Chapter 22

Wednesday started with me jolting awake to the alarm. For the first time since I was able to get back into this bed, I’d had a terrible night of sleep.

I started my day mechanically and got myself to school to attend my meeting about ten minutes early.

Mr. Peterson showed me into his office and we waited for Coach Mullins who finally showed up just before the meeting time. I waited for them to start talking. I had no desire to say another word so long as I lived right now.

He started. “Thank you for coming back, Matt,” he said, trying to start the meeting on a positive note. “I think yesterday, we were going to discuss what happened from your point of view and see if we could settle things.”

“I thought they WERE settled,” I said tiredly. “Coach Mullins stated that the exercise program I used would not be tolerated from any cheerleader. Since I perform that exercise plan, I told her I understood that would stand in the way of my participation and I left. What have I misunderstood?”

“Coach Mullins said she intended to stop the other girls from seeking you out since your help comes with inappropriate touching,” he said, trying to smooth it over and doing a lousy job.

“Coach Mullins is a fucking liar if she told you that,” I said with the same toneless voice. “The stretching routine I do is an advanced ballet stretch. Putting someone through it and not treating them for muscle strains afterwards would leave them crippled for days. I told her that and explained it. If she characterized it as inappropriate touching, then I don’t see what this meeting is even supposed to accomplish.”

Both of them visibly blanched at the bald language I was pushing. I delivered the whole speech in the monotone of someone who’s run their emotions ragged.

“I was hoping we could establish a dialogue and see if there’s a way to move forward from here,” Mr. Peterson said, ignoring my swearing for the moment.

“I don’t think so. Coach Mullins treated me like a pervert that was looking to sexually assault the cheerleaders even though one of them recruited me for the team and I considered it as a favor. She called me a braggart and a liar and told one of the other team members that she was considering throwing me off the team because she didn’t know what sort of lies I’d make up about the rest of the girls. Then she gathered everyone together and made a rule that barred anyone performing those stretches from participating on the team. She lied about me, accused me of the most insulting things imaginable and then created a situation which would give her an excuse to kick me off the team. I know when I’m not wanted. I didn’t make a stink. I apologized to the girls and told them I’d been looking forward to working with them and then I left.”

“Coach?” he said to her. “Some pretty harsh criticism. Care to respond?”

“I think that there was a lot of tension at the practice,” she said diplomatically and I wondered how practiced her response was. “Certainly none of us are used to having a boy on the team. It was certainly not my intention to make Matthew uncomfortable and since I certainly seem to have done so, I respectfully apologize for any harm I did.”

“I understand,” I said softly. “Apology accepted.”

“Good!” Mr. Peterson said, clearly uncomfortable with how I was reacting, but hoping to put the best face on it. “So I guess that means that you’ll be returning to practice after school tomorrow.”

“No,” I said softly.

“But you just said you accepted her apology,” he said, confused.

I dug a pencil out of my backpack and reminded myself not for the first time to buy more. I passed it to him and he took it curiously. “Would you do me a favor and break that for me?” He looked confused, but snapped it in two. “Now, please humor me and apologize to the pencil for breaking it.” He looked at me oddly and then said the words. “Did it fix the pencil?”

“No, of course not,” he said, understanding.

“Putting the issue of how I was treated aside for the moment, since our meeting yesterday, I learned that my close, personal friend, mentor and the man who runs the study I’m participating in has terminal cancer. My parents separated over the summer, I lost every friend and relationship I had to that filthy rumor about me at the start of the term and I was nearly killed by an incident of malpractice in the past three months. I really don’t HAVE a lot to jump up and cheer about. After last night’s news, I doubt I’m much of an asset to the team. Quite frankly, I’m willing to concede the point that I’m probably over-sensitive right now, but I’m not in any fit state to put myself in any situation where I might be put in MORE stress than I’m already in. So what’s the endgame? Why are you both so invested in me joining the cheer team? What am I missing?”

“Your participation is a chance to turn cheer from a ‘girls’ club and into a real sport,” Coach Mullins said finally. “Me and my girls see it as a sport, but most boys and even parents see it as a club for the girls to support the school teams.”

“Then stop cheering at games,” I said simply. “train harder for your competitions. Perform at assemblies. Do anything but perform at games if you don’t want to be seen that way.”

“It’s not that simple. It’s traditional to perform at those games.”

“It’s also traditional for cheerleaders to be gibbering idiots with tight sweaters, pompoms and cheers that start with ‘Gimme a G’,” I pointed out. “None of those traditions are being honored any more. Why hold onto this sacred cow?”

“It’s also a platform for us to demonstrate our skills and perfect our routines,” she said.

“Fair enough,” I said. “I didn’t come her to argue. I just made a suggestion. If it wasn’t helpful, it wasn’t helpful.”

“None of us are looking for a fight, Matt,” Mr. Peterson assured me.

“You’re just hoping that I’ll sign on to be the face of male cheerleaders in the school so you can change the face of the sport,” I filled in.

“We would be extremely appreciative,” he said, hopefully.

I rubbed my forehead, knowing it was going to be a long day. I couldn’t wait to see Victoria. “So we’re taking Monday and chalking it up to an overreaction on everyone’s part to the first boy to join cheer in years?”

“We actually looked it up. The school has never had a male cheerleader. You’re the first ever,” he told me.

I felt my chest tighten and willed myself to breathe, knowing it was a panic attack. Victoria called them anxiety attacks, said she didn’t like the shameful connotations of the word panic. I was stalling.

“Fine,” I said, investing the word with all the resentment of a teenager being pushed into something I didn’t want to do.

“So we’ll see you there tomorrow?” he asked, clarifying hopefully.

“Sounds that way,” I said flatly. “How you think you’re gonna paint a smile on my face in time to perform in front of people, I have no idea, but that’s a problem for later, I suppose.”

Coach Mullins got up and thanked me again before she left. I was gathering my backpack up when Mr. Peterson asked me to stay a moment.

“Are you okay?” he asked gently.

“No.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“On the record?”

“For starters.”

“Cure cancer. Right now, that’s the most help anyone can be to me. Carl Saddler has become like a father to me. When I lose him, I’ll be lost.”

“And off the record?”

“When the Waterman twins take their plea deal and return to the school, let them come looking for me.”

He was shocked. “Why? They’re probably going to be worse than they were. They could kill you.”

“They took girls I cared about, lied to get their confidence, got them addicted to drugs and then while they were too high to remember much of their weekend, they raped them and let them be raped by nearly fifty people. Don’t ask me for names. I’m not going to start pulling other people’s pain into the public eye. If they don’t come looking for me, I’m not about to start anything, but once the knuckles fly, I’m going to give them a gentle reminder that some people stand up for the people they care about.”

He looked ashen now. “This goes back to that rumor at the start of the year?”

I nodded. “The third person that helped get those girls raped is in Alaska, so she’s well beyond my ability to deal with ... for now.”

“Have you considered talking to the police about this?” he asked gently.

“Two under-aged boys that they’re already offering a plea deal for attempted murder, attempted kidnapping, attempted rape, possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia? Those police? The fact of the matter is that there was a party organized by those three where there were drugs provided, so legally no one in that house could have given consent. Forty people, multiplied by three days. They wouldn’t want to even count up the number of combinations, let alone type the paperwork.”

“Jesus! How did you find out?”

“One of the girls that was at that party confided in me that she’d been provided drugs and had sex with everyone there while she was too high to have a clear recollection of the events of the weekend. I suspect that there’s a lot of girls and probably a few boys that still go home from this school and try to scour the unclean feeling from their bodies. I can’t fix that. What I can do is see that the masterminds are punished. If they attack me, I’m going to make sure they can’t attack anything tougher than mashed potatoes ever again.”

“You’re not allowed to carry your shield around the school, you know,” he said delicately.

“I don’t need it. I take Kung Fu classes,” I said. “I’m also working out daily and I’m filled with enough rage at what they’ve done to my life personally and the lives of people that I care about, that I don’t think I have to worry. I just need a day’s notice that they’re coming back and your word that if they attack me, the words self-defense get used a lot.”

He nodded. “I doubt you’ll want to put that dust-up on YouTube”

I shrugged. “Depends on how bad it is. If they come after me armed with fists, probably not, because I intend to assume they’re coming to kill me outright. If they’re dumb enough to bring a weapon? Then yeah, I’m gonna post it.”

“You know of course that I can’t condone what you’re considering.”

“I know. If they come after me with weapons though, I expect to be exonerated or at most, get a suspension. It’ll be twice that they tried to kill me on school grounds, after all.”

He nodded. “After what you’ve told me here, I’ll do what I can for you,” he told me and then sent me off to class.

I managed to find Tricia and told her about last night. She was horrified and wanted to know if that was why I got called to the office yesterday. I told her about the meeting and she stopped me.

“You don’t seem to be too happy to be back on the team,” she said.

“The coach doesn’t care about me being on the team. She cares about a boy being on the team. I’m her only option right now. It’s a PR stunt.”

“Then why do it?” she asked.

“I dunno. Right now it’s just easier to do for others.”

“You do that too much. How much do other people do for you?” she asked.

Again I was reminded how much she spoke like Carl sometimes. I hugged her tight. “You make me feel better all the time,” I told her softly. “Emma, Zoe and Hanna have all helped me. Patty and Dan have been there for me. Other than that? It’s a pretty short list. Mr. Peterson has been good to me and he was doing the asking, so I guess that’s a big part of it.”

She hugged me back and asked what I was doing after school and I told her I had my regular appointment at the hospital, but I’d walk her home after school.

I went to my first class and put my head down, hoping that the day at least went by quickly. I started some of the lectures I hadn’t had time to do last night and experimentally started four of them, hoping that I’d trained my mind to pay attention to the audio enough to make out the lectures. I was better, but I scaled back to three again for comfort. At the end of class, I was getting ready to leave when Beck approached me.

“I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about Dr. Saddler,” she said sadly.

“Thanks,” I said dully.

“If you need anything...” she knew there was nothing she could do to help. It was just one of those things people say.

“It’s okay, Beck. It’s just the way it is. I lose people. I’m getting used to it.”

I didn’t see the look on her face, but she fell back and left me to my thoughts.

I walked through the rest of my classes and collapsed into a chair in the cafeteria, feeling exhausted. I picked at the fries I’d ordered, but they didn’t seem all that good today. I knew there was no difference, but I couldn’t manage to rouse any interest in food or much of anything else right now.

My phone pinged with a couple of responses to my Tweet last night about having a bad day. I didn’t have it in me to post anything more right now. I put the phone away and then picked at my fries a little more before dumping them in the trash and walking out to wait at Tricia’s last class of the morning. I walked her to the cafeteria and told her I loved her before I kissed her and went off to my afternoon.

Blissfully, the day came to an end without anyone else asking me for anything. I was grateful for the few minutes I got to spend with Tricia on the way to my appointment and told her so.

“I’m gonna talk to my dad tonight about getting more freedom to spend time with you,” she said firmly. “I know he’s been giving you a hard time and it’s not right. I’ll message you when we finish talking and let you know how it goes.”

I nodded and kissed her. “Just don’t push him too hard. We’re trying to get him used to the idea of us being together.”

I dropped her off at her house and then went on to the hospital.

Victoria closed the door behind me and hugged me gently before we took our seats.

“How’re you managing today?” I asked, taking my seat.

“I think I’m supposed to be asking that,” she pointed out.

“But a good therapist addresses the issues uppermost in the patient’s mind,” I reminded her.

“And my well-being preys on you?” she asked.

“Normally, no,” I admitted. “Last night was a terrible night. You received terrible news. You were told someone you loved had cancer.”

“We discussed this before,” she said. “Carl and I have never been in love. We have deep affection for each other and respect between us, but not love.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I told her. “You thought he was telling you I was dying before we figured out what you were thinking and corrected that.”

She looked extremely uncomfortable with the tone the conversation was taking and seemed to struggle for a way to turn it aside from disaster.

“I can imagine you feel a lot of things right now. Devastation. Carl is your mentor, just as I’ve come to see him as mine. Relief. You thought that the tests had picked up cancer and I was going to die. Guilt. You don’t feel as crushed at his death as you were at the thought of my death. Shame. As long as you’ve known him, you feel like he deserves more of your grief than that.”

“You DO spend too much time with me,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.

I got up and pulled her up out of her normal chair to hold her. We both needed each other today. “I told Carl yesterday that I could spend the rest of my life with you and never make up to you everything you’ve meant to me,” I told her. “He desperately wants to know that we’ll be here for each other.”

She stiffened at that and pulled back to look at me questioningly.

“Maybe not as lovers,” I allowed. “But I think that would make him supremely happy too. He loves us both a great deal. I don’t think it’s ridiculous to say we’re the two most gifted students he’s ever had. That’s how he’s built his family over the years. You’re his favorite and I’m his last.”

“Oh, Matt!” she said tiredly, her fingers running through the hair at the base of my neck. “Why couldn’t you ignore this? It makes it so much more complicated!”

“Someone I love very much taught me that ignoring my feelings isn’t healthy,” I told her gently. “Even if the only way forward is difficult, hiding from it is just going to hurt you and me and Carl.”

She gave me a hard squeeze and sighed. She’d shown me more of her thoughts last night in her devastated state than she could ever cover over now. “I HATE it when you pay attention!” she hissed and we both laughed.

“Better that we move forward with our eyes open,” I said softly. “We’ve been sort of dancing around the issue. Let’s talk about it instead of trying to pretend it’s not there.”

She nodded and took our seats as normal.

“Tell me about yesterday,” she said softly, trying to reconnect with normality.

I nodded and started talking. I could remember the dialogue as clear as if I’d read it from a page. I told her about the tension in the lab and about how I’d sent them all for a break, including Carl, about chasing down the loose connection and running the tests.

“Carl must have loved being banished from his own lab,” she said, amused for the first time.

“I had to ask him which of us he’d prefer to call you to settle it,” I told her. “In the end, he tried to stall me until I threatened to throw him out for twenty minutes. We were all productive after that. And then at the end of the day, I walked around and talked with everyone there and gave them a little pep talk before they went home. It’s the kind of thing Carl wouldn’t think to do, but it means a lot to people at the end of a hard day.”

She nodded. “That, it does. Knowing that our struggles are noticed helps us in innumerable ways. ‘In solace, we find salvation’,” she quoted again and I smiled.

“And then Carl asked me when I was going to tell you that I loved you,” I told her.

She nodded. We’d touched on how he was driving us together, but now I was telling her what had been said. I told her what I’d said to him, how I said it all the time and that I just didn’t use those specific words. I told her about how I’d told Carl I’d take a bullet for her and count myself lucky and about how we would lose ourselves in each other if we ever crossed that line, but how I loved her enough to say no if I felt she’d regret it after the passion had been sated.

She sat and watched me as I talked and nodded occasionally. We both needed tissues for parts of it and she looked supremely proud of me when I told her I’d convinced him that he needed to tell her.

“When I hung up, he was astounded that I’d told you, but it wasn’t so big a leap to me. I’d never made a secret of it. I told him I loved him too. Then we came to see you and, to my ever-lasting shame, we made you think I was dying. I’m so sorry for that. We should have been clearer from the start.”

“That’s not your fault, Matt. You were understandably overwhelmed. You’re lucky you knew what you were saying at all,” she said. “I mostly made that leap based on the realization that you were there for tests. I’d worried that Carl had discovered a tumor in your MRI scans.”

I nodded. “Then we were with you. You know what happened from there.”

She nodded. “Other than this issue, how has your week been?”

I sighed and told her about Hanna and about Lilly’s new behavior, about the settlement and about the popularity on YouTube and the money it was making. I told her about the meeting at school today and my desire to have nothing to do with team or helping people out right now.

“I know it’s selfish, but I want to just tell everyone to fuck off when they come to me for such stupid shit. I know it’s important to them, but with everything going on, showing up for practice twice a week is the farthest thing on my mind.”

“Would you care for some advice?” she asked gently. I knew what she was going to tell me, but I nodded anyway. “Stay with it. I’ve been trying to establish a normal routine for you to follow for months. It hasn’t worked out and we even had to move our regular day from Monday to Wednesday since the school year started. I’d be supportive of any activity, but cheerleading is especially well-suited to your needs.”

“How so?” I asked, surprised.

“It’s a team sport, with little to no individual achievement. It emphasizes positivity, athletics, trust and team-building. You’re someone who feels detached from almost everyone around you. You would quickly make that team your new family and work as hard for their triumphs as your own.”