Losers Take All (11 page)

“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 rewriting 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.

There was no response, and all kinds of crazy thoughts ran through my head.

“Mom,” Becca called. And then she pounded on the door:
“Mom?”

Seconds passed. Then the door opened and a petite woman with disheveled hair was standing there in a yellow bathrobe, squinting out into the light. She looked a little lost, as if she had just stumbled out of a fog. “Becca?” she asked.

“This is my friend Jack.”

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Knight,” I said.

But her mom didn't even glance at me. She was staring at her daughter, and then she stepped forward and took Becca in her arms. “Becca, oh, Becca,” she said, halfway between an apology and a sob.

Becca started hugging her and sobbing, and I quickly backed up and headed quietly down the stairs.

 

15

It was a top predator contest—sharks versus lions—and Gentry Field was rocking. More than five thousand students and fans had filed through the main gate, past a new bronze statue of Arthur Gentry in full stride, and were now seated on the red metal bleachers. Smithfield is west of Fremont, and there's always been a crosstown rivalry. They can't compete with Muscles High when it comes to the major sports, but they're just dumb enough to try. A loud contingent of Smithfield fans decked out in navy blue were hooting and hollering for their beloved Sharks to gobble up our Lions. They were waving plastic dorsal fins and screaming that the Lions weren't going to be state champs but rather stupid chumps, and that our team was too scared to even show up.

“Where the hell are they?” Frank demanded. The game was scheduled for a noon kickoff and it was already 11:40.

“Maybe Muhldinger's punching a few extra holes in the locker room wall during his pep talk,” I suggested.

“They're probably waiting to make a big last-minute entrance,” Becca said. The Lions liked to enter their den in style. They always sprinted in through the gate closest to our school while the band played “Fremont Forever”—the starting quarterback in the lead with both arms raised, his seniors running along with him, while the underclassmen and coaches trailed behind. I kept glancing at the gate, waiting for it to swing open and the band to strike up the first notes of the fight song, but seconds just kept ticking away.

I'd been surprised that Becca even wanted to come to this game. She'd had a tough week—her parents had separated, and her dad was now living in a hotel near his dental practice. She couldn't sleep and didn't eat much, but somehow she came to school every day, kept getting A's on tests, and even came to all our weird soccer practices.

We'd had five so far, each one stranger than the next. I guess any kind of physical activity can make you a little better at soccer, but I doubted that these nutty practices would teach us anything about scoring goals or playing tough defense.

Muhldinger had shown up unexpectedly at our Thursday practice. He'd sauntered up just as Coach Percy was finishing a lecture on tactics, and he'd watched, baffled, as our coach drew wavy lines around a big circle on his whiteboard. “What the hell is that?” Muhldinger demanded.

“Lake Trasimene,” Percy explained enthusiastically. “I was telling them about the ambush there in 217
B.C.
—the best tactical use of terrain in all of military history.”

Muhldinger studied the whiteboard. “What does Lake Tra-whatever-the-hell have to do with soccer?”

“Lake Trasimene is south of the Po River in Umbria,” Percy told him. “Hannibal ambushed the Romans there in 217
B.C.
and killed fifteen or twenty thousand of them, depending on which historian you trust. Livy is more dramatic, but I personally lean toward Polybius because he was Greek and therefore had less reason to exaggerate and embroider, wouldn't you agree?”

Muhldinger stared back at him as if even trying to answer such a question made you insane. Instead, he growled: “And that is important because…?”

“The Romans never even had a chance to fight back!” Percy said reverently. “Stay hidden and let the terrain do the fighting for you—that's today's message. Now we're moving on to our stretching.”

“Good,” Muhldinger said. “Let me see some calisthenics. Don't go easy on them, Haskell. Pain in September, trophy in November.”

“Actually, we're trying to alleviate stress so we use free form yoga,” Percy told him.

Muhldinger glanced at Frank, who'd assumed a position that I was pretty sure had nothing to do with yoga but a lot to do with deep sleep. “When do they actually kick a goddamn soccer ball?”

“We'll get to that very soon,” Percy assured him. “Do you want to wait?”

Muhldinger had glanced around at the fourteen inferior physical specimens folding themselves into yoga positions and meditating or napping. “No,” he'd growled. “I've seen more than enough. But I'll be at your first game against that girls' junior high school. And you'd better show me something.”

Now we had come to watch his first game, and even though our soccer team was full of kids who hated football, a surprising number of us had shown up.

Frank, Becca, Meg, and I were standing together on a high bleacher. Dylan was supposed to join us, but his stagehands' meeting for the fall production of
Hairspray
must have been running late. Pierre was first tuba in the marching band. Chloe was working her wonders on the pre-game stats that flashed on the high-tech scoreboard.