Losers Take All

  There were screams of surprise and fear from my soccer teammates, and my first instinct was to step toward tiny Chloe, who was right behind me, to shield her. As I did, one of the charging Lions almost knocked me down and we grabbed each other by the shoulders. I recognized him—it was my childhood friend, Rob Powers. When he saw me, Rob looked a little guilty and veered off. Then someone else blindsided me from behind and knocked me flat onto my chest.

  I put my arms out to break my fall, but for a moment I was back in Founders’ Park, lying in the mud, tasting my own blood. By the time I shook the blow off and Becca helped me back up to my feet, the attack was over.

  “What was that?” Percy demanded, as team members dusted themselves off and Shimsky climbed down from the tree branch where he had taken refuge. “I will lodge an official complaint with the highest authorities.”

  “Don’t bother,” I told him. “The highest authorities already know about it. That was our official welcome to Fremont sports.”

  13

  “Do you think Meg likes me?” Dylan surprised me by blurting out a few minutes before the soccer party was supposed to start.

  We were setting out sodas and cups, and plates of chips and pretzels. His basement was large and carpeted and had a Ping-Pong table, a foosball table, and a flat screen TV. Dylan thought about girls all the time, and hinted that he’d gotten to know ones in other towns through his church group, but I doubted it. I had never seen him say two words to a girl, and this was the first time he’d admitted liking one at our school. I thought it was a step forward, and called for a little gentle teasing as encouragement. “Are you kidding? She’s not that desperate.”

  “Don’t bust my chops,” he pleaded. “Maybe she’ll be impressed when she sees my backhand slice.”

  I feared that he was serious. “Dylan, in the whole history of the world I don’t think a girl has ever liked a guy because of his Ping-Pong backhand. If you really like her, try saying something to her.”

  “You could be right about that,” he admitted, and chewed nervously on his lower lip. “Like what?”

  “Meg always gets the lead in the school play. Ask her what role she’s going out for this fall.”

  “I don’t know anything about theater.”

  “Then ask her what she had for breakfast. It doesn’t really matter what you ask. The important thing is to show some interest.”

  The doorbell rang, and it was Chloe, with Pierre a few steps behind her, holding a box of cookies from his dad’s bakery. I didn’t know how many people would show up for our soccer party, but I guess our team members didn’t have busy social schedules, because the basement was soon noisy and full.

  Frank and Pierre parked themselves on the couch in front of the flat screen. They kept most of the cookies, a giant bag of corn chips, and a bowl of salsa. It wasn’t surprising that neither of them could run more than fifty feet without a time-out—their afternoon snack sounded like a swarm of locusts descending on a cornfield.

  Zirco danced weirdly by himself in a corner.

  At the Ping-Pong table, Dylan was hitting one killer backhand slice after another. He threw occasional glances at Meg, who was standing alone by the fish tank, looking bored. She kept dialing someone on her cell phone, and I figured it was Becca. I didn’t want Meg to leave until Dylan tried to talk to her, so I went over and asked if she’d try a foosball game. “I’ve never played before,” she told me.

  “Not an obstacle,” I said, pointing to Chloe and Shimsky, who were waiting for us on the other side of the table. “Those two don’t exactly strike me as foosball pros.”

  But there are some things in life you can’t predict. Shimsky, dressed in his usual black, gave the impression that all he cared about in life was surviving high school, listening to his iPod, and eventually leading a revolution that would change the world order so that the thin, weak, and victimized would take over. But somewhere along the way he must’ve spent a lot of hours on a foosball table, because the moment the ball dropped through the hole his thin wrists started snapping, sending the foosball rocketing toward our goal.

  Chloe had good coordination and a competitive side I didn’t expect from a nerdy statistician. She defended against me furiously, and every time Shimsky scored a goal she slapped five with him and urged him to “Keep the pressure on.” Shimsky had finally found something he could be aggressive at, and each time he scored he repeated, “No mercy.”

  Meg and I were soon toast. “Sorry,” I told her, leading her over to the drinks table. “I didn’t know what we were up against.”

  She had her cell phone in her hand and had already forgotten all about foosball. “Becca always texts back in five seconds. She’s still not answering.”

  “I talked to her an hour ago and she said she was heading over,” I told Meg. “Something must have come up.”

  “Well if she doesn’t get here soon, I’m leaving.”

  The party was in full swing, and everyone else seemed to be having fun. I glanced at the Ping-Pong table, where Dylan was undefeated. I walked over to him and said, “Let other people play. It’s time to have a drink and mingle with your guests.”

  He glanced in the direction that I was trying to lead him, and saw that Meg was standing alone near the drinks table. “But I haven’t been beaten yet,” he said. “I gotta keep playing till someone beats me. Rules of the house.”

  I yanked the racket out of his hand and gave it to Zirco, who looked at it like he might try taking a bite out of it. “Come have a root beer,” I said to Dylan, grabbing his wrist.

  I half dragged him over to where Meg was studying her cell phone and scowling. “It’s like she dropped her phone in a lake.”

  “I’m sure she’s okay,” I told her. “Dylan was asking me about the school play. He’s thinking about trying stage crew. What’re you guys putting on?”

  “Stage crew?” Dylan repeated, as if he wasn’t even sure what that was.

  “Hairspray,” Meg told us. “Auditions are next week. It’s gonna be great. I saw it on Broadway.” She gave Dylan an encouraging nod. “We need help with crew.”

  He poured himself some root beer and looked down into the cup as if counting the ice cubes.

  “What kind of help do you need most?” I asked. “Is it mostly set building?”

  “Everything,” she said. “Carpentry, lighting, grips. Everyone wants to be in the spotlight and nobody wants to work behind the scenes.”

  “I don’t think Dylan minds being out of the spotlight,” I observed. My shy friend was so nervous that he couldn’t even look up at her. “And Dylan’s great at carpentry.”

  “Not really,” he mumbled.

  “He built that foosball table,” I said.

  Meg glanced at the table where we had just been humiliated. “You built that?”

  Dylan shrugged. “I just followed the instructions and put it together.”

  “That’s more than I could have done,” I said, and gave up. It was up to him now.

  Shimsky walked by and touched my arm. “I’m out of here.”

  “What about my chance for foosball revenge?” I asked.

  “Forget about it, you’ll never beat me.” And then in a lower voice, he said, “We should talk.” And he headed for the door.

  I looked at Dylan and Meg. “Be right back, guys.”

  The fact that I was about to leave prodded Dylan into action. He cleared his throat, and I could see him racking his brain for something to say to Meg. He must’ve come up empty, because when he finally spoke he asked her the question I had suggested, jokingly, earlier: “So, what did you have for breakfast this morning?”

  She stared back at him. “What?”

  There was no way out, so he repeated: “I was just curious what you ate for breakfast this morning.”

  “Why do you possibly care?” Meg demanded.

  He looked at me wildly for help.

  I didn’t have a clue what to say, so I took my best shot. “Dylan’s parents mak
e him eat giant breakfasts,” I told her, “so he’s always asking other people if it’s normal to eat three eggs and bacon and toast, and whatever else.”

  “I usually just have a yogurt,” Meg said. “God, do they stuff you like that every morning?”

  I walked away quickly. Dylan was really on his own now. Even if he failed miserably, at least he’d actually said something to her.

  Shimsky was waiting on the front lawn. “So,” he said, “what are you going to do?”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “We were attacked yesterday,” he said.

  “You mean at soccer practice? They were just sending us a message.”

  “The message was that that was the first punch, before the second punch,” he said, as if he knew everything there was to know about being punched. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “Why do I have to do anything?”

  “You’re the captain.”

  I looked back at him. “So what? If you think we need to do something, let’s take a team vote.”

  Shimsky flashed me a little smile of disdain. “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”

  “Who said that?” I asked him.

  “Joseph Stalin. If you don’t do something fast, it will just happen again, even worse.” Then he stomped off quickly in his black boots.

  I watched him leave, and thought that in his loner way Shimsky might be a little bit dangerous. Then I turned back toward the house. My cell rang, and I saw that it was Becca. “Where are you?” I asked. “The party’s almost over and Meg’s been driving me crazy asking about you.”

  “In the Corolla,” she said, and I knew right away that something was wrong. A silver Toyota Corolla was parked down the block, beneath a tree. I could just make out a figure behind the wheel.

  “Since when do you drive?”

  “Come with me,” she requested.

  “Should I get Meg?”

  “Just you.”

  So I jogged toward the Toyota. Like me, Becca had just gotten a learner’s permit recently, and she wasn’t allowed to drive unless there was an adult driver in the car with her.

  She was alone in the front seat, gripping the wheel with both hands as if she didn’t care about steering but just needed something to hold on to. “You missed a weird party,” I told her. “Dylan’s crushing on Meg. I can’t tell if she’s got any interest. And Zirco was dancing with himself.” I got in and sat down next to her and closed the door. “Bec, what’s up? Are you okay?”

  “Put on your seat belt,” she said softly, and it almost came out like a threat that she knew she might wreck the car. I saw that her eyes were red and puffy.

  “Maybe we should just sit here and talk for a minute.”

  She shook her head.

  “Then let me drive. You might have a panic attack.”

  “If I feel one coming I’ll pull over,” she said, and she switched the car on.

  I fastened my seat belt. “Where are we going?”

  “Away,” she told me, and steered us from the curb with a screech.

  14

  Becca drove fast and didn’t say a word. I asked her several times what was wrong, but she just kept looking straight ahead, as if concentrating on the road was all she could manage.

  We left Fremont and were soon on the Garden State Parkway, heading south at more than seventy miles per hour. I phoned my mom and told her that the soccer party had ended, and that I was with Becca and would come home late. I neglected to mention that we were on the Parkway, heading south at more than seventy miles per hour.

  I clicked off my cell and asked Becca: “Where are we going? Do you want me to call your parents and tell them something? They’ll be worried.”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just don’t go too fast,” and she slowed a little bit. I took that as a good sign. Her hands on the steering wheel looked steadier, as if putting distance between herself and Fremont was good for her. “What’s going on?” I asked her again. “Did something happen at home?”

  Becca finally answered, “Two people who hate each other shouldn’t get married. And if they do they really shouldn’t have kids.”

  “I’m sure your parents don’t hate each other.”

  She glanced at me and then back at the Parkway. It was late afternoon, and cars were just starting to turn on their lights. “Did they have a fight?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “It’s over.”

  “The fight?”

  “My family,” she said. “Could we please not talk for a while?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Just tell me this. Do they know you took the car?”

  “My father drove off in his Lexus and he’s not coming back tonight. He sleeps on the couch at his office, or at least that’s what he says he does. And my mom is locked in her room. She took a pill and she’s either asleep or lying there staring up at the ceiling.”

  Becca turned on the radio, and hip-hop pounded for the next thirty miles.

  She drove us to Seaside Heights, a beach town with a boardwalk that had been badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy and then rebuilt. The summer was over and the giant crowds were gone, but it was a warm Saturday evening and the boardwalk was still busy. There were food stalls and game booths, and steps that led down to the sand.

  We walked the boardwalk for a while, and I bought us slices of pizza. I tried my hand at knocking down milk bottles, and on my third attempt I actually won a small orange teddy bear. I gave it to Becca. “It’s gotta be the ugliest color in the world, but it will bring you good luck.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I think I am going to need some.”

  Sunset was coming on, and she led me down the stairs to the beach. We walked along the dark gray sand above the waves. She asked me, “Do you remember on our first date when you asked me why I study so much?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It was a stupid question. It made you mad.”

  “Studying in my room, with the door shut, always felt safe.”

  “I get that,” I told her.

  “Today I went to my room and shut the door and put on headphones, but I could still hear every single word.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  Becca stood very still, looking out at the dark water. A tanker was a big dot at the edge of the horizon. She fixed on it, as if she wanted to climb on board and sail far away.

  “There was a crash,” she said. “He must’ve thrown something. My mom said she was going to call the cops, but I doubt he threw it at her. My dad can be a real jerk but he doesn’t try to hurt people—at least directly. But suddenly they had pushed each other over the edge. It all just came tumbling out.”

  Becca shivered and I put my arm around her shoulder.

  “He told her the marriage was a mistake,” she went on in a low voice, as if she had hit Rewind and was now playing it back word for word. “The biggest of his life. That it had ruined his whole life. He said that he’d never loved her. That he felt trapped. That’s the word he kept using. Trapped. He had been trapped. He felt so damned trapped. And of course what he was really saying was that I’m a big part of that trap.”

  “Your father knows how lucky he is to have you for a daughter.”

  She turned away from the ocean to look at me, and those hazel eyes had no room for excuses or politeness or anything but the sharp truth. “He wishes I had never been born,” she said. “If I hadn’t been born he would have left her years ago.”

  “He didn’t say that.”

  “He didn’t have to. Then my mom told him if he wanted to leave he should leave. She said she knew he had a girlfriend, and why didn’t he just go to her and stop pretending. So he left, and this time when the door slammed I knew it was slamming for good.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, not knowing what else to say.

  Becca shrugged. “So I was sitting there with my college applications all spread out on my desk. I was rewrit
ing my stupid application essay, ‘Knight and Shadow,’ about how I saved my horse.”

  “It’s not stupid,” I told her. “You did save him.”

  “It’s pathetic that I’ve rewritten it two dozen times,” she said bitterly, her voice getting a little out of control. “You know why I’ve done that? To escape. And the truth is I’ll still never get into Stanford or Yale or Harvard. Because I’m just not quite smart enough or original enough, and it’s a vapid, meaningless essay about a stupid horse. And you know what, Jack? It doesn’t matter. None of it. I looked around at my textbooks, arranged in order on my shelf, and my homework done perfectly. Year after year I sat in that same stupid white chair and did it all just the way the teachers asked, and the truth is that none of it matters, not my grades, not our joke of a soccer team, not Latin or calculus, it’s all crap. I had to get away. So I took the car and … Screw them,” she snapped out, biting off each word. “I wish I had never been born.” And then she stopped talking.

  I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything. Eventually, she took my hand and we just stood like that, watching the lights of the tanker melt away into black. Finally I whispered: “It’s getting late. We should probably go back.”

  “Okay,” she said. And then, “You’d better drive. It’s kind of amazing I got us here in one piece.”

  “You drove fine,” I told her. “And you’re gonna be okay.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I know it. Just give it a little time.”

  I drove us back, and for someone with a learner’s permit who’d never been on a highway before, I did okay. We didn’t talk much, but I noticed how Becca tightened up when we got near Fremont, and when we pulled into her driveway she looked terribly tense. “Let me come in with you,” I asked.

  I thought she would say no, but she just whispered, “Okay.”

  Her front door was open, and we stepped into her house. It was super neat and eerily quiet. She headed up the stairs, and I followed her. When she reached the second floor, Becca walked down a short hall to what I guessed was the master bedroom and rapped loudly on the double doors.