Out of Nowhere (25 page)

His face fell.

Bingo.

This was where he lived. He might be a privileged, full-of-himself jerk, but he was no dope. He knew that beating us without Saeed on the field was no victory at all. Everyone would always
wonder whether Chamberlain would have won if they’d had their best player. It would be a hollow victory at best. And Alex was, first and foremost, a competitor.

“I
am
better than that,” he said quietly. “And for the record, I know we can beat you, and I welcome the opportunity to do it with your whole team on the field. If it makes you feel any better, I said that to my father.” His tone changed. “Not that what I say matters. He’s running this show. Pretty much runs the athletic director and the principal, too. So you see, Tom, you’re talking to the wrong Rhodes. I may play the game, but my father calls the shots.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’ve got a father who always comes to my games, but other than that he’s pretty indifferent to sports. I think he would have preferred if I sang in the chorus, to be honest. For the first time in my life I actually felt sorry for Alex Rhodes.

I hoped that feeling would pass.

I stood.

“Then I guess we don’t have anything else to talk about,” I said.

“Guess not,” he said. He didn’t get up. As I walked toward the exit, however, I thought of something. I turned to him.

“About that Osama crack. Back at the rock? That sucked, man.”

Alex looked surprised. I wasn’t sure he even remembered he’d said that.

“That’s, like, hate speech, Alex. You can’t go around doing that. Even if you were just trying to bug me.”

An incredulous smile spread over his face.

“C’mon, Tom, let’s not exaggerate. I just said it to piss you off. But you’re right: it wasn’t nice. And I’m better than that, too.”

I stared at him for a moment. The feeling had passed. Probably faster than it should have.

“So you say,” I told him. Then I left.

We were on the letter
M
when all hell broke loose. Varsity had the late practice, so I went to The Center right after school to put in an hour of service. And … for other reasons.

Unlike
C, M
was turning out to be easy. We did
money
and
malab
, which means “honey.” As Abdi drew the pictures, I attempted some humor.

“My grandmother has a saying: ‘No money, no honey,’ ” I said. “I guess we could change that to ‘No money, no
malab
.’ ”

Blank stare from Samira.

“It’s a comment about relationships,” I explained. “Honey, in this case, could mean love. Romance. A few other things, which we won’t mention in front of Abdi here.” Our guy was actually paying no attention to me at all. He loves to draw. The only time that foot stops swinging is when Abdi’s got some crayons or colored pencils in his hands.

“So the phrase is a funny, rhyming way of saying that without cold, hard cash in hand, you can pretty much forget about
holding
hands. Isn’t that right, College?” I said that last bit loudly, in
the direction of the glassed-in cubicle where Myla was doing some paperwork. Her head shot up, and she smiled at me through the glass.

“What’s that?”

“No money, no honey,” I called to her. “You’ve heard that before, right?”

Myla got up from her chair. She joined us in the big room.

“Hmm. Can’t say that I have,” she said. “But it sounds about right.” She was trying not to laugh.

Samira frowned at her.

“But what does it mean?” she asked.

“It means,” Myla said, “that it’s easier to love a rich man than a poor man.”

“It does not!” I exclaimed. “Samira, don’t listen to her.”

Myla stepped behind me and put her hand over my mouth.

“It means,” she continued, “that if a guy wants any affection or attention from a girl, he’d better show up with a very full wallet.” She burst out laughing at her own joke. Samira, meanwhile, looked very serious. Pondering.

I pulled Myla’s hand off my face.

“It means,” I said, looking pointedly at Myla, “that getting along with girls is hard as it is, and being broke only makes it harder.” I still had hold of her hand, and I pulled her toward me. She gave me a look and tilted her head toward Abdi. I released her. We’d agreed to cool it with the boyfriend-girlfriend thing around The Center because we didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. Samira knew what was up, but she was the only one.

Finally she spoke.

“It means,” she said slowly, “that life is hard, and if you don’t
have money you work all the time. To pay your bills and feed your children. But if you have enough money, you can stop work and do the fun things. And that is the sweetness. The honey.”

Myla looked at me.

“And just think: English
isn’t
her first language.”

“Done!” Abdi cried. He slapped his pencil down and held up his sheet. Around the words and definitions he’d drawn a big jar of
malab
and a green one-dollar bill. “I go now, right?” Before any of us answered, he was out of his chair and flying toward the exit. He almost crashed into Saeed, who’d just arrived.

He looked terrible.

If despair were an expression, he’d have been wearing it. His eyes lit on me and he walked right over to our table.

“Tom. I can talk to you?”

Myla and I exchanged a glance and she wordlessly pointed to the office.

I closed the door behind us. There were a couple of chairs, but when I went to sit, Saeed remained standing, so I stood, too.

“I off the team.”

Damn. Damn, damn … damn. This was bad. I’d known they’d try, but deep down I hadn’t been able to believe those Maquoit assholes would actually get him thrown off. How the hell had Coach let it happen? Principal Cockrell? Were those guys completely asleep at the wheel?

“Who told you?”

“Coach. Before school end, he call me down. He say we gots to fight, and he say we will win it, but today I off the team. No practice. Nothing.”

“Did he say how long you’ll have to sit out?”

“He don’t know, Tom! I don’t know. I ask, ‘You need to see the green card?’ but he says no. So I don’t know!”

I put one hand on his shoulder.

“Saeed, Coach will fix this. You’ll just have to miss a couple days of practice probably, then it’ll all be worked out.”

He nodded, but he didn’t look too convinced.

“How are the other guys doing? Ismail, Double M? Are they okay?” Saeed shrugged.

“Yeah, they still plays. They is okay.” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.

“The other guys are still on the team?” He nodded.

“Only your eligibility has been challenged?” I heard my own voice rising.

“Coach say somebody say my age? On my green card? Is maked up. The peoples in Maquoit tell Coach somebody tell them I makes up the age! I don’t!”

Oh God. Oh no. Fuck. Fuck you, Alex Rhodes. You two-faced son of a bitch
.

I’d handed it to them. Told him Saeed had no papers back in Africa and he estimated his age and might actually be older. I said that. I didn’t say it about the other guys, just Saeed. And that’s what they were using.

They must’ve had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Until I opened my big, stupid mouth.

Certifiable, Tom
. Even Don had known I was nuts to talk to Alex.

I had to find Coach. I had to tell him what happened.

I beat it out of there, scarcely saying goodbye to Myla and Samira. I got to the fields at least a half hour before JV practice
ended, but Coach was nowhere to be found. The JV coach said Coach Gerardi had a meeting and wasn’t coming to practice and so he was going to work with us. Told me I could try calling him at home that night or track him down at school the next day.

So I went through the motions at practice, expressing disgust and anger with all the other guys over Saeed’s eligibility case. I said nothing about speaking to Alex, nothing about how my fingerprints were all over it. I buried my guilt and my rage and took it out on the ball. Ran a couple extra laps when practice was over, and prayed I could get some sleep and the night would pass quickly.

Then the storm hit.

A nor’easter is a winter storm, but we can get them in Maine as early as October.

It forms when warm air spiraling up the East Coast mixes with cold Canadian air, creating a meteorologist’s nightmare. Heavy snow and rain pelt the ground. Winds whip, taking out power lines heavy with wet snow. It usually gets really cold right after a nor’easter, freezing the rain and turning the snow into a sharp crust that makes things especially fun for all the emergency crews trying to restore power and all the people creeping out of their homes to survey the damage and chainsaw the fallen trees blocking roads and driveways.

When you live in Maine, you pretty much get used to weather. My dad likes to say there’s no such thing as bad weather, just improper dressing. But a nor’easter is serious. It was a nor’easter that finished off George Clooney in that movie
The Perfect Storm
. When there’s one in the forecast, you count on a snow day from school.

You bring in extra wood, stock up on batteries and candles
and lamp oil. Make sure you have plenty of PB and J in the house, because you might not be cooking for a while.

Here’s what you don’t do: you
don’t
go out driving. Especially not with George Morin.

Practice was canceled because of the forecast, and when the final bell rang and kids streamed out of the building toward the waiting buses, it was getting dark. The sun had already been setting earlier and earlier every day; by late November, it would be pitch black by four-thirty. But that afternoon, with the storm coming? Dusk fell early. The clouds were low and thick overhead, and everything was awash in a gray half-light.
Le crépuscule
, in French. I’ve always loved the feel of that word, like something soft is closing—and end of day is like shutting the lid on a velvet box.

Of course, that’s how
le crépuscule
feels at the end of a good day. On a bad day, like that one? It felt like closing a coffin.

I had just come from seeing Coach.

His office is a glorified closet not much bigger than a confessional. It felt like a confessional, with him sitting in there alone, waiting. We didn’t have an appointment, but there he was. Seriously, I almost started out with, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” which is the traditional opener. It precedes the long list of all the things you’ve screwed up and have to tell the priest, who then absolves you, tells you to knock it off (“go out and sin no more”), and assigns you a few prayers to mutter in the pews before you peace out.

My non-Catholic friends think this is the biggest pile of horseshit they have ever heard of. They’re like, “Dude, so you can pretty much go out and do whatever because the priest is gonna wipe the
slate clean for you on Saturday afternoon?” Which of course is not the point. The point is you’re supposed to
stop
doing whatever it is.

But in the whole big Catholic cafeteria line, confession is the part I actually get. That and angels, which, after watching Saeed play, I’m a little more open to. I’m not so sure about the rest of it—the body and blood, the pope, saints—but when I walk into that little dark box and tell Father Whoever behind the grille what I feel guilty about, I’m pounds lighter. Like someone just took a sack of stones from my arms. It doesn’t mean I won’t mess up again, but for a while at least I believe I won’t.

And that feels good.

Coach let me spill. He didn’t interrupt once, just let me get it all out. And when I was through, he didn’t yell. Didn’t tell me what a complete dope I’d been. We just talked, man to man. And yeah, the stones I’d been carrying all day dropped from my arms one by one. Which didn’t fix anything, but at least I didn’t feel like shit anymore.

“First off,” he said, “I want you to let yourself off the hook. You tried to do something to help a friend. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. I do wish you’d come to me first, but … well, that’s water under the bridge.

“Second, I don’t think you and I can appreciate how much pressure that young man is under. It explains why he used you.”

“You mean Alex?”

He nodded.

“His father was at the meeting I attended yesterday and … well, let’s just say it can’t be easy having him for a parent.”

I thought of that summer day at soccer camp, and Mr. Rhodes
speaking to his son. The blinking. Alex was like a dog that’s so well trained it doesn’t need a leash: it obeys on voice command.

“Why was he there?” I asked.

Coach swore.

“That’s what I wanted to know! Why is the president of some private soccer club involved with a public school sports program? But no one seemed interested in answering that question, and it turned out to be a foregone conclusion that they were going to challenge Saeed’s eligibility. I don’t know why they bothered to waste my time with a meeting.”

I felt gut-punched. This was mind-blowingly unfair.

“So Saeed’s off?” I said.

Coach shrugged.

“My guess is we’ll work this out in a couple of days, but in the meantime, he’s benched. I did get
that
concession from them. He can suit up and sit with you guys, but I can’t put him in.”

A couple of days. We were scheduled to play our first postseason game in a couple of days. And if we lost … we were out. Our season would be over.

“Also, Tom, given what you’ve just told me … there’s a chance you might get asked some questions.”

“What sort of questions?” I asked.

“About Saeed. Whatever you told Alex. They may try to use that against us.” Coach said this calmly. Matter-of-factly. As opposed to the adrenaline flips my stomach was doing.

“What do I say if they ask me?” I said.

Coach smiled.

“Do what you always do, son. Tell them the truth. Tell them
to the best of your knowledge, Saeed is eighteen. Exactly what it says on his green card.”

To the best of my knowledge
. Key words there. Pretty much everything I knew about Saeed was “to the best of my knowledge.” Which was none too clear. Bits and pieces I could barely string together. Stories from Myla, a few things from Samira. Plus the dude himself. Laughing, eager, friendly. Fast. What could I say? I liked him.