Out of Order (8 page)

And then I know why. That's what Coach says, sometimes when he's on the way through the weight room when you've been doing squats or lunges. He walks by and shouts, “Those glutes burning yet?”

What he means is your butt muscles. Glutes.

It dawns on me—I
do
know this stuff. I do! I use this stuff, every day, in the weight room. I know more than
anybody else in this room, because I feel the burn in these exact muscles. I work these muscles to the point of jelly every day—upper body on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, lower body on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

So I'm thinking, what else does Coach say?

Quads. He says that when I'm on the leg press machine. And what hurts like hell, on the leg press machine?

The front of my thighs.

I write
quads
down in the blank. It's not a doctor word. It's just what I know.

I go over the test thinking, what Coach-type exercise makes
this
muscle hurt? And what's he hollering while I'm sweating and shaking?

Lats. Delts. Pecs. Abs. Biceps. Triceps. Traps.

I write it all down. I finish early, of course. I turn in my test while old Chlorophyll's still chewing her eraser, trying to think.

For the first time in—actually, for the first time
ever
in a class, I feel proud.

And for the first time ever, I can hardly wait to get a test back.

 

I've got no worries now. I'm on a roll. I don't need help. When Mr. Hammond gives us a pop quiz in English, I don't even blink, though I've never heard
Coach hollering anything about Coleridge, this poet who I remember looked like a pop-eyed wuss in the picture in the textbook. Old Coleridge looked like somebody who got the shit beat out of him a lot.

I copy bits of other people's work. I make the sentences as long as possible, and use the biggest words I can think of. Hammond'll love it. Of course he will.

By fifth-period assistant I'm getting a little tired of doing the brainiac thing, but I continue as planned. I open up my English book, because from now on I'm going to by God figure out what it is I'm supposed to
know.
And then I'm going to write it down. And then later I'll condense it down to something I can hide in my palm, or my sock.

The homework is reading something called “A Red, Red Rose.” Mr. Hammond said it was by Bobby Burns, like he knows the guy personally. But now I see that can't be possible, because the book says Robert Burns died years and years ago. So I figure it's one of those intelligent-type jokes that I never get.

I don't get the poem, either.

First of all, even
I
can see the words are all spelled wrong. What gives? For ten years the system grades me down for bad spelling, and now they're making me read this shit that looks like pig latin.

Second of all, it's got to be the stupidest thing I've
ever read. Or tried to read, anyway. All
Os
and
my dears.
Did Hammond explain this in class? “The seas gang dry, my dear.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?

I shut the book and sit up. I don't need this hassle. I don't need this stress. All I need to pass a test is the Trammel balls of steel—plus a sprinkling of words like
theme
and
meter
.

The trash can is in the corner. I wrap my fingers around one corner of the book and draw my arm back, like I'm going to throw a boomerang, or a knife.

Ka-thunk!
A direct hit. The trash can shakes but doesn't fall over.

I know I'll have to dig the book out eventually if I don't want to have to pay for it. The point is I feel better now.

I'm ignoring Chlorophyll, the way she always ignores me. I walk over to the window and hop up to sit on the cabinet underneath, like it's a window seat.

Chlorophyll's deep into her book. She wouldn't notice or care if I fell out the window.

Which is great. I'm free to think my own thoughts, looking out this second-story window at the grass down below, and the asphalt, and the classrooms beyond, in the other wing.

I sit sideways on the cabinet, leaning back against the
windowsill, my legs stretched out in front of me.

I think about last Fourth of July.

Because that was our first real date. Grace's dad said she could start dating when she turned fifteen. Her birthday was on the third, and she spent it with her family. On the fourth I came to pick her up in my car. She had on a white tank top and denim shorts, and her legs just about begged a hand to run up them, they were so smooth. For the first time she slid into the car beside me and it was just us, no Eric or Stu or anybody else from the group. Her hair was tied back, and when she looked at me, her eyes seemed clear green because of the white shirt, I guess. And when she looked straight ahead, her profile was like one of those pieces of jewelry, you know, one of those little round white-and-brown things carved with a woman's face.

I took Grace to see the fireworks downtown. We didn't go to any of the parks or along the river, because we would have been stuck in traffic for hours. Instead I pulled off on this road that I've used in the past for parking. With Grace, though, I brought a blanket and we walked out into the dark field and I spread the blanket so we could sit.

It was breezy, and not hot at all, since the sun had gone down. It was perfect. I didn't talk on purpose, because I didn't want to make an ass out of myself. We
just sat together, and she kicked off her sandals, and somehow in the middle of the fireworks show she let me pull her into my lap, and after a few moments her head leaned back against my chest. And when the fireworks were over, we didn't move, just stayed there and kissed for a long time. I didn't try anything at all, and she didn't get mad at me at all, and it was the best night I ever had. In the morning I could still feel the way her arms slid around my neck and how she kissed me back. And the next time I came to take her out, when she saw me coming up her sidewalk, she opened the door to meet me on the porch. And she smiled at me like she'd just gotten a present.

The bell rings. I don't want to move out of the sun, but I know I have to.

I turn my head, and that's when I see Chlorophyll watching me. She hasn't made a move to gather her stuff. Her book's still open. She's just sitting there with her chin on her hand studying me like I'm a plant cell or a para-whatdyacallit, that you look at under the microscope and it's shaped like a shoe.

I feel my face getting red. I swing my legs around and jump off the cabinet. She's still sitting there—she doesn't bother to look away, like she doesn't even care if I caught her staring at me.

“Take a picture, Chlorophyll,” I tell her as I walk out the door. “It'll last longer.”

 

On the way home I've got Grace on the brain. Thinking about all the making out we did on the Fourth of July—man, I need a Grace fix.

I've been Super Gentleman the past week. In seven days I've worked my way up from hand holding to kissing, being very careful not to piss her off.

I don't want to piss her off. I just want to be with her.

I'm going to call her the second I get in. But when I walk in the door, the phone's already ringing.

I knew it! Grace could feel me thinking about her. She misses me, too! There's a direct line from my heart to hers.

I feel a smile taking over my face as I pick up the phone—it's fate, it's destiny.

No, it's Whorey Dori. The one with Jordan Palmer on the brain.

“Hi!” she says, bright and perky. “Whatcha doing?”

One sinking second later, I tell her, “Not much.” Because it's Grace I want to talk to, not Dori, and I know this girl will talk forever.

“What are
you
doing?” I ask.

“Picking out wallpaper.”

“Wallpaper,” I echo.

“I'm redecorating my room,” she says, like that's a really interesting activity. Which it isn't. Not at all. “But I can't decide on a pattern. I need a man's opinion—which do you like better, vines or shells?”

“I dunno,” I say. I'm thinking how I ought to hang up, just hang up, Colt! Or say I've got to go and
then
hang up.

I always think that, but I never can seem to quite cut her loose. Probably because she really is pretty fine-looking, for a nobody. And according to Palmer, she'll do anything you want her to, any place, any time.

Now you've got to understand that I'm in love with Grace. No question about it. Always have been, always will be.

But hey, for real, I'm perfectly normal. I'm a teenaged male, I'm supposed to be horny for girls I don't particularly know or like. At least I'm no Palmer, who was once boffing two girls, best friends, and neither knew about the other.

So it's not my fault that just the sound of Dori's voice gives me that feeling, sort of guilty and excited at the same time, like when you pick up a dirty magazine off the rack and you're looking at the pictures, and you're acting like you don't care if anybody sees you, but at the same time you're hoping nobody does.

“I like the shells,” Dori's saying, “but I also like the vines because they have these little flowers all around. Flowers are pretty, don't you think?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Flowers are nice.” I've never mentioned to Grace that Whorey Dori calls me sometimes. Grace might not see it the right way.

“So I'm kind of leaning toward the vines,” Dori's saying. “I'll feel like I'm in a forest when I walk in. Don't you think?”

“Yeah, sure,” I tell her. “Vines it is.”

“How many rolls do you think would it take to paper my room?” Dori's asking.

“I don't know,” I tell her. I've never been in her room. I've never been in her house. I don't even know where she lives.

“How much do you think a roll of wallpaper costs?”

“I have no idea.” I'm thinking how things start to happen—like one day you accidentally make eye contact with somebody who's not in your group—and then suddenly everything's out of your control and months later here you are stuck sitting around listening to some slut talk about wallpaper and you can't even hang up.

Finally Dori gets down to it, down to the subject she really called about. Just like she always does. “So,” she asks, breathless all of a sudden, “you talked to Jordan lately?”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “Just saw him in sixth.”

I guess I have to admit I feel kind of sorry for Dori. Being in love with this guy who's completely forgotten she even exists.

Still, I make one last try. I tell myself I'm a sap, an ass, that I can't sit here and listen to this girl, that she's a nobody. I remind myself that it's not my problem that she's in love with a guy who used her, then dumped her forever. I remind myself that I'm never even going to be in the same room with her, much less get close and private enough to sample the goods. I remind myself I am not going to get one single thing out of this conversation but lost time.

I tell myself it's time to reach down deep for those balls of steel and tell this loserette to take a hike.

“I guess he's doing okay?” Dori asks.

It's just so fucking sad.

What's saddest of all is that all the stuff she asks about that asshole Palmer is the same stuff I always want to know about when Grace is out of my life.

I know how Dori feels. I don't like this girl, don't need her, don't want anything to do with her—but I know how she feels. And I'd pour melted lead down my own throat before I'd talk to her in the halls, but I'm also not going to be the one to tell her that the guy she loves is out doing a million other girls, every one of which he
forgets—just the way he's forgotten her.

So I settle in—just for today, just one more time—for what I know is going to be a long, boring, one-sided conversation. Next time I'll tell her to take a hike. But today I tell Dori, “Yeah, Jordan's doing fine.”

Waiting is not one of my strong points.

It's been two weeks since I agreed to let Grace be the boss of our sex life. The Super Gentleman thing is already getting old. I open doors, pull out chairs, and nod wisely. I don't take her parking, and I only kiss her when I'm saying good-bye.

I also keep my hands off her. No joke—we've been out twice, and both times I did some strumming on my old banjo, if you catch my drift, at home before I left to pick her up. That way I wasn't—well, pawing at her is what she calls it.

Don't ask me why it's making love when it's in a movie, and it's pawing when it's just us in a car.

God, I'd take either one.

Another thing I'm having to wait for is the stupid test grades from biology and English. Now, I understand
Mr. Hammond insists on writing little notes on everybody's paper. I don't mind waiting for that, because it'll be nice to get a bunch of good comments in red ink for a change.

But Ms. Keller is just plain lazy. She's sitting on her ass letting my muscle test gather dust. She gets off work at three thirty, for cripe's sake! She could have given me my A the same day I took the test.

With all the waiting I've had to do lately, I spend as much time outside as I can. For one thing, I eat lunch outside a lot at school. The weather's been nice, and even just being out there in the sun and wind clears my brain. Any worries I have get vacuumed right out.

Today Eric, Patrick, Stu, and I are sitting near the top of the bleachers. The guys are eating sandwiches from Carshon's. I've already finished mine. I'm stretched out across three rows, my equipment bag on the footboard under me while I wait for the guys to be done so we can hit a few balls, or toss a few back and forth, or whatever.

I love days like this—out-the-classroom-window kind of days. The sun is out, but it's fall so it's not too hot, and the breeze feels like it's going to lift you off the bleachers, just pick you up and float you away.

The other guys are eating really slow, and Eric's going on about his grandma, or maybe it's his sister, I'm not really sure. It's always whoever's fucking up his family
the most at the moment. Whatever. If I'm not worried about
my
worries, I'm sure not worried about Eric's.

“Either my parents've got to give up their room,” Eric's saying, “or they're going to have to build a bathroom next to the family room and put in doors and everything.”

I only halfway listen. I'm noticing that the old backstop way back by the farthest fence is completely gone now. It was mostly gone before—there were just a couple of steel posts sticking out of the ground. But now there's not even that. Now nobody would even know that used to be a field.

Too bad; that's where my coach called practices when I was a little kid, on my first team. That's where I learned that there are places where nobody cares if you can sound out words or not.

“I don't see why they can't put her in Christine's room.” Eric takes another bite of his sandwich. “I mean, Grandma could make it up the stairs if she really tried,” he adds with his mouth full. “And we could take her meals up to her. That way she'd be guaranteed a visitor at least three times a day. And why would she ever have to come back down? It's not like she's got a life.”

Patrick and I nod agreement, although I haven't really been listening and I'm sure Patrick hasn't either. Stu opens his mouth to say something, but then he shuts it
real quick, because here comes Max Gutterson, the senior, walking around the corner of the refreshment stand. Max is carrying an equipment bag. Only the bag's moving, and it's making these ungodly yowling sounds.

There's a cat in there.

We all stare at the bag. Eric's been talking nonstop since we sat down out here—but looking at that bag, he doesn't have much to say all of a sudden.

“That the cat that's been hanging around all the time?” I ask Gutterson. Because I heard some of the cheerleader girls saying how they've been feeding this cute kitty that lives under the concession stand. I've also heard some of the guys complain how some stray cat's been shitting in the dirt around home plate.

“Right now it is,” says Gutterson.

The bag twists and quivers and yowls. You got to wonder how it can breathe in there.

“We've all cleaned crap out of our cleats for the last time,” Gutterson adds. “Gimme a bat, Trammel.” He doesn't say please. He just reaches toward the bag at my feet.

“Fuck, no.” I put my foot on the bag. Eric, Patrick, and Stu say nothing. Patrick, I know, likes cats. But he's stuck between liking cats and having one very big, very mean senior on his ass for the rest of the year.

Me, I don't care about cats one way or the other.
There's just no way Gutterson can order me around like that.

“Come on, Trammel,” says Gutterson. “Don't be a—”

“Put it in the freezer,” I say. “In the concession stand. Let 'em find it in the spring.”

I don't know why I said it. I didn't even really think it—it just popped into my head. I'm actually a little shocked, that it came out of my mouth like that. Fortunately, I'm still sitting there with just the right amount of coolness, like Hey, whatever.

Gutterson grins. He never thought of that. The concession stand's locked up. But rumor has it there's a key. Rumor has it that more than one girl's buffed the concession stand floor with her back, courtesy of certain members of the varsity team.

Gutterson's staring at me. “You are one sick little bastard,” he tells me with approval.

I shrug. I don't figure Gutterson'll really do it. I don't figure he's one of the guys with a key. Now Palmer, I'm sure, has one. But Gutterson would have been bragging about it all the time if he had one.

Gutterson disappears to the back of the concession stand. I can hear the sound of a key in the padlock, and then a
bang!
as the door swings all the way open against the wall.

Eric and Patrick and Stu are just sitting there, suddenly
silent. Eric and Stu are very interested in their shoes, but Patrick's staring at the concession stand, and he looks really miserable. Of course, he's not going to do anything about it. None of them are. That's my crew for you. They're afraid to help the cat, but still they've got to make me stop and think about what I just started.

All of them, Patrick especially, are sitting there ruining my peace of mind, rubbing it in that I was the one who said to put the cat in there. And the thing is, they'll probably all be moping around for days when all one of us has got to do is take a beating for the cat. Or maybe get put into the freezer himself for a little while. If he'd fit. I don't know how big it is, I just know they got room for hot dogs back there.

Finally we hear the sound of the door closing, and the scrabble and click of the lock, and Gutterson appears again.

“Great idea, Trammel,” Gutterson says. “You may turn out not to be a total waste of space after all.”

Then he's walking back up toward the school with an empty equipment bag.

One frozen kitty, coming up.

“How long do you think it'll live?” Patrick mutters to me.

“What am I, a vet?” I'm leaning back with my elbows on the bench behind me. It's a nice day for October. Not
too breezy. Warm in the sun.

Out here, that is.

Okay, now I'm actually thinking about the stupid cat. About what it'd be like to freeze to death. Little paws on the cold, cold ice. Little meows in the dark. With nobody to hear.

“Hey,” I tell the guys. “Freezing to death beats getting your skull bashed in with a baseball bat.”

Nobody says anything.

“Freezing's just like falling asleep,” I insist. I really think I heard that somewhere. Although I don't know how anybody would know—if you froze to death, you wouldn't be able to tell anybody how it felt because you'd be dead.

“It's too late now,” Eric says, almost to himself. “There's no way to get in there anyway. Not without a key.”

Not without a key.

“There might be,” I point out.

“What do you mean?”

“We could beat the lock off with one of my bats.”

None of them look relieved. They were trying to talk themselves into not feeling guilty, and now I ruined it for them.

“Gutterson thinks he's such hot shit,” I say, because now my thoughts are bounding off in a completely
different direction. “He needs to be taught a lesson.”

Stu twists around and peers back up toward the building. The back of the concession stand's within clear view of two classrooms. “It'll be too loud,” he says, but I'm already slipping off the bleachers onto the ground. I was starting to feel bad about mouthing off, but now I can ruin Gutterson's stupid plan. Ha ha.

But I'll have to hurry, because I don't know how much time we have till the bell rings and people start flooding out of the building for second lunch.

I unzip my bag and look over my bats. I select my oldest, cheapest bat, an Easton aluminum, to do the job. Nobody else moves. “Let me know if anybody's coming,” I say, and walk around to the back of the concession stand to get to work.

Beating a padlock is not the same as hitting baseballs. A couple of minutes later my hands are hurting and my shoulders are sore from absorbing the shock. If the cat's still alive, it's probably shit all over the hot dogs from the racket.

I stop and check the padlock. Not even dented. I lower my bat.

“No go,” I call to the guys, although I can't see them. “Sayonara, Kitty,” I say lightly, like it doesn't matter, but then all of a sudden I'm swinging the bat around for one last really vicious whack to the lock.

And with that last whack, the screws that hold the hinge onto the door pop halfway out.

I act like I meant for that to happen. I put the bat down, pry the screws out with my fingers, and pull the door open.

It's dark in the concession stand. I make my way into the back, where they keep the boxes of food. I give my eyes a minute to adjust, and when they do, I see there's a huge triple sink and a refrigerator. A freezer.

I reach for the handle and pull the freezer door open.

Rrrow!
A cold taffy-colored blur bursts into my face, slices across my right upper lip, and shoots out the door.

I've just released Freddy Krueger's cat. And now I'm standing alone in this dark room in front of an empty freezer. I touch my lip, gently. I can't tell if it's bleeding. It feels like the mother of all paper cuts on my face.

I edge back over to the door that leads outside. I lean around to peek out.

The grass is empty. The asphalt is empty. The classroom windows are blank.

The bleachers are empty too.

My friends are yellow-bellied dipshits.

I step out, shut the door to the concession stand. How many minutes till the bell?

I poke each screw back in its hole. The wood's splintered, and the screws keep falling back out. I finally
have to give up. I pick up my bat, stick it back in my bag. I sling the whole thing over my shoulder and walk, very casually, up the slope toward the parking lot. The back of my shirt is wet from the sweat I worked up hammering on the lock. My lip stings from the cat scratch.

The bell rings right as I'm slipping onto the breezeway. Then I'm walking down the hall to my locker, so I can get my English book. I duck my head when Max Gutterson passes, so he doesn't see the mark I know is there, on my face.

I don't mind much that my friends were afraid. They're my friends, after all, and this kind of thing is why I have the rep I do. Besides, I like danger, and I got to destroy school property and save a helpless animal all at the same time!

I'm a fucking hero.

 

Not for long. On the way up the stairs to assistant, it occurs to me: What if somebody sees the broken lock? What if somebody saw me from the windows and puts two and two together? What if it gets back to Vice Principal Sheridan that I had something to do with busting the door open?

If Mom had a cow over bad grades, she'll come un-fucking-glued if I get suspended.

I can't work on my English now. I can't even open the
book. I plunk myself down in a chair a few seats down from Chlorophyll, who's reading, as usual. I scowl at the table, because I'm pretty pissed at myself. I don't know how I get mixed up in stuff like this.

Chlorophyll doesn't look up or say hello. She never says anything to me—except when I go first, and even then I have to poke her, or say “Hey.” We've been in here alone every day for three weeks now, so I know her, I know that's how she is. Doesn't give a shit about anybody but herself.

Her book isn't a textbook today. It's a regular book. But she's actually
marking
on the pages. With a pencil, writing notes in the margins. Writing in a book that's already filled up with words. Figures.

I turn sideways, so I can look out the window. I can't see the concession stand from here, but now I'm realizing my fingerprints are probably all over it. Sheridan could call it more than breaking a hinge. He could call it breaking and entering.

I could get arrested.

How can everything get to be such a mess in a few short minutes of brainlock?

“I'm such a dumb fuck.” I mutter it out loud. I can't help it. It's so true, it has to be
announced.

“No impulse control.”

It's Chlo. I look over. Her eyes just keep moving down
the page. I thought she was off in her book world. When she's like that, she could be a chair or a part of the table. She could probably sit here all day and never notice if the roof blew off.

And she must have been talking to her book, because for somebody who just butted in, she doesn't seem at all interested.

Impulse control. What does that mean?
Was
she talking to me? She's not explaining—it's like she doesn't even know she said it.