Cornered (10 page)

She smiled and touched a finger to her chin. “Hmmmm . . .” She laughed. We stood without speaking for a moment. The silence of the suburban night crushed down on us. It was peaceful, but I felt anything but.

“It wasn't that bad, was it?” I said. She sighed.

“It looks totally different from wherever you sit on the totem pole, my friend. And only people on the top, or at least not the bottom, would ever, EVER say it wasn't that bad. It was terrible. There were times, many times, I wished I was dead.”

The word “dead” sat there in the night air for a long time. I felt awful.
I
was the reason a kid that young wanted to kill herself? I thought about my sister, Hannah. If someone treated her that way . . . I felt a little sick.

“What can I do to make it better?” I said.

“Don't run away just because someone throws a spoon at you. Stick around to ask why they threw it.”

“I have a feeling that's supposed to have some deeper, artistic meaning. . . .”

“I guess it means don't treat people like shit. Stand up for people who are being treated like shit. Don't go with the crowd just because it's easier. . . .”

“Is that what you're doing?” I asked.

“Yup.”

Something inside me shifted, clicked into place. “I'm sorry,” I said. She didn't say she forgave me, but it felt good to say it.

Instead, she looked out over the bridge and changed the topic. “You missed the last part of the last song. After ‘Lucky Pup' I brought back the first song.”

“We're all ugly?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Well that's how it starts. But that's not how it ends.” She started to sing. I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me. “We're all beautiful. We're all beautiful. We're all beautiful anyway.” The song repeated this simple phrase over and over and over again.

I opened my eyes, stared at Tiffany—the little frizzy-haired girl somehow now visible despite the years—and I sang along. I didn't care that my voice was out of key. I didn't care about anything. I just sang.

“We're all beautiful. We're all beautiful. We're all beautiful anyway.”

{Verse}

Cm-Bm-Am-G

They use their lies

And their fists.

To divide you from your friends.

You prepare, you adapt.

But they wound you in the end.

As a youngster in the corridor,

You just wish to comply.

As a person, getting older.

You spit into their eye.

{Chorus}

Am-Em-F-C

You're only

As ugly

As you let them make you feel.

I felt ugly.

I was ugly.

I was ugly.

I was ugly.

{Second verse}

Cm-Bm-Am-G

So you looked my way.

You're not redeemed.

Not my friend.

Not a thought.

We never are who we seem

In the end.

Start something new.

Be uncomfortable.

Take a chance.

Unwrap your mind.

Who wants to be predictable?

Not me, that's for sure.

{Chorus}

{Alternate Chorus}

Cm-Bm-Am-G

We're all beautiful.

We're all beautiful.

We're all beautiful anyway.

BY
D
AVID
Y
OO

T
OBACCO JUICE STINGS
your scalp and the smell doesn't fully come off, even after a hot shower. Black spray paint, even when dried, soaks through the fabric of a Hanes white tank top and into your skin like a tattoo. And according to trusted sources, wedgies, despite seeming so funny and painless in kiddie films, are anything but (no pun intended).

Midway High didn't have a soccer field, so you practiced and had “home” games three miles away at the local park. During the preseason Hell Week before school started, you quickly learned that it was best to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack during team wind sprints. If any freshman finished first, the seniors had to do extra sprints, and the punishment for making seniors do extra laps was one of two things: a Coke can filled with tobacco spit poured on your head, or being the recipient of an “adult” wedgie. The latter wasn't to be mistaken with those previously mentioned kiddie wedgies, where the point was to merely rip the underwear off the way you
imagined Hulk Hogan doing before every shower. Adult wedgies were exceedingly unfunny. You have it on good authority that they caused tiny rips in your asshole that'll bleed for two days. Luckily that happened to a fellow frosh recruit, not you.

Freshmen were also discouraged from scoring against the seniors in a scrimmage. Scoring on seniors was considered even more offensive than beating them in wind sprints, even though you had been doing sprints all summer in secret, hoping your speed would help you make the varsity squad. Other no-nos: stealing the ball from a senior during a scrimmage; sitting in the front of the bus; receiving a compliment from the coach at any point during practice (thereby making you seem like a kiss ass); making eye contact with certain seniors; not making eye contact with certain seniors, etc. It should be noted, however, that being fast was otherwise a very good thing. Despite the repercussions after wind sprints, it certainly helped you get out of other situations that were far more unpleasant.

These rules were confirmed to you in private by the lone, kind upperclassman player. Jason was a junior on the varsity squad. While he never stood up for you publicly during practice, he now and then chose you as his “subject” and pretended to torture you—but not really. Once on a jog around the lake, he gave you these aforementioned tips about how to survive the torment. In those moments, thereafter, when you were getting picked on, you thought about Jason and how you would model yourself after him as an upperclassman. He was blessed
with all the elite varsity soccer privileges yet simultaneously the one ray of light for struggling frosh players.

A hero to all.

The one setback to this private encouragement was the smidgeon of defiance it gave you. The meanest bully, Frankie, could sense this. It probably wasn't wise to glare back at this senior during scrimmage. This was shortly after getting picked to be on the “skins” side—meaning you had to take off your shirt—whereupon Frankie announced, “Jesus, where do you live, a concentration camp? I can see all your ribs!” If he hadn't yelled it loud enough for the girls' soccer team on the adjacent field to hear, perhaps it wouldn't have been as bad.

Seniors in general were clever and experienced at hiding the evidence of torture. They knew it was open season to kick a frosh in the shins, for even with the required shin guards all soccer players were already bruised there. Frankie was especially knowledgeable on the subject, knowing that a punch to the back of the head left an indiscernible welt, hidden by your hair, even if it was shaved with a number two razor.

Technically, or in theory, rather, these rules (privately reinforced by Jason) applied only through Hell Week of soccer practice before school started. Preseason was important because it whipped the varsity team into shape, but it was also a chance for the coaches to observe and ultimately determine which freshmen made the junior varsity squad. Only four out of about twenty freshmen made it. The remaining freshman languished on the “frosh” team, and though they participated in
practices they didn't even receive a uniform. As a result, they were barely considered soccer players at all.

The JV roster was tacked up to the corkboard outside the coach's office at the end of Hell Week on Friday. Your name was listed, along with Luke, Robbie, and Greg. As a varsity traveling squad member, you received a Midway High Varsity soccer traveling uniform, including the prized hooded warm-up jacket with MIDWAY SOCCER emblazoned across the back. It was immediately your most prized possession, which made it all the more painful when Frankie found you after second period and literally cut the hood off with a pair of very sharp metal scissors. You didn't cry, but your throat definitely knotted as you watched it fall to the floor. It was doubtful Frankie would have stabbed you to death right then and there, but you could never trust the look in his eyes, which were gray, like a wolf's.

• • •

At the first official day of practice following Hell Week, the coach announced that the four of you—the four freshmen picked to play junior varsity—would be designated by a special shirt-top. The reason for this was so the coach could easily distinguish the four JV freshmen from the lesser frosh players during the structured chaos of after-school practices, and the seniors took it upon themselves to create said uniforms.

That night a senior visited the local Marshalls on Route 22 in Midway and purchased half a dozen, plain white Hanes tank tops, along with two cans of black spray paint from Haley's
Hardware next door. You imagine they took great relish in this team-bonding activity, high-fiving each other throughout the aisles. During lunch the next day all returning varsity players convened in the woods behind the school and arranged the fresh tank tops on the ground. Large numbers, one through four, were spray-painted onto the fronts and a big
F
spray-painted on the back. Once dry, or dry enough so the ink wouldn't bleed when pissed on, the players then surrounded the shirts in ceremonial fashion and finished the job. The tank tops were then tossed into a black plastic bag and left out in the sun, allowing the scent of urine to marinate into every fiber of fabric. These were now the official frosh recruit practice uniforms.

When they were exhibited that afternoon at practice the other freshmen, the ones who didn't make the JV squad, silently celebrated their inadequate soccer skills. You ended up with number four. By the second day of practice the coach demanded that the shirts be left at the practice fields, in the bag, because the smell was too much to bear. Even so, the stench stayed on your skin. You privately complained to Coach after Wednesday's practice that the black spray paint was making your chest itch, and you showed him the forming of a rash under your shirt. The tank tops were forcibly retired on Thursday, and during Friday's practice, the seniors were ominously silent; they didn't even force you to shout the Pledge of Allegiance over and over on the bus ride back from practice.

One of the seniors poked his head in the freshmen locker room after showers on Friday, when the four of you were racing
to get your clothes on before Frankie showed up—Coke can full of tobacco juice in hand. “Let's take a trip,” the senior said, an odd smile on his face.

“I have a doctor's appointment,” you lied. “My mom's waiting in the parking lot.” The senior stopped smiling.

“There aren't any cars waiting, so everyone better get moving.” The four of you looked at each other with wide eyes as you were led like POWs, out to where the varsity girls' field hockey team was having their first preseason scrimmage. The seniors handed out your respective uniforms and forced you to put them on after having taken such warm, soapy showers.

Frankie lined the four of you up in front of the home bleachers, instructing you to pull your shorts down and grab hold of your ankles. The parents in the bleachers laughed, and the field hockey girls pointed. At first you refused to comply; again, Jason's friendship had given you the inkling of confidence to revolt, but none of your fellow frosh recruits were in support of your defiance. Luke shoved you in the back and snapped, “Cut the shit, you're making it worse for all of us!”

Frankie demanded you waddle like ducks in a single file line and quack around the entire field. The hottest girls on the hottest team stared, mouths agape. You couldn't tell if your face was red because of the blood rushing to your brain, or the humiliation you felt at the Morgan twins witnessing this spectacle. You'd often daydreamed about the Morgan twins seeing you in your boxers for the first time; this scenario woefully didn't quite live up to the fantasy in your head. You prayed you
wouldn't get a boner. This went on for thirty seconds until the field hockey coach blew his whistle and shouted for the frosh recruits to get the hell out of there (as if this was your own idea).

After this incident, the other frosh recruits noticeably distanced themselves from you, feeling that you aggravated things by offering even a hint of resistance. Not that you were ever close with the tight-knit soccer guys. The last time you were officially part of the group was in elementary school, linked merely by being on the youth travel soccer team. While you were never the star, they easily accepted you as one of their own, and you went to their birthday parties and sleepovers up till sixth grade.

Things began changing in junior high, at the onset of school dances and interest in girls in general. You were shy, and girls weren't attracted to you the way they were to Luke or Robbie. The soccer guys noticed this, and before you knew it, you were no longer invited to parties, which were now coed. To add insult to injury, Luke's house, located directly across the street from your own, seemed to become party central every weekend.