Second period: Sam is in the weight room. It is a jocks’ P.E. option, filled up with senior lettermen, plus some competitive pumpers and wide boys for whom muscle is a major preoccupation.
One of the non-lettermen is J.C., who answers the roll call as Jason Chapin. Though he has built himself a physique even the bikers respect, J.C. streaks his asymmetrically cut blond hair with an electrical rainbow of color and hangs with the burns, among them the Mutant. He must pump out of vanity, as he’s not into team sports and it’s apparently not a health thing—his fingertips are yellowed with nicotine. Doubtless just looking tough is a business asset. J.C. deals. That’s axiomatic; everyone does who uses. It’s the economics of dope. But J.C. is bigger than mere economics; he is The Man at Greenspark Academy, or at least he thinks of himself that way. He is a happy camper, a popular dude who smiles a lot and gives no grief to the administration. Chapin and Sam Styles keep a careful distance between them.
Sam finishes early enough to corner Coach in his office.
“Sam, Sam,” Coach exclaims. “Did you crack your coconut on the edge of a bleacher when you fell all over those girls? I hope you haven’t been talking this around. The girls’ll get the idea they’re entitled.”
“But they are.”
“Oh Jesus Jumping Christ.”
Sam grins. “I’m going to the Office with it.”
“You’re going to your next class is where you’re going. Those morning loosenin’ up sessions just might be our edge. Why do you want to mess with a winning situation?”
“The girls almost took their division last year. Maybe with a little bit more court time, they can go all the way.”
With a moan, Coach throws up his hands. “You’re the only guy on this team has any interest in any of those girls going all the way outside the backseat of a car. One of those twitches put this numb idea in your thick skull?”
Sam glances at the clock.
“Just trying to be fair,” he says, and splits.
By lunch hour when Sam catches up with the principal, Coach has already weighed in with his opinion.
“This is all your idea,” Laliberte says, with the practiced reasonableness of an authority who has already made up his mind. “Why don’t you let them fight their own battles?”
“What’s fair is fair. Why should they have to ask for what’s their due?”
“What brought this on, Sam? You’ve been using the gym in the mornings for three years without sweating the girls’ access to it. All of a sudden you’re on a crusade.”
From the principal’s office windows Sam can see the empty outdoor courts. The multicolored tangle of lost-and-found rags appears to be frozen to the ground amid the clutter of dead dull-bronze leaves.
“Deanie Gauthier was out there this morning, shooting hoops in the below zero.”
Laliberte snorts. “So she hasn’t got sense enough to come in out of the cold. Gauthier’s just one member of the girls’ team. They seem to be content with the current situation. She wants to go out there and freeze her buns off, that’s not your lookout.” The principal shifts restlessly in his chair. “Sam. Think. You want your team distracted and upset about something like this when they should be winning another state title?” Leaning forward confidingly, Laliberte speaks in the earnest tone Sam recognizes as the principal’s bullshit voice. “You’re a good kid, Sam, and we’re proud of you. You carry a lot of weight with your peers. Don’t misuse your influence and start something that could divide the school into camps.”
You’re just a kid, Laliberte means, and the only thing you know beans about is how to get a rubber ball through an iron hoop, so shut up and get back in line.
Sam thanks the principal for his time and heads for the cafeteria.
It is team policy to lunch together if possible. They shove together a couple of tables and horse around a little and it makes everybody feel a little bit more connected. Some of the guys, like Rick Woods, who is going with Sarah Kendall, have their girls sitting with them too. The girls who get to sit at the team table strut and toss their heads a lot to make sure everyone sees where they are.
Sam scarcely hears the dirty joke of the day being repeated as he empties his lunch pail into his gut as quickly as possible. The tension in the pit of his stomach doesn’t make him less hungry but it does diminish his ability to savor fully his stepmother’s chicken stew and biscuits.
The Mutant is nowhere in the cafeteria. The people she hangs with don’t do lunch. They have more pressing engagements in the smoking area.
Selected for maximum discomfort and inconvenience, the designated student smoking area is outside, on a blind back corner of the gym. It is often wet underfoot, exhaust from the metal shop in the basement vents nastily nearby, and there is a draft that feels like it originates in the Antarctic. Hunched over their butts, the smokers huddle like sheep in a blizzard. Generous to a fault in their pariah fellowship, they often share their smokes. Somebody always has a boombox, so there is music or at least a perceptible beat. There are enough smokers to break down into smaller groups: bikers, burns, hipsters and scrubbers, townies and shitkickers—all with jackets wide open, if worn at all, no gloves or mittens, bareheaded, jeans strategically rent for maximum exposure of chapped skin—a literal interpretation of cool and its current intensifier, chill.
Sam does not bother to close his denim jacket either, and with his fingers trying to find refuge
