Tradition Page 16

  “I thought we were friends,” I said.

  “I thought so too.” She’d turned us in a one-eighty, and she spun around and continued up the path toward the admin building. I took a step after her, and it was like she had eyes in the back of her head, because she muttered over her shoulder, barely loud enough for me to hear, “Please don’t follow me.”

  I wanted to, and I wanted to know what the hell was going on, but I suddenly had a shock, thinking about what she’d just said. I was just like who? I remembered a moment like that at the beginning of the year, when she was walking away from Hackett—from all of us, but mostly Hackett—and I wondered if she thought I was like him in some way. What, with Aileen? Screw that. I didn’t need to be associated with Hackett, that snake. She was the one who’d hooked up—scored—with him, again. Everyone was talking about it.

  But she was right about one thing. I did have a meeting, so I went to it.

  Coach O had a midweek meeting for all winter sports athletes and I had to sit there all fake-ass chummy a few feet away from Freddie, nodding along when he got up to address the room as captain of the hockey team. Ethan had to say a few words as the captain of the ski team too. I was glad I didn’t have to stand up. It was worse than class. At least there everyone knew I had nothing intelligent to say. Here, in the small bleachers alongside the basketball court, under the glow of the gym lights, I was supposed to be in my element. I was supposed to be at the center of things.

  “This is our year too,” Ethan shouted. His voice strained. Ethan spoke from his nose and throat. Freddie had learned to bellow from his belly, like a volcano erupting.

  “State!” Freddie shouted, as he had earlier. The hockey guys echoed him. “State,” we all boomed. “State. State. State.” Freddie began a slow clap, and the team followed, chanting along in time, stamping the floor as they sped up. Me too. I wasn’t loud, but I mouthed the words. I brought my hands together. What the hell else was I going to do?

  Freddie’s uproar quieted Ethan, but he remained standing. Coach O paced the floor in front of us, the line of other coaches behind him like a troop of military police on watch. “All right,” Ethan continued, when the hockey team was finished. “Let’s all just go get what’s ours this winter!”

  At this, everyone jumped up and cheered, all the boys’ and all the girls’ teams, and the coaches clapped along, pumping fists and feeding the rally. “Red Hawks! Red Hawks! Red Hawks!” the room roared. Coach O nodded along, and as the room began to settle down, he told the captains to take their teams off to the individual meetings.

  Freddie led us out of the gym and down the path to the ice rink. It was basically the same building, but he wanted to parade us through the front door. He pointed out the medals and cups from previous years in the display cases in the lobby outside the rink, took us inside, and then finally led us down to the locker room. I was trying hard to follow along, nod along, look interested, but my mind was elsewhere.

  “And that’s why the Buckeye is here,” Freddie said, pointing down at me. When he’d led us into the locker room, he’d jumped up on one of the benches and huddled the rest of us around him. “Let’s hear it for our starting goalie this year!” The guys roared and pushed me around between them. “Come on, Buckeye. Let’s hear it for the Red Hawks. Belt it out, man.”

  I whooped something ridiculously pathetic, and for a second there wasn’t much of a response, just a few weak cheers back, but I had to admit that as much as I felt all twisted up inside and as much as I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be here, here was incredibly familiar. The humidity of the room and the breathing around me. The stench of sweat and mold in the wood. Flakes of rusted metal on the locker hinges. The low growl of ten guys in a room huffing and bouncing, packed in tight. The hiss of heat and water in the pipes all around us.

  I roared like I hadn’t in over a year and it felt good and filling and free.

  They all yelled and punched my shoulder and rubbed the back of my neck, and I grabbed some guys and slammed them against lockers, and two guys bounced me back, and I pulled them into a headlock, pressed them to my forehead and yelled in their faces, and after we’d slammed one other around for a minute or two, Freddie calmed us all down.

  “All right, I have nothing else to add,” he said. “Weights and cardio starts tomorrow. We hit the ice next week. First scrimmage is against that public school from Buffalo. Let’s kill ’em.”

  The guys cheered again. As they slowly trickled away, Freddie hopped down and threw an arm over my shoulder. He led me down the aisle to a locker in the far corner. It had a number plate, like all the other lockers, but it was hidden behind strips of masking tape. In shaky permanent marker, someone had written The Buckeye on the tape.

  “Let’s put the shit behind us,” Freddie said. “And kick some ass this year.”

  I nodded.

  “You in the back. Me in the front. This is going to be the shit.” He was almost drunk with excitement. “Northeastern? Boston College? I’ve always wanted to play for the Kings, man. Think about it. You play ice hockey, but in LA?”

  I nodded again. Gave him my best game face. The one I’d always given Coach Drucker back home.

  Freddie pulled a puck out of his back pocket and slapped it down in my palm. “Seriously. Bros before hos, man.”

  I swallowed. And smiled. “Yeah, man,” I got out. I almost asked, “What’s this for?” but didn’t, because I realized exactly what it was for, and I didn’t want to talk about it.

  He slapped me on the back. “I see you working it.”

  I stuck around and claimed I wanted to get my head in the space, claimed I had some preseason ritual, which they all bought, filtering out one by one. I needed them to leave so I wouldn’t have to keep smiling and nodding like a jackass, which I knew I was going to have to do—but for how long?

  I sat on the bench trying to imagine the year ahead, but I didn’t have that kind of foresight. I couldn’t anticipate; I could only react. That’s all I was good at. Catching pucks. Taking shots to the chest. Leveling a bastard who took a swipe at me. I turned the puck over in my hands. There’d been a time long ago when the Mi’kmaq people of Newfoundland played hockey with frozen rotten apples. Europeans witnessed, watched, and wrote about it in the 1600s. Later they swapped the apples for wood, and the Irish immigrants who played called the disk a poc—the word for punch or strike a blow. Coach Drucker had told me that. He’d thought it was perfect. Just punch it past the other guy. Or take a punch, was how I thought of it as goalie. But as I squeezed the stiff rubber in my hand, I thought of how fitting that word was now. Poc.

  I noticed a line of graffiti scratched onto the locker two doors from mine. There was a ton of scratch graffiti all over the locker room, etched in over who knows how many years of guys down here strutting around in towels, finding tools like cavemen to mark their walls. I’d done it more times than I could count back home. But this one stopped me. It was big enough to read it from the bench.

  Best deep throat of the year: The Viking.

  How many bathrooms, locker rooms, camp cabins, and dorm rooms had I been in and seen graffiti like this? But how many times had I seen graffiti about me? Never.

  Poc. Puck. How fucking fitting. How fitting and so wrong.

  CHAPTER 24

  * * *

  JULES DEVEREUX

  What had me the most confused was how people saw things the way they wanted to. Bax thought I was getting back together with Ethan. Gillian thought I was getting back together with Ethan. I had to keep going over it in my mind so I didn’t go crazy. I didn’t want to get back together with him—but what had actually happened?

  My jeans had never come off. Open, but not off. And his jeans had stayed on. I know, I could still feel them pressed against me, like I was being crushed by a stone wall. We’d done everything together before. We’d had sex whenever we could for at least three months. Why couldn’t I even find the words to describe it all now? Everything had once felt so n
atural, like a language of the body—the rocking of hips, two hands up to his face when I kissed him, the way I sank into the V of his hooked arm like it was a hammock. Now, even the sight of his hands repulsed me. To think of any of it made my skin crawl.

  “Finger.” The word just sounded so medical, mechanical. So dead.

  I had spent too many days making it too easy for him. I resolved to say something to him. He had to look me in the eye, acknowledge me, acknowledge what he did. It wouldn’t make it better. Nothing and no one could make it better—but at least I could take some control.

  I’d see Ethan in our Modern Chinese History class, and since I’d had my head down, nose tilted into the spine of my notebook, all week, I thought I’d surprise him by staring at him from across the class. Today, when I wasn’t firing face-frying laser beams that he occasionally caught and that made him look away, I was answering as many of Mr. Dyer’s questions as he’d let me answer.

  “My goodness, Jules,” Mr. Dyer said at one point. “Yes. That’s the spirit. Exactly. A Maoist embrace of capitalism was essential for the party to keep control.” He smiled. “Looks like you’re back.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “And better than before.”

  “Well, look out,” he joked. I didn’t appreciate the laughter around the room. If any of them knew and still laughed, I’d be coming for them next.

  But right now, my target was Ethan. Gillian may have tossed him aside, but he didn’t look rattled. Instead, after he caught me glaring at him again, he leaned back and put his hands behind his head. The back of his chair rested against the old radiator Mr. Dyer never turned on because it clanked and banged like the sound of pylons being driven into concrete. Ethan rocked the chair with only one foot on the floor.

  “Taking it easy, Ethan?”

  “No. No, Mr. Dyer. Sorry. No disrespect. I was just wondering. All that quota stuff. Certain number of women in each level of office. You think that would fly here?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Would it make our society better?”

  “I’m not sure, but it would certainly be more equitable.”

  “But that’s what I’m wondering,” Ethan said, dropping his chair down and leaning forward across the table. “Is equity really the end goal we want? We say we do, but do we really? To be equitable, some folks have to give up some of what they have. I just don’t see that happening.”

  Mr. Dyer went into another long lecture about the different way of viewing the world from the perspective of a culture that thought more communally than the highly individualistic United States. “On balance, I’d actually argue the US veers more individualistic than any other culture in the world. Most of the rest of the world tilts at least a little bit more collective in its thinking than we do.” He concluded and seemed enamored with his own thoughts, but tapped his finger on the table and pointed to Ethan. “You’ve given us all something to consider, especially as we think about our next paper topics. After all, our next papers have to be about the economy.”

  But Ethan was just taking up class time to say fuck you to me. He knew me well enough to know I was coming for him finally, but he’d maneuvered class so that the last five minutes were all about him and his brilliance. People nodded, some made notes. Ethan didn’t even have his notebook out. He was up and on his way to the door before I could get my bag packed.

  I had to bump past a few people in the hall, run down the back stairs, and chase him down on the path around the academic center. “Hey,” I said, grabbing his arm. “We need to talk.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I have a ski meeting.”

  “No. I’m serious.” He began to walk away, but I held him tight and yanked him back. “This is about last week.”

  “I can’t be late, Jules. Later, okay?”

  “No. Now.”

  He knocked my hand away. “Look, I can see you are pissed, but I’m pissed too, okay?”

  “You’re pissed?”

  “Yeah. Gillian won’t even speak to me. Really? Not even speak to me? That’s so stupid. But whatever. Everything is just so messed up, and I don’t have time to deal with all this because I have to get ready for the ski season.”

  “This is about me, Ethan.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, of course it is. It’s always about you.”

  I could feel my hands begin to shake. I couldn’t believe this. “I’m . . . You . . .” I couldn’t find the words.

  “Oh my God. You’re supposed to be Miss Tough Girl. I can’t deal with your tears too. Besides, I’m the one who is in pain here,” he said. “Gillian won’t speak to me. But I was wasted. Why did you even sneak away with me? What did you think was going to happen? It’s like routine for us, Jules.”

  “Excuse me? This is my fault?”

  “Stop. Just stop with the innocent act.” He put his hands on his hips and blew a frustrated breath into the air above his head. “For God’s sake, just admit you’ve wanted to get back together all year. You know you wanted it. And it. It? I don’t even know what happened. I just know Gillian walked in, we were about to get busy, and then we didn’t. We didn’t! We didn’t even do anything. So frankly, I don’t know what any of you are so worked up about.”

  I was speechless. I thought I’d been ready but I could barely find my voice. He started to walk away. “Just leave me alone for a while, Jules. Time heals—isn’t that what you said last year when you dumped me?” he said over his shoulder.

  He was slipping away. For some reason, it felt like if he got around the corner of the admin building, I’d never be able to mention any of it again. I felt flushed to the bone. “What if I press charges?” I belted out.

  He stopped and charged back. I almost thought he was going to hit me. “For what? Because you, you were all kinds of drunk and made out with your ex-boyfriend, and now you regret it? The feminazi train is heading out of town, Jules. You’re so delusional it’s frightening. It’s impossible to have a conversation with you. You say one crazy thing, one crazy non sequitur after another, and no matter what I say back, you disagree with it. Get the fuck out of my face. Friends, my ass. You’re a frigging liability.”

  He paced as he spat his rant, but the longer he stayed in front of me the more courage I found. “Stay here,” I said. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t push me and push me even though I said no.”

  He hesitated a moment, then kind of snarled at me. “I have a meeting,” he said. “You’re so crazy you should get some serious help.”

  “I’m not crazy!”

  “Or better yet, go find Bax if you are so lonely. See the two of you around together enough anyway.”

  “He’s just a friend, you jerk.”

  “Oh, really? I better warn him, then. This is what you do to friends. You get all sloppy drunk with them, make out for a while, and then accuse them of something crazy like you’re some wounded victim.”

  I couldn’t say anything back. I was, I wanted to say. I am.

  He took two steps away, then turned back and pointed at me. “Seriously. Think about that. Think about all our history, all we’ve done. Think about all that weed, and last weekend, all that booze. Think about all the other people involved. I didn’t rape you, Jules. Don’t blow this all out of proportion.” He turned back and jogged off toward the dorms, leaving me standing alone. Unsteady. Stunned.

  I hadn’t said the word even to myself yet. “Rape.” But that was exactly what had happened. That night, after I had said no, he had reached down into my pants and grabbed me, gone inside me, and continued, forcing himself as I repeated “no,” again and again. He said it—“rape”—not me, and the word stretched out like my shadow in front of me, staring back at me.

  CHAPTER 25

  * * *

  JAMES BAXTER

  Each day felt more and more disorienting as I tried to negotiate practice and figure out why Jules wouldn’t speak with me. I never saw her with Hackett, either, and Hackett was keeping his distance from me, too. The thing
that was most disorienting, but in a good way, was Aileen. She and I had kept our word. Seeing each other more often was cool.

  We’d met twice at the student center, just to talk over a plate of fries, where I told her about Vinny, and she nodded along quietly and didn’t run out of the room, and on Thursday I had late practice, and it wasn’t rink time, it was weights and cardio, so I took a chance and waited outside the arts center, because I knew she had photography last, and more to the point, I knew she’d probably linger after class, because it was her favorite. I didn’t know a damn thing about photography, but I liked the enthusiasm in Aileen’s voice when she spoke about it.

  “Well, look who it is,” she said, coming out of the building. She was walking next to Jules, and I smiled at both of them.

  “Oh,” Jules said. She hesitated. “Did you want to head over to the student center?” she asked Aileen.

  Aileen glanced back and forth between us. “What were you doing?” she asked me.

  “Just coming to find you. I don’t have practice, and I wanted to see what you were up to.”

  That made Aileen blush, and me too. I couldn’t believe I was so straightforward. I didn’t even know I could think that quickly and easily. I realized my heart was beating a little faster. “But whatever,” I added. “If you two are hanging out, I’ll catch you later.”

  “No, no.” She came down a step and waved us all forward. “Let’s all go.”

  “Nah,” Jules said. “You know what? I left something upstairs. I’ll just meet you over there.” She didn’t wait to hear what we said next. She disappeared back into the arts center, and didn’t even pull the door closed behind her.

  “Do you think she’s actually coming to join us?” I asked.

  “That was a definite ‘see you later,’ ” Aileen said, flashing a peace sign. “As in, not today.”