“Hey!” I said, killing the alarm. “Connor MacLeary, get your drunk ass over here!”
Connor stumbled toward me, kicking up sand. He was barefoot, wearing his jersey with a pair of jean shorts, and he looked strangely vulnerable without shoes on. I’d known him since kindergarten, and what I was thinking about then wasn’t how I was a cane-wielding member of my high school’s debate team, about to face off against the varsity quarterback, but how Connor had refused to put on his construction paper pilgrim hat during our kindergarten’s Thanksgiving party. He’d thrown a tantrum over it until Ms. Lardner had picked him up and sat him on top of the cubby nook to calm down.
He was the kid who’d refused to give fat girls Valentines even though you were supposed to bring enough for everyone, who’d always forgotten part of his Cub Scout uniform and who’d made dioramas on lined paper the morning they were due. And he was committing playground vandalism with cooking spray, which was so ridiculous that the vast difference between our respective lunch tables didn’t even factor into my decision to confront him.
“Faulkner!” Connor shouted, spreading his arms as though literally embracing my appearance in the castle park. “Perfect timing! Grab a can!”
“You’re an asshole,” I told him. “Also an idiot, but mostly an asshole.”
His smile disappeared and he scratched his head like he couldn’t believe I was actually angry, as though he was probably misunderstanding.
“What? It’s a joke,” he explained laughingly.
I shook my head, disgusted.
“This is the furthest thing from a joke I’ve ever seen. We’re on a playground. It’s for little kids, you douchenozzle. Call off your goons before some second grader breaks an arm.”
It finally got through to him that I was seriously pissed off. He cocked his head, sizing me up, and for a moment, I thought he might actually take a swing at me. But we both knew he wouldn’t get away with it. Not at school on Monday; the entire football team against a kid with a cane.
I sighed impatiently and hit the alarm on my car again.
“Call it off,” I threatened. “Now.”
“All right, Faulkner. Jesus.” Connor shook his head and ambled back toward his team.
“Hey, assholes,” I heard him call. “Drop your cans. This was a dumb idea. Let’s get that beer from my garage.”
I felt invincible as I swaggered back toward the castle, as though I’d actually accomplished something good. I grinned when I saw Cassidy. She was sitting on the stairs, solemnly watching the football team slink off in defeat. I sat down next to her and pulled her close.
“I have completed my quest, fair maiden,” I joked, “and returned to yon castle to share tales of my triumph.”
But Cassidy wasn’t laughing.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she said. “I thought he was going to jump you.”
“I have bested the ogre,” I insisted. “I am the king of castle park.”
“Ezra, be serious.”
“Connor wouldn’t have done anything. I’ve known him since we were five.”
I tilted Cassidy’s face toward mine, trying to resume where we’d broken off, but clearly I’d used up my allotment of successes for that evening, because Cassidy wasn’t having it.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she said, twisting her hair up into a bun. “Just—don’t scare me like that, okay?”
“No more questing,” I promised, and then drove Cassidy home because it was getting late.
22
SCHOOL ON MONDAY was unbearable. I hadn’t thought anyone would know what had happened, but it was pretty evident that everyone did. A junior from JV tennis named Tommy Yang (the younger brother of notable pantsless sake bomber Kenneth Yang) had been on the courts that night and seen the whole thing.
“I wish I was invisible,” I moaned, putting my head down on the lunch table.
“Yeah, well I wish the turkey in this sandwich wasn’t sweating more than a fat kid in a Jacuzzi,” Toby said philosophically, peeling two pieces of incredibly clammy deli meat apart and jiggling them for emphasis.
I laughed, feeling slightly better about all of the unwanted attention. And then Luke grinned and leaned back in his seat.
“So I heard a pretty good joke,” he said. “I heard Faulkner fought the entire football team on Friday night.”
“What’s funny about that?” I asked, in no mood for Luke’s crap.
“It’s true?” Toby let the halves of his sandwich drop onto the plastic wrap.
“Mostly true,” I admitted. “Depending which version you heard.”
“I’d rather hear your version,” Phoebe said, leaning forward in her seat and reminding me strongly that she ran the school paper.
Cassidy joined us at the table then, unwrapping a pack of vending-machine granola bars.
“Hey,” she said, quickly kissing me on the cheek. “I didn’t say anything. I promise.”
“I know.” I sighed. “Tommy Yang was on the tennis courts.”
And so I told everyone what had really happened, leaving out the part about my having a half-staff the entire time thanks to Cassidy’s and my, uh, fortress play. Toby laughed so hard that he snorted, which I hadn’t heard him do since we were kids.
“I hate to say it”—Austin shrugged helplessly—“but it’s pretty genius, using cooking spray like that.”
“The sort of genius that falls into the exclusive realm of pedophiles and psychopaths,” Phoebe noted.
“I can’t believe you didn’t get your ass handed to you,” Sam said.
“Well, I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m limping,” I deadpanned.
Toby laughed.
“I would have shit my pants,” he told me. “If I was sitting in the park and those goons showed up drunk and spray happy, I’m not even kidding, I would’ve had a bodily misfunction.”
“It’s just Connor MacLeary,” I said. “He’s like a big drunk puppy. Honestly.”
“Maybe to you,” Toby said. “But he made my life hell in middle school. Who do you think dared Tug Mason to piss in my Gatorade?”
Actually, now that Toby mentioned it, the mystery of Tug Mason’s sports-drink-pissing proclivity resolved itself. I mean, people don’t just do that sort of thing without prompting.
“Toby’s right,” Phoebe said. “Football’s a bunch of drunk rednecks. They haven’t won a game in how long?”
“Well, they tied with Beth Shalom once last season,” I offered. “Although that doesn’t really count, since half of the other team was missing due to Rosh Hashanah.”
“I’m so glad Faulkner’s here to give us last year’s football statistics,” Luke grumbled.
“Screw you,” I said.
“Screw your girlfriend,” he retorted. “If you can get your crippled dick to work.”
Our table went quiet, and the white noise of the quad seemed to drop away until it was just me and Luke Sheppard, with his slacker glasses and nasty smirk and unforgivable insult.
I always thought it wouldn’t get to me, someone calling me crippled like I should be ashamed of myself. I suppose I’d only pictured it broadly, the word by itself, like when Charlotte called the debate team nerds, or the orchestra losers. But what Luke said wasn’t some generalized insult. It was genuinely offensive, and he wasn’t getting away with it.
“You are such an asshole,” Phoebe said, slapping Luke across the face. The slap echoed—or maybe the word is reverberated—and in its aftermath, the whole world roared back into place.
Phoebe got up, taking her backpack with her. The poltergeist of her unfinished lunch sat on the table, half of a chocolate cookie and a peanut butter sandwich missing two neat bites.
“I’m going to see if she’s all right,” Cassidy said.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ll go.”
I found Phoebe sitting on the metal bench outside of the swim complex, at the very edge of the parking lot. There weren’t any lunch tables over there, so it was a decent place to sulk, if you didn’t mind the tang of chlorine.
Her eyes were red, and she cradled her right hand as though it still stung. She scooted down on the bench to make room for me, and I sat, and we said nothing.