4x200

It’s five a.m. We’re sitting at the back of the bus like a flock of hung-over sparrows on a wire. We can see everything from here. Can keep an eye on everyone. Zoli-boy doesn’t wanna sit next to me, and for once I’m really happy about it ’cause I’m not in a good mood and I don’t feel like listening to his bullshit the whole way. He’s two seats in front of us, not squirming, just staring out the window. He’s not even munching on anything. Not like I give a shit anyway. All day yesterday at school he was on my back and up my ass about wanting to talk about something, but I always shook him off, and he didn’t come to practice, where I might have asked him what he wanted. It didn’t really seem like he was pissed off. He said hello and all, but it’s weird that he isn’t talking to anyone. He didn’t even ask if there was room in the back with us. Of course, there’s always the chance that Ducky will tell him to fuck off. Zoli-boy isn’t stupid. Maybe it was just that he considered the odds and didn’t feel like getting slugged before the race.

Ducky, on the other hand, is hyped as fuck. It’s like he snorted a snowman-sized speedball for breakfast. His pupils are bigger than his eyes, he’s smacking up the little kids like it’s already later on tonight, dropping rude comments, groping the chicks, sticking his hand between their legs, pawing their tits, badmouthing the bus loud enough that the driver can hear it too, of course. Most of the others, though, aren’t going at it like that. Everyone’s totally out of it. Which is no surprise at five in the morning. They listen to music, gnaw on sandwiches, watch a film, mess around with their phones and tablets, or try to sleep. I despise these dawn bus rides. The seats are uncomfortable and the whole bus is saturated with the smell of salami sandwiches, fuel oil, floor wax, and bad breath. Times like these I wish the race would get cancelled, or the bus would break down, so we’d never get there, or the maintenance crew would fuck up again, like last year in Eger, when they combined industrial amounts of bleach and sulphuric acid and flooded the pool with chlorine gas, but so hardcore that disaster management had to come in and air the place out. The News was helpful in giving us the exact recipe: sixty kilograms of bleach combined with three kilograms of sulphuric acid. I wrote it down. But of course we always get to where we need to go, and by then I don’t mind that we’re there anymore, ’cause I wanna win.

Moms wave their kids off with teary eyes—’cause they haven’t got the slightest inkling what their little boys have in store for them at initiation tonight—and dads smoke cigarettes with bored or sleepy faces. As the bus rolls out of the parking lot, Ducky’s already telling all the clowns about what happened after we dropped Mishy off behind the hospital and went back to his place to clear away the traces.

“My old man, shit, he got so glazed from the space cake. He was rolling around on the living-room floor counting his fingers, but could never get all ten. He was hella wasted.”

Ducky’s old man is a stoned ATM machine.

We had to reconstruct the events afterwards, like an episode of CSI, but basically what happened was that while we were making asses of ourselves with Norris’s henchman, Ottó regained his senses, went downstairs, and sat down to watch porn. Then Ducky’s old man walked in and asked Ottó where we’re at, but he couldn’t say, then his pop started badgering Ottó to watch the game with him, but Ottó asked if maybe he wanted to watch porn instead, so Ducky’s old man plopped down on the couch and polished off the rest of the space cake in front of the TV. We packed it chock full of weed. It would’ve been enough to last us the whole of our four-day class trip. The only reason you couldn’t taste the weed was ’cause we made half the dough out of sugar-substitute. When we got back home, Ottó and Ducky’s pop were rolling around, screeching on the Persian carpet, while we just stood there, staring at them, not suspecting that this was just the beginning, ’cause the next minute Ducky’s mom stormed out of the upstairs bedroom, making straight for the bathroom, rubbing her twat like crazy and shrieking, aaah, shit, shit it stings, ow, ow, fuck it stings. The old bitch sprinted so damn fast I was scared those amazing jugs of hers would rip off her chest. Ducky was just staring, like a snowman in a tanning salon. I could tell by his face that he was totally whacked, but when he was still there just standing like a dick half a minute later, I told him to use this opportunity to bring the guns in from the car, ’cause there’s no way in hell he was gonna get an easy break like this again. Amirite or what? His dad’s squirming around in the living room, high as a kite, and his mom’s scratchin’ her pussy like a turntable record and running around upstairs. All he’s gotta do is mosey on in with the guns and that’s it. No way they’re gonna notice. Ducky pulled himself together and went out to the car, took the two shotguns out, but of course he didn’t get a chance to sneak them back into the gun cabinet ’cause his dad noticed at the last minute. Luckily, the dude was so out of it that when he saw the kid with the two massive rifles, he burst into such a fit of laughter he almost choked. Thank the fucking Christ he didn’t remember any of it the next day.

Ducky just keeps going on and on about it, like a wound-up toy, and I’m starting to get drowsy again. I’m watching Zoli-boy. He’s not really in great shape these days. He’s acting like a dumbass all the time, talking bullshit, and then he’s all surprised nobody’ll fuck him. Before we left, Viki came up to me and asked what Zoli-boy’s problem was with Ducky, and when I said fuck if I know, she told me that somebody said that Zoli-boy’s acting like a dickhead with Ducky or something, but they couldn’t say exactly what was going on, ’cause the chick—or dude—who was “blabbing” didn’t quite get what was going down. Blabbing. That’s the word she used. I told Viki she should drop it and chill ’cause there’s no way Zoli-boy’s being a dickhead to Ducky, first of all, ’cause he’s broke as shit compared to Ducky, and second, ’cause Ducky’ll bash his head in if he fucks with him too much. So I told Viki to back the fuck off, and now here I am getting all obsessed over it. I mean, no matter how much I wrack my brain, I just can’t figure out what the fuck is up with Zoli-boy. After a while I get so confused that I can’t fall asleep, and then I gotta piss real bad, but of course you can’t use the toilet. I’ve never in my whole life been on a bus where the toilet was working.

Meanwhile, Ducky starts to hassle Zoli-boy.

“Hey, Zoli-boy, listen,” he calls to him, and Zoli-boy slowly turns but doesn’t say anything, just looks at Ducky with this droopy-ass face.

Ducky goes on.

“It’d be killer if you didn’t fuck up the relay this year.”

Last year we blew the 4x100-metre ’cause of Zoli-boy. The referee said that the dumbass left the block too soon, so we were disqualified. Everybody was raging ’cause we beat that cocksucking Kaposvár team by two body lengths and of course they had to rub it in by laughing in our faces when they found out we fucked up. Ducky went batshit crazy, he was ready to pulverise Zoli-boy. The only reason he didn’t punch him was ’cause Coach Bandi came over and dragged the dipshit off. After all, he couldn’t kick his ass right there by the pool. There would’ve been too many witnesses. I totally thought Zoli-boy would quit swimming, but come Monday morning, he showed up at the pool and trained like nothing had happened. Since then, Ducky takes every chance he gets to mention it, otherwise everybody would’ve forgotten about it by now.

Zoli-boy still says nothing. Somehow the silence is starting to feel weird. Ducky’s on his case exactly ’cause he knows the kid’s gonna explode in one second flat, scream with his face all red and throw a tantrum. He even bawls sometimes, but this isn’t what’s going down right now. A sick smile spreads across Zoli-boy’s face as he stares at Ducky, and he doesn’t seem tense at all.

“Chill, Ducky, I won’t fuck up,” he says finally.

Even his voice is all mellow. I’ll bet he popped some of his mom’s meds.

Ducky’s so shocked he forgets to go on busting Zoli-boy’s balls, and just says:

“Fine, fuckface.”

Then he leans forward and pats Zoli-boy on the shoulder.

Zoli-boy says nothing again. He turns away and stares out the window. Ducky’s hand hovers in the air for a sec. Then he slowly retracts it, and smiles. He’s kinda lost. I guess Zoli-boy’s tactics can kick in too sometimes. Either that, or his mom’s got some bitchin’ meds.

An hour later I really need to piss again. Another half an hour later I can’t stand it anymore and I think about asking somebody for an empty plastic bottle. But then I go up front instead and ask Coach Bandi when we’re gonna stop, but the old man barks at me to haul ass back to my seat and tie a knot on my dick. On the way back, I take a little girl’s drink. Of course she bursts into tears, but I don’t give a shit. It’s an emergency. I drink the OJ as I go, sit down in my seat, and try to piss behind the cover of the backrest. The others mess with me, push me, give me shit about my dick—like they’ve never seen it before—and the chicks start giggling when they realize what I’m doing. It’s the driver who’s fucking with me the hardest, though he’s got no idea I wanna piss. It’s like he always finds a pothole right when I manage to aim into the mouth of the bottle. Whatever, he’s gonna have to clean up the spill. I get the hang of it by the time I finish and succeed in getting most of the piss actually in the bottle. Just as I wring out the last drop, Coach Bandi starts hollering at the top of his lungs. His voice crackles like it’s coming from a PA system, but he doesn’t need a mic. Everybody can hear him loud and clear.

“We’re stopping at the next gas station. You get eight minutes. Everybody pisses.”

Fucking hell.

Coach Bandi probably miscalculated at this morning’s grocery run and didn’t get to fill his hip flask properly. Drinking hard liquor in a gas station at dawn is level hardcore. The old man’d better take a nip of some rotgut fast, otherwise he’s gonna be super uptight by the time we get there, and that makes him deal out the blows double time. The kids stand in line at the door of the bus, and the driver’s deliberately taking half an hour to park. I can see on his face that it’s on purpose and he’s having a fucking ball. Nevermind. The cocksucker’s got it coming tonight. Finally he manages to stop, and everybody wants to jump out the door at once. Coach Bandi whips us all into shape. The little dingbats stampede into the convenience store as if their parents hadn’t packed enough cold rations to last them a month. Now that I’m in no hurry anymore, I wait until they get off and put the bottle of piss away. I read somewhere this one time that an ancient and legal way of improving your performance is to drink your own urine. There’s gotta be something to it, ’cause I heard on the news that a couple of Chilean miners drank their own urine after an explosion and they were rescued from the mine shaft.

We go to a lot of swim meets, and I’m used to the countryside gas stations and the country-bumpkin asshole gas-station attendants, plus you can always find some pretty awesome graffiti in the bathrooms. I take a picture of Jesus’s head with a huge, smoking joint in his mouth, sprayed on with a stencil, with the words, “Would Jesus do it?” I snap a couple of pics with my phone, then I’m about to head over to the store to swipe a couple of candy bars when Ducky moseys past me and into one of the stalls with his phone pressed to his ear. It takes me one second to figure out that he’s talking to Buoy. I don’t follow exactly what they’re going on about, but I do get that there’s some deep shit going down, ’cause Buoy’s been banned for the next ten matches. I wash my face and Ducky flushes the toilet, so I can’t hear what he’s mumbling. Then he steps out of the stall and I stick my hand under the faucet, which quiets the gushing. Ducky tells him to chill. His brother’ll smooth things over somehow. Then he hangs up while I put my hands under the dryer, pretending not to have heard anything.

I go back to the shop, fill my pockets with candy bars, then walk out the automatic doors, board the bus, sit down, and shove a couple of them in my face. Meanwhile, the others slowly start drifting back. Coach Bandi’s losing his shit ’cause we’re way past eight minutes by now. Ducky’s the first one in from the back row. He grabs his bag, rummages through it for a while, then turns towards me, jabs his finger towards Zoli-boy’s water bottle, and says:

“Give it here.”

“What for?” I ask.

Instead of answering, Ducky starts waving a blister pack of meds in front of my nose.

“What’s this?” I ask, and hand Ducky the bottle.

“Cialis,” Ducky grins, then looks around and starts shaking the potency enhancer into the bottle.

“You’ve lost your fucking mind,” I say.

Ducky doesn’t seem to have heard. He’s jamming the pills into the bottle with a crazed look in his eye.

“We should crush them up,” I suggest.

“What for?” he says, looking up.

“They’ll dissolve faster.”

Ducky looks at me, then shoves the bottle in my hand and says:

“I’ll crush a few. You keep shaking.”

While I shake the water bottle, Ducky grabs a Swiss army knife from his bag and starts hacking up the pills on the seat’s armrest. He’s not being stingy for sure. If he downs this whole drink, he’s gonna jizz in his pants every five minutes all weekend. It’s easier to get a boner on the bus anyway ’cause of all the bumping around.

“They’re coming!” I warn Ducky.

Ducky looks up for a second, then dices up one more pill in a flash, like Gordon Ramsey with a garlic clove. He grabs the bottle from me, sweeps the crushed potency enhancer in, shakes it up vigorously, and puts it back in its place. He then plops back down in his seat, pulls out his cell phone, and starts fucking around with it, as if he’d been at it this whole time.

Zoli-boy’s one of the last ones back. The spiked apple juice has settled by now, so he won’t taste the Cialis. He sits down, doesn’t look at anybody, doesn’t say a word. He’s hardly ever this mopey. A bit of potency enhancer might even do him some good.

The bus rolls out of the parking lot. I’m guessing we’re off the fucking hook for once ’cause Coach Bandi’s managed to up his blood-alcohol level and he’ll be resting a bit now. Ducky’s still petting his touch screen while glancing at Zoli-boy every once in a while. Zoli-boy doesn’t reach for his bottle for a long time, but then, an hour later, when we speed past the Great Plains, he drinks the whole thing straight down in big gulps. He makes a face at the end, and turns around, so I close my eyes fast, and pretend to be sleeping. Zoli-boy doesn’t ask anything. I count to sixty, then open my eyes. Zoli-boy’s staring out the window. The landscape is flat as fuck. There’s a grey cloud swirling in front of a barn. At first I think it’s a swarm of locusts, but it turns out to be just horseflies. Then I spot a lake of red water, but that turns out to be a red sludge reservoir or some shit. This place needs a couple of well sweeps, a herd of grey cattle, and those cool horsemen with their stripy bellbottoms, but all you can stare at from the highway are the endless plains.

I’m watching Zoli-boy from the corner of my eye. He’s tense, like a porn star in a confessional. He’s probably thrown off by this unexpected onslaught of horniness. Maybe he suspects his tight pants, or the bumping bus, or the smell of the girls’ sickly sweet spray-on deodorant wafting towards him from their direction, which many wrongly think is pussy smell. I didn’t think the stuff would kick in so fast, but it’s logical after all: if you wanna fuck and your dick ain’t hard, there’s no time to twiddle your thumbs. Meanwhile, Ducky’s looking at hardcore porn sites, and naturally, he’s got the tablet at an angle where Zoli-boy can see the dominatrixes—gigantic tits, whips in their mouths, dildos up their asses and all—even if he doesn’t want to. By the time we arrive, he’s jizzed himself at least twice. Half an hour later, when we park in front of the pool building, he gets off the bus with a red face, holding his bag in front of him. He avoids the girls. Actually, he’s avoiding everybody, but that’s pretty hard in such a crowd. As he’s shuffling around with his bag, Ducky walks over and starts hassling him in front of the girls, asking stuff like why is he using his hands when he could hold up the bag without it, and some other shit. The chicks are shrieking. I guess Ducky’s already let them in on it.

As we step into the lobby and the smell of chlorine hits me, my brain clicks into a different state of consciousness. My stomach clenches for a second, then I take a few deep breaths, but secretly, so no one sees, and my tension starts to ease. By the time we get our locker keys in the changing room, all I can think about is the 200-metre freestyle. I swam the length a couple of times on the bus, imagined the start, the flip-turns, and the streamline. I counted the strokes and pushed myself in the third fifty really hard. I pack my stuff in the locker, tie my swimsuit, and put on my bathrobe. I’m headed up to the pool area to warm up when the cocksucking Kaposvár guys come barging in. The rival relay team. It’s been counterstrike attacks for years. One year we win, the next year it’s them. Last year they had it lucky, so this year we need to throttle them.

“Hey there,” one of the cocksuckers says, the one called Nándi, trying to get chummy. We grip each other’s hands, our finger-bones cracking. We slap each other on the back. Nobody’s being soft about it. Our fingers leave nice welts. You could carve the testosterone in the air with a knife. Nándi won a silver in the 400-metre freestyle at the Junior European Championships last year, and ever since he’s been surfing an ego trip that would put Ronaldo to shame.

“How’s it hangin’, Ducky?” he asks. “You got the butterfly down yet?”

The dude’s harmless, but you don’t mess with Ducky before a race. You don’t mess with him period, but especially not before a race. He starts psyching himself up real early, so that when he gets up on the starting block he’ll really believe he can mow everybody down, that he has to mow everybody down, including us. Sure, everybody’s like that, but Ducky’s the most serious about it.

“Suck my dick, asshat,” Ducky answers in a bone-chillingly calm voice.

He doesn’t even glance at the kid.

The dude tries to brush it off with a lame comment. Ducky looks up. He smiles coldly, the air freezing around him. Nándi doesn’t know what his next move should be. It really was just an innocent joke and dumbass Ducky’s being all tough guy on him. The grin fades from the dude’s face. This is what Ducky’s been waiting for. He bursts out laughing and slaps him real hard on the back a couple of times, till the kid chuckles awkwardly. Then the others join in, everybody talking shit to everybody else, everybody laughing. Ducky peers around slyly, thinking nobody can see him. He leans over to Nándi and whispers something in his ear. The kid freezes for a moment, and when he comes to, he grabs his stuff, sits down on another bench, and packs his stuff in another locker. He doesn’t look at Ducky again. Ducky puts his things neatly away and heads out to warm up.

I’m glad Ducky’s so calm. This one time he got into a fist fight because of some similar shit, but of course I wouldn’t want him to chill too much and get all Zen master on us, ’cause if the Kaposvár team does end up beating us in the relay, we’re the ones who’ll get our asses kicked, not him. Meanwhile, Zoli-boy rushes to the toilet, to jerk it real quick, I’m guessing. Maybe then he’ll get through the warmup without coming in the water. When he returns, he hides behind a locker to change. The 4x200-metre freestyle relay’s in the afternoon. Maybe by then the drug will have cleared from his system. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I still don’t know why we had to mix the potency enhancer in his drink. Sure, it’s a funny prank and all, but what’s really going on here is that Ducky’s trying to get Zoli-boy kicked off the relay team. If the dipshit can’t race, Coach Bandi will be forced to put someone else on the team. I hope Ducky considered the fact that Zoli-boy’s in fuckin’ awesome shape, and that no matter who takes his place, we end up worse off.

Coach Bandi already told us back home that everybody’s swimming the whole “menu.” And this goes down at every swim meet. Everybody swims all styles so we can build up a proper race routine. Things went pretty well in the morning. We delivered the times expected of us, which of course doesn’t mean that Coach was satisfied. He always tells everybody off, even if we’re on the podium: if your time is good, if you don’t position your hand properly at the stroke, if you roll onto the wall too early at the turn, if you meet the water at too sharp an angle when diving, if you don’t streamline long enough after the turn.

We eat lunch in a fast-food joint at the base of a long housing block. I fish a dinosaur-sized cockroach out of my goulash, send one of the little kids to fetch bread, and when he walks off after moaning and groaning, I put the bug in his soup. I mash it up, ’cause if I leave it in one piece, he’ll definitely notice it. I even manage to pick out the exoskeleton before the dude comes back with the bread. After lunch we go to our lodgings and rest up, except for Zoli-boy, who doesn’t get to rest, naturally, ’cause he’s gotta run out to the bathroom, like, every ten minutes. Ducky’s already hyping for the relay. We look at the morning’s lap times to know who’s in what shape. Based on the results, the Kaposvár team fucked up the tapering, so I don’t know what they were so high and mighty about in the locker room. Considering what they showed—and what we did—we’ve got the relay in the bag, so long as Zoli-boy doesn’t fuck up, of course. Walking back from lunch, I subtly asked him what was wrong. He said he must’ve eaten something that didn’t agree with him and not to worry, he’ll be all set by this afternoon. His bullshit was so brilliant I almost praised him, but came to my senses at the last second. I’m sprawled out on my bed listening to the most recent Lostprophets album, but can’t detach myself from the thought that the singer raped babies, so I just delete the whole folder instead. Luckily, I took the whole file from a torrent site, otherwise I’d be mad as hell right now knowing that I was stuffing that cocksucker’s bank account with my purchase. I switch to Slipknot and swim the afternoon’s races in my head a couple of times. I’m doing a mental flip-turn when Coach Bandi comes barging into the room without knocking. We all sit up in bed simultaneously, like Count Dracula in his coffin. Only Zoli-boy doesn’t notice that Coach is here. He lies motionless on the top bunk, turned against the wall. He’s listening to music too, and if he’s got any brains, he’ll skip all the female artists. There’s a huge colour poster on the wall, and if he opens his eyes, he’ll find himself face to face with a blonde, complete with fake tits and BJ lips, being pampered by a huge black dude from behind. Ducky designated that one as Zoli-boy’s bed after he scanned all the bunks and posters. I guess this seemed the wildest option, ’cause the poster I had showed a stupidfaced actor dude in a leather jacket staring seductively from the hood of a fire-red sports car. Maybe I’m in some faggot’s bed? I poke Zoli-boy to rouse him, but as I touch him, he jolts, then, when he turns, he sees Coach Bandi. I root for him not to freeze up from the shock, but luckily he sits up immediately.

“I’m glad your siesta is so nice and pleasant,” he begins, nodding towards the poster. Then continues: “If you fuck up the relay this year too, son, I will personally rip your balls off. Am I clear?”

Zoli-boy hiccups something, I don’t understand what, even though I’m sitting right under him. If that doesn’t make him tense up, nothing will. It’ll be a miracle if he doesn’t fuck the relay up outright.

“Something the matter?” Coach Bandi looks at him piercingly.

“Yes, Coach,” Zoli-boy finally groans. “…Or actually, no… I mean, everything’s fine.”

Ducky seems disappointed. He looks at Coach Bandi and says:

“Zoli-boy’s got the runs.”

“Huh?” Coach says, turning towards him angrily.

“Zoli-boy,” Ducky repeats. “The runs.”

Now I’m sure that he really wants to get Zoli-boy kicked off the relay team.

“You got diarrhea?” Coach Bandi asks Zoli-boy.

“I’m fine,” Zoli-boy answers, but doesn’t sound too convincing. “I had a stomach-ache this morning, but everything’s okay now.”

“Don’t mess with me, son,” Coach rumbles. “You can’t swim the relay if you’re sick.”

“No, I’m really feeling better now,” Zoli-boy insists. “The coffee must have set it off.”

“Is that why you’re running off to the john every five minutes?” Ducky grunts.

“That’s not true,” Zoli-boy says, defensive and desperate.

“It’s really not,” I say. “The last time he went out was half an hour ago.”

Of course that’s bullshit too, but I do kinda feel bad about the Cialis, and I don’t want Coach to kick Zoli-boy off the team.

“Shut up!” Coach Bandi says. He’s near the end of his rope. We know what’s coming, so we zip it and listen. Coach Bandi sizes Zoli-boy up, time seems to come to a standstill, maybe we’ve been here for days, we’d be ready to scream if someone came in the room, then Coach continues: “Whip yourself into shape for warm-up, son, otherwise Kishorvát’s gonna replace you.”

When he leaves, I check my phone. Coach’s visit lasted three minutes.

My eyes meet Ducky’s. He seems disappointed, but doesn’t say anything. He just shrugs and leans back on the bed.

The next-to-last race is the 4x200-metre freestyle relay. After that, there’s just the women’s 4x100. We’re in the final with the best time and will be swimming in lane four. You can keep a close eye on everybody from there. You alternate looking right and then left at turns. The outer lanes are shit to swim in ’cause you get the waves straight-on, and even in crystal-clear water, you might not be able to see to the other end of the pool, and then it’s impossible to catch someone gaining a lead. Unless, of course, it’s you who’s sneaked off in the lead. As the start of the race gets nearer, my consciousness narrows and all I can think about is that we gotta kick everybody’s asses. We made it to the finals with a pretty big advantage, but until the last guy on your team hits the wall, you can’t know if some cocksucker on another team wasn’t taking the whole field for a ride in the prelims. It’s kinda hard, though, to mislead the others in a relay, ’cause it’s four people who’ve gotta be in on the tactics scam, but you can work it if you really want to.

Zoli-boy doesn’t jump the gun this time, and he even swims his best time this year. With a hard-on. It’s only ’cause of the flying start that a new national record isn’t set. I’m the anchor, diving last with a body-and-a-half length’s advantage, and shoot off even more on the first fifty metres. I pace myself, saving my strength for the second half of the distance. If the Kaposvár team’s kid in lane five starts coming up, I can upshift. He’s basically got zero chance of gaining on me. This isn’t mind-over-matter anymore. In the 200-metre race, a three- or four-metre advantage is more than enough. I’m about to explode. I cut through the water with long strokes, my reach stretching nice and long. My muscles aren’t burning, I don’t feel tired, and streamline lengthily underwater after the final turn, while the others are just now reaching the wall. I swim the last twenty metres in a delirium, barely breathing, and almost shatter the touch pad as I slam into the wall. We beat the team in second place by two body lengths. The dude from the Kaposvár team petered out by the end. Even the Szolnok team beats them at the last catch. Ducky’s in ecstasy, jumping up and down and hollering at the pool’s edge, even though he swam pretty shit time. I don’t look at the scoreboard, but for sure it was at least half a second less than what Coach Bandi asked of us. Ducky swam first and the dude from the Szeged team he hassled in the locker room most def came up on him four or five tenths of a second. It’s not much, but it was still us who had to work it off. If you fuck up in the relay, it’s you who fucks up. But if we win, then we win together. I grip the rope. I’m in the same place I started out. I take a deep breath. When the last team’s anchor reaches the wall, I’m not panting anymore. I’m mute and cold. The others are hugging each other by the pool, high-fiving, shouting. I take my goggles off and glance up at the stands. Coach Bandi’s looking at his stopwatch, then he wrinkles his forehead and writes something down on his pad. Even from here you can tell he’s not happy. The Kaposvár team’s kid clutches the other rope, then comes over to me and we shake hands. He gasps for breath. He ran himself ragged. He slips under the rope and swims to the ladder. I grab hold of the poolside by the block and lunge out of the water. I’m barely out when Ducky’s got his arm around my neck, screaming into my ear, “We fuuuuckin’ destroooooyed them!” I look over Ducky’s shoulder. A competition referee is staring at us, looking strict. I pretend not to notice. Meanwhile, the Kaposvár team slinks away. I know their coach. They’re really gonna get it later. I mean, they deserve it though. They were weak. We gather up our stuff, I put on my robe and head down to the showers. There’s plenty of time till results are announced.

As the speaker blares our names, we step up onto the podium. The four of us barely fit, and we shove each other around a little before everyone finds their place. Ducky’s hogging the area up front, completely blocking out Zoli-boy, who, for once, has no objections to this. I think about pushing Ducky off, maybe he’ll fall on the County Assembly Sports Committee’s Vice-Chairman, who is distributing the medals. The dude’s got a huge double-chin and his face is all red, like he just stepped out of a sauna. He definitely flunked PE in school. We lean down one by one, hogface breathes heavy and loud as he drapes the medals around our necks, gazes earnestly into our eyes, congratulates us, and shakes our hands. Ducky tries to get the attention of the chick carrying the silver tray of medals, pssst pssst, but she can’t hear him ’cause the announcer starts listing the Szolnok relay-team members’ names. Then it’s the Kaposvár team’s turn. They’ve managed to collect themselves enough that you can’t tell they’re disappointed. Everybody shakes with everybody else. We’re all sportsmanlike homies. Ducky can’t resist dropping a comment though: nice job, fellas. They know he’s messing with them, and they just murmur something in reply. I’m still up on the podium but I take off the medal. I don’t care about all this fuss. I’m here for the adrenaline.

The chicks flopped bigtime. Coach Bandi was livid, ’cause he expected them to bag first place no prob, but in the end, they almost lost the medal even. They’re still sulking as they stand around looking blasé on the podium. They congratulate the winning team, but would rather scratch their eyes out. I know them. What I don’t get is why Coach Bandi’s surprised. Everybody knew they’d swim like shit. It was last year at the Junior World Championships that things started getting bad between the girls—though they weren’t too crazy about each other before either—after it turned out that Ducky fucked all of them, one after the other, at training camp. Of course, nobody would ever have found out, but the dumbass got so wasted at the banquet from the free drinks, he started mouthing off about how he’s the only guy who’s also on the women’s relay team. Like Robbie Williams in Spice Girls. Naturally, the girls immediately pounced on each other, tearing each other’s hair, scratching and clawing, you name it. They had to be pried apart. Meanwhile, Ducky was standing at the counter, laughing.

At dinner, I ask Ducky what’s up with Buoy ’cause I can’t reach him on the phone. I pretend not to know anything, and he tells me that Buoy got busted for doping at some international water-polo meet, and is probably gonna be banned for several months, and not even his brother, a member of the water-polo federation board, will be able to gloss things over. I murmur about how that sounds really fucked up, but considering the amount of EPO Buoy was doing, I’m surprised he lasted this long. The funny thing about the whole thing is that it’s exactly because of his big brother that he even started that shit. Everybody was always hassling him about his brother. Chicks used to sleep with him ’cause they thought they’d have a better chance of hooking up with his polo-star brother for a night. Sure, Buoy had a goddamn blast for a while, but then he realized what a fucking loser it made him. One night he got smashed real bad at the Rhino, and he laid out his plans, telling me how he would surpass his brother’s achievements. I already knew that he wouldn’t have an easy time, ’cause the dude had been to two Olympics already, but I was like, whatever, it’s none of my business.

I’m pushing around the neon-pink square of cake on my plate while we discuss tonight’s initiation. All the little kids are on our list. Ducky says that one of the fat, blond kids made some snide comment to him on the bus so leave him to me. It’ll be exclusive treatment, he grins, pointing the kid out. The kid looks pale and squishy, not dangerous or one to make snide comments. At least he never messed with me before, but you never know with these little snot-nosed toddlers. Fatso looks real innocent from over here, but he could be a spoiled little cocksucker. This one time at initiation, a dude tried to threaten us, saying that his dad was a cop and he’d lock us in jail. The only thing he achieved with this was to get a treatment twice as special as the rest. Still, he just couldn’t shut the fuck up, so after lights out, Ducky went to his room and whispered that he’d cut the kid’s throat in his sleep if he dared to rat us out. I wouldn’t have put my life on it that Ducky really would’ve done it, but you gotta admit: he can be pretty convincing. The poor little bastard staggered around all morning the next day at the pool with huge bags under his eyes, and every time he sat down, he drifted off to sleep. A year later, he was the biggest asshole at initiation.

We wait until the corridor quiets down, then go visit the little kids, armed with slippers, towels, and flashlights. Ducky’s even got a plastic bag, for what I don’t know, ’cause we’ve never used one before. We knock quietly on the girls’ door and invite them to come with us as judges, then head over to the kids’ room. They blink sleepily in the lamplight. One of them slips his hand out from under the covers. Ducky shines the flashlight on him and tells him to quit fapping, which makes everybody laugh while the kid turns beet red. Ducky quickly orders him up and the chicks sit down on his bed. Then we line the kids up by the wall, tell them to pull their pants down, and we slap their asses one by one with shower slippers. Ducky attends to the blond kid, and naturally he gets twice as many slaps. I didn’t think they’d take it this well. Only a couple of them start blubbering, and actually, it’s just one who gets really whiny, but we shut him up real fast. Now it’s time for the towel. We twist it, wet the end under the tap, and snap at their backs till they’ve got welts. A few of them burst into tears again, the blond kid too, but he gets twice as many whips again from Ducky, who finally walks over and hands him a tissue. The kid’s surprised, reaching gratefully for it, but Ducky drops it on the floor at the last second, and when the towhead looks at him all puzzled, Ducky booms at him to pick it up. Then, as he leans down, Ducky lifts his foot and tells him to lick the bottom of his shower slippers clean. At first the kid thinks it’s some kind of joke and starts giggling awkwardly, but Ducky just pushes his slimy slippers in his face and repeats the order. Someone snorts, laughing, and porky starts bawling. He gets that this is dead serious. He really will have to lick the crud off. I’m starting to feel sorry for the poor thing. He’s a fuckin’ mess, even without knowing that Ducky intentionally went into the men’s room before we came over here. Next minute, one of the bigger dudes steps over to the kid and bitch-slaps him real hard, so finally he starts licking the bottom of the slipper. Of course my cell phone has to ring right at that second. I check the display. My mom. Maybe she only just realized that I’m not home. Otherwise I don’t have a clue why she’d be calling me at this hour. I turn the sound off and watch the little kid’s clean-up job. He spits and gags, but licks faster and faster. I guess he realized that the quicker he finishes, the quicker he’s free of this grinning psycho who’s shining a flashlight in his face.

I’m starting to get bored of the show. I look around. The little boys are deathly pale, staring saucer-eyed. They have some idea of what’s coming. They’ve heard the horror stories.

“Let’s see you lap it with your whole tongue, shithead, or you’ll be licking the dingleberries from my asshole in a minute,” Ducky threatens.

My phone rings again. Mom can’t seem to chill. I decline the call and pocket the phone, but then I realize that I should probably just talk to her before she starts calling Coach Bandi.

“I’ll be right back,” I say to the dude standing next to me, who’s watching Ducky in amazement, then I quietly step out into the hall and shuffle back to our room.

Zoli-boy’s out cold, turned towards the wall. He’s whimpering in his sleep. I didn’t even notice that he wasn’t at initiation. I fish out a secret stash of weed from my bag. Somehow I’m not in the mood for all this anymore, so I go down to the backyard instead and step behind a row of garbage containers to roll a J. As I take the rolling paper and the weed from my pocket, the top of a container bursts open with a loud clatter and a grubby-faced guy with a beard climbs out of the garbage. It’s like he’s emerging from a tank, exactly like that dude with the leather cap in Kelly’s Heroes. But his clothes look like he swiped them from the set of some zombie flick. As he scrambles out of the reeking garbage and lands beside me, I slowly look him over. He really does look like a zombie, except maybe his face is kind of in better shape. He shakes a couple of potato peels from his hair, looks at me, and says:

“Greetings, young Padawan. May I have a toke of your cigarette?”

All this is so weird that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the old dude’s words appeared in a thought bubble. I tell him sure he can, but I can’t really talk by this point. My mind’s all hyped up at times like these. I don’t even try to follow my train of thought. I listen to the fella. We kill the joint, and he goes on about how he feels like he’s finally found a person to share his views about the apocalypse with, or something. First he tells me not to worry about the homeless. They’ll be all right. Moreover, since humans are cranking out more and more garbage, quality of life will become increasingly better for winos, since they know perfectly well what to look for and where. And everything’s gonna be destroyed by the apocalypse pretty soon anyway. I try three times to say the word apocalypse, but I just can’t get it out, so homie lifts his finger and simply whispers:

“Armageddon.”

“Bruce Willis.” I nod. “That’s a badass dude.”

The guy wrinkles his forehead, and when I don’t say anything, he shrugs and asks me:

“I’m hungry. Would you like to have dinner with me?”

I know it’s impolite to decline such an invitation, but two chicks gave me their dinners at the restaurant, so I wolfed down three portions of fried cheese, and I’m still completely stuffed. I tell him I just ate, but thanks anyway. Homie smiles and says no worries, your loss, then scrambles up onto the container’s top, looks back one more time, then disappears through the opening, closing the cover over him.

I stand around for a little while longer beside the container, listening to the sounds of the dude shifting around inside, then head to the building entrance, freaking out a little, ’cause what if Coach Bandi’s gotta piss right now. My bowels start rumbling at the stair landing. Like distant cannon fire. It’s dead quiet on our floor. It feels like the initiation was a thousand years ago, but there’s no way they’re gonna be done so fast. They’re probably doing some quiet torments. I hurry it up so I can get to the bathroom in time. Somebody left the light on. I can’t decide which stall to use, but I’m about to shit myself. I shuffle around flustered for a while, then take a deep breath and enter the stall at the far end, with pussies, cocks, names, and numbers scrawled on the door.

Ducky stands in front of the toilet bowl, his back to the door, sticking a fucking enormous hypodermic needle to the hilt into his ass. His butt cheeks are full of needle marks. I guess I never noticed before because I don’t spend too much time staring at his rear end. The door detaches from my fingers and keeps swinging open. Ducky pushes the contents of the hypo into his glute, then yanks the needle out. Now I can really see how incredibly long it is. The door knocks against the wall. Ducky looks up.

“You could have locked the door, for fuck’s sake,” I say, glancing at the hypo.

Ducky seems flustered for a sec, then turns towards me and hides the hypo behind his back.

“I saw what you did,” I grin.

“Buoy’s aunt prescribed it,” he tries to put up a front. “My fuckin’ ears hurt like hell.”

I know he knows I know it’s bullshit. I stare at this poor bastard as he’s standing there with the needle hidden behind his back, and the image of his pinpricked ass flashes through my mind, and I just can’t hold back the laughter anymore, which actually comes out sounding more like a mew. Ducky’s looking at me odd, like he’s scared, while tears well up in my eyes, and I just keep screeching, and I just can’t stop. I don’t know how much time passes like this, but Ducky collects himself and says:

“Fuckin’ hell, stop it already. You’ll wake Coach.”

This just fuels the fire. I start whooping again, and can’t stop for, like, two minutes, and meanwhile I’m freaking out that I’m gonna be laughing for the rest of my life. Ducky finally gets that there’s no point in shushing me, ’cause I’m not shutting up. I know this expression of his. Now comes the part where he starts losing his patience. He takes a step towards me, and I leap aside like a bullfighter. Ducky shakes his head, looking at me. He shrugs, then leaves the bathroom. Wiping my tears, I step into the empty stall and squat over the toilet bowl, but there’s no way in hell I can squeeze the fudge out, I’m laughing so hard.