Haze (2 page)

I took a seat on one of the lowest benches, figuring it wouldn't get quite as hot. With twelve of us packed in together, it was crowded.

“Loving the new swimsuits,” Droid said, taking a spot on the bench beside me. Water dripped from his hair. He had dyed it blue, but he never wore a swim cap. The chlorine four times a week was bleaching it a weird green color. Between his washed-out green hair and his thick dark eyebrows, Droid was hard to miss.

I shifted and the diaper squelched. “They're chick magnets,” I said. I hoped the Sharks wouldn't steal our clothes this time. The rest of the school would be up by now. My boys didn't like the cold, and a Speedo didn't do much to hide that fact.

“Hey—they're leaving!” It was Red Cap. He was on the top bench, taking up twice as much room as anyone else.

I peered through the narrow glass window over the door handle. Sure enough, Jeremy and Steven were disappearing through the locker-room door. No one else was in sight. The last time they packed us into the sauna, somebody had stayed behind to let us out. “They'll be back,” I said. Sweat rolled down my face.

“They'd better be,” Red Cap said. “It's hot in here.”

“It is a sauna,” Droid pointed out.

“Oh, really, boy genius?” Red Cap said. “I hadn't noticed.” He flopped back against the wall, then sat up fast. “This sucks.”

“Jeremy won't leave us in here,” I said. And sure enough, a few minutes later, the locker-room door opened again. Jeremy was wearing his pissed-off look and walking fast. He almost slipped on the tile.

“Nice move, Shark,” Red Cap said.

“Shut up. He's letting us out,” I said.

Jeremy opened the door. “Two lengths,” he said, with a halfhearted wave toward the pool. Some of the guys booed. They would never have done that with Steven.

I was the last out. Jeremy put a hand on my arm to stop me. He glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “Bram—be careful, okay? Don't do anything stupid, no matter who asks you to. And don't go to the initiation party.”

Before I could ask what he meant, Red Cap spotted us. “Hey, pond scum! I don't care what your boyfriend says, you have to get in the pool with the rest of us.” He cannon-balled into the water, still wearing his diaper.

I followed, but chucked the diaper like most of the others had done. The cold water shocked my skin into goose bumps. I concentrated on swimming hard and beating Red Cap. By the time I finished my lengths, Jeremy was gone.

chapter three

I tracked Jeremy down in the weight room that evening. It was late enough that we had the room to ourselves. Not a lot of people like to spend Friday night in a windowless, concrete-walled basement room in glamorous Strathmore Academy.

“What are you doing here?” Jeremy said.

“I'm fifteen, nothing better to do,” I said, adjusting the leg press to two hundred pounds, a little more than I usually pressed. Jeremy might not have been the one choosing the team, but he was still a Shark. “What's your excuse?”

Jeremy had a car, even if it was a clunker compared to the sixteenth-birthday BMWs that littered Strathmore's parking lot. He had options.

He finished his set before answering. He was doing pull-downs, working on his arms. “Not in the mood to go out, I guess,” he said.

I let him finish another set of ten pull-downs before interrupting. “So…what's with the warning?” It was all I could do to keep the weights from crashing down. Maybe two hundred was too much.

“We both know you're going to make the team,” he said as his pulley slid up and down. “Just skip the party, all right? Make an excuse.”

I pushed out again. My leg muscles shook as the weights rose into the air. “You can't” —breathe—“just”—breathe—“say that.” I let the weight down, slowly. “You have to explain.”

The party was going to be at Steven's friend Nate's house. Rumor had it Nate's parents were away and the place was well stocked. Some girls from our sister school, Wallingford, were going to be there too. Wallingford was an all-girls boarding school, like Strathmore was for boys, except the girls wore kilts.

And kneesocks.

Jeremy walked over to look at what I was lifting. “You should focus on what you're doing,” he said. “This is too much weight for you.”

“I can handle it.” I groaned, pushing out again.

“Uh-huh,” he said. But this time, when I lowered the weight, he tugged out the key that kept the weights together.

I pushed again, and my legs flew out. The default weight was only twenty pounds. “Hey! I'm not a girl.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I dare you to say that to Abby.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. Abby would deck me, or worse. The girl carried a knife. A thumb-sized Swiss Army knife, but still.

I held out my hand. “Give me back the pin.”

“Nope.” He stuck it back in the weight rack, several weights lighter than where I'd had it. “Try that. Should be around your body weight. Work with that.”

I worked my legs, slow and steady, concentrating on my form. “Better?”

“Always listen to your elders,” he said.

I finished my set at the lower weight. “Except when the elders tell you to miss a party and won't tell you why.”

He sighed and went over to the mats to stretch. “You ever hear of Marcus Tam?”

I shook my head.

“You would have, if he'd lived. He would have an Olympic medal in freestyle by now.”

Olympic is a big word, and Jeremy wouldn't just throw it around. This kid must have been good. “So what happened to him?” I started another set. Jeremy had been right about the weights. It was better like this.

“Initiation party,” Jeremy said. “My first year. Things got out of hand. And instead of taking him to the hospital like they probably should have, the older guys dropped him off back here in his room to sleep it off.” He turned his back to me and started looking through the free weights. I don't know if he was really seeing them though. He picked up the same five-pound weight three times. “He choked on his own vomit and died.”

“Oh,” I said. I'd heard of stuff like that happening, but never to anyone real, if that makes sense. I mean, of course they were real people, but they weren't connected to anyone I knew. “Were you friends?”

Jeremy tensed. “Roommates,” he said finally. “So if I'd gone home with…”

“You can't know that,” I said. “You can't know what would have happened.”

He shrugged and turned to face me again. “Anyhow, it was all hushed up. Not that he died, obviously, but that it was an initiation party. The hazing and all that stuff—nobody talked about it. The stuff in the papers made it sound like he was some kind of binge drinker or something. A dumb kid let loose on his own for the first time, drinking underage. Nothing about the team, except that he happened to be a swimmer. The school took some heat and did room inspections more often for a while. And the swim team was really careful the next year. No hazing, no initiation. But last year, it started up again. And this year…let's just say I know the pattern.”

“I'm not stupid,” I said. “And besides, you'll be there, right? We can make sure nothing bad happens.”

He shook his head. “You don't understand. I'm not worried about some random accident. They know we're friends, and they said if I—”

He slammed his mouth shut as if he wanted to bite back the words.

I lowered the weight slowly. The room seemed to shrink. “If you what?”

He shook his head. “I'll make sure nothing happens. It's time to come clean about what happened to Marcus. I've talked to some of the other guys—”

The door swung open as he was speaking. It was Steven. Nate was right behind him. Jeremy's face went white.

“Don't let us interrupt,” Steven said.

Jeremy straightened. “We were just talking about Bram's kick. It needs work.”

My eyebrows reached for my hairline.

Nate shrugged. “Kid hasn't made the team yet. Worry about it when he does.”

It was like I wasn't even in the room. “Uh, hello? Still here,” I said.

“Watch your tone, pond scum,” Steven said. “Drop and give me fifty.” He turned to Jeremy. “We need to talk. Privately.”

We weren't at the pool. So technically, he couldn't boss me around. But I didn't want to get into it with him. I held his eyes until he glanced away, then I got down on the floor.

I took my time with the push-ups. All the way up and all the way down, so slowly my arms shook. If Steven wanted to talk to Jeremy privately, I wasn't going to make it easy for him.

When I finished, Nate grinned. “Nicely done, pond scum. You made your point,” he said. “Now give us a sec, okay? Shark business.”

I stood up and looked at Jeremy. “You want me to leave?”

“It's fine,” he said. “See you in the morning for our run?”

What run?
“Uh, sure,” I said, as he jerked his head toward Nate and Steven.

“Six o'clock. Out front, by the flagpole. Don't be late,” he said.

I waited outside the weight room. If I heard anything like a struggle, I was going back in.

Jeremy was the first one out. He frowned when he saw me standing there. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I said, stung. Didn't he realize I had waited for him?

Jeremy opened his mouth to say something, but the door opened again, letting Nate and Steven out. Nate winked at me. “Good kid.”

I'd had enough of all three of them. “You done? Can I use the room? Some of us have training to do.”

A look flickered across Jeremy's face. It vanished too quickly for me to read it. “Remember what I told you,” he said. “Less weight. It might make a difference.”

I headed inside and made a few attempts to get started, but my head wasn't in it.

Time to come clean
. Maybe. But I was here to swim. I didn't want to be part of anybody's crusade. Not even for Jeremy.

chapter four

I woke up to loud beeping. My head felt thick, like I was still half stuck in a dream.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Time to meet Jeremy. Time to find out what he was going to tell me before Steven had interrupted. And time to let Jeremy know that, whatever he was planning to do, I couldn't be a part of it.

Droid sighed and rolled over as I smacked the alarm. His side of the room was all
Star Wars
posters and glowing computer equipment. That, and a giant Mexican flag over his headboard.

I dressed in the dark while planning what to say to Jeremy. I needed a spot on this team. The Sharks were jerks, but I couldn't afford to piss them off, or Coach. What happened to Marcus was tragic, but it was in the past. The police had done their bit. If anyone was at fault, it would have been dealt with by now. Jeremy needed to move on.

Maybe I wouldn't say that last bit to his face.

I jammed a ballcap over my bed-head and jogged downstairs.

At Strathmore, we were allowed to go for early morning runs or walks as long as we signed out and got back in time for breakfast. The sign-out book sat on a dark wooden table outside the headmaster's office. I flipped to a new page, wrote today's date at the top and signed my name. Jeremy hadn't signed out yet.

Outside, I walked back and forth between the front steps and the nearest lamppost to keep warm. It wasn't breath-frosting chilly, not yet, but my arms were all goose bumps. I stretched my calves, leaning each foot in turn against the concrete steps. A jack-o'-lantern sat on the top step, its hollow eyes following me.

I waited five minutes, then ten.

I texted Jeremy and even tried phoning. No answer.

I left the school grounds at a light jog and didn't really start pushing myself until I had passed a few cookie-cutter mansions. My usual five-mile loop took me up around Yale and back to Strathmore in time for breakfast. I passed some woods, then the golf course, and then headed toward downtown New Haven. It started to rain—a light, misty drizzle that felt good on the back of my neck.

On my way back to school, I saw flashing lights up ahead, near the Catholic cemetery. A police cruiser was parked across the road, blocking the way. I detoured past some more monster houses and made it back to school only a little later than usual.

The minute I walked through the dining hall doors for breakfast, I smelled bacon. It took me a minute to notice the quiet. A charged quiet, not a sleepy one.

Some of the Sharks, but not Jeremy, sat huddled around a table in the corner. Nate crumpled a paper napkin while I watched. Steven said something to him, and Nate shook his head.

I finally spotted Droid. He was sitting with Red Cap and some of the other pond scum, not with his usual crowd of computer geeks. I slid into the seat across from him. “What's going on?”

Red Cap stopped mopping up yolk with his toast long enough to look at me. “You don't know yet?”

I got an eyeful of the half-chewed egg in his mouth. “Know what?”

Droid spoke. “It's your friend Jeremy. He was hit by a car this morning. He's in the hospital. Bram, I'm sorry.”

No one at the table met my eyes. I gripped the edges of my chair. I needed Droid to keep talking. I needed not to have to ask.

Red Cap swallowed whatever was in his mouth. “They don't know if he's going to make it. Do you think they'll open up another spot on the team?”

chapter five

I still wasn't used to Saturday-morning school, but that was the way they did it at Strathmore. Wednesday afternoons off for athletic training, Saturday morning classes instead. Geography and English passed in a blur, except for the part where the guidance counselor came in to talk about Jeremy's accident and some of the things we might be feeling.

How would she know?

I signed out before lunch and hopped on my bike. Jeremy was at the hospital in downtown New Haven. His family had probably arrived by now. Storrs was just over an hour away. There was nothing I could do that they couldn't. But I had to go.