Losers Take All (19 page)

“They're poison.”

“Okay,” she said, “then here's a secret.” She leaned so close that I could feel her warm breath. “I just want to be someplace else. I want to go off to one of the beautiful places I've read about in books and—and disappear. I even made a list: Togo. Madagascar. Fiji. Bali…”

She paused, out of breath, and her eyes were wet and shining.

“My father filed for divorce two days ago. My mom's on a heavy diet of antidepressants. She's like a zombie, walking around in silence, except when she talks to lawyers. I hate my life right now. Do you understand that?
I hate it
.”

I held her tighter. “So what's happening with our soccer team is the only thing taking your mind off it?”

“It makes me smile and feel good about something. It's a lot more real than the two of us sailing away to Bali.”

“The two of us? I thought you were getting ready to sail away yourself.”

“Well, I wouldn't kick you out of the boat if you stowed away.”

I ran my hand through her hair. “You posted that video of our team, didn't you?”

“No. But I helped,” Becca admitted. “I filmed Muhldinger on the bus with my cell phone. I was aiming it between two seats and I was scared to death he would see me, but his anger made him blind.”

“Who'd you give it to?” I asked. “Who put the video together and posted it?”

She kept silent.

“The school system may hire someone to try to find out,” I told her. “Whoever did it needs to be on their guard. Was it Meg? I don't think she has the technical know-how. Dylan could do it but he wouldn't have the nerve. Chloe? Shimsky?”

Becca started trembling in a way that I remembered from her panic attack in the barn. She tried to shrug me off.

“Calm down,” I said. “Just breathe.”

“I'm fine,” she gasped. “Go away, Jack.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

“I told you I loved you. Why couldn't you say it back?”

There it was. I knew it was coming at some point, but I didn't know what to say.

“Well, maybe I need to hear it,” she said, and started to hyperventilate. “I can't believe … you'd think … I betrayed you. That really hurts.
Go.
” She pushed my shoulder so hard I nearly fell over the bench, and she shouted:
“Get away from me!”

I let her go and she sat on the bench, holding her stomach. I just stood there and watched, feeling stupid, but ready to help if she needed me.

She slowly came out of it and I sat down next to her. We stayed like that for about five minutes without speaking, and I listened to her breathing get more and more regular.

“My God,” she finally said. “Worst ever.” She glanced at her watch and stood. “I'd better go back. My mother notices when I'm not in the house and she panics. She called the fire department a few nights ago.”

I stood also. “I'll walk you home.”

We headed back up the block. The football game had ended and autumn darkness was knitting together tree branches and streets and empty yards. We walked silently. When we reached her house we stopped in the long shadow of the hedge, and she looked into my eyes. “Please don't make me tell you about the video.”

“I'm not going to make you tell me anything, Becca. But I wish you would.”

“Why?”

“Because I just do.”

“Someone could get in a lot of trouble.”

“Don't you trust me?”

“Of course,” she said. “But there are things…”

“What things…?”

Becca hesitated for a long beat and then said, “Sometimes it seems like you're not like the rest of us. You are not a real Loser. You want to win.”

So the truth was that she didn't completely trust me. I wondered if Frank and Dylan were thinking the same thing.

“Maybe I'm not like everyone else on our team, but I made a choice,” I told her. “I know who my friends are, and I hope they know who I am.”

She looked at me and finally said something so softly that it took a second for my mind to register it. “Percy.”

I stared back at her. “No way. He doesn't even own a computer.”

“He rocks on computers,” she said. “He runs simulations of ancient battles on software he writes himself.”

I was still skeptical. “He's too polite. He would never take on Muhldinger and our school.”

“Don't be such a muscle-head, Jack. He's smarter than all of us put together. Muhldinger called him an idiot and Percy didn't like that. And he's going back to England next year. He's got a great teaching job lined up. So he can do whatever he wants.”

I remembered meeting him in the principal's waiting room, and how he'd said he thought Muhldinger had summoned us to let us know he was ending our season. “But when the Web story broke he didn't have a clue what was going on.”

“The English make the best actors,” Becca told me with a little smile. “He certainly fooled you. Trust me, he knows exactly what's going on.”

“Where did he get all that footage of our team playing its first game?”

“A friend of his from England is the coach of the Marion team. He sent Percy everything he needed.”

“Becca?” her mother's voice called from the porch. “Is that you?”

“I was just taking a walk, Mom,” she answered. “Go back inside. I'll be right in.”

There was the sound of the screen door banging.

“It feels like he lied to me,” I told her.

“Not telling the full truth isn't lying,” Becca said. She took a deep breath. “But I don't want you to ever say I lied to you, Jack. So here's the full truth. You're right—I talked to that woman reporter at the
Star
Dispatch
, too. Meg talked to her first, and I think Meg sent her to Dylan, and then she called me. I didn't know exactly what her article was going to be about and I
never
,
ever
intended to tell her any secrets about your family, but I did answer her questions about our team and how it got started. Maybe that was a mistake. I'm not sure.”

We stood there in silence looking at each other. And then her mother shouted again: “Becca, Meg keeps calling you. It's some kind of emergency.”

Becca hurried into the house, and I hesitated and then followed. I stood silently in the living room as she frantically hunted for her cell phone. “What's wrong?” she asked her mom as she ransacked the living room. “Did she tell you? Is she home?”

“No, she's at the hospital. She didn't tell me.”

Becca was pulling cushions off the couch, searching for her phone. “Is she hurt, is she sick, was it a car accident? She texts while she drives and I told her to be careful…”

“Calm down,” Becca's mother said. “Meg's fine.”

Becca found her cell phone under the couch and read something on the screen. “It's Dylan,” she said. “Something bad happened.”

 

25

At the emergency room, we tried to get in to see Dylan, but the nurse at the front desk said he was with his family and the police and pointed to the waiting room.

Frank arrived a few minutes later, out of breath and drenched in sweat. He'd gotten a text message from Meg and had run two miles to the hospital. I believe that my big friend had pushed himself as hard as any member of Fremont's track team could have done. “How is he?” Frank demanded, red-faced and gasping. “Did they catch the guys?”

“What guys?” I asked. “What happened? No one here will tell us anything.”

“Somebody beat the crap out of him,” Frank told us.

I remembered Rob Powers's warning to me that the football team wasn't amused by all the publicity we were getting. “Could it have been some of the football players?” I asked.

They looked at me.

“I hate our school,” Becca said.

“I hope Dylan tells the cops everything,” Frank said. “I hope he names names.”

“Why wouldn't he?” Becca asked.

“Because he has to walk through the doors of Muscles High again soon,” I told her.

“Things are going to change,” she vowed. “Enough is enough.”

I glanced down the corridor and saw two cops walk down the hallway to the exit. In a minute, Meg appeared. She didn't say anything but just waved for us to follow her.

In the ER ward, Dylan was the only patient. The curtains around his bed were wide open. Dylan's mom was usually a very calm woman, and I had watched her coast through three years of school board emergencies without ever once losing her cool. Now she looked worried and enraged at the same time. “Thanks for coming,” she said in an unsteady voice as we entered.

Dylan's father—a tall and gentle guy who ran a small travel agency in town—was standing by the right side of the bed, and Meg moved to a spot on the left. Dylan was lying on his back with his neck in a protective brace and what looked like the biggest Band-Aid ever on his nose. There were cuts on his face, his left eye socket was badly bruised, and his right wrist had been immobilized in a splint. My friend wouldn't be hitting any killer Ping-Pong backhand slices in the near future.

“Hey, buddy,” Frank rumbled, concern and anger clear in his deep voice. “You look awesome.”

Dylan looked back at us, and I think they'd probably given him some pain meds because he smiled. “I feel pretty awesome,” he said.

“What the hell happened?” Frank asked. “Who did this to you?”

“Dunno,” Dylan told us. “After school, I was cutting through the Stevens.” The Stevens is the nickname of a little patch of forest near the back of our school. A stream twists through it, and according to local legend a young solider named Stevens was drowned in it during the Revolutionary War. It still carries his name two hundred and however many years later. “They came from behind me, fast. I heard footsteps but I never saw who it was. The next thing I knew I was on the ground, they'd pulled my jacket over my head, and someone kept pounding on me and laughing.”

Then he stopped talking and began to cry.

None of us knew what to do, as our friend lay there sobbing like a little kid. Tears squeezed out of his eyes and ran down his cheeks, and his nose started to run. His mother squeezed his hand, and his dad said to us, “Sorry, guys. You'd better go now.”

We walked back to the waiting room and Meg came with us.

“Could he tell the cops anything?” Frank asked her.

She wiped away a tear of her own. “Just when and where it happened. The police are going to see if there are any footprints or other clues.”

“He heard them laughing,” Frank said. “Didn't he recognize their voices?”

“He said it could have been anyone,” Meg told us.

“It was football players,” Becca announced.

Meg looked at her.

“We don't know that for sure,” I told Becca. “We shouldn't spread that around until there's proof.”

“Who else could it have been?” she demanded. Suddenly the anger between us from earlier bubbled back up. “Dylan doesn't have an enemy in the world. Tell me who else it could have possibly been, Jack. A motorcycle gang? How about a Viking raiding party?”

Her sarcasm made Frank and Meg smile, but I said again, “You can't accuse people unless you know for sure that they did it.”

“I can accuse anyone I want,” Becca insisted. “You were the first one who mentioned the football team. They knocked out your teeth, too, remember? Why are you defending the people who just beat up one of your best friends?”

“Great, accuse anyone you want,” I told her. “Maybe you want to call a newspaper reporter.”

“Hey, guys, chill,” Frank said. “It's not gonna help Dylan if you two go at it.” And then he asked Meg, “What happened to his arm?”

“His wrist is broken. The doctor said it's a common injury when someone is knocked over and tries to break their fall.”

“What about his nose?” I asked.

“They broke that, too,” Meg said.

“Was that also busted in the fall?” Frank wanted to know.

“No, that was a punch,” Meg told us.

We were all quiet for a long moment, and then Shimsky's voice rang out. He had stepped into the room behind us. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” he said.

We turned to look at him. He was standing there nodding and almost looking pleased, as if he had always known this situation would flare up into violence.

“Who said that?” Becca wanted to know. “Danton?”

“Stalin?” I guessed.

“John F. Kennedy,” he said. “You know what just happened, right? They just upped the ante and we have to hit them back even harder.”

“What good will that do?” I asked him.

“It's not about doing good,” he said, and I saw Becca nod slightly.

Percy arrived next, and two minutes later Chloe and Pierre showed up. Within half an hour, a dozen of our teammates were milling angrily around the waiting room. We might have been the Losers, but when it came to solidarity and friendship we were making a pretty strong team statement.

*   *   *

They operated on Dylan's wrist at about nine p.m. He had something called a distal radius fracture, and they had to use two pins to stabilize the bones.

“Remind me not to fly with him,” Pierre joked. “Every time he travels through an airport he's going to be setting off alarms.”

“I think these days they use titanium,” Becca said. “It doesn't set off anything.”

Suddenly Percy called out, “Everyone quiet down.”

Dylan's mother had walked into the waiting room, with a young and athletic-looking male doctor in blue scrubs. “That's right, titanium's a nonferrous metal,” the doctor said. “It doesn't set off any alarms. I just wanted you guys to know that your friend came through the operation okay. His wrist is gonna be fine and his nose will heal up better than ever.”