Travis loved lacrosse. It took a while to get used to the new equipment – the thick pads over his lower back, the loose gloves – but nearly half of what he wore was from his hockey bag: the same helmet, the same shoulder pads with a plastic extension tied on to give his arms more protection, the same elbow pads, even the same Screech Owls sweater, which he continued to kiss for good luck as he pulled it over his head.
The stick was another matter. Tamarack Sports had brought in a shipment of Brines – wooden shafts, plastic heads, and nylon braid pockets – and all the Owls had been outfitted with them, each shaft carefully cut to length by Mr. Dillinger. Unlike in hockey, sticks in lacrosse were expected to last several seasons, not a few games.
Travis’s new stick had a nice weight, but at first it seemed awkward in his hands. He could scoop up the ball so it skipped into the pocket, but as soon as he tried any of the fancy twirls or fakes that Jesse was so good at, the ball would drop or go flying off in the wrong direction.
But he kept working at it, sometimes alone against the back wall of the house – the steady thumping almost driving his parents crazy – sometimes against the wall of the school gymnasium, and more often than not, now that they were best friends again, out in the street with Nish.
Nish had shown up the very next morning after The Blood Children: Part VIII, behaving as if nothing at all had happened. The way Nish acted, he and Travis might have been to see the latest Walt Disney with a church group, after which they’d had a pleasant discussion and then walked home to say their prayers before bed. Not a word about the spilled Sprite, or the fight, or the two of them getting banned for life from the Bluebird Theatre by Mr. Dinsmore.
Travis found he could not say anything about the graveyard. By the time he’d made it home that night, his heart was back in his chest and his brain was refusing to accept what he had seen. Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay had still been up when he arrived home. They had no idea what movie the two boys had gone to see. Travis’s mother had put out chewy chocolate chip cookies for him, and he found a cold root beer in the refrigerator. By the time he had started on his third cookie he’d convinced himself there had been no boy and no light and no one crying and no reason whatsoever to think that anything had happened as he passed by the graveyard. It was all his imagination, triggered by the horror movie, the shadows, and the wind.
By morning, when his mother tapped on his bedroom door to let him know that Nish was outside, waiting for him, he’d practically forgotten about it.
They’d tossed the ball around a bit in the yard, then walked up Church Street towards the school, where Nish began to chalk out a net on the brick wall of the gym.
Travis knew he was starting to get a feel for the game. While Nish worked on the net, Travis fired the ball again and again against the wall, the solid thump … thump … thump so comforting in its steady repetition. He loved the way the India rubber ball smacked against the brick wall, seeming to bounce back faster than it had flown into it, and whispered to a stop in the leather cushion of his stick.
Whip … smack … hiss …
Whip … smack … hiss …
Nish had almost finished drawing his net. It seemed small to Travis. He knew that the net was not as wide in lacrosse as in hockey, but this seemed narrower still, and not nearly as tall as it should be.
Nish was, of course, giving himself every possible advantage. He stepped back, considering his art.
“You know what I’ve decided?” Nish asked, not even looking towards Travis.
Travis caught the ball and held, his rhythm broken, and waited for Nish to continue. “What?” he prodded.
Nish stared at the wall, almost as if he hadn’t yet decided anything.
“I don’t think The Blood Children: Part VIII was a very good movie.”
“How would you know?” Travis asked. “You never even saw it.”
“I saw enough to know it sucked,” Nish said, as if he was the world’s number-one movie critic.
“It wasn’t bad,” argued Travis, who still resented not seeing the ending.
“It wasn’t scary at all,” Nish said.
Travis said nothing. He couldn’t tell Nish about the boy and the graveyard. Nish would not only laugh at him, he’d tell everybody in town.
“I could do better than that myself,” Nish continued.
Travis dropped the ball out of his stick. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m gonna make my own horror flick, that’s what.”