“Hey, Kurt.” He smiles, stops tossing the baseball, and pats the empty space on the couch for me to join him. Coach Brigs is leaning forward in the squeaky chair at his desk, diagramming plays with one pencil while chewing on another pencil. He stops scribbling when I enter and pulls the other pencil out of his mouth. A country-and-western song plays quietly on an old radio on his desk.

“Have a seat, son,” Coach Brigs says, opening up with a big smile. I must’ve done something pretty bad if he’s giving me a world-class grin like that, like he can’t wait to spring something on me.

“Kurt, it goes without saying that Coach Stein and I have been very pleased with your progress so far and your contribution to our team. Your work ethic is outstanding. Hell, Frank here won’t stop talking about how you’re the first one in and the last one out of the weight room every day. He doesn’t need to brag to me, though, because I see it with my own eyes.”

I glance from Coach Brigs to Coach Stein and realize I’m still standing. Maybe they aren’t about to punish me. I slowly walk over to the couch and sit down next to Coach Stein, feel his grin beaming at me, warming the side of my cheek.

“Shoot, if every player on the team worked half as hard as this boy here, there’d be no question we’d be walking all over our opponents on our way to a state championship,” Coach Stein says, and slaps my knee. “Kurt, we all know you’re dedicated with a capital D.”

“You hear that, Kurt? You hear the way Coach Stein brags about you? He’ll talk the same way when the scouts come calling, asking about promising players.”

Are scouts already asking about me? I wonder.

“Now, I don’t want to get your head so swollen that you get it stuck in the doorway when you leave,” Coach Brigs continues, “but I do want you to understand just how much we value you. We recognize that great players are a rare commodity, that they come few and far between, and the greatest don’t just happen, they’re built. They’re built through raw talent, dedication, determination, and a willingness to lead a team by example, show others they’re willing to do whatever it takes to win.”

All the compliments start to make me feel uncomfortable because I’m not sure where this is going. Getting smacked around sucks, but at least when it’s happening, it makes sense, not like this, getting compliments for no reason.

“Kurt.” Coach Brigs is still smiling at me. “Does that describe you? Are you a leader ready to do whatever it takes to win?”

I rub my hands on the knees of my jeans while I nod at Coach Brigs that, yes, I am ready to do whatever it takes to win. Coach Stein claps his hands together and it rings like a firecracker in the small office.

“I told you,” Coach Stein says, like he and Coach Brigs had a bet on how I’d answer. “I told you this boy was on the same page and ready to step it up. Take it to the next level.”

Coach Brigs and Coach Stein glance at each other, grins getting even wider, if that’s possible.

“It warms my heart to hear this, Kurt. It really does,” Coach Brigs says. “Because Coach Stein and I have plans for you. We think you can be our team’s next great player. We’re talking about building an offensive scheme completely around you and your skills and making you a star—not just on our team but in the whole state. We think you can be the engine that gets us all the way to state and wins us a championship. Whaddya think about that?” Coach Brigs asks, painting a real sweet picture for me while he slowly pulls open a side drawer on his desk.

I nod at him that I like the idea a lot.

“Good boy, Kurt. Good boy,” Coach says. I don’t mind how it makes me feel when he says this. Way better than getting a belt across the mouth. “Frank and I knew you wouldn’t hesitate to step into the role of lead warrior. My hunch about you has been right as rain since the day we first scouted you.”

I glance at Coach Stein, still beaming at me, nodding along to Coach’s words. He keeps regripping the baseball between his first two fingers and thumb, like he’s readying to whip a forkball through Coach’s trophy case.

“Now, to get you to the next level, Kurtis,” Coach Brigs says, “takes a new level of dedication.” Coach Brigs reaches into the open drawer and pulls out a dark blue pill bottle with one of those childproof caps. He sets the bottle on the desk between us, closer to me than him.

“Coach Stein’s got a guaranteed system for getting you even bigger and stronger than you already are.”

“That’s right, Kurt.” Coach Stein nods. “This stuff is safer than aspirin when taken on my schedule. Put another fifteen pounds of rock on you in a couple weeks the way you train.”

“Kurt, Frank and I wouldn’t be approaching you if we didn’t see the way you train, didn’t see the hunger in your eyes already. That thing burning in you is a rare jewel. It marks you, makes you special, separates you from all the coddled kiddies I see nowadays who cry if their mama’s not around to wipe their behinds. But you, boy . . .” Coach begins drumming his fingers on the desk near the bottle of pills as his voice drifts off like he’s daydreaming about my training. The three of us sit for a moment, listening to his fingers.

“Kurt,” Coach begins again. “That hunger you got can’t be taught or coached or trained. I know you want to get bigger. Hell, I can sense it just sitting across from you right now. You feel it, too, don’t you, Frank?”

“Sure do,” Coach Stein agrees.

“Son,” Coach Brigs continues, “I see an absolute warrior, an absolute monster, buried inside you just itching to claw his way out, just waiting to be unleashed on the field of battle, show this world how great a man he is. Are you ready to be that man?”

I think of Crud Bucket, think of all the things I could do to him if I got even bigger.

“Kurt, Coach Stein and myself, we want to do our part to help you realize your full potential.”

“Nothing will get you there faster and safer with minimal side effects than D-bol,” Coach Stein jumps in. “That’s Dianabol.”

I nod my head as Coach slides the pills closer across the desk to me.

“I’ll give you a full schedule . . .” Coach Stein continues, but I’ve stopped listening. I’m imagining me, but even bigger, even stronger, imagining no one being able to hurt me ever again. Before I know it, I’ve pocketed the pills and both Coach Brigs and Coach Stein are slapping me on the back, offering me a path, offering me almost a guaranteed way out. Where I come from, that’s bigger than Jesus Himself.

I want to see more.

Trying to quietly climb the nearly empty bleachers is impossible; they groan under my weight with each step but I’ve got my pick of good spots. For the next hour I watch these monkeys throwing the craziest tricks, sometimes landing them and sometimes wiping out in ways that have got to hurt, even with mats. But the monkeys just smile or clap their hands together, same as how I do after taking a hit, never showing anyone’s got the best of me. These guys are small, but fearless. Lamar would’ve fit right in with them. Makes me miss him while I watch the little guy from my math class—the tiny dude who’s always nodding off and getting razzed by Mr. Klech—bounce and flip along the square of wrestling mats. His teammate—the Chinese guy ready to duke it out with Jankowski that day in the lockers even though he’s half his size—gets up in the rings and owns them. He’s holding poses on the rings—dangling in midair with arms sticking straight out from his body like a crucifix while his legs shoot forward—that would crush me or anyone on our team trying it. Then he’s swinging in giant loops that turn into a blur of body twists as he flicks the rings away. When he sticks the landing, I suddenly wonder if maybe he could handle Jankowski.

Nothing beats the trick I watch my tiny math class buddy throw on the high bar, though. Dude is whipping around the bar like he’s got rockets attached to his ankles. He keeps letting go and regrabbing the bar in different positions as if on a dare. Makes me nervous just watching. I’m not the only one, either. His coach stands under the bar the whole time, arms spread out, as if expecting the kid to burst into flame and he’ll have to catch the pieces. Then the kid lets go, heading straight up, flipping above the bar and he’s dead. I mean he’s going to come straight down on the bar and snap his back. I open my mouth but can’t yell. He’s still flipping, still dead, as his body arcs over the bar and he’s got no choice but to pile-drive his head into the floor from a drop of fifteen feet. His coach, arms raised, eyes wide, ain’t about to break that fall. Then, like magic, the dude’s hands reach out from this blur and snag the bar. A chalk cloud puffs and next thing I realize, the kid is back to whipping around the bar, unhurt. When he lets go a last time and lands without a crash, I finally let out my breath.

His routine ends the meet. I’m clapping mostly out of relief that he’s not dead, but it’s also pretty amazing. I should congratulate him, I think, him and his other monkey-mates. Then I spot that goth girl, Tina, the one from the lunchroom who claims she knows me. She’s two empty bleacher sections over but heading my way. How long’s she been here? Was she watching the meet the whole time? No way am I letting her bring me down with her shitty memories of Meadow’s House. Screw that. I grip the pill bottle in my sweatshirt pocket and hop down the creaky bleachers, scrambling through the gym doors for a clean getaway.

Once outside the school building, I relax, pretty sure I’ve escaped. Crossing the student parking lot, partly blinded by a low-hanging sun, I sense someone approaching from behind a small herd of parked cars.

It’s her, again. Tina. Even with the heat rippling off the warm asphalt, she’s got on her black leather jacket and combat boots. Before she can open her mouth, I put a hand up.

“Juh-juh-just leave me alone.”

“I was there, too,” she says. “I remember you and Lamar and I remember Mr. Sanborn—”

I move on her real fast. So fast it surprises me. Surprises me how quickly my own anger can flash. I don’t want to talk about it! My right hand reaches out and clamps her wrist, twisting it so she has to kneel down on the oily blacktop or risk breaking a bone. My other hand grabs her neck before she can scream.

“Don’t . . . don’t you ever muh-muh-mention his nuh-nuh-name. Understand? Nuh-nuh-not ever!”

Her eyes bulge as my hand tightens around her throat. All those little muscles and tendons between my thumb and fingers feel so, so ... delicate ... so easy to crush in one jerk. Such a simple way to silence her, keep everything a secret. Something boils up in me at the thought, something wicked. Something Crud Bucket would do ... Ever breathe a word of this and I’ll cut you into pieces. Put you in trash bags. No one’ll even notice you’re missing. No one ever misses garbage. His threat reaches me even now, even after all these years, from the time I caught him bent over Lamar, pants down. Lamar, who never backed down or gave in, crying in a way that told me Crud Bucket had finally found a way to break him.

Little goth girl struggles in my grip, eyes dancing wildly in search of mercy while shame, slick as Vaseline, coats my outside and insides—same as it does every day—with the failure and weakness that buried Lamar.

“Sh-sh-shit!” I let go of her neck before I accidentally squeeze it limp. She falls backward against the door of an old, rusty Subaru, clutching her throat, heaving for air.

“What’s up your ass, anyway?” she snaps, hacking up some lung and spitting so it lands next to my feet. “I mean, Jesus, I’m only trying to be friendly and you’re, like, a dick.”

“Suh-suh-sorry.”

“You oughta be,” she says, rubbing at her neck. “That first day, in the lunchroom, I couldn’t believe it was you, how big you got,” she goes on, acting like she didn’t just call me a dick. “I mean, I knew it was you ’cause of your sca . . . anyway, you want to be left alone, fine!”

“I duh-duh-don’t ruh-ruh-remember you at all,” I say, though she looks maybe a little familiar beyond the piercings and eyeliner and dyed hair and black nails.

“Everyone here comes from such cush families and it’s like I can’t even tell people how I grew up ’cause they look at me like I’m a freak.”

A puff of air escapes my lips while I let my eyes wander up and down her real slow. “Muh-muh-might be your costume,” I suggest.

“I am a freak. I know. But now you’re here and I thought, finally, someone in this place that’ll know me. I mean, could really know me. Who gets it.” Tina watches me as she says this last part like I’ll suddenly open my arms and give her a big hug. I do nothing but roll my eyes. Of course she mistakes this as a signal to keep talking. “I was in the girls’ quarters only for about six months, thank God, before they placed me . . . actually the first family sucked, but the family after that was okay and the one I’m with now is all right. They let me do my own thing.... Anyway, I remember you and some of the other boys at . . . the place. None of you talked much. We’d heard rumors about what Mr.—” I stop her with a warning finger. I’m not kidding about her speaking his name again or teaching her a lesson if she does. “About what ... what’s-his-name was doing to the boys over in your unit.”

“They wuh-wuh-weren’t rumors,” I say, and I wobble for a second, trying to knock back the ugly taste rising up in my mouth. Tina’s talking again but I’m no longer paying attention, finding it hard enough just to maintain my balance as I turn away.

“. . . because I know what happened, I mean I was living the same situation—”

“No.” I try cutting off the voice behind me since she won’t take any type of hint. “No you wuh-wuh-weren’t.”

“Okay, but I’m here, now, to talk to ... if you want. I don’t mind. Really.”

When I turn back around, Tina’s sitting on the hood of the Subaru, rocking on her butt while clasping her knees up by her chest. She’s gazing across the parking lot, toward the football fields. Her offer sounds stiff, like she’s been practicing it since the day I left her in the lunchroom and nothing, not even the truth, is going to get in her way. The truth is that living at Meadow’s House will never be something I want to talk about, even though Lamar and Crud Bucket sit on either of my shoulders all day, every day. The truth is that I have plans for Crud Bucket soon as I find him unguarded by the state. The truth is that since the day Lamar suffocated in that plastic storage bin, stuffed in there by Crud Bucket as punishment, my insides feel like concrete. The truth is that when they first blamed me for killing Lamar, they were partly right. I was sealed up in that plastic storage bin right beside him and the truth is that it’s me who should’ve died, not Lamar. The truth is I keep waking from the same nightmare, throwing off damp sheets and calling for him, but there’s no escape and no rescue coming. Never is.

So I go on, waiting for a sign that Lamar forgives me while I plan out ways I’ll make Crud Bucket pay. Hard hits on the football field are sometimes the best because they feel deserved and relieve some of my guilt for a second. Explaining any of this—even if I wanted to—leaves me tired. And I never want to explain it: not to the detectives; not to the reporters; not to the teachers; not to the counselors; not to Patti; and especially not to the pathetic, powder-white goth girl rocking on the Subaru. That first wave of shame and anger evaporates over the warm asphalt but little currents remain, leaving me weak.

“Wuh-wuh-why were you in the gym?”

Tina sighs. “Kinda a long, dull story but I run the AVT club—Audio Visual Technology. Lame name, I know, and I was downloading some music for my friend Indira. When I finished up, it was late and I was walking by the gym and saw the gymnastics meet. There’s this kid on the team who almost got wedgied to death today but Indira and I saved him. Well, mostly me—and I got three days’ detention for it, too, fascists! Anyway, I saw him and I guess I was curious. Then I saw you and wondered why you were there and wanted to, you know, say ... what I said earlier ... before you almost crushed my larynx. Asshole!”

She hops off the Subaru and takes a feisty step toward me. “You fucking almost ripped off my head. Got anything to say?”

My anger is gone now. “Suh-suh-sorry,” I offer again, meaning it.

“Better be,” she huffs, and steps forward, then punches me semi-hard in the stomach. I flex so she hits stone. “Ouch!” She grabs the wrist of her punching hand. “Big ape!”

Watching her do this, for some reason I think of the time I’m riding in Sergeant Schmidt’s cruiser, heading back from a full day of trial testimony about what Crud Bucket did to us. It’s winter and nightfall comes early and Sergeant Schmidt pulls his cruiser over on a lonely stretch of road without streetlights. He makes me get out of the car, wind whipping and cold making me pull the hood of my coat over my head. He points up to the sky, tells me no matter what happens down on earth, the stars won’t change for millions and millions of years. That I’m safe as long as I can look up and see starlight overhead. We get back in his cruiser and he takes me to my new boys’ home. I’m wishing for night right now in the school parking lot so I can look up into the sky. . . .

“You deaf, too?”

“Huh?”

“I asked you how you’re getting home.” Tina says.

“Buh-buh-bus.”

“The late-activity buses left an hour ago.”

“City buh-buh-bus. The suh-suh-stop is by muh-muh-McDonald’s.”

“That’s, like, a mile away. Who actually takes city buses?”

“Me,” I say, shrugging my shoulders. “Suh-suh-suhsometimes I have a kuh-kuh-car.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

“It’s okay.” I turn and walk toward the sun hovering just above the houses across the parking lot, squinting against the light, feeling my stomach rumble with hunger as I leave Tina behind.

“Come on,” she calls out. I don’t answer, just shake my head no and keep walking. Coach’s money sits in my pocket ready to burn on three Big Macs, maybe four. I’ll chow them while waiting at the bus stop. I’m taking the first D-bol tonight. Any doubts I have about the pills fade, pushed out by thoughts of Lamar and how I should’ve saved him, how I’ll get justice for him yet.