Adam liked to be the first one into the locker room, but not today. He found it was eerie to walk into the locker room and see the kid sitting there on the bench, all suited up, his eyes glossy and staring from within the shadow of his helmet.
Focus , Master Griffin whispered in his mind. Adam thought the interior voice was starting to sound more and more like Yoda now that he had cut back his trips to the dojo to once every couple weeks rather than twice a week like he had over the summer. Master Griffin would have to wait his turn behind Coach Konrathy and Emily Brontë.
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And Phoebe.
Adam started some post-running stretching exercises, feeling his muscles lengthen and contract. This was Konrathy's first late practice--he liked to do a few a season to get the team used to playing under the lights--and Adam was pleased with the way his body was responding to the shifts.
Coach Konrathy frowned at Tommy as he joined the other players. He took his cap off and put his hand through his thinning hair, and Adam knew that some punishment was coming their way.
"We're going to start out with some tackling drills," Konrathy said. Adam thought he could hear him wheezing; he looked like he needed a shave and his eyes were glassy. "All the rooks line up. We're going to see how you take a hit."
Adam watched Tommy Williams take his place at the end of the rookie line. There were about twelve kids trying out for the team this year; mostly freshmen. Oakvale didn't have enough players to field both a JV and a varsity team, so pretty much all of the new kids would at least get a uniform to wear on the bench. Every year, though, there were a few who washed out, didn't make it through the practices, or decided they didn't enjoy peeling themselves off the ground with a headache and a bloody nose.
Adam watched Konrathy looking over his tacklers. Adam's instincts at the line caused him to read meaning in everything: eye contact, nonverbal cues, the inflection of the quarterback's voice as he called the signals. He watched a look pass between the coach and Pete Martinsburg.
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"Look alive, Williams!" Coach shouted, drawing a dark laugh from some of his veteran players. Adam saw Pete watching Coach like a guard dog waiting for the attack sign. Pete smiled before putting his helmet back on, and then Adam saw why. Coach's left hand was held flat at his waist with thumb down.
Adam wasn't grinning at all. He was thinking of the last time he saw Coach make that sign, when he'd ended Gino Manetti's career by hitting him in the knee. He could still hear the tendons pop as he drilled into the side of Manetti's leg with his shoulder, and he could still hear the other boy's shrill cry of pain as he went down. It wasn't until Adam saw Manetti months later at the mall that he realized what he'd done. Manetti, his once-proud shoulders slumped as he gimped along with the old folks, had a cane, and there was a pretty girl, his girlfriend probably, loping along with him, alternately trying to encourage him to pick up the pace or slow it down. Watching them--the look of pained resignation on his face, and the look of total loyalty and sympathy on hers--Adam thought that it was one of the saddest things he'd ever seen. He knew as soon as he'd made the hit that Manetti would never walk right again. He damn sure would never play again.
A week later Adam had signed up for lessons at Master Griffin's dojo. He had read a little about karate and thought it would help him with control. He also hoped it would help him with his guilt.
"You aren't still mad at me, are you, man?" Pete said, slapping
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Adam on the shoulder pads and snapping him out of his reverie.
"I'm not mad at you, Pete," he said, although he wanted to hit back. He wanted to blame Pete for his part in making him the ass he'd been for the past two years, but really he just wanted to punch himself.
"You saw it. Coach wants us to take out the dead kid," Martinsburg said. The lines were beginning the drill.
Adam looked back at him.
Pete gripped his shoulder. "Time to pick a team, Adam."
Adam shook off Pete's hand and held his ground without replying. Stavis and Pete weren't shy about using their fists-- neither was Adam, for that matter--but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He hoped Pete would allow Adam to outgrow him gracefully.
Right, he thought. That's how it will happen.
"You take first crack, Lame Man," Martinsburg said. "Case of beer to whoever puts him out."
First crack, Adam thought. There were a lot of things that living impaired people couldn't do--normal things like breathe and bleed.
He didn't think they could heal either.
The hollow resonant sound of Phoebe's heels on the metal bleachers echoed in the cool air of dusk, drawing looks her way from the few spectators sitting in small clusters and watching the action on the field below. Most of the watchers were parents, girlfriends, or kids from the marching band waiting for rides. Phoebe was used to getting stared at. Her all-black
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wardrobe, an even mix of vintage and trendy clothing, practically guaranteed she would get odd looks from her classmates. Knee boots with heels, long black skirts, dyed hair, and a flowing shawl ensured a raised eyebrow here and there. She didn't mind. She found that her look repelled people she didn't want to talk to and attracted those she did. The goth look wasn't nearly as popular as it once was, probably due to the appearance of the living impaired, but to Phoebe that just gave the style a subtle hint of irony, a private joke to be shared by a special few.
She stood for a moment, scanning the low ridge that rose up behind the bleachers. Koster Field, so named for a scholar athlete who had set track and field records for the state back in the early eighties, was surrounded on three sides by the Oxoboxo woods. A short perimeter of grass ran about twenty feet from the waist-high chain-link fence to the edges of the forest, making the tree shade that reached into the field late in the day appear to be a wall of spectators.
Phoebe sat down by herself. The bench was cold beneath the thin material of her skirt. She took her iPod out of her backpack and slipped the padded earphones over her ears. She also took a thick rectangular notebook and a silver pen out of her bag and set them on the bench next to her.
At least my ears will be warm, she thought, punching up the new album by the Creeps and drawing her shawl tighter around her shoulders. There were a few girls wearing letter jackets over their cheerleader outfits at the end of her bench, whispering and pointing at the field. Phoebe could fit all
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of what she knew about football onto the first four lines of her notebook. The only thing she could make out from the action on the field was that some of the boys were running and some of the other boys were trying to knock them down.
Adam was always easy to spot. He was the biggest one on the field just like he was the biggest wherever he was. She looked around for Tommy Williams, but all the boys moved strangely in their padding and helmets.
Then she saw him, his movements stiff, but not because of his padding. He was taking his place in the line of boys about to be knocked over.
Killian Killgore of the Creeps was singing in her ears about being lost on the moors and chased by a banshee. Phoebe tapped on her notebook with her silver pen, the remaining lines of her poem floating somewhere in the air between her and the field, waiting for her to catch them and write them down.
Phoebe set her notebook on her lap and opened it. The first page was blank. She looked up at the sky and then wrote two words. Then she looked at what was happening on the field.
Adam hit Williams cleanly from the side and tried to brush the football out of his grasp. The hit was easy to make, because Williams was pretty slow and didn't try to fake at all. He went down, but Adam thought that if he hadn't jumped into the tackle, Williams might have kept his feet. Tackling the dead kid was like tackling a brick wall.
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Dead weight, he thought. Ha-ha.
The ball popped loose and bounced end over end ten yards downfield. If it was the start of the season and Williams was already on the team, h
e'd offer his hand and lift him to his feet, but in preseason, Adam was supposed to spit next to his head and call him a wuss.
Williams stared up at him with flat, expressionless eyes that reflected the moonlight above. Adam walked away without saying anything. It was creepy, tackling a zombie.
"Layman!" Coach yelled, "did you play with dolls all summer? What kind of hit was that?"
A clean one, he thought, looking back at his old pals Pete and TC. The Pain Crew. It had been funny when they were freshmen and realizing that they were tougher than about ninety-nine percent of the student population; not so funny now that they were juniors and toughness might not be the number-one criteria for success in life.
TC was still grinning, like he was thrilled that he might still win the case of beer, but Pete was wearing that "what happened to you, man?" look that seemed to be on his face a lot when he looked at Adam these days. Pete whispered something to TC, who nodded and took his position at the line.
Adam watched TC hit the dead kid square in the back. With his helmet.
The sound of the impact echoed across the field. Phoebe could hear the hit up in the stands even with loud horror punk playing in her ears.
"Good hit, Stavis!" Coach yelled.
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Layman's jaw opened as far as his chinstrap would allow. Good hit? That was spearing, and it would be enough to get you disqualified from a game, if not the whole season. That sort of hit could hurt or paralyze someone.
It could even kill someone.
TC jogged over to pal Martinsburg, and they slammed each other's shoulder pads.
"I think he's dead, Jim," Martinsburg said, loud enough for most of the team to hear. He was laughing.
Adam walked toward Williams, who wasn't even twitching. He thought that the force of the hit might have shut him off like a radio being dropped on the concrete, but the dead kid pushed himself up from the turf with the knuckles of his hands, brought a knee up under him, and rose to his feet.
Adam couldn't help but smile when the dead kid flipped the ball to Coach Konrathy. A hit like that and he'd held on to the ball. That kind of focus deserved respect.
The attack continued for the rest of the drills. TC and Martinsburg always seemed to line up against the dead kid even though there were more tacklers than runners. Adam watched Pete hit Williams in the knees on his next turn, followed by TC wrapping his apelike arms around Williams for a neck tackle. Every hit was a dirty hit, but the only disappointment that Coach Konrathy showed was when Williams would pick himself off of the turf after each punishing slam.
The drills stopped when the pattern changed. Martinsburg was about to lay in a shot at knee level when Williams's hand came out and hit the tackier on the helmet. The stiff arm sent
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Martinsburg face-first into the field while Williams lumbered away untouched. Adam noticed that some of the rookies--who themselves had been taking a beating in the drill--were trying to suppress sly smiles.
"Stay away from the face mask, Williams!" Coach yelled.
Adam shook his head. Williams hadn't come anywhere near the face mask.
Later in the practice Konrathy set up a scrimmage drill. By this time most of the players and rookies were spent and wheezing, all except the dead kid. Adam wondered if it was possible for the living impaired to get physically tired.
The drill was simple. The defensive line was to try and get through to sack Denny, and the offensive line was supposed to stop them. Coach put Williams on the defensive line right across from Adam.
Williams, dead or not, was not one of the bigger guys on the field. Five foot ten maybe, and built more like a wide receiver than a lineman. Layman thought that this was cheap, the same way all those hits from the Pain Crew were cheap. Karate class had taught Adam much about honor, and this didn't seem honorable at all.
But it was also dishonorable not to execute one's duty. Cheap or not, he'd have to hit Tommy Williams just like he would hit any other enemy lineman. He'd hit him cleanly, yes, but no less hard.
No one gets through, Adam thought as he spun the ball on the turf and took his stance. No one.
He snapped the ball to Denny and propelled himself
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forward, getting all of his leg muscles into the launch. Williams was slower but he was coming up to meet the charge.
And he did. Adam was peripherally aware of the game; he noticed things at the edges of his vision, like Gary Greene on his right slipping and missing his block. He noticed that no one was helping Williams against him, something that other teams always did to keep Adam from ripping a hole open in their line.
He also noticed that he only moved Williams back about a foot.
The play ended. Greene's slip let one of the rookies through, and the rookie pressured Denny enough to throw an incomplete pass near the sideline. Adam unlocked from Williams, who turned without a sound and went back to his place on the line.
Holy crow, Adam thought. Williams had gone up against him unassisted, and Adam had barely budged him.
He looked around at his teammates to see if any of them noticed the amazing feat that Williams had just accomplished, but for the most part they were all bone tired and shuffling back to their places on the line. Adam knew that very few of them showed any real promise beyond high school--Mackenzie and Martinsburg were probably the best players besides him--and few had the sort of "field radar" that would allow them to notice the important details of the game.
Adam looked over at Coach, whose chubby face was pink with anger, his eyes narrowed to slits. He was shaking his head in disgust.
But it was what Adam saw beyond the coach, out at the
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edge of the woods, that really caught his attention.
There were a few people standing among the trees, watching them practice: three or four of them just standing like statues, watching. Adam might not have noticed them at all if it hadn't been for the big one, a black guy in a T-shirt as gray as the bark of the large oak he stood beside. Adam couldn't see the others well, but he knew from the way that they stood without moving that they were dead.
Out to watch their boy, he thought, but none of them looked familiar. The black guy had to be as big as he was, and there was no way that Adam would have missed him in the halls.
"Layman!" Coach yelled, taking off his cap and slapping it against his thigh for effect, "are you here to play, or what?"
Adam went back to the line. No one else seemed to have noticed the zombies. The living impaired people, he corrected himself. They were creepy, sure, but he couldn't let their presence distract him from the task at hand. He squared up on the line and looked at Williams. Williams looked back at him with unnerving calm.
He believed in knowing his opponents. On the next snap Adam hit him with equal force and again moved him back maybe six inches. There was no way that Williams was going to get through or around him, but Tommy didn't get knocked over like just about everyone else Adam played against, either.
The play ended with a completion. Coach called Adam a little girl and told him to put some effort into it.
Third time's the charm, Adam thought, and this time when
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he hit Williams he shifted his hips in the way he'd learned from Master Griffin. Williams flipped to the side like a gum wrapper caught in a breeze. Denny darted through the Layman-size hole and ran down the field.
Williams was flat on his back. Adam saw light--either that of the harvest moon above or from the stadium lights-- reflected in his flat eyes.
He offered Williams his hand, and the dead boy took it.
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***
CHAPTER SIX
HE LINES PHOEBE WROTE glowed with a blue electricity on the white page. She read the words a second time and the energy flowed back up through her fingertips. The feeling was something she rarely experienced when writing, despite the pages and pages of notebooks she'd filled. But when it came, the sensation was like the spark of
life to her.
She really thought Tommy would not be able to get up from the first bad hit he took. The successive tackles were no less brutal, but up he rose, no worse for wear, that she could see. His resilience seemed to infuriate the tacklers, who pounded and slammed into him with renewed vigor. When he had stopped Pete Martinsburg with an outstretched hand, she had almost started clapping.
She read her poem a third time.
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Harvest moon
Above
The dead boy on the field
Trying to show us
What it means
To be
Alive
If the cheerleaders saw her smiling to herself and thought she was a bizarro, so be it. It was worth it.
Practice ended with a final whistle from Coach Konrathy. She watched as Adam passed by the bleachers. He saw her sitting in the stands and gave her the most imperceptible of waves. She waved back at him like he was a Hollywood celebrity, hoping she'd embarrass him. But if he really had told Whatsername that she was his best friend, there wasn't much else she could do to tweak him.
Phoebe looked for Tommy and saw him standing at the far edge of the players as they moved in a loose knot toward the locker room. Slower than most, he trailed farther and farther until he was a good five paces behind even Thorny Harrowwood, who was limping along after spending the previous hour being pounded into the turf like a tent spike.