“Look,” I said. “I don’t even want to be on the damn team. It wasn’t my idea to try out. Coach made me. I’m not even going to take the spot come fall. I’m going to get out of it somehow.”
While I talked, he moved closer to me. Menacingly, like he was trying to intimidate me into backing up.
Over his shoulder I saw Connor making wild pointing gestures. And I knew what he was trying to tell me. Maybe it was just really good pointing, or maybe it was because I’d known Connor for so long, but I read him loud and clear. There was something behind me.
My guess was that one of them was crouching down back there, and as Snicker Boy forced me to back up, I’d fall backward over him.
So I didn’t back up.
I stood my ground as he got closer and closer. Until his nose was nearly touching mine. I could feel every muscle in my body tight like a drawn bow, but I wasn’t in a complete state of panic. Because I really didn’t think he was going to hurt me. Trip me, make me fall down, laugh at me. Yeah. But there were cars going by. Lots of them. Lots of drivers who lived in this small town. Nobody was going to get seriously hurt.
“Says you,” he said.
He seemed to be losing patience with my unwillingness to play the game.
He took one step back, reached out with the palms of both hands, and pushed me hard in the chest. I flew backward. And, sure enough, his idiot friend was crouched back there. I just kept falling until I was on my back in the grass, staring up at the sky.
By the time I’d scrambled to my feet, Connor was flying across the grass. And I do mean flying.
He hit Snicker Boy with his full weight and brought him down, probably more with the element of surprise than anything else. Connor fell with him, fell on top of him. Then he raised himself to his knees and started swinging. Snicker Boy was so caught off guard that all he could really do was try to cover his head with his hands.
Then one of the other boys pulled Connor off the kid.
But Connor wasn’t done. Not even close.
He turned around and started punching the boy in the head. Lefts and rights, both. Over and over.
Now, I’m not defending those guys. They were idiots. But all they’d wanted to do was cause me to fall on my ass, laugh at me, and then walk away. Nobody—with the exception of Connor—had meant to escalate the thing to this level. But, let’s face facts. You can only punch a guy in the head just so many times before he swings back.
The guy swung back.
He connected with Connor’s jaw so hard that I heard it from ten steps away. Connor flew backward and landed in the grass, holding his jaw.
All four guys laughed at him.
Then they turned their backs on us and walked off laughing. And that should have been the end of that whole disaster.
It wasn’t.
Connor rolled over, launched to his feet, and picked up my bat. And he went after the guys with it.
It’s times like that it pays to be really fast.
I caught him with an arm around his waist, and spun him around, and brought him down to the grass again. Brought us both down.
As I did, I looked around for possible assistance. Just my luck. In that moment, there was no one going by.
I managed to wrestle the bat away from him.
I looked up to see the boys looking down on us. They had walked part of the way back to stare. And get off one parting shot.
“Your friend is a freak,” Snicker Boy said. “What the hell’s wrong with him? You oughta keep that freak on a leash.”
Then they turned and walked away.
“Is it swollen?” he asked on the walk home, turning his jaw toward me to give me a better view. And leaning in, as if I were half-blind. It was the third time he had asked. “Is it starting to look bruised?”
“It’s a little swollen,” I said.
The first two times I had said no. But now it was beginning to swell, and no amount of positive thinking could convince me I was only imagining it. And I wasn’t going to outright lie to him.
“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to tell my mom,” he said.
“Maybe she won’t notice. It’s kind of dark in your house.”
“She’s pretty good at noticing stuff.”
We walked in silence for a time. I could see his jaw working as he ground his molars together. Maybe he was testing it to see how much it hurt. Maybe he was just grinding his teeth with stress.
“For me, I don’t even really care,” he said. “But my mom worries about me. She can’t handle it when she thinks I’m not safe.”
“Can I do anything to help you with telling her?”
“No!” he said. Shouted, actually. “No, you should go home. It’s better if I talk to her alone.”
“Tell her it was an accident. We were playing touch football, and you tripped and landed on a rock.”
“That’s good!” I watched his eyes change. Soften. To something slightly less fierce than a suddenly uncaged jungle animal. “She’ll tell me a billion times to be more careful, but it won’t break her heart like if she thinks somebody hit me. Yeah. Thanks. That’s good.”
We were almost back at his house, and he stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. And I knew he didn’t want me to walk any closer with him. I have no idea how I knew. But I knew. Sometimes, when you’re really good friends with somebody, you just know, and they don’t have to say much out loud.
I opened my mouth to ask him why he’d gone after those guys the way he did.
Then I closed it again.
First of all, he’d
