Bruiser

53) EJECTION

I’m off my game, and I’m not feeling right.

The coach knows that something’s up with me. He pulls me out at the half. We’re down 6 to 3 against an easy team. I haven’t scored once.

I’m nervous and unsettled. I tell myself it’s because Katrina’s not at the game. She’s always at the game. She’s kind of like my good-luck charm. I keep hoping she’ll show up and that when she does I’ll be able to get my head clear. What’s more, my lack of focus is contagious. I guess I affect the mood of the team far more than I realize, because my teammates keep missing passes and obvious opportunities to score, getting crankier by the minute.

It’s Katrina. Has to be. She didn’t even text to let me know she wasn’t coming. She hasn’t called or texted me for two days; and when I call her, I just get left in voice mail purgatory.

I watch the game, miserable on the bench as we give up another goal. By the fourth quarter all I want to do is go home.

We’re shut out by one of the worst teams in the league. While the other team celebrates their surreal and unexpected victory, our coach lays into us, which is just what we deserve—or at least I deserve it. If we lose one more game, we won’t even qualify for league finals. Killer practices all next week.

I should go straight home, but I don’t. Instead I take a detour to Ahab’s—our neighborhood coffeehouse trying painfully hard to be Starbucks, down to the obvious rip-off names of their drinks. I figure I’ll stop in for a Phrappuccino to console myself, but even before I reach for the door, I see them inside.

Katrina sits beside a bald kid with a bandaged face.

And his hand is on her knee.

All of a sudden it’s Mom and the fur ball all over again; and I keep walking, never going inside, trying to figure out which of the two sights is worse: Mom and her boyfriend or Katrina and Ozzy. Now more than ever I just want to get home.

So Katrina’s playing nurse again, just like she did when we first started going out. She’s taken in the wounded while hitting my ejection button in one smooth stroke. And how unfair is it that I can’t even walk in there and punch him out since I already broke his freaking nose? Home! The second I get in the front door and close it behind me, I start to feel better. I find Brontë in the living room working on some project with Brewster. Papers are spread on the coffee table.

Brontë looks up when she sees me. “How was the game?” she asks.

“They lost,” Brew says.

“How can you tell?” she asks.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“The game went fine,” I say, not wanting to get into it. It’s over. Now that I’m home, it’s history. Even thinking about Ozzy and Katrina doesn’t feel quite so horrifying.

In the kitchen, Mom marinates meat for Dad, who’s out back getting the barbecue going—something he rarely does this time of year. I scavenge the fridge, and Mom says, “Don’t ruin your appetite!”

Normal.

How could anything be wrong when everything at home feels so perfectly normal?

By the time I get up to my room and stretch out on my bed, I can feel the last of my frustration leave me. It feels like I’m enveloped in an invisible security blanket. All is well with the world. And all will be well with Katrina—because I’m already working the angles, formulating a plan. There are two things that go straight to Katrina’s heart: injury and victory. Well, Ozzy’s got injury all locked up—but victory is mine. Or at least it will be.

54) AGENDUM

I wouldn’t say I’m a selfish person. No more than anyone else. When it comes down to it, everyone has an agenda, even if we don’t know what it is at the time. There are lots of times I’ll do the right thing even if it’s against my own self-interest, too. It all depends on the circumstances. There are things that shift the balance, though. I know exactly where that balance has shifted when I go into Brewster and Cody’s room that night.

Cody lies on the blow-up mattress, lost in a comic book, while Brew reads a skinny little book of poetry that most guys wouldn’t be caught dead with. His eyes rise over the edge of the book and meet mine.

“You were right about us losing the game,” I tell him.

He turns a page in his book. “It doesn’t take a brain surgeon.”

“No, I guess not.” I fiddle with the doorknob for a moment. “Well, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve changed my mind.”

“About what?”

“About you coming to my games.”

Now he puts down the book, getting more interested. “Why?”

I shrug like it’s nothing. “Just because.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be at your games.”

“Suit yourself.” I turn to leave.

He stops me. I knew he’d stop me. “Maybe I’ll come if you tell me the truth.”

And so I do. Or at least part of it. “Our team needs to win the next few games to qualify for league finals,” I tell him. I don’t talk about Katrina since he doesn’t like her anyway. “If I play well enough, I might even be in the running for MVP.”

That’s when Cody looks up from his comic book, and I realize that he wasn’t in his own superhero universe at all—he’s been right here all along, listening to everything. He knows what I’m asking Brew to do. He knows what it means. Suddenly I feel guilty, like maybe I don’t want a witness.

Brew picks up his book again and pretends to read, but his concentration isn’t there like it was before. “I thought you said it was cheating.”

“I said it feels like cheating. There’s a difference.”

“I’ll think about it,” he says, but I know he’s already decided to do it. It would all be good if it weren’t for Cody. Those eyes of his just look up at me, pupils dilated in the diffused light of the room. Wide, black pools, seeking out galaxies.

55) UNPRECEDENTED

Brew and I have an understanding. Brew and I are a team on the field. So what if the coach doesn’t know he has a secret player? I start the game feeling like I can take on the world, but today we’re just taking on the Billington Bullets. They’re highly ranked, and a tough team to beat—but I make it clear what kind of game this is going to be right away. I score in the first minute of play. From the first face-off, I rule the field with unprecedented speed and agility—rising from hard falls, disregarding the hardest of stick checks, and never losing an ounce of energy. I’m golden.

And Katrina is there to see it. I made her promise to come.

“I need you there,” I had told her. “Please…you inspire me.”

I hated to beg, but she has to see me. It will all be for nothing if she doesn’t see.

I keep glancing over at Brew, just to check in and see how he’s holding up. He paces off by himself at the edge of the field, a little worn, a little out of breath. He leans back against the fence and gives me a thumbs-up. I resolve that if I get MVP, I’ll give him the trophy. I’ll keep Katrina.

Halftime! It’s 4 to 1—and I scored all four goals. The coach smiles and looks at me like I’m his own son. “That’s what I’m talking about, Tennyson!” he says. “Show ’em what we’re made of!”

“Can I stay in for the whole game?”

“Keep playing like that and you can stay in till New Year’s!”

The rest of the game is a study in humiliation for the Bullets. With thirty seconds remaining, I seal the Bullets’ fate by scoring my sixth goal of the game. I’ve scored six of our eight goals.

The whistle blows, and it’s all over! My team races to me, and in a second I’m lifted up in the air— levitation by glory! But I don’t bask for too long. As soon as I’m back down on the ground, I’m bounding over to Katrina.

“I’m glad you came!” I pull her in for a quick kiss. She doesn’t resist, but she does try to pull away after a second, because, after all, I’m sweaty.

“Sorry,” I tell her. “I’ll shower and we’ll go out to celebrate.”

“You should celebrate with the team.”

“Plenty of time for that!”

“Listen, Tennyson…I’m happy for you and all, and you were great out there, you really were…but I’m meeting Ozzy.”

I’m listening, but I’m not really hearing, because I’m not over myself yet. “So ditch him,” I tell her. “I know you feel sorry for him and all, and I know I shouldn’t have hit him so hard, and you’re right about how all the stuff going on between my parents was driving me crazy—but I’m okay now.” I put my arm around her, and she pulls away again.

“It’s not about feeling sorry for him…. I was seeing him even before you broke his nose.”

Suddenly it’s like I’ve been smashed in the head with my own lacrosse stick. My million-dollar words get knocked out of my skull, and all I can say is:

“Huh?”

“Actually,” she says, “I kind of thought that might be why you were fighting him.”

“Whuh?”

“I was a little flattered, to tell you the truth.” Then she leans forward and kisses me, but on the forehead, the way you might kiss a small child, or an old dog before putting it to sleep. “You should call Katy Barnett—I know for a fact she’s been dying to go out with you since, like, the Plasticine era.”

“Pleistocene,” I mumble vacantly.

“Right, that one. Well, toodles!”

And she’s gone, strolling away with all the good feelings I thought were mine.

The crash inside me could shake the earth. It feels like a fever. It feels like the flu. And my team is still celebrating. We’ve won the game, and qualified for league finals. Why do I not care?

There’s no rock large enough for me to crawl under right now, and all I want to do is get home— teleport if I could—straight to my bedroom.

In all the commotion I’ve totally forgotten about Brew. I look for him, but he’s gone. He must have left the second the game was over—gone home to nurse my wounds, whatever they might be. Did I get hurt in this game? A little banged up maybe, but nothing major—nothing he didn’t sign on for. I want to find him and talk to him. I need to have someone to commiserate with. Even if he doesn’t talk back, that’s okay.

I say my good-byes to the team as fast as I can, grab my lacrosse stick, and head home, feeling like I might use my stick to take out a few mailboxes along the way, and wonder how I got so psychotic.

56) PACIFIED

Brontë catches me out in the street before I get to the front door and punches me in the arm with the strength of a prize-fighter.

“Ow!”

“That’s for forcing him to go to your game!”

I guess Brew got home before me. I guess he told her. Or more likely she saw the way he looked, and she dragged it out of him.

“I didn’t force him to do anything. He came because he wanted to.”

But she’s not buying a word of it. “You’re a self- centered, self-serving—”

“Oh, and when I chased him away from my game last time, that was wrong, too?”

She fumbles her thoughts a bit. “Yes, it was—but at least then you were thinking of him, not yourself!”

I don’t want to fight with her; I just want to get inside. The things I’m feeling right now are too venomous to put into words, and I don’t want to take it out on her or on anyone—I just want to get past her and in through the door. “Instead of complaining about me,” I tell her, “maybe you should think about what you just did to him!” She looks at me, not understanding. So I rub the fresh charley horse in my arm from her punch and say: “The second I walk inside, he’s gonna have one nasty bruise thanks to you.”

I push past her and go into the house, leaving her to stew in her own juices.

Once inside, I drop my lacrosse stick on the family room floor and collapse onto the sofa. I curl up and close my eyes like I do when I have a bad stomachache. I feel my diaphragm begin to heave, and it makes me furious that I might actually burst into tears. Me. I don’t do that! No one can ever see me do that. Is it wrong to feel this awful when you get dumped? Is this even about Katrina at all? I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want the feeling gone.

I hear the TV turn on, and I open my eyes to see that Cody has entered the room. He looks at the way I’m all curled up on the sofa and says, “Can I watch cartoons?”

“Do whatever you want,” I tell him.

He sits on the floor in front of me but leaves the volume a little too low to hear. “Are you just tired, or do you got bad stuff?” he asks me.

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. “It’s not your problem.”

“If you got bad stuff, you should leave,” he says.

“What are you talking about? I just got home.”

“You should leave anyway.” Then he presses the remote, and the volume gets higher and higher until it’s blasting.

I take the remote away from him and turn off the TV. “What’s your problem?”

Then he turns on me with a vengeance. “It ain’t fair! He’s MY brother, and you got no right!”

I want to yell back at him, sink down to his level; but then something begins to change. I feel it building like a wave gathering strength just before it crashes on the shore.

Relief. I draw a deep, fulfilling breath. Comfort. I slowly let it out. Contentment. I am pacified, just as I’ve been pacified each day when I get home. It usually doesn’t arrive so powerfully, but then, I’m usually not feeling as beaten down as I am today. As I was today.

All the bad emotions I had just a few moments ago are gone. I’m a bit dizzy and almost weightless. It feels good.

Cody’s shoulders slump, and he sits back down. “Too late.”

Now I can’t deny that this is something more than the mere comfort of being in a place that’s safe and familiar. “Cody… what just happened?”

“The bad stuff went away,” he said like it was perfectly obvious, perfectly natural. “Cuts and stuff are easy—they go quicker; but the stuff inside is harder. It’s like it has to find a way out first.”

I hear muffled sobs from the guest room, on the other side of the wall. The sobs are coming from Brew. They’re deep; they’re powerful; they’re mine. But not anymore.

“He can take it,” Cody says, resigned. “He can take anything.”

By the time I get to the guest room, Brontë’s already there, holding Brew, trying to wrap her slender arms around his hulking frame as he shudders with sobs of both fury and sorrow. There’s a welt on his arm where Brontë punched me.

“What is it, Brew, what’s wrong?” Brontë says, at a loss to comfort him. “Tell me, please; I want to help!”

The second he sees me, he looks up at me with pleading eyes—he knows this came from me. He knows! “What happened, Tennyson? You won the game; what happened?”

I can only stutter there in the doorway.

Brontë narrows her eyes at me. “Get out!” But I don’t move, so she gets up and reaches for the door. “I said, get out!” Then she slams the door in my face. I wonder if she even knows what’s going on. I wonder if he’ll tell her. Brontë, the compassionate, Brontë, the observant. I’ll bet she’s totally in the dark when it comes to this secret side of Brewster’s gift.

But now I know—and knowing the full truth propels me out the front door. I can’t be a part of this. I can’t willingly bury him in all my baggage.

I make it as far as the front gate before my momentum fails me. There, just a few feet away from the street, I can feel the edge of Brewster’s influence. I can feel myself slipping out of range. All the bad feelings—the hurt, the betrayal—it’s all waiting there just on the other side of that gate. One more step and it will all come flooding back. And as much as I want to take that step, as much as I want to free Brew from the pain…I can’t. I’ve always considered myself so strong, so willful; but here is the truth: I don’t even have the strength of will to steal back my own misery.

Dejected, defeated, I go back inside; but in a few moments even that crushing sense of defeat is gone, evaporating into nothing as I sit in the family room with Cody, the two of us watching cartoons without a care in the world.