Brett McCarthy (2 page)

glow•er

Monday, October 15th, my soccer team played Topsfield, our archrivals. Most of the time our games are attended by a handful of parents and a few students, but Topsfield games are different. Gazillions of fans turn out, for both sides.

For one thing, Topsfield is right next door, so it’s a short drive either way. For another thing, Mescataqua and Topsfield are soccer-crazed towns, each with rival private soccer clubs and state-championship high school teams. When the Topsfield Buccaneers take on the Mescataqua Maineiacs, expect blood. Hysterical parents screaming from the sidelines. Coaches bellowing. Refs handing out yellow cards. Players hitting the dirt. Hard.

For me, Topsfield meant one thing: Big Joan. Big Joan Biff, to be exact. A five-foot-nine, 155-pound eighth grader who could run the length of the field with the speed…and impact…of a linebacker. Joan had the build, single-mindedness, and intellect of a Mack truck, and those who valued their skeletal systems stepped aside when Joan drove the ball. She’d never gotten a red card, but she averaged one yellow per game. Of course, everyone knew she’d gladly take a red card if it meant clocking Brett McCarthy.

Basically, she hated me. At the season’s opener in September I had humiliated Big Joan before throngs of her adoring fans. No match for her power, I could, however, out-finesse and out-think her from my position at midfield. So six times, as she barreled toward our goal, snorting and steaming, I had stripped the ball from her and sent it sailing ahead to Kit, our center striker. Kit went on to score five out of those six times (we won, 5–3), and before it was over, people from the Mescataqua side of the field were cheering for “Brett the Biffolator.” It was sweet. Until we had to line up and do the “good game” handshakes.

Big Joan was waiting. She stood at the end of the Bucs’ line, glowering, and if I’d seen her murderous expression, I’d have been better prepared for what was coming.

Glower:
to stare or look at someone with anger.

When I reached Joan, I stuck my hand out, palm open, prepared to gently slap hers in return.

“Good game, good ga—YOUCH!” I screamed as Joan wound up and torpedoed her fist into the bones of my hand. Pain exploded from my fingertips clear to my elbow.

Kit, behind me in line, was the first to react. As Joan lumbered away with the rest of the Bucs, Kit whirled on her, outraged.

“What was that for? Hey, come back here, you big ape!” With a flying leap Kit sprang on her. It looked like a Chihuahua attacking a St. Bernard, which is saying something, because Kit’s no shrimp. In a nanosecond other girls took up the cry, and before you knew it, half the Mescataqua Maineiacs and the Topsfield Buccaneers were in the dirt, while I was doubled over holding my hand. When it was over, four players, two from each team, ended up with suspensions. Ironically, Joan and Kit were not among them.

Monday, October 15th, was the first time our two teams had met since The Brawl, as it came to be known. Fans turned out in big numbers. As I stood at my position at midfield, waiting for the ref to blow the starting whistle, I looked around. The sidelines were packed three deep. At one end a group of Mescataqua students had painted signs in green that read
BIFF HER, BRETT
! and were chanting accordingly. My nerves felt like tightly stretched piano wire. I turned to the center of the field and saw her.

Big Joan was scraping the turf with her cleats, like a bull. Topsfield had won the toss, and she stood in center kickoff position. Her eyes were locked on the Biffolator, and when our gazes finally met, she stopped her pawing, raised one arm, and pointed, wordlessly, at me.

I’m going to die, I thought as the whistle blew.

Joan touched the top of the ball with her foot and sprinted directly toward me. The girl to her left picked up the ball while the Topsfield front line took off. It was the standard Topsfield opening play: They’d pass to their wing, center to Joan, who’d drive uncontested for a goal. Topsfield won most of their games by doing this over and over. The key was stopping the wing, because once Joan got the ball, the play was pretty much complete. Unless, of course, I stole it from her.

As I backpedaled, Kit struggled to strip the ball from the Topsfield girl, both of them leaning hard into each other. Kit managed to tap it away, spin off the girl, and take up the dribble toward their goal. Yes! I thought. Things were already looking better.

That’s what I was thinking when my legs went out from under me and I was airborne. Joan! I thought, the second before I hit the ground. I’d never seen her coming. Neither had the ref, although plenty of fans had seen her stick her leg out and trip me. But there was so much screaming going on, the refs didn’t hear the shrieks for a card. I rolled over, winded but otherwise unhurt, and looked straight up into Big Joan’s jowly face.

“I think you’ve just been Biffed,” she sneered before she ran off.

Here’s the thing about playing against Mescataqua Junior High School: Don’t get Brett McCarthy motivated. I don’t know, maybe I’ve got an adrenaline disorder or something. But when I’m fired up, I enter this zone and get beyond aggressive. It’s like I’m bionic or a predator, the ball is dinner, and I haven’t eaten in three days. Watch out.

I leaped up and tore after her. Kit and the other members of our front line were passing the ball back and forth, trying to maneuver into scoring position. The Topsfield defense was playing pretty far up, an attempt to draw them offsides. Big Joan had stopped just beyond the midfield line, waiting for a pass. She had her back to me, and despite my bionic focus I could hear the crowds roar as I drew close.

“Pass back!” I screamed as I whipped past Joan and hurtled toward the goal. A Mescataqua player tapped the ball back to me. There were no defenders in sight as I wound up and booted it high, a giant arc over our front line, the Topsfield fullbacks, and the goalie, who leaped into the air waving her hands. That beautiful black-and-white-spotted ball floated inches below the top metal bar of the goal and swished into the net. One to nothing.

As people screamed wildly along the sidelines and my teammates rushed up to high-five me, I looked for Big Joan. She was trudging slowly across the grass, back to starting position. When she was about ten paces away, I cleared my throat loudly, and she looked up.

I raised my arm, pointed at her, and held it there for five full seconds. Noise erupted on the sidelines.

The final score on Monday, October 15th, when the Mescataqua Maineiacs played the Topsfield Buccaneers, was 4–1. Kit headed two goals in off my corner kicks. I scored once more, a kind of ball-hoggy move when I should have passed off but decided to drive hard to the goal and laser it inches away from the goalie’s hands. Big Joan racked up one goal on the standard Topsfield play. Boring.

When the final whistle blew, my teammates did something they’d never done before. They grabbed me and Kit and hoisted us to their shoulders. Fans streamed onto the field, and as Kit and I grabbed hands, laughing hysterically at the crazy scene, our teammates chanted, “Biffolators! Biffolators! Biff Biff Biffolators!”

My eyes scanned the throng. Mom was in the stands, and she blew kisses at me. Diane was there, jumping up and down like an excited electron, waving at us. “You rock, girl!” I heard her yell. I saw Jeanne Anne standing a little off to one side. She was talking to a couple of girls I didn’t know, and unlike the rest of the universe, she wasn’t shouting and jumping. When I happened to catch her looking my way, her expression surprised me.

I’d call it…annoyed. No, more than that. Pissed off. It seemed so out of place, because everyone else was really pumped. Then I realized I’d seen that face before. On Big Joan Biff, back in September.

The glower.

met•a•phor

Tuesday, October 16th. Coach gave us a day off practice, a gift for the big Topsfield win. So when the final bell rang, we met at The Junior, then headed to Diane’s, which is only a short walk from school.

The Pelletiers’ house is huge. An immense maze of perfectly decorated rooms connected by long hallways and short flights of stairs, it’s a work in progress. Mr. Pelletier is a builder and Mrs. Pelletier an interior decorator, and over the years their house has become an experiment of sorts as they keep adding rooms or tearing out features they don’t like anymore.

Mrs. Pelletier is big into color. Once, Diane had come home from school to find her bedroom emptied and a work crew painting her walls “eggplant” (basically purple) with “lime” (a.k.a. green) trim. I remember being astonished at how calm she was.

“Didn’t you get even a
little
annoyed?” I asked when she told me about the eggplant. “I mean, shouldn’t you have some say about the color of your own room?”

Diane had shrugged. “I guess I don’t care about that sort of stuff like you do,” she said. “I mean, it’s just paint, and Mom re-paints rooms once a month. Besides”—she smiled slyly—“I got to sleep in the den while it dried. I watched cable until two.”

When we arrived at the Pelletiers’, Diane’s mother greeted us at the door. A suspiciously large smile stretched across her face, which worried me. No mother, unless she has something up her sleeve, looks that happy when she discovers four eighth graders on her doorstep.

“Perfect timing, girls!” she exclaimed. “I was just ducking out to the store with Merrill. But now I have
four
babysitters to keep an eye on him!”

Merrill, the Nine-Year-Old Menace of Mescataqua, rarely had babysitters. The Pelletiers had run out of teenagers willing to put up with him. They’d managed to snag Jeanne Anne for one night, back when she first moved in last year and didn’t know his rep. But now, despite her constant sucking up to Diane, even she refused to babysit Merrill.

“Oh, Mom, no, please,” Diane began pleading. “We were going to study. We have a
big
test tomorrow. We won’t get anything done with Merrill bugging us!”

Of course, Mrs. Pelletier wasn’t fooled. She made a beeline for her car, never breaking stride and waving to us over her head as she hurried out.

“He’s watching TV,” she called over her shoulder. “Help yourselves to snacks. And study hard, girls!” She waved, then honked as she pulled away.

“C’mon,” Diane sighed. “Let’s see where he is.”

We found Merrill seated on the floor in the den, a few feet from the flat-screen television, hypnotically shoveling fistfuls of orange goldfish-shaped crackers into his mouth from an enormous bowl in his lap. He was watching a video, and the four of us stared uneasily at the unusual phenomenon of Merrill Sitting Still.

“Shh,” whispered Diane, ushering us away from the den and toward the kitchen. “He’s good like that for thirty minutes. We’ll use the phone in the guest bedroom, and he won’t even notice us.”

Diane loaded us up with Sprite and Oreos, which we carried to a blue (“sea glass”) bedroom at the other end of the house. I seated myself at the head of the bed, near the phone.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” said Kit. “I’ll bet the Levesques have caller ID.”

Everyone was silent. In the early days of the Phone Thing, caller ID was rare. These days it was more prevalent, and the Levesques were pretty likely to have whatever was prevalent. This was a problem. If someone could see where the call originated, the prank wouldn’t work.

Diane snapped her fingers.

“Cell phone,” she said, and dashed out of the room. She returned a minute later with a small, electric-blue phone, which fit neatly into the palm of her hand.

“Oh, you are
so
lucky!” Jeanne Anne exclaimed. “That’s a Nouveau 3300! I have been
begging
for one of those!”

“That’s
yours
?” I asked, stunned. Since when does your BFF get a cell phone and you don’t know? Diane didn’t meet my eyes.

“Early birthday present.” She shrugged. She plopped beside me on the bed, held the tiny receiver button-side up, and expertly depressed the on button. The phone lit with a green glow when it located a signal. “Just dial,” she said, handing it to me.

“Okay,” I sighed. “Quiet on the set.”

“What if Bob answers?!?” Jeanne Anne suddenly squealed, hurling herself backward on the bed in excitement and practically bouncing me onto the floor.

I calmly hit the end button. I turned to Diane, who recognized the warning signs on my face.

“People who can’t control themselves have to leave,” I said.

“Okay, okay!” Jeanne Anne huffed, popping back up. “Lighten up, Brett.”

Diane’s pleading eyes, begging me to
not
lose it with Jeanne Anne, kept me under control. Only Diane knew how close I had been in recent months to telling Jeanne Anne off. Frankly, I just didn’t get it. Back when she arrived in Mescataqua last year, she’d attached herself to us like a barnacle to a boat’s bottom. Kit and I didn’t want to be mean, but we were like, Huh? We couldn’t figure out why someone who pasted pictures of Brad Pitt in her locker and went for monthly pedicures at Nail World wanted to hang with us. I mean, I love Brad as much as the next girl, but
locker pinups
?

I’d tried to explain all this to Diane, but she didn’t want to hear it. Sometimes I suspected Diane even liked her.

I took a deep breath and picked up the phone again.

“Shoot,” I said.

“555-1748,” Diane prompted. I punched the numbers into the keypad, hit send, and waited.

“It’s ringing,” I said quietly.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice. Mrs. Levesque.

“Hey, Mom,” I said cheerfully. “I’m ready to be picked up.”

“Oh.” There was a hesitant pause at the other end. “I’m sorry. I think you have the wrong number.”

“Isn’t this 555-1749?” I replied quickly, giving her the Pelletiers’ number.

“No, but you’re close,” she laughed. “This is 1748. Sorry.”

“Oh, no. Wait. Wait, please don’t hang up!” I exclaimed in a panicky voice.

“Yes?” the woman replied.

“Um, ma’am? I was supposed to call my mom when it was time to come get me.” A pause.

“Come get you where, dear?” asked Mrs. Levesque.

“I’m at the movie theater and…hello? Are you still there?” I shouted into the phone.

“Yes, I’m here! What is it?” replied Mrs. Levesque.

“Oh, great! Listen…I think my cell phone is running out of juice. Would you call my mom for me and tell her I’m ready to get picked up? Tell her I’ll wait for her out front?”

“Oh gosh, honey, sure!” said Mrs. Levesque. “That’s no problem.”

She was really nice. Super nice. From somewhere deep in the dark recesses of my conscience I could feel a slight prickle of guilt. Unfortunately, I pushed the prickle aside.

“Now, which theater are you at, and what’s your name?” she said. She was all mom: taking charge, making it right.

“Hello!” I shouted again. “I’m losing the signal…are you still there?”

“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Levesque shouted back. “Quick, what’s your number?”

“555-1748,” I said. “I’m Josephine. I’m at Hoyt’s…” Mid-sentence I cut the phone off. No more juice. I turned to Kit.

“You’re on,” I grinned.

There was no containing the whoops. Who was it? Who answered? What did they say? Everyone seemed to be asking at once. We almost didn’t hear the phone ring.

“Shh! Shh! Everyone, quiet!” Diane demanded. Kit slid into my spot. She wiggled her shoulders and shook out her hair. It reminded me of the way divers loosen up before plunging into the pool, or the way an actor warms up before a performance.

Kit picked up on the third ring.

“’Ello?” she said tentatively into the receiver. She paused as Mrs. Levesque spoke.

“
Sí, sí,
Josephine,” Kit replied, nodding her head, as if she were engaged in a real conversation. Totally in character. After a few seconds, Kit interrupted.

“Pero, señora,”
Kit said. “No English.
Hablo español.
” Kit paused, listening. If Mrs. Levesque answered in Spanish, Kit might have to bail. I knew she could imitate a Spanish accent and manage a few words, but to actually conduct a conversation in Spanish would be way out of her league. We all held our breaths.

Kit smiled and flashed us a thumbs-up. Mrs. Levesque was sticking to English. We were still on.

“No comprendo,”
Kit said. “
No hablo inglés, señora.
I. Clean. House.” Kit spoke these last three words with the slow emphasis of a well-practiced, unfamiliar phrase. Kind of the way we memorized dialogues for Spanish classes, only half understanding what we said.

At this point, having played her role of the non-English-speaking cleaning lady, Kit was supposed to hang up. That’s how the Phone Thing worked. You involved the person in a made-up mini-crisis—Josephine waiting for a ride home, Josephine forgetting her cleats before the big soccer game, something like that—and convinced the person to call “home” for Josephine, where the non-English-speaking maid was the only adult available.

We never knew what happened after the call ended. We didn’t care; it was immensely funny to us that they even bought it in the first place and bothered to call back. Once Kit did her maid thing and hung up, the prank was over.

But this time Kit didn’t hang up. She listened. For too long. Diane began making a chopping motion with her hand, signaling Kit to cut it off. Meanwhile, the expression on Kit’s face began to change. Her eyes got big. Panicky. Uh-oh, I thought. Barbie just threw her a curve. The prickle in my stomach became a burn.

“No!” Kit suddenly burst out, sounding very much like her old American self. Something had gone wrong.

“No English,
señora,
” Kit quickly countered. “I clean house.
Adíos.
” She slammed the phone onto its cradle as if the receiver were red-hot.

“What just happened?” Jeanne Anne demanded. “What’s going on?”

“She’s driving to Hoyt’s to get Josephine,” Kit said weakly. “She’s concerned.”

“Oh, no!” groaned Diane. “That’s not supposed to happen.” We looked at each other silently, stupidly. Then we totally broke up. Diane laughed so hard she began to gasp; Kit shrieked that she was going to pee in her pants and ran for the bathroom. I pictured Mrs. Levesque cruising the parking lot of Hoyt’s Cineplex in her Lexus SUV, gazing worriedly out the window, and lost it to a fit of giggles.

Naturally, Jeanne Anne threw cold water on the whole thing.

“You know, you guys?
Guys!
” she said loudly. Diane was wiping her eyes. I was lying on the floor. Kit had emerged from the bathroom with a not-happy look on her face and was trying to say something, but Jeanne Anne had our attention.

“You know, that is
really
sweet of her,” Jeanne Anne said.

“No, it’s really
stupid
of her!” I countered loudly, and Diane and I burst out laughing again.

“Hey, everybody, shut up a minute…,” Kit began, but Jeanne Anne cut her off.

“No, it’s really, really sweet,” she persisted. “It’s really nice that she’d go out of her way to help some kid she doesn’t even know.”

“Oh, brother,” I muttered. Jeanne Anne turned and spoke directly to me.

“Maybe that’s just something you wouldn’t understand, Brett. You know? People being nice?”

“Okay, Jeanne Anne, what’s your point?” Diane said. She could tell that once again Jeanne Anne and I were headed toward dangerous ground.

Jeanne Anne took a deep breath.

“I think we should call her back. Tell her the whole thing was a joke so she doesn’t waste her time driving to Hoyt’s.”

Cries of no-way-are-you-out-of-your-mind? filled the sea-glass bedroom. Every one of us had at least a dozen good reasons why we shouldn’t call the Levesques again, but Jeanne Anne would hear none of it. Before we could stop her, she’d picked up Diane’s phone and dialed. Next thing we knew, she was speaking into the receiver.

“Uh, hi. Hi. Is this the Levesque residence?” A pause.

“Um…is your mother at home? May I speak to her?” Another pause. Kit, Diane, and I watched in horrified silence. I remember thinking, This is what it’s like to watch a train wreck, or an accident on the highway. It’s unreal, awful, and fascinating all at once.

“Oh. Do you know where she went?” Jeanne Anne continued. “Right. Okay. Listen, I know this is going to sound weird, but do you have any way to reach her? I mean, does she have a cell phone? Good. Well, I need you to call her and tell her there is no Josephine. Tell her I’m really, really sorry, but it was just a joke, and there is no Josephine at the movie theater.” Jeanne Anne paused, listening. Then her face got all funny, with the nose all wrinkly. At first I thought she smelled something bad, but then I could see—she was smiling.

“No, I…I can’t say who’s calling. Is this Bob?” she said.

“Are you
nuts
!?” burst from my mouth. Certifiable jerk. Idiot. Boy-crazy idiot who didn’t realize what sort of trouble we could get into if she opened her big mouth. Time to cut this off, I thought. So I made a Spider-Man-like leap at Jeanne Anne, hoping to yank the glowing blue phone from her hand.

Unfortunately, I’m no Spider-Man. Midleap I tripped on the bedspread and landed on the night table. A tan pottery lamp crashed to the floor. Diane exclaimed, “Oh, no!” and from the blue phone, which Jeanne Anne held away from her ear, we could hear a boy’s voice loudly demanding, “What was that?”

I swung around and faced Jeanne Anne.

“Hang up.
Now,
” I whispered in my most threatening way.

Then Jeanne Anne did two things that really surprised me. First, she stared me down. She looked me right in the eye with a glower that said in no uncertain terms, “Drop dead.” I don’t know why I had never seen it before, but Jeanne Anne had about as much use for me as I had for her.

Then she did the second thing. Returning the phone to her ear, her eyes locked on mine, Jeanne Anne spoke carefully into the receiver.

“Hello, Bob? Tell your mom it was Brett McCarthy who called. Tell her McCarthy thinks she’s really funny.” Jeanne Anne hit end.