Good and Evil : Freeland - Part Two (9781628547375) Page 4

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Are we on for after the game with Abby?”

  “I will think about it. Right now, I don’t think it is cool.”

  Two more days awaited the big shebang. The tension raised daily. Coach Schuler was starting his ritual, pre-game zombie dance. He would call in a substitute teacher to instruct his Internet survival class; the rest of the week, he would lock himself in the coach’s room where loud sounds from the motors of turning devices would echo through the crowded locker room. Smoke would roll out from beneath the door. The thick tint on the side windows would reveal flashes of light, but there was no way to see what he was doing. This was his form of focus.

  Some players would poll that he was sacrificing some tribal beast with his bare hands and shredding teeth. Others would go as far as guessing that he was torturing the other school’s principal, then trading him back for that same team’s playbook. Whatever he was doing, no one has ever been allowed in that room until halftime of each game.

  The day of the big game, Treble, Drake, Zon, and one of the other main players, Traiten James, showed up to school dressed neatly in Ardle Shey formal pants, Lewbuoy long sleeves, Penache ties, and their purple and gold jerseys sheathing the dress shirts. This was the norm, or high, of spirit week. The final day was all about respect and dignity. If, and only if, they did lose, at least they would look good.

  All classes were cut short for the prep rally halfway into the day. Just after lunch break, the entire school filled the stands in the gymnasium. As in all cliques, the jocks sat in one section, the nerds in the other, and the deviants kept to their own, sprawled out all over each other like an orgy of spiders.

  Several oversized football-shaped beach balls ricocheted from section to section. The logo on each one of them was a giant paw print, the same one the cheerleaders painted on their cheeks: a purple center with a yellow outline. A number was printed in the center. One of the junior girls had forty-two on her paw. Lexie didn’t care that Abby despised her; she merely created a defense by stating that someone had to make sure he was remembered. If Abby was too immature to see through the gray, then Lexie would stand proud and strong for Brody.

  Five hours before kickoff, the cheerleaders started chanting the school song. Everyone stood up as the captains lined a podium in the middle of the basketball court. One after the other, each gave their pre-game speech, all to the likes of a clean-sweep victory chant. Zon ended his with a bobcat-like growl.

  Coach Schuler was still absent as the players hit the locker room to start pre-game. Everyone became isolated. Some mulled over their playbooks, rehearsing them in their heads. Others divided themselves by listening to adrenaline-pumping songs on MP3s. Still others kick-started their motivation by punching lockers, slapping seated players on the heads, and yelling to generate an uproar. Every attempt was made to overcome the nervousness that was pushing each player near the edge.

  Outside the locker room, the prep rally continued. Parents were now involved, as well as Rumor Mill citizens who just loved the game. They were painting paw prints on the drive entering the parking lot before the football field. There was a big B burned at the fifty-yard line that had been painted blue and white, the same color of the Bulldogs’ jerseys. Everyone thought it was scorched there by the other team. Boots Bailey, Josser Pendleton, Den-den, and another troublemaker named Shane Poole, knew the real truth as to how it got there. Regardless, humility served its purpose. The whole team was burning inside. They couldn’t wait to get a taste of Bulldog meat.

  Banners were posted, and the goal posts were both striped with purple and gold. Lettered signs were placed in various sections where fans would fill the bleachers that spelled out Go, Fight, Win. The cheerleaders’ blocks were situated on the rubber track encircling the football field. The number forty-two on the rubber track, arching half the gridiron, had the names and numbers of each Bobcat and their positions on the field. The hissing bobcat-head emblem made up the largest portion, and a low-flying airplane, with a crowd-monitored digital scroll at its tail, scripted the largest chant so the fans could keep up with the cheer. This had just come out a year ago when Brody brainstormed the idea. He had arranged sub-stand microphones that recorded the pep squad. A computer-choreographed audio-synchronizer diluted out-of-rhythm barks then radioed to the plane the most frequent gathered words and displayed them out the back end of the plane after translation. A stringed row of lights, with sensors in each one, blinked on to fill the letter as it rolled to the end of this ten-foot-wide, one-hundred-foot-long wire harnessed belt. It became a planet-wide project. It was infamous for outdoor sports and advertising because it was able to digitally scroll.

  Two hours to go, the solar star was settling down into the horizon. A deep maroon painted the landscape all around. The sounds of hoarding crowds mixed with humming generators were stifled as the stadium lights illuminated. Fourteen hundred people were at hand this eve, all perky to watch the game. The concessions opened with barbecues perched out back in the wide parking lot, where tailgate parties were dotted by lanterns swinging loosely from the grasp of overhead tarps. Behind each vehicle, small sects of people gathered in conversation to feast and cheer their favorite team. Several jerseys had been purchased to support the most popular players. Zon’s forty-four had clothed many a back, and of course, Tynan Felderbras’s and Sidney Mariot’s numbers adorned many a fan.

  Zon Raynes had come from some far away place but was the biggest, richest kid on the team. There wasn’t any telling if the combination made him anymore scary, but at six feet eleven inches, with shoes off, and four hundred fifteen pounds of muscle, he was the most respected. His name topped all of the motivational performance charts, right next to Leanon Meane’s and Shug Bailey’s, which plastered the weight room walls. Unfortunately for Leanon’s records, they were all tainted with steroid use.

  These records were outrageous. To name a few, Zon benched 705 pounds, three hundred more than Leanon at number two. His squat was an unbelievable, 245 more pounds than Shug’s previous record—no ‘roid use there—and his dead lift was untouchable. He could pick up the diamond shaped step-in bar when it was loaded with sixteen forty-five pound weights on each side of the bar. That’s 1,440 pounds plus the forty-five pound bar. His record in big, bold letters was posted at 1,485 pounds. With five percent body fat, this goliath didn’t mess around. He was tested for steroids almost every day and the results were always negative. Someone had said, one time, that they heard Zon’s father is where he got his size, though his father was never known or seen.

  The story goes that they were separated during the Great Erase. Zon’s father was taking on a force of fourteen cops, and as he got down to the last one, the scared and skinny law enforcer pulled out a forty-four and shot the giant six times before frantically reloading twice and finally reaching his heart with the last bullet. Zon’s father fell on top of the officer, knocking his head against the bumper of the squad car. The official went into a coma and died an hour later from a brain hemorrhage. That is as far as the story goes.

  The opposing team swam through the crowded parking lot as tailgaters booed and hissed. Several words and gestures showed how the players were affected by the mind games. They lifted their heads and chanted to ward off the disturbances. With hands on each teammate’s shoulder pads, they pounced back and forth from side-to-side, ready for the bout. These guys had come to play. Determination lit the inside of their helmets. Their eyes were nothing but white surrounded in a sea of war paint. Through the bars of facemasks, deep blue stripes played host to white flames solidly rising toward those fierce-looking eyes.

  A couple minutes later, the back door to the Bobcat’s locker room burst open. Out came the biggest, the baddest, and the most intimidating coach in high school football. Coach Schuler was cloaked in solid purple. Two fierce-looking cat eyes centered his broad shoulder blades. A pale pink nose with white-tipped w
hiskers and a set of ferocious fangs had a gleam about them. The mouth was wide-open, pink tongue curled to the back. Its barely visible cheeks pulled back to a cringe at the top of its nose. The cat on his back was as ferocious looking as Schuler.

  Behind Schuler was the rest of his clan: the Rumor Mill Bobcats. Two-time repeating champions with returning players, minus seven. Those seven had all come back from their selected colleges to attend the game this eve. Each one stood across from another as they formed the start of the long body-tunnel to introduce the players onto the field.

  Upon entering, Zon broke through a circular cheerleader-made banner with all of the football players’ names and numbers on it and led the Bobcats around the sidelines. They trotted past the Bulldogs, holding their heads high as they clapped two times and slapped quadriceps once, then continued in unison with claps and slaps. Taunting the opposition, they let their pads do the talking. Scuffling once around the entire field, the Bobcats ended at their own goal line at a wall consisting of thirty-two freshmen players standing side-by-side. The wall blocked the view of the Bulldogs while the Bobcats warmed up with a few practice plays. Afterward, it was time for kickoff. The opening play was a ninety-seven-yard return by Tynan Felderbras. The Bulldogs returned with a scoring march up the field. Back and forth they went, stopping each other at the goal line a couple of times. Their defenses were pretty evenly matched. Tynan Felderbras caught a throw from Sidney Mariot in the final seconds to score the tying touchdown. It all came down to the leg of Tarrel Payne. The Bobcats ended the game on a last-second field goal.

  It was down to the wire. Blake Haverton, from the Loveland Bulldogs, took three steps back and two to the left as place-setter Shem Dupree received the snap. The kick was dead center on the football, and the ugliest kick high school football had ever seen. The ball didn’t go end over end, nor did it incline the slightest; it stayed upright like it never left the tee and hit the centerpiece holding the goal posts. It ricocheted dumbly to the ground, not rolling, but sticking to one spot. That ball became a heart sitting idle, lifeless and dead, just like every heart on the Bulldog team as well as their fans, for more than a moment. Blake hid his head in shame. The Bulldogs had lost their momentum.

  Tarrel Payne warmed up his leg as the referees moved the ball to the opposite twenty-yard line. A look up at the scoreboard, in big numbers, read eighteen to eighteen with zero seconds on the clock. It all came down to Tarrel’s kick. Twenty yards stood between happiness and more heartache.

  Three steps back and two to the left, Tarrel rubbed his hands together. Thoughts of post-game celebrations lit the confident grin on his face. Arms dangling back and forth, he rocked steadily on the balls of his feet while eying the goal posts. He closed his eyes momentarily and visualized the ball going through the mile-wide uprights. The fans, roaring loudly, brought him back as the ball was snapped. History was in the making, and time slowed. On both sides of the ball, each player put his head on the next guy’s inner hip toward the center, forming a connected V. More sturdy and solid than a brick house, no one was able to break the links of this impenetrable wall.

  The pigskin was lifted from the bottom as it traveled end over end, soaring brilliantly through the air after leaving Mariot’s fingertip grip. Everyone was silent as their mouths dropped open wide. Anticipation kept the crowd on edge. There was no doubt about it: the football split the uprights dead center, and Rumor Mill had defeated its rival.

  Fans poured from the stands. They leaped the chain-linked fence and sprinted across the surrounding track until attaching to the dog-pile of overzealous ball players. Tarrel started crying, and his yellow helmet was flung high into the sky. Several other Bobcats threw their helmets as they propped Tarrel on shoulders to parade him around the field. Tarrel held up his forefinger and middle finger, leaving down his ring finger, and raised his little finger to make a victory three. Three-peat champions, the Bobcats had gone and done it again.

  Treble and Drake joined hands in the air as the team held them high; both were coming down as Abby walked underneath. She said, “You guys are the best. I can’t wait to show you my secret tonight.”

  The entire team loaded the top of a fire truck as the siren wailed and a deep horn blared. Everyone cheered. Fans were rocking the giant vehicle back and forth, throwing up three-peat signs with their hands. Tarrel, at the front of the extending ladder, held his sign high. For a moment, he felt on top of the world. Tears of accomplishment rolled down his sweat-beaded cheeks. A feeling of dignity overwhelmed him. Ever since he was a youth, the goal of kicking the game-ending point exalted his charisma. The tears tingled down his chest. The wells bottled in both lower lids gave emphasis to a work-hewed face.

  The players, the coaches, and a few select fans took a ride through the city and back. Schuler, all the while, thanked the team for their grand efforts. Now, the decision had been made. He was going to trade in his offer for a college coaching job for higher pay and a bigger computer room at RMHS. He had been asking for both all along. With his end of the bargain met, the school principal gave him his raise in advance. During winter’s break, the construction would begin for a modified room equipped with over three hundred computer stations.

  When the yellow fire engine returned to the parking lot, the commotion was still hot. The players, led by Zon, took a jaunt around the track with helmets in hands. From Zon back, in order by class and age, the players lifted their helmets to the sky while rehearsing the Watusi Chant, another year and strongly victorious.

  High school football’s leading rusher, with 1407 yards in a single season, Tynan Felderbras, the senior tailback, herded the team back to the locker room. Before any of the coaches made it in, he declared the party was going to be out at the Love Shack. His mom had already supplied the team with alcohol from their underground liquor store. He swore anyone not going to secrecy.

  Coaches Bailey, Schatz, an ex-quarterback from college, Shiver Echsbachs, and “the man,” Dick Schuler, humbly marched into the locker room to give a congratulatory speech.

  Schuler spoke about next year’s plans and expectations. As of now, he freed them all to enjoy the post-victory celebration. Like little children, they were warned against the hazards and consequences of underage partying. Then, he stopped and said, “To hell with the consequences, you guys have earned the right to rip it up! Have at it! You are all winners in my book! I will handle that jock strap, Sgt. Waylon Meane, and his fight-loving son, Leanon! If they have a problem, I will put my victorious foot in their rear end! You guys have earned a party! Just be careful. On a final, serious note, men, remember this moment for the rest of your lives, because you will never get another moment like this again. Savor it. Hold it close to your heart.”

  The team hollered loudly, condoning the possibility of Schuler’s seriousness toward the Meanes. Not too many people liked the two anyway. They beat up a couple of juveniles in KaraJujishoot fighting class for making the younger kids tap out while they strangled them with their gui. One of the kids did get a good kick to Leanon’s nose, though. That’s why it is always swollen and off-centered. It’s a Rhinologist’s nightmare.

  Chapter 4

  Love Shack

  Treble and Drake joined forces early in the evening. Light still kept everything within sight. At a gas station downtown, Treble looked up at the digital hi-fi Maverik sign. Nacho cheese dripped down his young, stubble-bearded chin. He was attempting to grow a goatee, but sixteen and a half years of cultivating hadn’t proven long enough. Reflecting back on his life and what he had shared with Brody, all two years of high school, he realized they had grown close—much closer than anyone else. His mom had been separated from her husband during the Seven-Year Erase and chose not to enter into another wedlock. It was fear that was holding her back. Treble, his mom, Cheyenne, and her boyfriend Stetson, lived together in the country-scape of Rumor Mill’s skirt edges. They didn’t have much as far as shelter, barel
y just enough, in fact, but it was enough to keep them humble and grounded as to who they were.

  Treble felt a burning at his groin. The same burning that took place the first time he accidentally walked in on his mom after she got out of the shower. She was stark naked and shorn all over. He almost threw up from the embarrassment. Something was amiss. Moms weren’t supposed to have attractive bodies, nor were they supposed to shave down there. He found the feeling of embarrassment disturbing. He made the mistake of letting his friends know at a gathering one time. One of them had the ignorance to ask if he had taken any pictures.

  All joking aside, Treble had re-acquainted the feeling. He felt low inside like he was already betraying Brody. It didn’t affect Drake. He had already done it once before with Jessica Glethry, the prom queen Brody had taken to the Love Shack after prom a year back. Let alone, the last championship party when Drake was getting a little too close to Tynan Feldergras’ girlfriend, Stormy Shutters, who was Abby’s best friend. It did create bad ties with Tynan and Drake. Ever since then, they avoided each other like the plague. Drake had lost all sense of practicality in Tynan’s eyes. Tynan was a strong social force with which to tamper. He was generally the originator of parties, both big and small. He was usually the fight-starter as well, but it was Leanon who backed down from Tynan after calling him out. This was one Leanon couldn’t finish.

  Abby arrived at the Maverik parking lot with several of her close cheerleader friends—the highly attractive ones. The car full of big-uns was behind. They were not huge, by any means, just pleasantly plump and too heavy to get off the ground, so they served as the base of pyramids during cheers. Abby got out and pranced about, trying to flaunt her stuff, keeping a confident, sexy smile while eying both Drake and Treble. The burning grew deeper. Ecstasy overcame them, and Treble’s knees became weak. He leaned back against his ride; the gray was offset by a purple and gold lettered shirt with a gold ring on both sleeves. They were swollen out from him secretly doing push-ups to look huge for Abby before they all got together.