? We'll never know because the dead don't talk to us, they just haunt us. Our ghost-to-be lies in front of us, arms outstretched, legs almost curled underneath him, and his tongue dangling from his almost toothless mouth. Even if he was alive, I doubt he could have breathed, because it felt like we were sucking up all of the oxygen in the cluttered, filthy space. What was his last breath like? What is the moment of realization when you understand that you're about to die? Is it a thing of stark beauty or indescribable fear? Does it matter how you die? Is it better to go slowly with cancer eating away at your body, or to go quickly: in an auto accident crushing your bones and organs like a trash compacter, or a violent death at the hands of another, wielding a gun, knife, fist, boot, or brick? Is it better to know when and how you're going to die, or to have it come upon you suddenly and unexpectedly? As I sit with my arms wrapped around my knees, and my head hanging low ready to vomit again, I want to rock myself back toward birth. If I'd never been born, then I wouldn't have to die. If I'd never been born, then I wouldn't have ever killed
.

I made my way to my locker after the prep-pep rally, walking mostly uphill against the teeming Red Dragon masses crowding the hallway. Brody was at the office getting his punishment, while I was caught in a cloud of negative thoughts. Maybe it's how that day started with Mom's questions about homecoming and some unstated expectation that I was failing to reach. Maybe it was seeing Whitney so beautiful at the bus stop or Rex so ugly to me before gym class. Maybe it was the stupid loudness of the rally or the silent loneliness I felt whenever I saw Nicole. Maybe it was all of these things, maybe it was nothing, but I'd never felt so pissed off. After tossing my books into the bottom of my locker, I loudly slammed the door on the day. The sound catapulted me into thoughts of tonight—drinking with Brody and Aaron, where nobody had expectations of me and there was nobody to answer to or judge me.