Cracking the Bell Page 4

  The football addiction gave him opportunities. It gave him a belief in himself. It gave him peace in his house, even after Dad abandoned the family. It gave him a future. . . .

  It is definitely a good addiction.

  We sat at a table in Joey’s junky barn. We drank root beer out of heavy glass mugs his grandpa used for real beer back in the day.

  Joey squinted at me. “Cool story, bro,” he said. “So that’s how you got in with Riggles and Twine, huh? They actually continue to be douchebags, you know? They’re jerks to people.”

  “No. They’re not. Not really. Not since sophomore year, probably. They’re my best friends.”

  “What about me?”

  “They’re different from you.”

  “They sure are.” He took a sip of his root beer. “Thrill junkie? It’s hard to think of you like that. You’re like the calmest dude I know.”

  “That’s why football,” I told him. “That’s why. It keeps my problem in a healthy place.”

  “What’s going to happen to you when you stop playing, like after your Hall of Fame pro career? Are you going to turn into a hitman or something? Maybe the government can turn you into a Jason Bourne biological cyborg murderer?”

  “I’m too small to play pro,” I said.

  “How about this? What if you run weapons for the resistance?” he asked. “Do something honorable with all your pent-up violence?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t think about after football,” I said. “I’m not ready to think about that.”

  “I’m going to think about it for you. You’re in a jeep, cruising across the desert. You’re wearing shades. A government helicopter suddenly flies up over a sand dune next to you. You stand up, steer with your feet. You leap into the sky, grab that chopper, and pull it down into the ground. Boom! You saved the resistance, dude!”

  “What resistance?”

  “THE resistance, dude. THE ONLY ONE!”

  “Who are we resisting?”

  “The forces of evil, man. Who else?”

  Resisting the forces of evil. In a way, that made sense to me. Football helped me to resist my own evil inclinations. That was its primary role in my life.

  That was before Cornell University offered me a scholarship.

  CHAPTER 9

  SEPTEMBER 30: AFTERNOON

  Truth: I continued to feel like shit. After the Country Kitchen breakfast, I nearly threw up. I stayed lying on the bathroom floor in the basement for the better part of an hour after we got home. It was bad. And the plans I had for watching games and studying the rest of the day just couldn’t happen. My broken bell meant bed was the only reasonable option.

  I canceled my day by text. Grandma didn’t respond (she received texts but never sent them). Dad asked, Concussion? I didn’t reply. I told Twiggs I had the flu. Twiggs asked if I was okay after that crazy hit.

  100 percent I responded, before turning off the lights in my room, pulling the curtains tight, and burying my head in the pillows.

  I drifted into sleep. Back out. Had that conversation with Mom been real? It didn’t seem real to me, sitting in Country Kitchen, the old people acting like synchronized swimmers, tilting their heads toward us in unison, trying to hear what? That I had to quit playing football? Mom said that, but it was impossible. Football was the future.

  Really.

  I had a big secret.

  Our first game of the year had been against Glendale, a giant school in suburban Milwaukee. Given the school’s size, Glendale thought they’d beat the crap out of us cornhole, small-town rubes (some names they called us). They barked at us across the field. They called us fat-ass farmers and hillbillies. They accused us of doing nasty things with farm animals. It’s like they had no idea of who we were, even though we’d been kicking ass all over Wisconsin for a couple years.

  I have to say, their nastiness pissed us off. We took it out on them. Five minutes in we’d knocked out their top running back and were up by two touchdowns. It was violent. I unloaded on that running back. They stopped talking shit. They looked like dogs with their tails between their legs.

  By halftime we were up by twenty. By the final whistle, we’d destroyed Glendale, 40–14. And honestly, it could’ve been worse. Coach Reynolds sat our supertalented running back, Iggy, and our all-area quarterback, Riley, the whole fourth quarter. Twiggs, our all-conference split end, came out after one series in the fourth. I never came out—I told Coach Reynolds I wouldn’t come out after we gave up two touchdowns at the end of a game sophomore year.

  Yes, we destroyed Glendale. This was not a surprise, if you were paying attention. We’d unloaded on two giant suburban schools the year before, too.

  There was a surprise, though. A serious recruiter had been there to see the Glendale quarterback. I had twelve tackles—violent tackles—a sack, a crazy, long bomb interception, and a fumble recovery that I returned for a touchdown. I, personally, had made that Glendale quarterback look like a middle schooler.

  On my way off the field, this guy waited next to the stands. He wore a college insignia golf shirt, had big shoulders, and carried a clipboard. I knew he was a recruiter. I’d seen these dudes before but had mostly blown them off because I already knew what I was doing after high school—Bluffton College. The guy pulled me aside. Riley and Twiggs had gone into the locker room in front of me. Only a few underclassmen and scrubs walked behind. No one really saw the exchange.

  “Isaiah Sadler?” the man said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re a senior?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have any D-I coaches come to see you play?”

  “Last year. Wisconsin and Iowa State. They think I’m small, which is fine.”

  “You’re not that small,” the man said.

  “No. I’m pretty small,” I said.

  “You’re a baller, straight up. That’s what I see.”

  I paused. Blinked. Looked at the red C with a bear climbing through it on the left chest of the dude’s golf shit. “Who are you?” I asked.

  “What kind of student are you, Isaiah?” the man asked. “Do you like school?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m second in my class. I probably should be first. My mom didn’t want me to take AP Human Geography last year because it’s tough and I had a lot of tough classes, so I got behind in AP credits. I’m taking it this year, though.”

  A big smile spread across the man’s face. He reached out his hand to shake. “I’m Jim Conti. Cornell University.”

  “Cornell?” I said.

  Since that game in mid-August, Conti had lit me up like the sun on a summer day. He texted several times a week. He called my cell once a week. He asked for my family’s financial data. I broke the rules, went into Mom’s office. I copied bank statements and tax returns from Mom’s files. Conti asked for video, which I got from Kirby Sheldon, our team’s student trainer and AV guy. That video showed again and again what Jim Conti saw in person, I suppose. Truth: I’m a little small. But, also, I am a baller, straight up. And based on my grades, my high ACT score, and, mostly, on my nose for the football, Cornell University, a great institution of higher learning—the alma mater of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and this writer I really like, Kurt Vonnegut, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, who Hannah and I watched on YouTube, and lots more (I googled everything about the school)—wanted to fly me out to Ithaca, New York, to visit their campus. They were preparing to offer me a scholarship. . . .

  But I hadn’t told anybody else (except for Joey, who thought it was awesome). Coach Conti kept asking to talk to Mom or Dad. I made up excuses about how they were busy but were as excited about Cornell as I was. I’m not even sure what I was afraid of. Mom, I guess. How would she react if I told her I wanted to go back on the commitment I’d made to her to stay in Bluffton for college, to stay close to home, to keep our family together? That fear might seem stupid if there hadn’t been all this death and disaster in my family.

/>   Coach Conti texted Sunday around noon.

  Big win against Sacred Heart yesterday. Gave up too many points, though. We could use you out there! Harvard next week. When can we get you out here to see a game? Talk to your parents this week?

  I shut my eyes tight. Slept the sleep of the dead, except I dreamed my recurring dream, which included Hannah drinking a black coffee at Badger Coffee on Main Street.

  I woke. Twiggs texted again. Apparently, Aaron Rodgers threw a crazy touchdown to Davante Adams. I tried to focus on the phone screen, to see the highlight Twiggs sent. But I couldn’t watch the motion. I couldn’t track it. My eyes didn’t work.

  I am broken, I thought.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE DREAM

  Early in September, I wrote about my recurring dream in my green notebook.

  They are in Badger Coffee on Main Street in Bluffton. The walls are cherry red (not the coffee shop’s real color). Hannah wears a red cardigan sweater (she never owned that piece of clothing in her life). All that red? For blood?

  What does red mean in a dream?

  (For the purpose of this story, I googled it—Sorry for the internet use, Joey.)

  Red is an indication of raw energy, power, vigor, passion, force, courage, intensity, and impulsiveness.

  Other than the red, Hannah is just Hannah. Not dead but funny, sarcastic, pretty. They sit in the big window up front that looks out on the sidewalk. Isaiah is next to her. He’s himself now, not the turbulent asshole kid he was back when she died. They’re both drinking black coffee because they’re not into a bunch of sugary bullshit. Their conversation feels normal until Isaiah remembers something’s very wrong.

  He turns to her and says, “Wait. What if I told you you’re going to die tonight, Hannah?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you,” she says.

  “You wouldn’t? But what if I’m right. What if I know you are? What if I know how? You’ll be in Ray’s Corolla.”

  “I like Ray’s car. He keeps it clean. Dudes are usually so gross.”

  “You’ll be out by Rewey.”

  “No way. We wouldn’t go there.”

  “On the way back from Blackhawk Lake.”

  “Oh, maybe.”

  “You’ll be going through an intersection.”

  “Hard to avoid that. Roads cross, don’t they?”

  “And you’ll be creamed—like smeared, so your body is destroyed beyond recognition. A sad guy in a pickup truck will hit you.”

  “Wow, Isaiah. That’s a little dark,” she says, smiling.

  “Don’t smile.”

  This makes her smile harder.

  “Will you still get in the car with Ray?”

  “Tonight? No. I don’t think so. I guess not. Not if you know for sure.”

  “Don’t get in the car tonight, Hannah.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good call,” Isaiah says.

  “You just saved my life.” Hannah laughs. Then she drinks her coffee. She looks out onto Main Street. An old lady walking with a cane is the only action out there. “What a boring piece-of-shit town,” she says.

  “But what about tomorrow?” Isaiah asks.

  “What, I’m going to die tomorrow, too?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. That pickup truck could be coming tomorrow.”

  Hannah turns from the window. She looks into Isaiah’s eyes. Her eyes are so blue, like the sea in the movie Mamma Mia, which she watched a thousand times even though Isaiah complained about it. “Dude,” she says. “That pickup could be coming every day for the rest of my life. You want me to stay in the house for the rest of my life?”

  “Yes. Please?” Isaiah says.

  “No,” Hannah says. “No way!”

  “But you never got a chance to live someplace else, Hannah. You never went to Greece! You never got married! You never sang songs with your friends in a bar!”

  “It’s okay, man,” Hannah says. “Hey. Fill up your cup. You’re empty.”

  Isaiah looks down at his empty cup. He nods. He goes to get a refill. When he returns, Hannah is gone.

  He runs out the door, spilling coffee, burning his hand.

  Out by Rewey, Ray Gatos’s car flies through an intersection. A half second later, a pickup truck screams through from the other direction. So close, but there is no crash. The truck barrels onward, whipping dust into horizontal tornadoes. Isaiah is left alone, standing on the gravel shoulder, watching both the truck and the car continue on their merry ways, getting farther apart, into the future, while the sun sets red and orange in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area.

  “Do the cars always miss at the intersection?” Joey asked after I read it to him.

  “They never hit. But I know they’re going to hit someday. I wake up sweating my ass off, my heart racing, because I thought they were going to hit. But they didn’t. Don’t. Not yet.”

  “We should go out there,” he said. “Stand right where you’re dreaming it. Pick up that energy. Don’t you think?”

  “No. I don’t think so,” I said. “I won’t go there.”

  “You never have?”

  “No. Never. Can’t.”

  “You have to face it, bro. See it. Be with it.”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s just an intersection. Just like Hannah says in your dream. Roads cross.”

  “No,” I said.

  CHAPTER 11

  OCTOBER 1: MONDAY

  I got ready to go to school Monday, even though the world continued to be plastic and unreal. Don’t think, I told myself. Maybe this is a bad dream.

  “Are you going to meet with Coach Reynolds?” Mom asked before she left for work. “Do you need anything from me? Do you want me to come?”

  “No,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll talk to him.”

  “I’m so sorry, Isaiah,” Mom said. “I know this is going to be tough on you. Don’t even think about the Bluffton College coaches. We can talk to them later. You’re a strong kid and you’re going to be okay.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Okay? I had no plan for escaping this situation and definitely no plan to talk to any coach about my injury, about the doctor, about my mom, who thought she understood but, clearly, had no idea what she was doing to me. I prepared to go to school and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, because it couldn’t be happening.

  But I couldn’t pretend with any measure of normalcy. The world was plastic? I wouldn’t be playing in the game on Friday? Mom mentioned the Bluffton College coaches? What did that mean? I wouldn’t be playing ever again?

  Don’t say anything to anyone about anything, my cracked brain said. Inhabit your second life and this stupid sickness will go away.

  It was easy to act sick. I was sick. There was this weird weakness in my muscles. I was still groggy, unsteady. My sensitivity to sound and light was less than Sunday but still present. I kept shading my eyes, covering my ears. I texted Riley that I couldn’t make weight lifting but would see him at school.

  Because of that hit? Riley texted back.

  No. Flu. Bad one. Puked yesterday. Recovering, I wrote.

  I drove myself in Mom’s Subaru (it was a nice day—she walked to her office when it was nice). Parked. Entered the school. Coming into the commons hurt badly, so much light and noise and action, four hundred high schoolers shouting across the room. I moved quickly, past all the people who talked at a volume that made my head vibrate.

  I had to find a place to isolate, so I sat in a bathroom stall in the science hall for ten minutes before heading to my first-hour class. I felt so shitty in there, so I googled how many kids die from playing football each year. Not too many, was the answer. But, yeah, some. When first bell rang, I covered my ears, my eyes watered. Then I got up and made myself move into the bright hallway toward class, physics.

  Riley and Twiggs were both there. Twiggs was jacked up that we hadn’t gotten together the night before. I sat down in my seat.

  “Dude. I couldn’t even start the assignmen
t. No clue. We were going to go over it at your dad’s last night, remember? I couldn’t do the shit without you. There’s my first zero.”

  I’d finished it the Thursday before. “Sorry, man. I’m pretty sick.”

  “Why are you here if you’re sick, man?” Riley asked.

  “Don’t like missing.”

  “Huh.” Riley stared at me, thinking. “When did you get sick? Did you puke right after the game?” he asked.

  “No. More in the morning. Saturday morning,” I said.

  “What’s wrong with your voice?” Twiggs asked. “You’re mumbling.”

  “Could be a concussion,” Riley said. “I fell off a snowmobile in sixth grade and got my bell rung, bad. I puked ten times. It was ugly.”

  “No,” I said. “No concussion, just a flu.”

  Tyra Ramirez, who sits on the other side of me, pulled her sweatshirt over the lower part of her face. “Keep your disease to yourself, Isaiah.”

  I pulled my T-shirt over the lower half of my face. “Sorry,” I said.

  “You have to rest up, man,” Twiggs said. “I once had the flu for a month.”

  “Flu doesn’t last a month!” Tyra said. “But maybe a week. I can’t be sick for a week! I got tests!”

  “You should go home, Isaiah. Do you want the whole team to get sick?” Riley asked.

  I hadn’t thought of that. Coming to school with my “flu” wasn’t good for other people. I shut my eyes. The stupid school lighting was so bright.

  Then Mr. Urness, the physics teacher, turned the lights off and on. That made my head ring. I could see the firing light through my closed eyes. The classroom fell silent around me. “Happy Monday,” he said.

  The class groaned. I opened my eyes.

  “Do any of you remember last week?” Mr. Urness asked.

  Twiggs raised his hand. “I don’t.”

  “What about this?” Mr. Urness asked. “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It only changes form. Anyone know what I’m talking about?”

  The class was silent until Twiggs repeated, “I don’t.”