One Shot Away Read online

“You got Armbrewster.” Pancakes shrugs. “I saw him lose once when he was in the fourth grade. So, it can be done.” Pancakes cracks himself up.

  “He looks bigger,” says Trevor.

  “He is. Last year, he wrestled one-sixty.”

  “Okay, Crow, show us what you got,” shouts Greco.

  Trevor reaches for his toes, stretching one last time, then jogs through his teammates’ clap tunnel. “Crow, Crow, Crow,” they chant.

  On the mat, he skips in place like Jimmy had done. The crowd is quiet. Armbrewster jogs onto the mat. Trevor pictures him at weigh-ins towering over the other wrestlers. Trevor needs to stop thinking, needs to relax. His heart pounds.

  “Feed him to the lions,” yells someone from the other team.

  “A stack of bricks,” yells Jimmy. “You’re a stack of bricks!”

  The referee signals them to the line. The whistle blares. Trevor circles, then shoots under Armbrewster’s arms toward his legs, but instead of clasping the legs, Trevor remembers the Fireman’s carry and seizes Armbrewster’s arm with one hand and thrusts his hand between Armbrewster’s legs. Trevor drops to his knees and throws Armbrewster over his shoulder to his back. It’s quick, and Trevor can’t believe it worked. Suddenly he’s in pinning position, chest on chest, with Armbrewster struggling, arching. Trevor locks his arms around Armbrewster’s neck and squeezes.

  Armbrewster struggles, arches high with his head and feet on the mat. Trevor hangs on with his bicep crushing Armbrewster’s face. Trevor’s not letting go. He’s riding a wild animal, but he’s got him. Armbrewster is pushing himself out of bounds. Trevor sees the line and tightens his grip around Armbrewster’s arm and neck.

  Armbrewster flips and hurls Trevor almost to the center of the mat. The power is shocking. Trevor hangs on, but now he’s on his back with Armbrewster crushing him! Trevor struggles, rocking his shoulders. Armbrewster’s rough beard scratches Trevor’s forehead. Armbrewster’s stale breath is in Trevor’s nostrils. Armbrewster powers down for a pin.

  Everyone is cheering. The Minute Men leap in the air screaming. Trevor can’t arch, can’t move. He glances to the clock, thirty seconds left.

  Then, it’s over. Pinned. Armbrewster runs to the side of the mat for high fives from his team. Trevor rises slowly. He stumbles off the mat in half a daze.

  Trevor

  THE LATE BUS LETS TREVOR OFF AT THE SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY, past the motel’s sign, blazing with new light bulbs. He carries his wrestling bag and books into the parking lot. His room door is wide-open. He enters and tosses his stuff onto the old trunk. His mother and London are looking at a hole, about six inches wide, scratched through the sheetrock wall. Chewed plaster lies on the carpet.

  “You’re going to have to train your dog,” says London sternly. “I’m planning to sell this place someday, and I’m working on a margin, a thin margin. You get what I’m saying?”

  Trevor ignores him and turns to his mother. “What are you doing in here and where’s Whizzer?”

  She frowns.

  “You see this?” London moves the drapes off the windowsill. “The molding is gnawed. Who’s going to fix this? Me, that’s who.”

  “You just come into my room, uninvited?” asks Trevor.

  “Trevor, I opened the door,” explains his mother. “Whizzer was barking.”

  Trevor glances toward the courtyard. “Where is he?”

  “If he can’t be in this room unsupervised, then he’ll have to be outside.” London drops the drapes.

  “What did you do with him?” demands Trevor.

  “He’s fine,” says his mother.

  “Where is he?” Frustration rises into his throat.

  “In the lot, out back,” says London. “Tied up.”

  Trevor runs down an alleyway to an empty asphalt field dotted with stiff straw-colored weeds and broken glass. He looks toward the road and the streaming headlights. Whizzer is chained to a fence post at the corner of the building. He stands alert, attentive, straining on his chain as if hoping someone will take him home. Trevor unhooks the chain from his leather collar. He carries his puppy back toward his room. Whizzer licks his face. His nose is ice cold.

  Trevor pushes the door open. “I don’t want him chained like that!”

  “He was perfectly fine,” says London. “Dogs like fresh air.”

  “You’re full of it,” says Trevor.

  “He’s half Lab,” says London. “He doesn’t mind the cold. Feel his coat.” London tries to touch Whizzer.

  Trevor stiffens and backs away.

  “You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” says London.

  “Maybe I am,” he says. “But you gave him to me. He’s mine, and I don’t want him chained outside.”

  “Trevor,” says his mother. “Harry didn’t mean any harm.”

  “Mom, can’t you for once take my side?”

  “I can’t have him ripping this room apart,” says London. “And your mother can’t be in here all day.”

  Trevor wants to scream. He sits on his bed and raises his eyes to the rusted exposed pipes. Whizzer continues to lick his neck and face.

  London puts his hand on Trevor’s shoulder.

  “Get off me.” Trevor shrugs him off.

  “You’re not going to wake up one day and discover Whizzer knows how to do everything,” says London. “It won’t happen. Dogs don’t work like people.” He looks around his room until his eyes settle on a puddle of pee that missed the newspapers spread on the floor.

  “I’ll clean that up,” says Trevor.

  “Let me show you something.” He snatches Whizzer by the neck. Whizzer’s nails scrape on the peel-and-stick tile. London presses Whizzer’s nose into the urine. “No!” he shouts.

  “Harry, that’s enough,” says Camille.

  “I’m showing Trevor something. If a puppy wets off the paper, you’ve got to rub his nose in it, otherwise he thinks my motel is his toilet.”

  “Just keep your hands off him.” Trevor pushes London and seizes Whizzer by the neck, snatching him from London. They lock eyes. Trevor’s heart somersaults in his chest.

  “That’s enough,” shouts Camille. “Enough.”

  “Dogs are animals, that’s all I was trying to teach the boy.” London’s face is red and he’s huffing.

  “Leave.” Trevor holds Whizzer tightly. “You too, Mom.”

  “I can’t have him pissing and ripping apart my motel!”

  “Come on, Harry, that’s enough for tonight,” says Camille. “Whizzer is a smart dog, he’ll learn.” She takes his arm and they step out of the room.

  Trevor closes the door. He looks around his jail cell, his own personal rat-hole motel room. He wants to punch the wall.

  Diggy

  RICKY O’SHEA IS PERCHED ON THE CONSOLE, BETWEEN THE front seats of the minivan, bouncing like a bag of groceries. Diggy’s sitting in a captain’s chair in the back seat. Jimmy’s kneeling on the floor. Trevor Crow is in the other seat, with Little Gino on his lap. Bones is squished in the rear compartment under the hatch. Jimmy’s father is driving like a nut, frogging lanes, riding every car’s ass. Jimmy’s mother has one hand on the dashboard and the other across Ricky.

  “The early bird special is over at five-thirty and it’s five-twenty,” says Mr. O’Shea. “I’m not paying eleven bucks for chicken parm.” He presses the gas. “Not for these savages.”

  “If we have an accident on the way there, we’re not going to eat anything,” says Mrs. O’Shea. Steadying his phone, Diggy reads another text message from Jane. In the past hour, she’s sent him six texts. He didn’t text back. He presses through them:

  Text 1: Dig where r u? want to hang tonight? i get off at 8:30

  Text 2: movies then TGIFs

  Text 3: TGIFs has ½ priced appetizers tonight

  Text 4: u alright

  Text 5: do u want me to call u at home

  Text 6: if u don’t want to go to the movies, tell me

  The movies on a Saturday night?
Every dating couple in the high school will be there. People will be looking at her face. He’s not ready to go public yet. He likes her, yet when he’s with her, he feels messed up, buzzed, and weird, all at the same time.

  Every evening for the past week, Diggy stopped at Jane’s apartment after practice. He told his mother he was doing a class project. They played backgammon or rummy in the front room with the television on MTV. They made out and joked around while her sister did homework at the kitchen table and her mother drank white wine and talked on the phone. Jane made fat-free microwave popcorn and cut celery and carrot sticks for him. In her room, they kissed and did some serious DH-ing—that’s what she calls dry humping. Then, it happened. They had their clothes off and they went all the way. After, he was lying next to her covered in sweat, thinking this is what it’s supposed to be like.

  “Jimmy, where are we going, anyway?” asks Diggy.

  “The Naples.”

  “For real?” asks Diggy.

  “What’s the matter, you don’t want to see Jane?” says Gino.

  “Jane the Stain, yo,” yucks Bones. Everyone cracks up.

  Diggy reaches over the seat and punches Bones in the head. Bones puts Diggy in a chokehold.

  “Now stop it!” yells Mrs. O’Shea.

  Diggy wonders what it would be like to have Jimmy’s mother. As far as moms go, Mrs. O’Shea is the double bomb. So cool and real. No makeup. No beauty parlor hairdo. No maids necessary. Not like his mother. She never leaves her bedroom without two layers of lipstick and a mushroom cloud of hairspray around her head.

  “Hold on, I’m hanging a U-ee!” Mr. O’Shea makes a u-turn, sending all of them into a heap. The car swerves. A driver, eyes popping, whizzes by, flipping the bird. Everyone is laughing. Diggy extracts Jimmy’s bony shoulder from his side. Finally Mr. O’Shea straightens the car and hangs a quick left into the Patriot Shopping Center.

  “Artie, what the hell do you call that?” yells Mrs. O’Shea.

  Naples Pizza is slotted between the Protein Punch Juice Bar and the Sew Clean Laundry. Diggy stares at the red curtains and the menu scrawled on the window, wishing he’d stayed home. They’ve come here to celebrate Jimmy’s birthday. What’s the big deal? He’s eighteen, can’t drink legally, doesn’t have a car, and probably will be pumping Regular at the Shell across the street in a year. Diggy will be eighteen on January 8th. Elvis’s birthday. Nixon’s birthday. One drug addict. One liar.

  Everyone piles from the car like clowns in a circus. Mr. O’Shea leads the pack across the parking lot.

  The place is practically empty, except for Roxanne, who must have parked behind the restaurant so she wouldn’t ruin the surprise. She’s wearing Jimmy’s varsity jacket, all hyped up, shrieking like an eight-year-old at her first sleep over. She holds a gift bag over her wrist, the ones with the little nylon rope handles. “Omigod! Are you surprised? Are you?” she asks. Jimmy plays along, acting astonished by shaking his head. They touch lips and hold hands. The thing Diggy hates about Roxanne is she’s too cute. She’s like a stuffed poodle you win on the boardwalk. All bright and perfect.

  Jane’s clearing dishes from a table. She wears a short top, hip-hugger blue jeans, and an unbuttoned red waitress jacket. Roxanne and the guys follow Jimmy’s parents past the counter toward the rear dining room. Tables are set with tablecloths, red napkins, and vases with cloth flowers.

  Diggy meets Jane’s eye. Her smile spreads across the room. She winds through everyone and gives him a hug. “Diggy! I don’t believe this. What are you doing here? I texted you like five times in the past hour.” She kisses him on the lips.

  He’s like a ventriloquist’s dummy without a hand up its ass, dead and playing dumb. He neither kisses her back, nor pulls away.

  She backs off. “What’s wrong?”

  Jimmy, Trevor, Bones, and Gino wait with their jaws dropped open. Diggy knows he owes Jane. He was with Jane last night, all over her, and he wants to continue being with her. He’s trapped. He raises his palms to the guys as if to show them he’s not hiding anything and remembers a line he’s heard Randy say. “Must be my new cologne.” He grins like he’s too cool.

  Confused, her eyes go from Diggy’s grin to Little Gino’s, Bones’s, Jimmy’s, and Trevor’s. Splotches of pink appear on her checks and her birthmark deepens. They are all waiting for her to slap his face or curse him out. She grabs a stack of stiff menus and heads to the back of the restaurant with Jimmy’s parents following.

  “What’s up with that?” asks Jimmy.

  “Nothing.” Diggy cracks his neck, one side to the other.

  “That’s not nothing,” says Jimmy.

  “Come on, what’s up with that, yo?” Bones shoves him. “You must be hitting that butter face.”

  Diggy stiffens at the description and draws in a breath. “No, she just likes me.”

  “I’m talking to the Dig Master General,” says Bones. “You’re telling me she lip-locks you like you just got back from the war, and she just likes you?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” He grins, hoping to end it.

  “Jimmy, do you get this?” asks Bones. “He’s got to be doing her.”

  “That was some kiss,” says Trevor.

  “Yo, Chief Sitting Bullshit, butt out,” snaps Diggy. “Your dog face never had a first kiss.”

  “Chief?” asks Trevor. “I told you about that.” He pushes Diggy in the chest. Diggy could knee him in the balls, but takes it. He’s not going to throw down here at Jimmy’s party.

  “Trevor, cool it,” says Jimmy. “Everyone, cool it.”

  Diggy follows the guys to the table. Stone-faced, Jane flings the menus at the wrestlers, then strides through the swinging kitchen doors. Mrs. O’Shea plops her leather pocketbook on the table.

  Mr. O’Shea removes his jacket, revealing a “Molly Pitcher Raceway” T-shirt with a dragster kicking up dust across his chest. He leans in next to Diggy. “I’ve got to give you credit,” he says in a whisper. “When I was your age, all I wanted was the prom queen type, and I never got any.”

  “I’m not dating her,” Diggy exclaims. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, hooking up or whatever you call it.”

  “Mr. O’Shea, with all due respect for you and everything, don’t assume that about her, okay? Because it’s not true.”

  Trevor has taken off his denim jacket. All he’s wearing is a black wifebeater. In December! What a first-class jerk. He’s beyond pathetic.

  “Trevor, you’re as big as the Hulk,” says Mrs. O’Shea.

  Diggy has to admit, Trevor is jacked to the max.

  “Green teeth and all,” says Jimmy. They laugh.

  Mr. O’Shea grabs Jimmy around the neck. “When I was eighteen, my father took me to a bar.”

  “And they had no trouble finding one,” says Mrs. O’Shea.

  Mr. O’Shea kisses her neck. She grabs his face, moves it away, then she kisses him on the mouth. Ricky sticks his finger in his mouth as if he’s going to barf. But Diggy thinks it’s kinda sweet. Last time he knew his parents touched was when they conceived him.

  Diggy doesn’t bother following the conversation. He’s too busy watching for Jane, waiting for some eye contact. He owes her an apology. Yet he’s not at all ready to announce that they hooked up.

  Jane comes to the table holding her pen and order pad. “Technically, I’m not supposed to offer the special in its last fifteen minutes. And Trevor, technically, you’re supposed to have on a shirt with sleeves.”

  “He’s got to show off his muscles.” Jimmy punches Trevor in the arm.

  “But I’ll let it slide,” says Jane.

  Mr. O’Shea has his paper bag on the floor beneath his chair. He rummages around it and removes a can of beer, then a wine cooler for the Mrs.

  The Early Bird has three choices: chicken parm, shrimp parm, and spaghetti and meatball; in parenthesis it says “one meatball.” Everyone goes for the chicken parm without the cheese, except for Ro
xanne. She orders the house salad that’s not one of the specials and doesn’t come with a soda.

  Jane scribbles all of this on her pad.

  “And garlic knots.” Mr. O’Shea smiles. “How’s that sound?”

  Everyone groans. “What are they,” asks Bones, “a billion calories each?”

  Jane raises a menu to her face and mouths “bastard” to Diggy, then goes to the kitchen.

  “I’d like to make a toast,” says Roxanne. “To Jimmy.” They raise their glasses. “To the sweetest guy. Happy Birthday.”

  What a suck-ass toast. Diggy can’t imagine Jane saying anything that lame. Everyone touches glasses.

  Jimmy opens Roxanne’s gift bag and pulls out a tiny teddy bear wearing a red wrestling singlet and headgear. Mrs. O’Shea goes on about it being “so, so cute.” Diggy thinks it’s about the stupidest gift he’s ever seen.

  “The team is going to have a good year,” says Mr. O’Shea. “All we need is Trevor at one-seventy.” Everyone’s eyes go to Trevor.

  “Don’t look at me,” he says. “You saw what happened to me at one-seventy.”

  “But that’s all that’s open,” says Diggy.

  “It’s too heavy. I was one-fifty-two this morning.”

  “You had Richie Armbrewster on his back, didn’t you?” asks Diggy.

  “I can make one-fifty-two without trying and you’re starving yourself. There’s something wrong with this picture.” Trevor looks around the table. “Besides, my chances are a lot better at one-fifty-two.”

  “Are you saying you’re going wrestle me off?” asks Diggy.

  “Are you saying that, yo?” Bones leans forward.

  “Hey, come on,” says Mrs. O’Shea. “Easy, let’s leave it for the coach.” She puts her hand on Trevor’s bare shoulder. “He’s not saying that.”

  “Well, then what is he saying?” Diggy wants an answer, now, in front of everyone. “Trevor, you couldn’t even make varsity last year. You get lucky with that fireman’s carry and now you’re talking smack about taking my spot.” Diggy wants some support. The guys nod at him.

  “It’s like a brotherhood respect thing,” says Bones. “Diggy wrestled varsity at one-fifty-two last year. Right, yo?”