Chapter Five
Braxton
On Monday morning, I awoke before dawn. Feeling restless and hungry and knowing the gym wasn’t going to open for another hour, I put on a light jacket and headed out the door.
The only thing open at this hour was a mini-mart a few blocks from my house. I walked through the darkness of a chilly spring morning past empty food trucks, boarded-up furniture warehouses, and hairdressers with large glossy pictures hanging in their windows. The whole town seemed to be sleeping.
For a few minutes, there was no noise but the steady patter of my own running shoes on the broken asphalt. And then I heard it: a loud scream, a woman’s scream, coming from a block of single-story apartments about a hundred yards behind me. It chilled me. It was the kind of scream a woman makes when her life is in danger, and she doesn’t care who knows it.
I stood there frozen, wondering if I should run toward the source of the noise, wondering if it would do any good. But she didn’t scream again, and gradually the sun began to rise over the still and empty streets.
I reached the gym a few minutes later, still feeling shaken and unsettled, to find that the doors had just opened. Coach Aardman was seated at the front desk groggily reading the morning paper, the stereo tuned to a local classical station.
“Will you look at this?” he said angrily. “The state’s decided to cut the education budget by another forty million.”
“That’s awful,” I managed to say. I didn’t particularly care about the state education budget, but he didn’t have to know that.
“It is. These clowns in the state senate have no sense of what’s important. Anytime there’s a deficit, they immediately decide to gut education spending. And then they wonder why our kids don’t know how to spell their own names.”
He slammed the paper down on the desk and motioned to a photograph of the governor. “I sometimes think the future of our nation is too important to be left in the hands of politicians. We ought to have coaches, teachers, and librarians running this place. They’d put the money where it matters. They’d make sure our kids are literate and in shape.”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Anyway.” He shook his head unhappily. “What are you doing up so early?”
“Cat woke me up again. But also, I wanted to get a few hours of training in before Carrathurs comes in tomorrow.”
I hoped it was clear from the tone of my voice that I couldn’t have been more excited about the president’s visit. I’d been up half the night pacing my room in anticipation, wishing the gym was open late so I could come in and practice.
“Oh yeah, that,” said Aardman with a dismissive roll of his eyes. “I wouldn’t hype it up too much. The amount of practicing you’ve been doing lately, you shouldn’t have any problems. It’s one of those things where you can’t prepare in a day. You’re either prepared or you’re not, and that takes weeks, months.”
“You think I’ve got a chance, then?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, as though this was obvious. “I’ve seen players who are stronger than you, but brute force only goes so far in this business. What sets you apart is that you’re dedicated, and you actually take correction. I can count on one hand the number of boys I’ve trained I can say that about. You ought to do fine.”
But I wanted more than to do fine; I wanted to shock everyone with my gifts. “I’m glad you at least have faith in me, Coach,” I said aloud.
Coach shrugged. “It’s not hard. Not with you.”
He went on drinking his coffee, and I returned to the elliptical trainer with a light heart. Coach didn’t seem even remotely worried about my chances, and that filled me with confidence. I was lucky to have just one person who believed in me; there were days when I found it hard to believe in myself.
I’d been working out for about twenty minutes when Nick came in looking half-dead from exhaustion. Taking a water bottle out of his duffel bag, he splashed some of the water over both eyes.
“You doing alright?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I will be.” I gave him a skeptical stare. “It’s just—okay, so I brought this girl home last night, and we spent a couple hours on the couch making out. I didn’t feel tired, but I must’ve crashed because I woke up at around nine pm and she was gone, and—she had stolen something that was very important to me.”
“Your wallet?”
“No. That would have been a nuisance, but I can always get a new ID.” He leaned over and in a lower voice added, “She took my grandmother’s ashes.”
“Excuse me?”
“My grandmother’s ashes were resting in a jade vase on the top of the entertainment center. And I woke up and the vase was gone, and the girl was gone, and God only knows where they went. I didn’t even get her name.”
“Are you sure you didn’t misplace them?”
“No, I didn’t misplace them,” he said in a mocking voice. “I walk by that vase every night when I come home, and it was definitely there when I brought her into the house.”
“Maybe she didn’t know the vase contained the remains of your grandmother.”
Nick nodded placidly. “That’s what the police said when I reported the theft. Maybe when we were making out her eye fell on the expensive-looking vase, and she decided she had to have it. Anyway, that’s why I’m so tired this morning. I was up at the police station half the night answering questions. They even had me draw a sketch of the girl.”
“Any luck finding her?”
“None so far. I get the feeling the police aren’t going to look too hard for an antique vase.”
“But it’s your grandmother.”
“I know! I tried to tell them that.” He let out a resigned sigh. “Mom is going to be so pissed when she finds out. She wants to drive down for a visit in a few weeks, and that’ll be the first thing she looks for. I hope she stays in Montana.”
“Sounds like a real crisis.”
I was having trouble looking appropriately solemn; it was hard not to laugh at the absurdity of the whole situation. It sounded like the opening scene of a Coen Brothers movie based on a Greek myth, one that sees Nick stumbling around Boulder, under abandoned bridges and inside crowded bars, searching for his grandmother’s ashes. But we weren’t in a movie, and Nick probably wasn’t ever going to see his vase again.
Nick blinked a few times, looking battered and world-weary. “Anyway. How are you?”
“Doing okay, I guess. A story like that really puts things in perspective.”
“Glad I could be of assistance.”
“I’ve just been practicing for our brawl tomorrow.”
“Oh, shit! Is that tomorrow?” Nick’s eyes grew wide.
“It is, and the president is going to be there, and I’m trying to get as much practice done as I can in the next thirty-six hours. Not that I think it will make any difference at this point.”
“Probably not,” said Nick. “I’m a shitty fighter, and I’m prepared to accept that.”
He went on chugging away at the Stairmaster, and I watched him for a minute, smirking. “You know you could be really good if you put some effort into it.”
“You calling me lazy?” he asked, though there was a teasing tone in his voice. “I’ll fight you.”
“No, I just think you could easily be as good as me. Maybe even better. I’m only an average player, but I excel because I’ve put a ton of hours into it.”
“That’s the mystery of ambition,” he said philosophically. “Some people have got it, and some people don’t. What motivates one person to become a great painter, while another is content just to sit around and play Halo?” I honestly don’t know.”
“I used to wonder the same thing growing up with my brothers. Marshall could teach himself any skill in under a week. He was a genius at card tricks, poker, various musical instruments, you name it…whereas Darren thought he deserved cake just for getting out of bed in the morning.”
“Getting out of bed is hard,” moaned Nick. “There ought to be cake.”
“You and Darren would probably get along.”
“Yeah, your brother Marshall sounds like kind of a prick, but I wouldn’t mind hanging with Darren.”
“Marshall is a millionaire now.”
“Of course he is. And I bet he never lets you forget it.”
“Not even for a second.” Nick returned to the Stairmaster, and we spent the next hour training in silence.