Damage (2 page)

Well, they do.

The light dusts her hair so that it looks almost golden. She looks a lot like one of those Barbie dolls Becky used to play with a few years ago—only nobody could ever make a doll so alive and perfect.

Heather turns her head and sees you through the window.

She gives you a smile so big and so bright that it lifts the breath up out of your chest. Somehow it doesn’t seem to be directed at Curtis or Dobie, although they’re sitting right next to you.

You nod hello back, then turn to Curtis, though you’re still watching her out of the corner of your eye.

“So,” you ask Curtis, “what do you think?”

“Bout what?”

“About Heather.” You figure you already know, but you’re in the habit of prodding Curtis out of his Kat-based bad moods.

Curtis doesn’t even bother to look out the window. “I think she’s shallow and manipulates people,” he says, and starts fooling around with Dairy Queen physics; holding
one finger over the end of his straw, lifting it, letting the air pressure keep the Coke in the straw.

Curtis is usually right about people. Curtis can peel people like onions.

But Heather’s looking at you right now, and she says something to her friends out of the side of her mouth, so that the whole circle of girls collapses in a flurry of giggles and glances cast your way.

And you’re supposed to play along with this game. You’ve always played it well; flirting, dating, getting laid—all without leaving a trail of hurt feelings behind—have always been Austin Reid’s home territory.

Now Heather turns away; she’s talking with her friends, flashing that beauty queen smile like she was just crowned Miss Texas.

Watching Heather, you wonder if she ever feels like the glue holding that smile to her face is slowly disintegrating.

The alarm clock has been going off for a while. It rasps the air, nagging, insistent.

Today is the first day of school.

You manage to pull the pillow away but can’t get the energy to sit up. Through bleary eyes you see the alarm on the nightstand and reach out, clamp down on it till it shuts up.

Okay. You know what you have to do. Don’t even think—just get up. Just get on your feet and start moving—don’t stop to sit on the edge of the bed, don’t wait for your head to clear, don’t pause at all. Just roll out of bed and keep going.

You feel that guy in the picture, that Pride of the Panthers, looking at you, greeting you from his newspaper clipping. When your eyes grab hold of him he’s grinning that blank grin; he’s one pushpin away from
being blank cork staring out from a flat wall, but he still seems more real than you are.

So you do what you’re supposed to; get out of bed, walk down the hall into the bathroom, shut the door, and turn on the faucet.

While waiting for the water to run hot, you take the wooden box off its shelf in the medicine cabinet and feel the heft of that golden razor in your hand. You almost feel like your dad’s with you right now, admiring the smooth curve of the handle, the sharp glint of the blade’s edge.

Shave, shower, get dressed.

When you walk into the kitchen Mom is still there, bustling around the kitchen. Usually she’s gone by this time, but right now she’s hurriedly packing her lunch. “Austin,” she says, “could you reach in the fridge and get me that baggie of carrot sticks?”

It’s on the top shelf behind the milk. You hand Mom her carrot sticks and then get the milk out, too, because that’s all you have for breakfast anymore.

“Thanks.” Mom stuffs the baggie into a brown paper sack. She’s got a run down the back of one stocking, but she looks pretty harried, and you can’t decide whether you should mention it. “Now, where are those crackers?” she mutters to herself.

“Right there on the counter.” You pour your milk into a glass. If she weren’t here you’d just drink it from the carton.

“Oh. Thanks. Hey, how about if you put some of those muscles to work and open the mayonnaise for me?”

There’s a jar on the counter. You pick it up, grip the jar lid, and give it a twist. No luck.

Mom’s got her back to you; the paper sack crackles as she dumps the crackers in. “You look a little tired,” she says, without turning around. “Feeling okay?”

How does she do that? She hasn’t even looked at you this morning.

You frown down at the stubborn lid. You could tell her about not sleeping well, but you don’t often talk to her about stuff, how you feel about things. Not because she’s mean or won’t listen. It’s just that you’re a seventeen-year-old senior football player, and she’s a forty-year-old office administrator who’s been working overtime for almost two years now, and your lives don’t overlap much.

“Mo-o-om?” Becky calls from down the hall.

“In here,” Mom hollers, and glances at the clock. You give the lid another straining twist and it comes free. “Thanks.” She takes the jar from your hand and turns back to the counter as Becky comes in, wearing one of her new pairs of jeans. Becky spent the largest portion of her school clothes money on two pairs of jeans, because she would rather wear the “right” clothes than have ten on-sale pairs of pants. No matter that now she’s got to do laundry every night to have something clean to wear the next day. The only thing that matters to Becky is that she
wears exactly what her friends wear.

“I’m begging you, Mother.” The words may be begging, but Becky’s mouth is pinched up for a fight. “Please, please, please let me wear my new blouse?”

Mom dips a butter knife into the mayonnaise and starts slapping mayo on bread. Her knife doesn’t stop moving as she glances over at Becky, who’s wearing some blue shirt that comes partway off her shoulders. “No. I told you to take that thing back to the store.”

“Allie’s got one just like this, and her parents don’t care.”

“That’s why I don’t want you going to Allie’s house.”

“It’s just a summer top. It’ll keep me cool—it’s not like it’s revealing or anything.”

“You can’t wear a bra under it. Go change.”

“Mother—”

“No. Don’t ask me again,” Mom warns. She tosses the knife into the sink with a clatter.

Becky’s eyebrows come together like thunderclouds. She looks the way she did when she was four, and you told her to quit following you and Curtis around. “I’m not a child anymore.”

“Don’t even start,” Mom says, grimly laying turkey slices on bread.

“I was going to ask if I could go home with Allie today, but now I’m not because you’re just going to say no. So I’ll just say thanks, Mom—thanks for not trusting me and for ruining my life.”

“Your life is just fine, miss.” Mom drops the top piece of bread onto her sandwich and turns to Becky. Each glares at the other with the exact same bulldog stubbornness before Mom turns back to the counter to stuff her sandwich into a fresh baggie. “I refuse to lose my temper, because I’m already late.” She drops the sandwich into her paper sack, crumples the top down. “Austin,” she says briskly, “your sister interrupted. You’re not coming down with anything, are you?”

She stops moving and waits for an answer. But her eyes are still angry, like they haven’t quite let go of the argument with Becky. And her short dark hair is still damp, because she’s late for work and didn’t have time to dry it this morning. And there’s still a run in her stocking that she doesn’t know about.

You’re not going to tell her. “I’m okay. I just woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, is all.”

“Try to take a nap when you get home, okay?” Mom gives you a quick, tight smile, snatches her purse off the counter, and moves to the door. “Lock this behind me, will you? Becky, I’m going to call at four o’clock sharp. You better be here to answer the phone.” Then she’s out the door, her purse falling down off her shoulder.

The screen door bangs shut, the
Wild Horses
wall calendar next to the refrigerator flutters a little before settling back into place. Years ago, Mom tried to make a go of her own business of breaking and training horses, but there just wasn’t enough money in it. That calendar, with
its soft-focus photographs, is your mom’s only acknowledgment that she ever had dreams of anything besides working in an office.

“Everybody gets to do everything they want, except for me.” Becky is standing next to you, arms folded, face sulky. “Even you get to do what you want, just because you’re a boy,” she says, as if it’s all your fault she has to go change her blouse. “Nobody cares what you wear.” Her eyebrows are coming together again. “
And
you got all the eyelashes.
And
you hardly ever get a zit.”

She whirls around and stomps down the hall, leaving you alone.

You can spend your time standing here like a zombie, or you can get moving, too.

Okay. Time to change the channel. You should drink what’s left of your milk. Better get something down, since you won’t have lunch till after noon.

But you really don’t want it anymore, so you pour the rest of your breakfast down the kitchen sink.

Becky hurries by on her way to catch the bus. She’s wearing a denim jacket and holding her books over her chest, so you have no idea if she’s wearing the forbidden blouse. She unbends enough to mutter a “Bye,” at you before she scuttles out the door.

“Bye,” you tell her, even though the screen door has already slammed behind her, and you’re alone again.

Okay. After twelve years of school, you can get into the routine, make all the right moves and say all the right
words by habit. All the actions from all the years before have embedded themselves in your brain.

So you go brush your teeth, grab a couple bucks out of the jar for lunch, lock the back door on your way out.

Once in your truck it’s down the highway, turn right into the parking lot, straight to the area by the field house where all the athletes park. Get there right as the bell’s ringing. Go straight to homeroom, sit and mess around with your friends till you get your locker assignment. Head to that first class and sit while the teacher wrestles with the roll, with latecomers, with people in the wrong class, passes out a xeroxed sheet of class rules and after everybody’s read it, reads the whole thing out loud anyway. Then there’s stacks of books waiting to be handed out, chalkboards full of words to be copied, more xeroxed sheets filled with more words that nobody wants to read—or hear.

The whole day is like trying to sing a song that’s had all the music drained out.

At lunch it’s the same as all the other years. The athletes eat together off campus at the Dairy Queen. The talk runs to practice, girls, classes.

It’s hot as Hades at the outside tables in the Dairy Queen parking lot, so you and Curtis and Dobie and Brett eat inside. Through the window you can see the First Baptist Church hasn’t gotten around to changing its sign yet.
Be joyful always
.

Dobie’s only concern is food. You’re forcing yourself
to eat; you take a bite and chew and swallow and take another bite. Curtis is quiet like always. But Brett had some kind of private talk with Coach this morning before school, and he’s all fired up. As far as he’s concerned, Coach is second only to God.

Brett’s been talking all the way over, on and on about getting to state, about how to light a fire under the team this year. His mouth is still running like a faucet with the handle broken off, and you notice without really caring that Curtis is starting to throw glances of irritation his way. He always says Brett’s mind is about three years behind his body, and Brett’s mouth is another couple of years behind that.

“…that’s what Coach told me,” Brett’s saying. “He said how back when he was in high school the whole team would dogpile on the guy who screwed up the worst. And I thought: Now there’s an idea. We could do that. Come on,” he urges. “Y’all know it’d work, team spirit and all that. We could take state this year. You’d go for it, wouldn’t you, Dobe, if you were playing?”

Dobie looks up from his half-eaten burger, still chewing. “Hmph?”

But Brett is a man with a mission. His voice gets louder and louder. “I know you got to agree, Hightower,” he says, squirting ketchup in a puddle next to his fries. “Right? Whoever’s got his head up his ass, the rest of us get to pound it out for him?”

“It’s a stupid idea,” Curtis says in a flat voice.

That
turns Brett’s faucet off. He drops the ketchup packet. In the sudden silence, Curtis adds, “That’s where they came up with the phrase ‘dumb jock’—because of ideas like that.” He takes a bite of steak finger as Brett’s face goes from tanned to white to red.

You’re tired inside, but not too tired to see that things are heading downhill fast. Brett’s got a temper like a firecracker. And Curtis couldn’t care less that Brett’s built like a Mack truck.

So, once again, it’s up to you. You’re going to have to click on that button. Only it won’t quite click yet. “Don’t be shy,” you tell Curtis, trying to lighten the mood even though your smile’s not working. “Tell us how you really feel.”

“What’s the matter?” Brett sneers at Curtis. “You scared you might be the one to get pounded?”

Curtis looks at Brett like he’s a mosquito that’s landed on his arm one too many times. “You really want to help us get to state, Stargill? Stop screwing around at practice.”

Across the table, Dobie winces.

Brett’s eyes narrow. “I don’t screw around at practice.”

“What do you call spitting ice chips at everybody? Mooning Dobie? Yelling at girls walking the track?”

“I call it none of your goddamn business.”

“You’re a distraction,” says Curtis, as if he doesn’t even see the way Brett’s hands are starting to clench. “If anybody needs to have his head poun—”

Click.
“I haven’t seen any girls out there lately,” you say, a little too loud. “Have you, Dobie?”

“Mrs. Hoskins,” Dobie answers, shooting a worried glance from Curtis to Brett.

Not very helpful; Mrs. Hoskins is one of the PE teachers. Still, you take it and run with it. “Yeah, wearing those same old flappy shorts she’s had for the past four years. But she sure did something different today,” you add. “She flashed me when I walked past the bleachers.”

It has the desired effect. Curtis, Brett, and Dobie all turn to look at you.

“She did not,” Brett says.

“I swear. The top half, anyway. Just lifted up her blouse and showed me everything.”

“Don’t say that, Austin.” Dobie looks horrified. “She’s
old
. She could be your grandmother.”

“You were dreaming, Reid.” Brett makes an obscene gesture in his lap.

“Believe me,” you say straight-faced, “it was no dream.”

“Cut it out, Austin,” Dobie insists. “She must be ninety years old.”

Curtis just watches and listens. Doesn’t say a word.

“Hey, I swear,” you tell them. “The closest I can come
to describing it is two watermelons bouncing in a rubber hammock.”

Stargill splutters and starts laughing. Dobie’s face is about the color of a tomato.

You grin. The corners of Curtis’s mouth are trying to rise up, but he won’t let them.

“You lie,” he finally says.

“Yeah,” you agree.

Curtis’s smile slips all the way out. He picks up an onion ring, shaking his head like he can’t believe he calls you his best friend.

“Good thing she
didn’t
flash you,” Brett remarks, swooping a handful of fries in his ketchup. “You’d be scarred for life. Don’t you know everything under there’s got to be hanging like a used-up feed bag.”

“I can’t believe y’all are making fun of some old lady’s private parts,” Dobie says.

“Then why are you laughing?” Curtis asks.

“I didn’t laugh.”

“You smiled,” Brett says through a mouthful of fries. “I saw you.”

Now they’re arguing about whether Dobie smiled or not, and you are no longer needed.