I glance at Texas and Beretta. I know I’ve already said plenty that’s highly personal, but this … it’s something I’ve never admitted to anyone.
“Why wasn’t I sure?” I hear myself say, and I know the whole story’s on its way out. My mouth won’t stop. I’m hemorrhaging memories and personal failures. These drugs suck. “You have to understand something, Cordero. Before my dad died, I had friends, decent grades, some promise in baseball. I had everything. After, I tried to keep my life the same. I tried to hang on to all that. But it was like when you’re hanging on a pull-up bar. You’re good for a little while. Then your muscles start to shake, but you keep telling yourself hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. But eventually it’s not up to you anymore. Your muscles give out and you drop. That’s what happened to me. I held on for a while. Then I dropped. I dropped, but I didn’t want my mom or my sister to worry, so I tried to hide how far down I was.
“I kept going to school, but my grades slipped. I stopped playing baseball, but I’d still go to the games. For a while, I’d still go to parties with my buddies but, mentally, I just wasn’t there. I didn’t care. About anything. It all seemed meaningless. How was I supposed to care about calculus when my dad was gone? All I had was anger. Anger that was … immense. Immense and burning, like I was carrying the sun around inside me. I only let it go when I was alone, hiking or running. Camping. Around other people, I worked my ass off to keep it inside. I buried it deep, except for this one time when I didn’t.”
“What happened the one time?”
“I screwed up.” Hold, Blake. Hold the line here.
Cordero waits.
“It was after a baseball game senior year. I wasn’t playing. I was up in the stands, watching my old team take on one of our rivals. They always played dirty and the game was tense from the beginning. In the last inning, it got a lot worse when the pitcher for the other team purposely pegged my buddy Griffin, who I mentioned earlier, while he was batting. The ball hit Griff’s helmet, probably going around eighty-five miles an hour. A missile. He went down hard. His helmet was cracked. He could have died, but he didn’t. He was okay, but I wasn’t.
“People don’t understand how easy it can happen. How fast everything can just … change. I watched the rest of that last inning without seeing it. I was thinking about Griff and if he’d died. Thinking about the pain his family would feel. His little brothers, Reed and Caden. His dad. His mom. The whole time that anger in me was stirring up. Pure fire. I waited until the game was over. Until the pitcher was heading to the parking lot to get on the bus. Then I jumped him.”
“You attacked him.”
“I did. I got him down on the ground and I hit him until people pulled me off. I only threw a few punches but I messed him up. The guy had to have stitches around his eye and his mouth. He needed one of his teeth replaced.”
I pause and notice that my legs and my arms have tensed up and my muscles are twitching. Thinking about that night always starts an earthquake inside me. It makes me want to run until there are no thoughts left in my head.
“The only reason his parents didn’t press charges was because Half Moon Bay’s a small town and, as it turned out, his dad had met my dad once or twice. This guy, Mr. Milligan, he was an ex-Marine and I guess some kind of loyalty among warrior brothers kicked in. No police report was filed. I wasn’t eighteen yet. Nothing went on my record, so … I got away with it.”
Cordero thinks for a moment. “You think what you did makes you bad?”
“It doesn’t make me good.”
“Would you have kept going?”
“I might have. I know I wasn’t slowing down when they pulled me off him. I might’ve kept going. How many people have you met who have the potential to kill, Cordero? How many people have that capability?”
My eyes drift to Beretta and Texas, who’ve become marble lions at the door. I know they have it too, this ability to turn to darkness.
“More than you think,” Cordero replies. “You’d be surprised. Sometimes the most average-seeming people are killers. You’d never know it by looking at them.”
It’s my turn to study her this time. Psychiatrist? Is that what she is? Something stressful. Small lines of tension crackle away from the corners of her eyes. I hadn’t noticed them before.
I wonder what she’s seen.
Has she met worse than me?