3

THE FOLLOWING DAY WENT BY IN A WASH AS ALWAYS, BUT this one even more so, the halls a pasty gray, and his teachers irritated with him, even Mr. Oberstar, who really was terrific—taking his test now with the others and running it through the mechanized grader, and there being one snapping noise, just one, when his went through, and David angry with himself, thought, What had he missed? and Mr. Oberstar watching David, studying him, so that David had smiled a big All-American Boy smile.

He knew all that cellular stuff backward and forward, so maybe it was something he’d missed the days he was out of school, in court over this thing his father had dragged them into, some hearing over new visitation rights, the thought of which put him in a clammy sweat. He’d tried not to think about it all morning; Max hadn’t even shown up at the hearing, but it had turned out he’d been in surgery, doing a hip replacement. This time, his absence not just an excuse, the hospital calling, and the judge rescheduling the hearing, now not to take place until December.

Thinking about the hearing made his heart skip beats and his eyes feel dry, and the morning passed slowly.

And then there was lunch, and after it Miss Schwartz’s class, Track 1 English, and her precious crap with “Shakespeare the Immortal Bard”; and Mr. Seeman’s Chinese History, which was okay, but through it all ran this thread of anticipation, something more upsetting than the visitation hearing, David pinned to the wheel of time, or fate, or circumstance, willing himself not to even consider what was most on his mind . . .

Buddy. Buddy would be waiting for him after class.

And lacing his Adidas up after school, in the locker room, in his shorts, Dean Simonson, his “cross-country friend,” as David thought of him, clapped him on the back.

“Way to go, Geist!” he said. “Man, that was really something yesterday!”

There were more than a few kids who congratulated him, and David was surprised. In fact, he was almost grinning at it, would have, if it hadn’t been for Buddy.

Maybe Buddy’d just give it up, now that David had placed in the meet?

David went outside with Simonson, the day warm yellow, and the light soft, and the smell of burning leaves in the air, all of which he loved, and back of the track he pumped his legs, then stretched in the grass, his hamstrings burning.

He tried to focus on running some fast 440s, saw himself burst off the blocks, had his chin on his right knee, his leg extended, his left leg bent behind him when he heard the rattle of plastic behind him and felt two thick hands on his shoulders, pressing him down, so the burning in his legs was searing.

He couldn’t find his voice for fear that Buddy might really injure him.

“Hey, cut it out, Buddy!” Simonson shouted. “You could mess up his back.”

“Yeah, cut it out,” another teammate, Pretorius, said.

Buddy gave out a low guffaw and let go.

“Get up, faggot,” he said.

David jumped to his feet. Behind him, his teammates stood watching. Long hair, wild looking, thin in running gear.

Dean Simonson said, tossing his head, “Come on, Davey, let’s take a fast one around the track.”

Right there, David could have moved. Simonson had given him an out. But he didn’t. If he had, maybe Buddy wouldn’t have said what he did, “You’re just a runner ’cause you’re afraid, asshole. You think you’re hot shit because of what you did throwin’ that ball, you and your faggoty ass baseball bullshit. You are never gonna amount to shit, because you’re made of faggotty shit, and you are shit. But most of all, you’re scared shit, Geist.”

David stood an arm’s length from Buddy, his hands twitching, his head a bright burn. He couldn’t think, caught out like that. All of David’s silence, his dogged persistence, his focus came out of a generalized fear, one that he hated in himself. He was terrified of something, and it came to him in dreams, in moments when he wasn’t prepared for it, this whooshing, swooping dark something, and only his being strong around Janie made it go away.

Making it go away for Janie was his only refuge.

Only, now it faced him in the person of Rick Buddy, who looked around to make sure the coaches weren’t out, then lunged at David, said, “Boo!”

David jumped back, but not much.

“You’re such a pissant you’re even afraid of your own shadow, aren’t cha,” Buddy said.

There in his shoulder pads and cleats, Buddy was smirking.

“Afraid to so much as breathe, that’s you, asshole.”

Then, before David had even a second to think of moving, to swing on Buddy, Buddy had him by the hair on the back of his head, and ran his face into the cyclone fence in front of the bleachers, so his nose hit the thick wire and he tasted blood. Buddy jerked his knee into David’s stomach, clapped him over his ears, and when David swung hard, struck Buddy dully in the mouth, Buddy caught David’s hand and bent his thumb back until David felt something there give with a dull, painful tearing.

“Say ‘I give.’”

David did not say it, and Buddy kicked him with his big knee again, knocking the air out of him, so that David sunk to his knees, here the smell of blood and newly mown grass and dirt.

But he wouldn’t say it, there was no way, but something in him told him to just give in, say “I give,” and he was arguing with himself about saying it, that he should say it, but then there was a sharp whistle, and there was that rattle and clatter of plastic that is football gear, and the whole team moved off onto the field, and Buddy with them, and when Simonson came over to see how he was, David shrugged his hand off his shoulder and headed inside, was crossing the field to the locker room, even as Coach was shouting, “Now, where the hell is Geist? Did that goddamn goober Buddy run him off? If he did, so help me—”

But no one said anything.

He made it up Xerxes, to the podiatrist’s. He’d had to have a cast put on his left foot when he’d broken two bones in it running the year before, and when he came in, Dr. Parker looked up over his receptionist’s elaborately done hair, an Afro with a green ribbon seeming to hold that balloon of dark hair down.

Dr. Parker, unlike their family physician, was black, and David thought here he could pass off his messed-up thumb as a sports injury.

“I’m gonna— Hey, David,” Dr. Parker said, and he bent over his receptionist and motioned David into the back, and David wondered, from the look Dr. Parker gave him, if his nose had begun to bleed again.

He went to the room at the back of the hall where Dr. Parker had worked on his foot, and minutes later Dr. Parker came in with an ice pack, and said nothing, just handed it to David, nodded a kind of you-know-what-to-do-with-it nod, and while David held the pack to his face, Dr. Parker fixed an aluminum splint on the thumb of his right hand.

When he’d finished with that, he said, “I want there to be an understanding between you and me, David. I know what this is, and you know what this is. You have anybody to go to?”

When David didn’t answer, Dr. Parker got him on his feet, then turned him toward the table and had him lie on his back on it.

“You hold that against your nose, and I’m going to get more ice for your hand. You don’t do anything for either, so it’s not that kind of situation. All you’ve got is a sprain and contusions. I don’t have to so much as make a record that you were here. But if it’s going to come to this again, you’re going to call me. You’re going to promise me that, or I’ll call your mother right now, and we’ll get to the bottom of this. Do you understand me?”

David nodded.

He lay back with the ice on his nose, and there was Dr. Parker’s reassuring voice in the clinic outside, and then he was in with more ice and had David hold it over his hand, which he lay across David’s stomach.

After a time David watched the ceiling, and at first he imagined dramas in which he pummeled Rick Buddy to within an inch of his life, crunching blows to those dull eyes of his, a devastating kick to the testicles, ten knee jabs to the breadbasket for every one Buddy’d given him, and after some time had gone by, those thoughts faded, stupid kid thinking, he told himself, and the throbbing in his hand and face took over, hot, itchy throbbing, and he held the ice there, and the buzzing of the lights became louder, and there was the opening and closing of doors, and cars starting out in the lot and driving away, and finally it was just Dr. Parker who came in to look down at him, his eyes sad, and his movements deliberate and slow, as if something weighty were pressing on him.