SAINT MIKE’S PLAYED MOUNT CARMEL IN the Catholic League playoffs a few days before Christmas. The bare trees were covered in frost; the frigid air was brittle; the flagpoles pinged in the wind. The bleachers were just as crowded as they’d been back at the September game against Notre Dame Prep, but the atmosphere wasn’t nearly as fun: the stands were almost quiet, with everybody bundled up beneath piles of coats and scarves, trying to concentrate on staying warm. Halfway through the first quarter, Saint Mike’s was already losing 14–0. I could see Evan Munro shivering on the bench, looking forlorn and holding his helmet in his lap. According to the game program, the backup quarterback was a sophomore named Thomas Wilkins, who was five foot six and 125 pounds. Every time he trotted onto the field with his offense, his thin brown face was etched in terror. He fumbled a snap, threw three interceptions, and just before halftime was sacked twice in a row by one of Mount Carmel’s human tank defensive ends. The second time, he took so long to get up that an even smaller and more terrified-looking freshman boy was called upon to finish the half.
“This is so dumb that they won’t let Evan play,” Sapphire protested during the halftime break, blowing into her hands to keep them warm. “I didn’t think they actually took that ‘academics and character before athletics’ crap seriously.”
“Yeah, it’s ridiculous,” agreed Emily. “I mean, Mount Carmel isn’t even good. It’s not fair to let them win like this.”
“Shut up, you guys,” Kenzie said viciously. “The game isn’t over yet.” I glanced over at her and realized it was the first time I’d ever seen her look nervous. She was licking her lips so that her electric-pink lipstick had bled to a messy puddle around her mouth, and she kept clawing her fingers through her hair so that it stood up in the cold, dry air, a mess of static and flyaways. It must have started to dawn on her that Saint Mike’s probably was going to lose after all, and there would be no more college scouts for Evan this season, or maybe ever again.
By the end of the third quarter, most of the Saint Mike’s crowd had given up and gone home. With fewer people left on our side of the stands to block the wind, it howled and bit at our faces. All I wanted was to go back to my apartment and curl up on the couch with some Christmas cookies, a Dr Pepper, and Teen Mom 2, but Kenzie had decided that, for better or worse, she had to see her man through to the end of the game, even if all he was doing was sitting with his elbows on his splayed knees and his head in his hands, a picture of despair and failure. When the fourth quarter ended and the buzzer mercifully put the game to an end, the final score was Mount Carmel, 35, Saint Mike’s, 3.
After the game, the three scouts who’d been standing on the sidelines taking notes and recording video in their brightly colored collegiate windbreakers were talking excitedly to the two Mount Carmel defensive ends who’d gone on a sacking bonanza against poor Thomas Wilkins. Other Mount Carmel players were laughing and high-fiving and posing for pictures with their parents and girlfriends, who’d flooded the field after the clock ran down. Evan stood by himself on the sidelines while his teammates lined up to shake hands.
“Let’s go down to the field,” Kenzie said, pulling out her phone and reapplying her smeared lipstick. “I want to go make sure Evan’s okay.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Kenz?” I asked. She whipped her head around and looked at me, her breath steaming in the night air like a wild horse’s.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “His team just lost. Maybe he wants to be alone right now.”
She rolled her eyes.
“This is what girlfriends do, Wendy. They comfort their boyfriends. You’ve never had one, so you wouldn’t know.”
She stalked off down the steps, and the three of us trailed behind her. Evan was just walking off the field when we approached.
“Tough game, baby,” Kenzie said, touching his arm. “But the good news is at least we can drink it off tonight at Sully’s house.”
“Are you serious?” Evan shook his arm free. Kenzie stepped back in surprise.
Sully, who’d been trudging past us toward the showers, his helmet in his hands, stopped and turned to Kenzie. “Who said you were invited to my party?” He reeked of sweat, his hair was frozen in wet spikes, and his eyes were blue and wet. “Or you either, Munro? That little stunt you two pulled over at ASH just cost us the playoffs. I’m a senior, man. I don’t get another chance.” He walked away, his cleats making little squishing noises in the torn-up mud. Evan watched him go, a yearning, broken look on his face. When he turned back to Kenzie, tears were spilling down his cheeks.
“Kenzie,” he said, his lower lip trembling. He wiped his eyes with the back of his enormous hand. “You seriously ruined my life.”
“Evan—” she reached out to him again, but he ducked away, his body taut with disgust.
“This?” He waved a hand back and forth between their two bodies. “Over.” Then he turned around and followed Sully off the field.
Kenzie stood there for a moment with her mouth open. Sapphire, Emily, and I hung back, not knowing what to say. Finally she whirled around, her dark eyes flashing beneath the glow of the stadium lights.
“Did I just get dumped?”
The three of us stood there, shifting on our feet.
“Well?” She thrust her face into Sapphire’s. “Did I, Sapphire? I mean, you would know, it’s happened to you plenty of times.”
Sapphire’s face blushed red beneath her pile of dark curls.
“Yeah,” she said. “You did.”
“Was Evan crying?”
We didn’t say anything.
Kenzie let go a deep, mean laugh. The air steamed with her breath.
“What a pussy. Does he really think I would even want to go out with a boy who blubbers in public like that? Ha!” She crossed her arms tightly across her chest, and began pushing her way through the crowd toward the parking lot. She turned around once. “Well? Let’s go!” As we hurried toward my car, I saw Evan, his head bowed, standing with his mother. She was hugging him while his shoulders shook and shook.
As we waited for my car to warm up, Emily ventured a question from the back seat.
“So, are we just going home, then?”
Kenzie whirled around, her hair whipping my face.
“Well, if you want to go to Sully’s party, then go ahead and be a fucking traitor. I’m going home.”
“Me too,” Emily said faintly.
“Good.” She plugged in her phone and turned her PARTY-PARTYPARTY playlist up to a deafening volume. No one sang along this time. I dropped off Sapphire, then Emily, and turned along the train tracks. We were a couple blocks from Kenzie’s house when she shot forward in her seat and screamed over the pumping music, “Stop the car!”
I slammed on the brakes in the middle of Avondale; if there had been someone behind me we would have been smashed.
“Jesus! What is it?”
“Pull over.” Her voice had gone soft and dangerous.
“Why?”
“Do it.”
I flicked on my turn signal and pulled to the curb. As soon as I put the car in park, though, I realized what was going on, but now it was too late to correct my mistake. Kenzie had already unbuckled her seat belt, thrown open the passenger-side door, and was striding across the road to where Alexis, violin case under one arm, was walking along the train tracks, her ears obliviously wrapped in a big white pair of headphones. A fine snow had begun to fall, dusting the road and the sidewalk. Nobody was around but us.
“Kenzie, wait!” I turned off the car, and ran after her across Avondale just as the 9:45 freight came screaming by, filling the snowy quiet with its prolonged roar. Kenzie trotted across the street and came to a halt directly in the middle of the sidewalk. Alexis, who’d been walking along staring at the ground—counting the cracks in the concrete, I guessed, like she’d done when we were kids—jolted to a surprised stop. When she saw Kenzie, it took a moment for her to register who it was. The slack, contented expression she wore whenever she listened to classical music still lingered on her face, as if she was being shaken unwillingly out of a pleasant dream.
I couldn’t hear what Kenzie said because the train was still roaring past. I could only see what she did. She reached out, almost casually, and smacked Alexis’s violin case from under her arm. The leather case, curved softly like a woman’s body, clattered to the ground, leaving skid marks in the new snow. Before Alexis could pick it up, Kenzie had kicked it away, sending it skittering into the street. Alexis, her headphones still over her ears, chased after it, but Kenzie got there first. She snatched it up, snapped open the brass clasps, and lifted out the lovely, mahogany instrument by its neck. The last of the train cars were now vibrating away and their echo rang around in the silent air.
“Give it back,” Alexis said. Her voice reverberated in the snow and the quiet street. It had a tenacious strength in it that I nearly didn’t recognize.
“How much do these things cost, anyway?” Kenzie turned the violin over in her hands, examining it. “Probably more than my grandma’s car, I bet. It’s always the spoiled brats who play the violin, isn’t it?”
“Give it back,” Alexis repeated.
“Or else what—you’ll tell on me?”
Alexis said nothing.
“I bet you practice this in your little pink bedroom with the pink canopy and all those frilly decorative pillows.” Kenzie ran her fingers over the smooth wood. “And your Disney posters on the wall.”
Alexis’s cheeks reddened. When she looked at me, her face was filled with an old hurt. Kenzie could only know what Alexis’s bedroom looked like because I’d told her. Because I’d made fun of it to her. It was such an intimate insult, the kind that can only be inflicted when someone betrays you. I looked away, ashamed.
“Give it to me!” Alexis said it more forcefully this time, and her eyes scanned the empty street, willing someone to come around the corner, a witness, a car full of Mount Carmel kids, anybody. But it was freezing and snowing and nobody was out.
“Kenzie,” I said, stepping between them, my heart slamming in my chest. “Come on. Give it back to her. This has gone far enough.”
Kenzie turned the violin over in her hands, ignoring me.
“It’s a pretty cool-looking instrument,” she said. “I’ve never really seen one up close before. I wonder what I could get for this on Craig’s List.”
“I’m not afraid of you, you know,” Alexis said to her.
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“Well. I guess we’ll have to change that, won’t we?” And with the same grace, the same fluidity with which she’d swum up and down the length of the Sister Xavieria Schmidt Memorial Swimming Facility for forty-five solid minutes, Kenzie grabbed the lovely mahogany violin around its neck with both hands, lifted it above her head, and smashed it onto the sidewalk. It splintered down the middle, making a high, keening, almost human sound, and the lovingly polished pieces scattered down the length of the deserted street, so that all Kenzie held now was the neck, tangled with jagged pieces and broken string. “Oops,” she said, tossing it, or what was left of it, to the curb.
A strangled cry emerged from Alexis’s throat, as sweet and broken as the sound of her violin, and she ran to the ruined instrument. Tears had filmed over her eyes as she gathered up the neck and the broken pieces, placing them gently into the crushed velvet of the case, which lay hanging open like a broken jaw. Kenzie loomed above, all six feet of her, arms crossed, leaning her weight on one foot, smiling with satisfaction as Alexis crawled around in the whirling snow, gathering up the shards of her violin. I just stood there, frozen, numb. When Alexis finally straightened up, clicking the case shut and holding it to her chest like a wounded child, she finally spoke. Not to Kenzie, but to me.
“You know, Wendy, I feel really sorry for you,” she said. “Because I know you. It must be so freaking lonely, this new life of yours. Being friends with people like this.”
“Like what, bitch?” Kenzie called after her as Alexis began to trek down Avondale, her violin case clutched to her chest, its broken pieces jangling horribly. “Someone cool? Someone pretty? Someone normal?” Alexis kept walking. “Just remember, next time you decide to tattle on me about anything, I’ll do the same thing to your fucking face that I just did to your violin.”
Once Alexis had disappeared around the corner, Kenzie turned to me and laughed. “Oh, don’t give me that look, Wendy. You know she deserved that. I warned you I was going to get back at her. And now it’s done, okay? I’ll leave her alone now. I promise.”
“How could you do that?” I asked quietly.
“Oh, relax,” Kenzie said, putting her arm around my shoulder and guiding me back across the abandoned street. “Girls like that make me sick. Girls who think they’re so perfect. Who get straight As and violin lessons. Who have moms who probably cut the crusts off their sandwiches every day.”
“Not the crusts,” I murmured. “The turkey skins.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
We climbed back into Red Rocket.
“You know,” she said, “she’ll probably thank me one day for toughening her up. As my dad likes to say, life’s a shit storm. If you want to get through it, you’re gonna need a pretty strong umbrella.”
After I dropped Kenzie off, after I watched her disappear inside her house, after I drove home with tears streaming down my face, hating her but hating myself even more, I climbed into my bed, hiding under the worn flannel sheets, and thought to myself that if being a bully is bad, being a coward is even worse.