"Jimmy . . ."

"Like, is it a good place? And if it is, then its fine to like, be happy again, right? Cause then theyre happy, wherever they are."

"Ive seen a few people die in the hospital, Jimmy, and let me tell you, its neither as good or as bad as people make it out to be, it just is."

Next he calls Carla.

"h.e.l.lo?" her voice is soft, tired. He imagines her under the covers, in bed. He imagines her speaking across a pillow to him.

"You ever think about where you go when you die?"

Rustling. Maybe shes sitting up. It is a strange question, and coming from him, will just make him seem even weirder.

"I mean, just wondering," he adds.

"No, I dont think about it." Then she breathes in. "Maybe well never die. Maybe well be the first people to never die."

Jimmy laughs-shes trying to be funny, he guesses-but what she said also makes him feel so much better.

Rule 18. If Push Comes to Shove, You Do the Shoving.

Friday, March 17, 2006.

JIMMY KIRKUS, FIFTEEN YEARS OLD-ONE YEAR AND NINE MONTHS UNTIL THE WALL.

Coach Kelly loaded his team onto the bus for the annual post-season pizza party at Fultanos. "Come on, come on!" he shouted.

It was raining, and the players were p.i.s.sed off. "What we got to celebrate?" Joe Looney asked aloud. Then he tilted his head up like he was talking to G.o.d. "Huh? Why is a 7 and 13 record reason to celebrate?"

"Oh zip it," Coach Kelly said.

On their way to the bus, Ray put an arm around Jimmy. "Hey do me a favor," he said. "Grab my jacket? Its in the gym. Bottom bleacher seat."

"Sure, Ray, sure," Jimmy said, voice so low it may as well have been groundwater.

"Whats that?" Ray said, overloud. "Speak up, Freshman."

"Im going, OK?" He turned, headed back to the gym. Ray f.u.c.king Atto. Since Jimmys meltdown against Seaside, the Fishermen hadnt won another game his freshman season. He was labeled as a soft player, and his nickname came to be Jimmy Soft. He was benched, and Ray, with his slow-down, draw-fouls, ugly style of play, became the focal point of the team.

Jimmy, meanwhile, became scared of his own shadow. h.e.l.l, he was scared of the thought of his own shadow. The flash, the buzz, the glamour were long gone. Other teams, all thanks to Shooter Ackley, had him dialed in. Put a little body on the kid, whisper in his ear, and boom, he couldnt find his shot. Jimmy Kirkus wasnt so hot after all. Worst part of it all was Jimmy knew it and blamed himself. He did errands for Ray and the other uppercla.s.smen without a second thought because everything in this world seemed penance.

As Jimmy scoured the bleachers he thought about this last week of practice. Whole season down the drain and most of the other players just messing around for fun. Hed been pushing himself, though. Over-practicing, if anything. And he was doing what he thought he should do. Getting on himself for every missed shot. Yelling, throwing up his fists, cussing. And none of it helped. He was still too jittery to make even simple pa.s.ses, his shots inelegant knuckleb.a.l.l.s pitched toward the hoop. His touch was gone and now all his extra practice, all that being hard on himself, hadnt amounted to anything. Hed been benched the whole season. He was sore and slow and everything hurt, and Rays jacket was nowhere to be found. When he got back out to the parking lot, the bus was gone.

Jimmy wasnt angry at being left behind. By that point he was used to it and hed slipped into a state of mind that told him he deserved everything bad that happened to him. Half-frozen lunchroom chicken fingers, Mr. Jacksons bad breath, and the never-ending rain that soaked Columbia City at least nine months out of the year: all a direct result of him losing his basketball grace.

Jimmy was so down on himself, he didnt wonder why there was no jacket where Ray said thered be one, he just felt he had failed at finding the jacket like he failed at basketball, like he failed at life. He didnt get that it was both better and worse than that: he was just the b.u.t.t of Rays cruel joke, excluding him from the end-of-season celebration.

With nowhere else to go, Jimmy walked to Pedros house. He couldnt bear going home to his pops and Dex and the always jabbering Flying Finn. When they asked him why he wasnt at the teams pizza party hed have to tell them he was left behind. That he was so forgettable, the team didnt notice he wasnt there. Then his pops would do something embarra.s.sing in the new sloppy version of himself. Ever since the game against Seaside, the man was a stereo with a broken volume k.n.o.b. Always at ten. Hed taken up drinking again, which was the main thing, but he also didnt seem to care about what anyone else thought. Would openly glare at people in public he thought had wronged him, park his van diagonally across two, three spots at the grocery store, not shower on the days he had off-coffee on knee, eyes pinned to the gray horizon across the bay, as if something better would come out of there, but if he blinked, hed miss it forever. Tell his pops about this and the man might drive down to Fultanos and make a scene.

As Jimmy walked he slipped into what was becoming a familiar routine for him. He imagined the Seaside game going differently, his streak as basketball golden boy continuing. He imagined a scenario where he was taller, stronger, and tougher than Shooter. Pushed him around all over the court. Then, back in the locker room, in this imagined world, he smacked Ray Atto in the mouth. The idiot would start crying, ask Jimmy to let up. And then later he and Dex and Pedro would go cruising to the beach-he could drive in these fantasies-and they had girls in the van, and they had a bonfire, and someone was playing the guitar, and he could feel that exhausted, emptied but somehow also filled up feeling of hooking up with a girl again.

On the way to Pedros, Jimmy ran into the Goth crowd behind the baseball field. There was David Berg and all his freaky friends. Jimmy hadnt had much contact with David since they were little kids. It seemed David had spent the years after the Ninth Shot and the Catch seething about one thing or another. Tinkering with little computer kits, taking apart radios, blasting out speakers. He had those slightly buggy eyes you see when people who never take off their gla.s.ses finally do. A puffy, sleepy vulnerability the lenses usually sharpen. Strangely, though, David Berg had never worn gla.s.ses a day in his life, at least not as far as Jimmy remembered.

David still played sports because his dad and grandpa forced him to but between cla.s.ses or at lunch, he snuck to the corners of school where Mr. Berg would not see him and put on a different sort of uniform. Black T-shirts with silver spikes embedded in the collar, thick, black eye makeup, and inky leather chokers. f.u.c.k the jocks. A freak uniform, Jimmy heard some people call it. Even during his junior varsity games David managed to apply eye makeup in the locker room during halftime. Drove his father and grandfather crazy in the stands when he came back onto the court looking like some effeminate rock star in gym shorts. Some kids called him f.a.ggy Berg. Rumor had it that he spent his time trying to conjure the devil, listening to Swedish death metal, and huffing things out of paper sacks or loose air-conditioning tubes. To Jimmy it always seemed David was ill-fitting no matter his environment. He couldnt fully believe the hard edge, but he respected his willingness to be different.

"Hey look, its a jock," David said. Its the loudest Jimmy had heard him speak in eight years. Also, there was something strange in his voice: a giddiness that pegged him as high.

"A jock," said one of his friends.

"Never seen a specimen outside its natural habitat."

"Some sort of pygmy variety," a fake British accent, "extremely rare."

It was strange to our kid: The jocks considered him a freak, the freaks considered him a jock, and the nerds and stoners didnt seem to consider him at all. Whered that leave him? Standing here alone, facing this crowd of kids who hated him for something he couldnt even be, close to tears once again.

Then a skinny girl named Kelsey with golden eyes-almost yellow, strangely-and a cigarette hanging between her fingers that she jabbed to punctuate on everything she said, started making gorilla noises and the whole blacked-out crowd laughed and closed in. "Get it? Get it? Im doing his mating call!"

Ray Atto and Joe Looney were famous for tormenting the Goth kids-or any outcasts for that matter. Their morning routine included busting into the bathroom the Goths favored and p.i.s.sing all over the radiator. The corner of school theyd managed to carve out for themselves forever smelled of burned pee.

"Wait," Jimmy said. He wanted to tell them that hed never done anything like what Ray and Joe had done. In fact, most of the guys on the team wouldnt talk to him anymore and frequently slathered his underwear in Icy Hot. "Hey, wait." He was closer to them than they thought.

One picked up a rock and threw it at Jimmy. Then another. Mob-think. Jimmy flinched and stared at David. David stared back. Then all of them were hurling rocks. Jimmy danced back, avoiding the poorly thrown stones-maybe they should have gone to gym once in a while-but he didnt run, stayed in range. There was a heady inevitability to it he couldnt break from-wouldnt break from. The prospect of being hurt felt like something to be leaned in to. A cleansing.

"The famous Jimmy Kirkus is all alone."

"Hes Jimmy Soft now."

"Hey, yeah, Jimmy Soft."

"You think its cause he cant get it up?"

Big laughter all around. More stones, suffocating and too clouded to see through, to move past. Why didnt he run? He didnt owe it to these cigarette-stub kids to stay around and be the outlet for their closed-circuit pain. Calling him Jimmy Soft, what did they know? Still, he hesitated, the signal to flee all jangled up, the circuits gone haywire. Fight or flight and Jimmy was stuck in the limbo between.

"Um, dude," Kelsey with the almost-yellow eyes said, pointing her cigarette, "I think hes too stupid to run."

They laughed.

"Makes sense," David said. "He is a jock, after all."

"Hey, wait, just wait," Jimmy said.

If Dex had been there, hed have knocked every one of those suckers heads off-including the skinny chicks. But Jimmy was alone and didnt fight back, didnt yell; he just kept slowly backing away. He was soaked and he felt tiny. His weakness only spurred them on. Finally one of the jocks cut down to size. They caught him. Hands and feet, too many to count, pushed him, kicked him, punched him. Jimmy blocked what blows he could out of instinct, but failed to swing back. Finally he squirreled away. Ran a few yards and turned around, heaving. The Goth group fanned out. Surrounded him. They were closing in for round two.

A real dread was knotting in his chest. All the strands of his circ.u.mstance tangling bigger and bigger inside of him, taking up the s.p.a.ce usually reserved for the work of vital organs. He was still standing, still alive, but he wouldnt have guessed his heart or lungs had anything to do with it. He felt a cold trembling as even his body betrayed him. No more full breaths, but tiny sips of air instead that did nothing. He could see in their collective, pot-clouded eyes the real damage and hurt coming. He regretted not running before.

"Hey, David," he muttered. "Come on."

"Jimmy, youre an a.s.shole," David Berg shouted. He picked up a big rock, weighed it in his palm. His aim had always been good when it involved Jimmys head. Jimmy didnt turn away. Too bogged down in soreness, in sorrow. It hit him over his right eyebrow. A slow bleed. He let out a soft, high-pitched whine.

"The f.u.c.k was that?" someone said.

Mr. Berg had been clearing out the winter scrum from the baseball clubhouse when he heard the yelling. Through the back window of the dugout, he looked up and saw the group of Goths, his son among them, surrounding Jimmy. Made Mr. Berg sick to see. Then he saw his own David throw a huge rock. Looked like it landed straight on Jimmys eye.

He dropped the rake. "DAVIE!" he bellowed. He came running around the edge of the dugout, full speed up the little hill where the Goths liked to gather and fly their freak flag. They turned and saw him barreling toward them. They scattered into the woods, yelling, "f.u.c.k you, old man," confident that their number would hide whod actually shouted the words.

Jimmy also took off running when he saw Mr. Berg-up the street while the Goths ran the opposite way, melting into the trees. Berg stood on the hill, looking between Jimmy disappearing one way, David the other. David stopped at the tree line, bit his lip as he stared at his father, held out his hands, like what. Then he turned, disappeared, howling like a madman.

Berg coughed something up, spit it out, and then ran after Jimmy. He was never going to find his son in those woods anyway, and even if he did there wouldnt be four clean words out of his mouth. Respect for your elders, yet another thing he hadnt done a good job of imparting.

In the backseat of McMahans tinted-window car-because they hadnt been able to wait until the condo-Genny Mori surprised herself by coming faster than normal. She shivered with the force of it and bit his fingertip, a feeling of expanding on making her insides as big as the whole world.

"Ouch," he said in shock. He pulled his finger from her mouth, shook it in the air. She had drawn blood. They both laughed.

"Dont get blood on me," Genny Mori said, shying from his hand. "He sees blood on me, h.e.l.l know."

"It doesnt really matter, darling, he must already know."

Genny Mori pushed McMahan back. This was a big deal, a real marriage, and his casualness belittled it, piqued her dread of an eventual come-clean, knockdown, breakup, to her and Todds twenty years together. Calling her "darling." That whole scene in the parking lot with Todd, that shouting, all those people making their own guesses, it hadnt meant anything to McMahan.

He didnt know what it was like to live with a man drunk and drowning at the same time. And Todd did already know about them, Genny was sure, somewhere deep down within himself. He just didnt want to face it. What a painful sight. Suddenly he was a guy who watched daytime TV, tallboy on the knee, enraptured by decorating schemes. Then a whip around the house, some desperate mission to get rid of every expired can of food present-sure of the deadly poison each one held. A man who both she and the Flying Finn began to avoid as deftly as they avoided each other.

And then there was the simple fact of her pride: that she didnt want to be seen as a s.l.u.t, but now there it was, the whole town thought it. And still, it was a joke to McMahan. His wife was clueless, they were going on vacation to Mexico in a month, and here she was simmering in the looks being poured on her wherever she went. What they were doing, the wrongness of it, was on both of them, so how come she was the only one to carry water for it? She didnt think of herself as stupid, and yet, how come she hadnt seen this coming? "Get off," she said.

"What the-?"

She hit him on the chest, tried for his face but he barred her arm. Those beautiful eyes of his awash in a terror like hed just got in too deep. She loved his fear of her hinted-at craziness. She played it up, huffing little whelps, scratching his forearm. He couldnt skate over this so easy, she needed to implicate him.

"Genny, Genny, what is this?" he asked.

She stormed from the car, all disheveled and nowhere near decent. Shirt half undone, hair all sticking out, reaching forth, itching, daring, to tell whoever saw her of what shed been doing in the back of the car.

He rolled down the window, stuck his head out, and pleaded with her. "Come on, wherere you going? Come back."

And maybe she would, eventually. Shed stick his bleeding finger in her mouth, taste the metallic shades of him, and theyd ramp up for round two. For now though she was stamping across the deserted parking lot, kicking through puddles, not caring about her shoes.

At the same time, back in the Kirkus house, Dex doodled on his homework. He drew pictures of what it would be like when he got to high school. Hed be seven feet tall by then, he was sure, and hed clog up the middle so tight his bro could create a different kind of atmosphere out there past the three-point line. Dropping in antigravity shots, hoop as big as the ocean.

Splish, splash.

Jimmyd be happy then. Dex was sure of it.

Dex squeezed his pencil too hard and it broke. It drove a piece of splintered pencil wood into his thumb. He squeezed his thumb so that it bled more freely. It dripped onto the drawing. It covered up the head of the seven-foot version of himself. He started to weep.

Then he heard his pops come into the room. "Whats the matter, for G.o.ds sake?"

The Flying Finn glided his bike around and around the high school track. His friend Ralphi was yelling at him. He went faster and faster until his lungs felt like they were going to burst. On the back stretch of the track he could see the river, coursing as always, about fifty feet away from eating Columbia City High whole.

He decided to do one more loop and pumped his legs harder. Best shape of his life and he was pushing sixty. He was a neon spandex blur. Faster and faster. On the back turn, just before he was going to see the river again, something in the steering column caught. He couldnt turn. He ran off the track and crashed his bike into the woods. The same woods that Jimmy would later wander. The Flying Finn was buried in bushes, yelling every cuss he knew. "G.o.d-darned ghosts and b.i.t.c.hes!"

"You idiot Finn!" Ralphi shouted.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d Swede!" the Flying Finn called back.

Coach Kelly leaned back in the fake leather bus seats and sighed. He was full to bursting with pizza and cola. Jimmy had skipped out on the pizza party, and that relaxed him. First time since that game against Seaside he felt totally at ease with his team. That kid just didnt want basketball bad enough when it counted. In practice, running lines or working on his form, he was all effort. Anything resembling a game though, and the kid froze up. In baseball they called it the yips. In basketball they may as well call it the jimmies. Hed always known there was something off in the kid. A little too quiet for his liking. Good riddance.

Coach Kelly joined in on a verse of the team song. "Send the seniors out for beer and dont let the sober FRESHMAN near!"

Todd "Freight Train" Kirkus sat on a stump in his backyard. Hed just walked in on his youngest son crying like a girl and bleeding on his homework. What the h.e.l.l? The whole universe was inside his belly, wanting to be filled. Or drowned. He was drinking beer. Drinking the beer killed the hangover. They used to call it hair of the dog back in the day when he was still tipping it up.

He threw the empty can out across the lawn, some small amount of unaccounted for beer spewing out of it. His life was all these loose ends and what could be done to tie them all together, where could he start? The relationship with the woman he partially blamed for his flameout was a disaster. Even if Genny Mori hadnt admitted to cheating on him with the Doc, he knew something was up. He knew he hadnt acted right, but when he had worked toward an apology, shed turned it on him. My dad used to like to yell at me too? d.a.m.n. Gum on the shoe. Low-down and getting lower.

She had been nicer to him these last couple months. Nicer, but chaste. A pat on the shoulder, his laundry folded, a dinner packed for his night shift. Nice in a way meant to convey distance. Duty done, obligation fulfilled, suspicion squashed. And him along with it.

Jimmy showed up at Pedros house with blood leaking down from the cut above his eye, heaving and out of breath.

"The f.u.c.k happen to you?" Pedro asked.

"Nothing . . ." Jimmy huffed.

"Someone get you?"

"Just nothing, OK?"

"You got that pizza party?"

He studied Pedros greasy face. He didnt want to tell him about the run-in with the Goths. Pedro had started b.u.mming cigarettes from them at lunch. Was making in-roads. Jimmy couldnt be sure how hed respond. "f.u.c.k basketball."