The Domino Effect (27 page)

Getting up on the gym roof at Hamden Academy wasn’t going to be that easy. I’d been looking at the gymnasium complex all week, trying to figure out the best way to get on top of the wrestling annex. All I wanted to do was take a peek through the window in the roof, and check on the results of my plan so far. I could have done this the easy way, just by showing up, but I figured that, if things worked out as I hoped, and nobody went to the match except for me, it would seem suspicious. There could have been an easier way than getting up there on the roof, but I was in superhero mode, and doing it like this made me feel like a kid again.

I’d looked around the night before for the stairwell leading to the main gymnasium roof, but the door up top was locked, which was too bad, because it would have made things a breeze. The only other way I could think to get up there was through the maintenance area. This was the last compartment of the complex, and the cover they’d built for the grounds equipment was only one story. It bordered the woods out toward the fields, and I came around through the trees and stayed out of sight to make sure no one was there. I fastened the straps of my backpack, put up the hood on my sweatshirt, and tied it tight. To get into the maintenance area, all I had to do was climb a 12-foot hurricane fence. To get onto the roof, though, I had to ride a tractor.

They needed these giant farm tractors to cut all that grass, and I sat on top of the biggest one for about five minutes, trying to figure things out. There were buttons and levers and dials, and I didn’t have a clue about any of them. I had a learner’s permit, but had only driven our car around the block two or three times. The tractor keys were in the ignition already, which was good, because I hadn’t even thought about keys. (I’d figured you used a button or a cord or something.) With the engine on, I pulled and pushed and turned everything I could until the beast jumped forward. I nearly fell off the back. I must have looked ridiculous, jerking around like that, but I wasn’t there to win any farm boy style contest and, eventually, I got that monster out of the shed and right next to the roof.

From the top of the seat, the leap to the roof wasn’t bad. The corrugated tin stung my hands and scratched my forearms, but I struggled and squirmed my way up there soon enough. The wrestling annex was the next section, and a ladder, mounted into the bricks, brought me up two flights. The lack of sound filled me with hope. I crept up onto the tar roof to the rounded window in the center. With my hands as a visor, I squinted through the glass until the scene below became clear: wrestlers on the mat and benches, coaches on both sides, a referee and a scorekeeper, nobody in the stands. Nobody except Rice and Santos in the front row of the balcony, paper bags of protest over their heads (I could tell it was them by the size and shape differential). Good one by those guys.

Instead of going back, I took the next ladder a few more stories up to the roof of the main gymnasium. The hills in every direction seemed endless, rolling over each other for as far as I could see. People walked around campus, and I felt like shouting out to them. I felt like letting them know I was up there, and what I’d been up to. Instead, I whipped out my spray can, went across the roof, and climbed down a few rungs on the ladder that led to the first section. From there, I hung out as far as I could and scrawled as wide as I could in the same style as I had in the mail room, but instead of the slogan, I wrote my name in gigantic letters: DOMINO.

I made it up and down all the sections, practically sliding down the ladders. From the tin roof, I jumped to the ground and landed with a thud. I climbed back over the fence and disappeared into the woods. By the time I got back around to campus, changed my clothes, and walked the path, people had gathered below what had been written on the side of the gymnasium. I bummed a smoke at the shack and admired my work. After that, I went home and got ready for dinner.

The wrestling team won. They’d be leaving in a few days for the national tournament. Big news, though nobody clapped when the announcement was made at dinner. Nobody except the faculty and some clueless freshmen. The rest of the large hall sat silent until a chant began. It began in the back and, at first, I couldn’t make out what it was, but as momentum picked up across the room, I knew they were chanting for me or, at least, for whomever had started the rebellion against the wrestlers: “Domino!” “Domino!” “Domino!” “Domino!”

The sound bounced around the dining hall, and people began to pound on the big wooden tables. Not everybody was doing it, but enough. Not me, though. I couldn’t call out my own name, and I felt a little uneasy, sitting there thinking as the dining hall echoed around me that maybe I’d made a mistake. I ditched that thought when I caught Brenda’s eye. She sat a few tables away, not chanting or anything, just looking at me with an expression I couldn’t make out. But she looked at me, and that was enough to keep me going.

Everything began to fall apart the next morning, right below the Arch. Sammie and I had pulled off the next part of our plan the night before, sneaking out of the dorm again and into the abandoned locker room. But something felt wrong as we crept through the corridor. My insides couldn’t keep still, though I figured that might have something to do with all the prune juice we had tanked in our room after lights out.

Every part of the plan took longer than expected, but we got it done without getting caught and made it back to the dorm at about 2:00 in the morning. Sammie and I fell fast asleep. We even slept through our first classes and barely made it to the Arch in time to catch all the action.

At first, things seemed perfect. On that blue morning, a crowd had gathered where the banner hung, and I smiled thinking about what we had done and how we had done it. In the wrestlers’ locker room the night before, me and Sammie, side by side, the prune juice kicking in, our pants around our ankles, our privates hanging down as we squatted like two baboons in the woods, aimed our rectums into separate wrestling shoes Sammie had stolen earlier in the year. And the whole time, as we squatted and pooped, we laughed and laughed like no one’s ever possibly laughed before. I really thought I might die, squatted down like that and laughing so hard. Relief and laughter and this twisted sense of payback made tears stream down our faces. We had both cried bitter tears earlier that year.

Afterward, with rubber gloves on, I carried the stinking shoes, carefully strung with twine. Sammie lugged the ladder across campus. Under the Arch, as careful as I could, I’d hung the shit-filled shoes from their most recent banner. Then we’d ditched the ladder so that it couldn’t be used the next morning to get the hanging shoes down.

And that’s how we found the wrestlers the next morning, in front of the crowd, trying to get their shoes down. Chester was up on the shoulders of two goons, trying to saw through the twine with his room key. McCoy stood behind them, hands on hips, breathing heavy through his nose. Chester’s nose crinkled as he worked, aware of a funky smell, but too distracted with his arms stretched out over his head, way high up in the air. When the twine broke, Chester caught the shoes and was overwhelmed, right away, by the stink. He fell off the shoulder-platform and landed on his back. Shit from the shoes spilled all over his chest.

Some people laughed and some people didn’t. I knew right away that I’d gone too far. Regret seeped in and sagged my shoulders. Another mistake that I’d have to fess up to and get punished for, but I wasn’t fessing up right then, because McCoy walked into the crowd looking to provide some punishment. He grabbed every guy he could by the shirt, shaking them around and asking if they thought it was funny. He went one by one until people smartened up and got lost. I headed for the mail room like I had an interest in mail.

Surprisingly, something waited for me in my box. It was a big envelope with a logo on the front from Stonington College. What timing. I knew enough about college admissions to know that they didn’t send a big envelope to say “thanks, but no thanks.” I’d gotten into my first choice, a college on the seashore of Connecticut. Holy shit.

I tore open the envelope and read the letter about 10 times. I had earned one of those moments. One of those moments where joy fills you up, and you could scream or jump, just about blow up with happiness, tell everyone in sight — strangers or neighbors or friends — your good news. The mail room was filled with the faces of people who wanted to be anywhere but under the Arch, getting tossed around on a school morning by McCoy and company. They didn’t deserve that. I did. So I swallowed my good news and left the mail room alone. The Arch had cleared out by then and the campus was quiet.

Later that day, low clouds crept in. A steady drizzle started in the afternoon and practice was canceled. I took a stroll through the soft rain, down to the falls. I sat on the bridge, above the misting water, and tried to get things straight. I’d been confused all day, feeling good about getting into college and everything, but bad about what happened under the Arch. I kept telling myself that those guys deserved every bit of what they got. I kept telling myself that they deserved it for being mean to Sammie and for what they did to Terence, and me, and our room, and the school, and everything else that made those jerk-offs such jerk-offs. I was a hero. That’s what I told myself.

As the mist soaked into my clothes, the idea of me as a hero began to fade. I hadn’t done what was right. I’d done what was easy. Making those morons look bad and turning the school on them had nothing to do with courage. Standing up to them, face-to-face, would have been better, but the way I did it made things worse. Those guys were madder than ever, and there was no way they were going to walk away or do the right thing. Now, thanks to me, bad things were coming. And I knew about bad things.

Bad things had happened to me, for sure, but because of those things, I’d been a jerk to my dad, and to Sammie, and to other people, too. I’d hurt the most beautiful girl in the world. I’d gotten so many things wrong and caused people pain, people who didn’t deserve it. I’d lost my way. Big time. And as I sat there on the bridge, soaked through to the skin, I watched the rushing water get whisked away and wondered how to find my way home.