Losers Take All

  This time the boos and hisses that interrupted him were noticeably louder, and I even heard mocking laughter. One voice called out loudly: “Give it a rest, Muhldinger!”

  Other students clapped for him, and a girl I recognized as a varsity cheerleader stood and yelled: “Go Lions! Fremont forever.”

  Muhldinger couldn’t continue over the noise so he just stood there with his big arms on either side of the podium, as if he were trying to wrestle something unexpectedly tough back into a box. No question about it—he definitely looked scared.

  Dylan turned to me and asked, “Can you believe this?”

  30

  Dylan opened the door to his basement and flashed me a grin. “Was it the barbecued potato chips or did you miss us?”

  “The chips,” I told him, looking around. “This place is becoming party central.”

  At our first team party everyone had looked restrained and a little uncomfortable, but now they were letting it all hang out. Heavy metal was thrashing from the speakers— I was pretty sure Shimsky must’ve chosen it. He was standing at the foosball table with Chloe, beating up on Pierre and Becca. I watched our revolutionary and our ace statistician work the foosball back and forth between offense and defense, and suddenly rip in goals. They gave each other flying high fives when they scored, and while they seemed to me like an unlikely couple, maybe Muhldinger was right and there was something going on between them.

  Becca was concentrating on trying to defend against Shimsky and didn’t see me come in. Or maybe she was just ignoring me. We hadn’t exchanged a word or a text since the Maysville game. I couldn’t help noticing that she was wearing tan shorts and a red V-necked top—the same outfit she had worn on our first date. She looked great, even though she was getting annihilated at foosball.

  This wasn’t easy music to dance to, but Zirco didn’t care. He danced too close to the Ping-Pong table and almost collided with Jenks, who was in a heated match with Frank. As I watched, Jenks tried to slam the ball and let go of his paddle, which clipped Zirco on the side of the head, knocking him over the black leather couch. He got up, rubbing his scalp, and went right on dancing.

  It was pure Losers mayhem, but everyone was having a good time. Dylan’s mother carried a pitcher of lemonade down the steps and I saw her smiling at her son, who had his right arm thrown carelessly around Meg’s back. My friend had lost his shyness in record time, and looked very comfortable in his new roles as boyfriend and host.

  A hand touched my shoulder. “Good to see you, Jack.” Coach Percy hadn’t come to our first soccer team party, but he was at this team meeting—or whatever it was—dressed fairly normally for him in jeans, a white shirt, and a blue jacket.

  “Good to see you, too,” I said. “Strange day at school. Muhldinger could have used your quote.”

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “The one from Caesar about how no one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected. Our fearless principal looked a little off his game.”

  “It wasn’t his best day,” Coach Percy agreed with a smile. “American schools are turning out to be more dramatic than I thought.” We were alone for a moment and he lowered his voice. “Jack, at halftime in the Maysville game, you mentioned that you aren’t much of an actor—unlike some people. Were you referring to anyone specific?”

  I looked back at him. “I just think people should be straight with each other.”

  “I agree,” he said. “If you ever want to talk about this further, let’s have a chat just between the two of us.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But I think Dylan is calling this meeting to order.”

  Our host was banging a Ping-Pong paddle on the table.

  We gathered around. “I got a call a little while ago from Chief Duggan. They connected Lowry to the beating ’cause they searched the Stevens and found his shoe prints in the mud. The goon wears size fifteens.”

  “Done in by canoe feet,” Frank called out, and people laughed.

  “They brought Lowry to the station and put a scare into him, and it wasn’t long before he cracked and gave them Davis and Barlow. Lowry told them exactly how it all went down, and who did what. They’re going to charge all three of them as adults with aggravated assault, which is a felony.”

  There was applause, but no more laughter. I guess everyone understood that there was nothing funny about the word “felony.” “Was it really serious enough to be ‘aggravated’?” Chloe asked.

  “They broke his wrist,” Meg said protectively.

  Dylan gave her a smile. “Because of the seriousness of my injuries and because three ganged up on one, they think they can make the felony charges stick. Chief Duggan told me not to talk about the legal stuff with the press”—he broke off for a moment and glanced at his mom—“and I won’t. But he didn’t say anything about talking to my friends. And I don’t think the Losers should let themselves be gagged. Especially not when we have the forces of darkness on the run.”

  There were shouts of “They’re going down!” and “Muhldinger for janitor!”

  “A word of caution,” Percy cut in. “This school has been run by certain … elements in the same way for many years. It would be a mistake to think they won’t strike back.”

  “Every revolution has its counterrevolution,” Shimsky chimed in ominously.

  “That’s exactly why we shouldn’t back off or be afraid,” Becca said. “We should all go to the football game tomorrow and sit as a team, wearing our soccer shirts. Let’s make a statement.”

  “Yeah,” Meg agreed. “Losers for Lynton!”

  Lynton was the town the Lions were playing tomorrow. They were competitive with us in basketball and baseball, but when it came to football we always beat the crap out of them. I guess they were willing to take their lumps on the gridiron, because I’d seen us dish out some pretty ugly thrashings and they kept coming back for more, year after year.

  I spoke up: “We can go and sit together but I don’t think we should cheer for Lynton.”

  “Why not?” Meg asked.

  “Because we go to Fremont.”

  “So we should cheer for the people who broke Dylan’s wrist?” Meg demanded.

  “The three guys who did that have been arrested,” I reminded her. “We can’t keep whipping this up.” I looked around at Frank, Dylan, and Becca, and I could tell they didn’t agree with me, but they held their tongues.

  Coach Percy walked next to me. “I happen to agree with Jack. You should listen to what he’s saying.”

  “Making this bigger and angrier and more violent won’t help anyone,” I said. “Dylan got hurt, three guys were arrested, and that’s enough.”

  “It won’t be enough for Muhldinger,” Pierre called out. “He likes dishing out pain.”

  “You really want to get him?” I asked. “I have a way.”

  They all waited.

  “Most of you know Rob Powers. The backup quarterback.”

  “Meathead,” Shimsky called out.

  “Misogynist,” Becca added.

  “I don’t even know what that is,” I admitted. “But I’ve known him for years and he might’ve gotten a meaty head from being on the football team, but deep down he’s a good guy. Muhldinger’s always had it in for him, and Rob hates Muhldinger as much as anyone in this room. He wants to join our team.”

  I could tell from their faces they didn’t like the idea. Chloe said loudly, “We don’t need anybody else. Especially a football player.”

  “We’ve never turned anyone away,” I pointed out. “One of the best things about the Losers is we’ve had an open door. I don’t see how you can slam it on Rob just ’cause he’s a good athlete.” I paused and added, “And if you want to push things without violence—this is a great way. I know Muhldinger, and if his backup quarterback quits to join us, that will piss him off more than anything else you could do.”

  They put it to a team vote, and to my surprise it narrowly passed. I got the feeling most
of them didn’t want Rob on their team, but my friends knew they had treated me badly and owed me one.

  I ate a last handful of chips and was on my way out when Becca appeared right in front of me. “Leaving without saying goodbye?”

  “You didn’t say hello when I walked in.”

  “I didn’t see you walk in,” she said.

  “You weren’t exactly looking.”

  We stood there glaring at each other. I wanted to turn my back on her and walk out of the basement, but I also wanted to grab her and kiss her. “So what’s a misogynist?” I asked.

  She gave me a little smile. “Don’t play dumb.”

  “I just don’t study vocab words all the time.”

  “It’s someone who hates women.”

  “Are you kidding? Rob has more girlfriends than anyone at this school.”

  “And look at the way he treats them,” she pointed out.

  “They seem to like it.”

  “It’s a technique some guys use to take advantage of girls with low self-esteem,” Becca explained. “Sometimes girls don’t know what they want. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a jerk. C’mere.”

  There was a back room in Dylan’s basement, really just a giant closet, filled with the water heater and the electricals for the house. Becca drew me into it and pulled the door closed. The little room was hot and stuffy, and when the door was shut the only light was from a partially blocked window and the illuminated dials on the machines.

  “You were right about my college essay,” Becca admitted. “In fact you were so right that you made me feel guilty. I owe you an apology.”

  “So you are writing about the Losers?”

  She nodded. “My college essay is now called ‘Revolution and Counterrevolution at Fremont High.’”

  “It sounds a little more impressive than ‘Knight and Shadow,’” I told her. “Not that I have anything against your horse.”

  “To get into Stanford or one of the top Ivies you need a story, and I think I’ve found mine.”

  “You definitely have. Just don’t start a civil war and burn our school down to impress the admissions people.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” she said. “But, Jack, I didn’t know that any of this would happen when we were floating on our backs on Hidden Lake and I first mentioned joining the team.”

  “You were so nervous that day about asking me out for a date that you couldn’t have been thinking about anything else,” I told her.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “Seriously, it’s also not why I talked to that reporter from the Star Dispatch about our team. I don’t want you to think I’m super calculating and that I’d been planning this all along, or that I used your family and your father—” She broke off. “’Cause I swear I didn’t. It all just sort of happened.”

  “Okay, I believe you,” I said. “My dad and I had a talk the other day and things are better between us.”

  “I’m glad,” Becca said. “Things are a little better with my father, too. I had lunch with him and he was really trying not to be a jerk. He’s full speed ahead with the divorce, but he’s making it as painless as possible. He’s giving my mom the house and the car, and pretty much everything she wants. It’s uncontested, and moving ahead at record speed.”

  “Well, isn’t that good?” I asked. “At least it’s not a bitter fight.”

  “I suppose.” She nodded. “Except that it makes me feel strange. Doesn’t he have any feelings for our house where I grew up? It’s like he’s trying to escape from everything we shared. Part of me wishes that it was a little more contested. And he wants me to meet his new friend, Emily.” Becca fell silent for several seconds. “At lunch he kept stressing the word ‘painless,’ as if he was going to inject us all with Novocain, like one of his patients. But maybe you’re right and painless is better than the alternative.”

  “I preferred painless when they were gluing my teeth back together.”

  “I know you don’t like dentists,” she said with a little smile. “And I also know how much you care about your old friends. I said some stuff at the hospital I regret.”

  “Me too,” I told her. “And you were absolutely right that it was guys on the football team who beat up Dylan.”

  “Actually, you were the one who said it first. So you were right.”

  There was a machine in the little room that suddenly made a thwump-thwump sound, like a racing heartbeat. I looked into Becca’s hazel eyes and waited for it to finish thumping, but it kept going and even seemed to speed up. “Is there anything else we need to apologize to each other about?” I finally asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. It was hard to tell in the low light, but I thought she’d started blushing. “I missed you,” she whispered. “A lot.”

  “Me too.”

  “Really?” she asked. “That’s a little hard to believe. Because you couldn’t say you loved me. And you’ve been completely ignoring me.”

  “I wasn’t ignoring you, I was pissed off at you,” I told her. “But I guess I couldn’t have gotten so angry if I didn’t care about you so much.”

  No, she wasn’t blushing. It was something else. Her eyes glowed.

  Becca stepped toward me and I put my arms around her, and then the electrical room suddenly got a lot hotter.

  31

  There were fifteen of us now—Rob Powers had wasted no time in letting Muhldinger know he was leaving the Lions for the Losers. “I told him in his office before first period. His face turned so red I thought he might explode,” Rob told me almost proudly. “He kept repeating: ‘You’ll regret this, Powers. Your father will be ashamed of you. I guarantee you’ll regret this.’ But the only thing I regret is that I didn’t do it long ago. I hate that son of a bitch and I’m glad I’m not down in that pit. Now, where’s that bag of chips?”

  We were sitting together, all wearing our home soccer jerseys. Instead of a tailgate party we had brought lots of snacks. The Lynton Mud Pit, as it was known in Fremont, was much smaller than Gentry Field, so we had a good view of the marching band playing “Fremont Forever” while the cheerleaders built a three-story pyramid. Several thousand Lions fans had made the short trip, and they sang as if in one voice: “Fremont High will rise to the sky, to be number one.”

  I picked out my dad ten rows down, standing with his old high school cronies, including Rob Powers’s father. I wondered if Muhldinger was right about Rob’s father being ashamed, or if our principal’s threats were now all empty.

  On the field, the Lions were fired up and ready for battle. They circled around Muhldinger, who thumped a playbook the way a preacher pounds a Bible. He was going over last-minute strategy, but I could tell he was also ordering them to keep their heads in the game. Three of their teammates had been arrested, and their backup quarterback was watching from the stands.

  Not that any of it mattered, because the Lynton Foxes were outnumbered and too small to put up much of a fight. There were more than sixty Lions on our sideline, and when they broke the circle with a loud cheer they looked like red-and-gold giants. Across from them stood thirty or so maroon-and-white Lynton Foxes, and when they ran out onto the field, they looked pint-sized. Their kick returner, who waited alone in the end zone, couldn’t have been more than five-five. He was going to get stomped on, and the Foxes were going to be buried in their own mud pit, as usual.

  The short Lynton returner caught our towering kickoff deep in his end zone. I thought for sure he would down the ball and take it at the twenty, but he never gave it a thought. Instead, he ran it out—straight up the center of the field—and the little guy was a maroon-and-white blur against the green grass and brown mud. The home crowd roared as his blockers formed a flying wedge to protect him. At the fifteen a ferocious red-and-gold wave smashed into the Lynton wedge and dissolved it.

  But the kick returner wasn’t hiding behind the wedge any longer. He had danced sideways, and he was so short and moved so fast that the F
remont tacklers hadn’t picked up his cut. By the time they gave chase the Lynton speedster was streaking down the right sideline with only the kicker to beat. He gave our kicker an inside fake and darted by him. It was a footrace to the end zone, and our fastest guys couldn’t catch him. Their kick returner high-stepped over the end line like he was seven feet tall and raised his arms, and the Lynton fans let him know just how sweet it was to draw first blood after decades of being blasted by Fremont.

  Next to me on the bench, Rob whispered, “Holy God. That’s a hundred-and-five-yard runback!”

  It’s a dangerous thing to give the home crowd of an underdog team some hope. I could almost feel the Lynton fans begin to rally behind their Foxes and start to believe that maybe, just possibly, this might be their day.

  Fremont tried to shrug it off. Our band played, our cheerleaders twirled, and the Fremont faithful chanted: “Fremont number one. State champs, state champs. Bury Lynton in their pit.” But their defense stopped us at midfield, and we had to punt it away. Down they came in half a dozen plays, and their short runner made a slick outside move, took it around the end of our line, and dove right through the legs of the last defender to score again. Almost before we knew what was happening it was fourteen to zilch.

  Good football teams respond to falling behind by getting physical. Fremont had been trained for this moment by practicing line drills, hitting the tackling sled, and power-lifting in the weight room. We didn’t need big plays—we needed to assert ourselves and start pushing them around. Whatever Muhldinger said about how we didn’t have a culture of bullying at Fremont, when it came to football that was definitely our style. The Lions tried to take over the line, stuff their runners, and grind out yards on the ground. But Barlow’s replacement fumbled deep in Lynton territory, and their quarterback uncorked the longest pass of his life to their tallest receiver, who somehow caught it and ran it in. Fifteen rows of Fremont fans fell silent, and Becca whispered to me, “They’re going to lose to Lynton.”