Swagger (19 page)

“There's more,” I said, and I told him how much Coach Richter liked his game. “Ask Hartwell to line up a junior college program for you. He'd be glad to do it. You go two years to a junior college, play like you can play, and we could be on the court together in New Hampshire. Wouldn't that be fantastic?”

I expected him to be as excited by the possibility as I was. Instead he lowered his eyes. “Once the tournament is over, I'm finished with Hartwell forever.”

That stopped me. Six weeks earlier he'd told me that Hartwell was the smartest man he'd ever known. Why the change? Silence hung in the night air.

“What's wrong with Hartwell?” I finally asked.

Another long pause. And then, when he spoke, Levi's voice was low. “You don't know the truth about him, Jonas. Nobody knows.”

My heart rate quickened. “What don't I know?”

The wind rustled the evergreens ringing the court. Clouds moved over the moon.

“What don't I know?” I repeated. The wind moved in the trees again; in the distance, a car sounded its horn. Still he said nothing. “Levi, I'm your friend. What's the point of having a friend if you can't talk to him? It can't be that bad.”

“It's worse than anything you can imagine,” he said finally, his voice thick with anger. He'd moved back a few steps so that he was almost lost in the dark.

I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a cliff. “Tell me.”

I waited, but he stayed silent. So I waited longer. And then, when I was certain he was never going to speak, his words came. “When I'm alone with Hartwell, he asks me to do things.”

The world slowed. I felt dizzy, but there was nothing to grab hold of. “What kind of things?”

“On the snow trip to Mount Rainier. That was the first time. And after that at his apartment. He says he's just going to tutor me; that I need his help to stay eligible. And I do need him. I'd have flunked without him and without you. But once we're finished with the schoolwork, he asks me to do things, things he says will help me relax and help him relax. I tell him no, but he talks and talks, and he gets me all confused.” Levi paused, and his voice went so soft I could barely hear him. “Sometimes I do them, Jonas. I know they're wrong, but I do them.”

I wasn't on the edge of a cliff anymore. I was falling. “Levi, are you talking about sex? Is it sex things he has you do?”

Even though he was deep in the shadows, I could feel him tense. “It's sickening. I'm sickening.”

“No, no, Levi. You're not sickening,” I said, fighting down panic. “You're not. You needed to tell somebody, and I'm your friend, so you told me. Just let me think about what do, okay? Just let me think for a second.”

He stood across from me, his body on alert as if in an instant he might turn and run. Thoughts flashed through my mind with lightning speed. What to do? Go to the principal? Call the police? If I did either, a million spotlights would be on Harding High.
Coach Accused!
That would be the headline. The team would fall apart. Kids at school would want to know:
Who? Who? Who?
Levi's name would come out—things like that always do.

“Listen, Levi,” I said, fighting to keep my voice calm. “We'll be done with the state tournament by Saturday night. Let's just play the games out. When our season is over, we can sit down—you and me—and work out a plan, figure out who to tell.”

He took a step back. “Jonas, I told you because you're my friend, but I'm not telling anybody else. I'm
never
telling anybody else. Never. My father would kill me if he found out.” He paused, and his voice darkened. “I shouldn't have told you. I should never have told you.”

I put up my hands to calm him. “No, it's okay. It's okay. You did the right thing. We'll put it aside for a while. There's too much going on right now. Okay?”

“You promise you won't tell anybody?”

“I won't do anything without talking to you first. I promise.”

He stepped farther back into the darkness. “I'm going home.”

“That sounds good. I'm ready too.”

“No. I'm going home alone. I don't want you with me.”

“Don't be crazy, Levi. We're heading in the same direction.”

“Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”

Before I could answer, he'd turned and raced across the playfield, disappearing into the shadows.

F
IFTEEN MINUTES LATER I WAS
in my room, the lights off, my mind and body reeling. I kept trying to come up with some way to make the chaos go away, but Levi had said what he'd said, and there was no going back.

I thought about school, the team, the games. How could I walk the halls of Harding, smile at kids, be a basketball player? How could I even look at Hartwell? Just the thought of him, of what he'd done, made me sick inside.

But when I thought about telling someone—whether it was in a day or a week—that also made me feel sick. Levi's father had screamed at Rachel over a tight blouse; what would he do to Levi? He'd want to kill Hartwell, but he'd blame Levi.

He'd blame his son.

Maybe Levi was right; maybe keeping it secret was the best thing to do. But that would mean Hartwell would get away with what he'd done, and that couldn't happen, because he'd do it again. I'd read about guys like Hartwell in the newspapers. They didn't stop until someone stopped them.

When your mind is buzzing, you think you're going to be awake all night, but you never are. I saw midnight, then one fifteen, then one fifty—but nothing after that. My alarm went off at six, and I sat up with a pounding head and an aching body, as if I'd been in a fight. I slouched downstairs and heated up some milk for hot chocolate and ate a piece of toast.

I left the house at my normal time. I was certain Levi would be gone, but I knocked on his door anyway. His mother answered, her face expressionless. “He left half an hour ago,” she said in a monotone, and then she closed the door.

As soon as I stepped inside the school, I started sweating. I'd never felt completely at home in the hallways at Harding, not like I'd felt at home at Redwood High. There were just too many faces I didn't know.

Through my first two classes, I could feel the blood pounding in my head. Luckily, I wasn't called on in either class. When I stepped into Butler's chemistry class, Celia pulled me aside. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

“I'm fine,” I said, making myself smile. That's when I remembered my scholarship. Celia was the second person at school I'd wanted to tell, after Levi. Now I couldn't bring myself to say a word about Monitor College. Had Richter called me just last night? It seemed years ago.

As the day dragged on, a new dread came on: practice. Seeing Levi and Hartwell together would make everything more real and more horrible. How could I look at either of them? Winning or losing didn't matter. Basketball didn't matter. All I wanted was for everything and everyone
to go away.

As I was standing at my locker right before health class, I spotted Hartwell in a side hallway. The instant I saw his face, the ground beneath me moved. My heart started pounding fast, the blood rushed into my head, but then it was as if all the blood had gone out of me. I was burning up, and a second later I was chilled. I felt the dizziness come, felt myself start to fall, but someone's hands reached out and grabbed me and held me upright. It was Gokul. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said.

He helped me to the nurse's office, where Mrs. Van Deusen had me lie down on a cot. She stuck a thermometer into my mouth, and her eyes went to her watch. “I'm fine,” I said when Mrs. Van Deusen took the thermometer out.

She scowled. “You're not fine. You've got a fever of one hundred and one. I'm calling your mother; you need to go home.” She looked to Gokul, who had stayed. “You can go back to class now.”

Gokul was about to leave when I remembered practice.

“Can you tell somebody on the team that I'm going home sick?”

“Yeah, sure,” Gokul said. “Cash is in my sixth-period class. I'll tell him.”

“Thanks.”

Gokul patted me on the shoulder, a smile on his face. “You get healthy, Jonas. Everybody knows we've got no chance to win the whole thing. But we've really got no chance without you.”

 

My mother arrived twenty minutes later. Once I was home, I went up to my room and tried to read
Sports Illustrated
, but the words swam on the page and the dizziness wouldn't go away. I gave up, flicked off the light, and fell asleep.

I didn't wake up until ten o'clock the next morning.

When I saw how late it was, I jumped out of bed, dressed quickly, and rushed downstairs. My mother and father were both at the kitchen drinking coffee. “Why didn't you wake me?” I said.

“You needed to sleep,” my mother said.

“But—”

My dad spoke next. “Jonas, I talked to Coach Hartwell. He says you have to be at school for your afternoon classes or you can't play against Lynden, but that you can rest until then. You've got a couple more hours. Take it easy—you're going to need your energy.”

T
HE DIZZINESS WASN'T COMPLETELY GONE
, but at least I didn't feel as if my knees were made of Jell-O anymore. I ate lunch at home, and then my mother drove me to Harding. As I got out of the car, I forced myself to stand tall. I could do this; I could get through the state tournament and then face whatever would come after.

Spanish class was Spanish class. I answered a few questions, read a little about Picasso, and the hour went by. It was health that I dreaded—Levi would be there.

I lingered in the hallway until just before the bell rang. I knew where Levi was without even looking. All year I'd taken the seat next to him in the back row. But I couldn't sit next to Levi and pretend that everything was okay, so I used my tardiness as an excuse to take an open desk toward the front. A couple of times during class I looked back toward him, but both times his head was down. He didn't want to see me, either.

When class ended, I waited for him by the door. It would have looked strange if we'd gone to the team bus separately, and I think he sensed that too. As we walked to the parking lot, kids called out, wishing us luck.

There were about fifty kids in the parking lot. Some of the guys were already on the bus, and they shouted out the window to their friends, who shouted encouragement back. I didn't join in, and neither did Levi. He grabbed a seat up front, next to Brandon, so I headed to the back.

We'd been on the bus for five minutes before Hartwell climbed on. He stopped all the screaming with a look. “Wait until you've won something before you celebrate.”

The guys stayed quiet as Hartwell gave a short lecture on keeping our focus. As I watched him, the unreality of it returned. Hartwell was so classy—tall, lean but strong, well dressed. He had a ready smile and always knew what to say. And he had just the right amount of swagger in everything he did. If someone had asked me two days earlier:
Who do you want to be like when you're twenty-five?
I'd have answered:
Ryan Hartwell
.

I looked at Levi. His eyes were fixed on the floor. What sort of hell was he going through? I felt a new surge of white-hot hatred for Hartwell, for that classy look, for that easy manner, and for that arrogance. He'd searched out a target, like a hawk circling over a field. He'd found Levi, and he'd struck.

Hartwell finished his talk and then said something to the bus driver. I closed my eyes as we pulled out of the parking lot. In front of me guys talked, but nobody was loud. Somewhere during the hourlong ride, I went into a semi-trance, doing everything I could to turn my mind off.

I came out of it when the bus exited the freeway. The sound of the motor changed; the speed of the bus changed, and the Tacoma Dome was right there, an American flag waving from the top of the blue and white roof.

We pulled to a stop in the parking lot. I grabbed my duffle bag, stood, and was immediately overwhelmed again by the sense that the earth was quaking beneath me. I was so lightheaded that I had to grab hold of the back of the seat to keep from falling. Somehow I managed to make my way off the bus and follow Hartwell through the players' entrance into the locker room.

I sat down on a bench, my head still swimming, and changed into my uniform. When everybody was ready, Hartwell called us together and gave us a final pep talk. I don't know what he said: I was too afraid I wouldn't be able to walk to pay attention. It was as if I were on the deck of a tiny sailboat in the middle of a typhoon.

Around me, guys hollered things like, “Let's win this thing!” and “This is our time!” Moments later they stood and ran out of the locker room and through the tunnel. Seconds earlier I didn't think I could walk, but somehow I was swept up and out with them.

And then an amazing thing happened. As soon as I stepped onto the basketball court, the world steadied. I looked at Levi, and I could see relief wash over his face too. “Just play,” I mouthed to him, and he nodded.

We were where we belonged.

We went through the lay-up line a couple of times and shot around for a few minutes. There were photographers and TV cameramen everywhere—the game was going to be broadcast live across the state. When our warm-ups ended, the lights went dim. One by one, the starters for both teams were introduced, while multicolored searchlights cut the darkness and rock music blared from the speakers.

None of the fanfare mattered; none of it made me nervous. On the basketball court, the rules were clear; the goal was clear. Hartwell was no longer a person: he was a coach, and I could listen to the coach, even though I hated the man. On the basketball court, I was safe.

The full lights came back on, and the horn sounded.