Page 74 of Demon Copperhead

This was legitimate, not using. With all the blood pumping through my heart, I believed that, and vowed as much to Coach. I would follow doctor’s orders to the T, and he’d let me play.

The next Friday was to be no such walkover.

Riverheads, away. I got serious in the weight room.

I was okay on upper body, but weighted front squats, nope.

Even still, I would not let down my men.

Or the school, Christ. My first day back, walking into the lunchroom: heads turn, trays clatter, everybody stands up clapping.

Lunch ladies in hairnets are clapping. Most of me is thinking: They don’t know me.

Free lunch kid. But one other small part of me is thinking: I have killed myself for this.

So I took my meds. And played like a guy on meds, slow on the uptake.

Coach didn’t say anything, but he saw, and directed the play towards faster legs and less buttered fingers.

That hurt me more than my leg, honestly.

I tried cutting back, less butter on the bread.

Just a hair, stretching to five or six hours on the Lortabs or the Percocets, a day and a half on the oxys.

I was supposed to alternate or sometimes double up, as per written instructions.

Doc had me well doped for practice, tapering off for game nights, giving me some of my marbles back to play with.

Counting on me to play through the pain.

Lord, I did. Hard enough to tear up whatever that knee had left to its name.

Pain wasn’t even the main event anymore, I was numb some way, enough to try easing back on the meds.

But if I stretched it out too far, especially between oxys, I’d wind up feeling tackled before I even dressed out.

Bone ache, gut ache, puking in the locker-room head.

And worse things, hard to discuss. I was shitting myself.

This would come on hard and fast, chills and shakes and everything inside turned full-blast to running water.

Which is so weird, because for the most part oxy constipates you like a motherfucker.

Till you’re in withdrawals, and it doesn’t.

So far I’d only gotten the runs at the house, before I left for practice.

Scary as hell though. I might get them just from worrying about it.

Homecoming was coming up. Not just the game, which is a big scramble anyway of mud, grass stains, piss, guys peeing in cups or towels or behind the benches, sorry if you didn’t already know that.

I was thinking more of the halftime thing, homecoming court.

Parading around the field with a girl on my arm in front of the entire Friday-night congregation. Home game, obviously. White uniforms.

I went back to taking the oxys on the clock.

Homecoming was a whole ridiculous thing.

Yes, I would be crowned. So it was a lot of pressure as regards asking a date: the queen is mandatory.

Girls laid it on thick. Food left in my locker, cookies, fine all that.

But then came photos. Pouty lips and stiff nipples, thumb hooked in the unzipped jeans, and all I could think was: Who the hell took this picture?

You’re halfway there already, go to homecoming with them.

Maybe I’m a fool. But I liked the idea of starting from the top of the chase scene, not jumping in last second before the vehicle explodes.

My locker was easy to access. Angus, Maggot, various teammates and weed connections all had the combination, for practical purposes.

So if these valentines turned up anonymous, which most did not, I only had to ask around.

Sorry to say, I didn’t. Just not that into it.

Who was into it was Turp Trussell. He had the locker beside mine and scored a lot of free snacks, since I didn’t feel right eating the cookies of a girl I wasn’t going to ask out.

I don’t like owing anybody. Turp felt by the same line of reason, he should take possession of the photos. But I drew the line.

Then comes the day where Turp is waiting by my locker like a big red balloon fixing to pop.

Kid was blessed with the pimply, boiled-meat type skin that gives you nowhere to hide.

He’s dying here, busting a gut, saying “Open it, man! Open it!” Like it’s my damn birthday.

He saw something go in, obviously. I felt like telling him to take it, whatever it is, just eat it.

But now I was curious. Scrolled the lock, opened, and saw no cookies.

No envelope with girl writing. Just a black scrap of something thrown in haste, hooked on the wire of a spiral notebook.

I took a second to untwine it, and then I about shit.

Underwear. A thong. I’d not ever seen one of those without the person inside.

Nothing to it, lacy front, absentee the rest. Meanwhile Turp is doing something halfway between end-zone dance and asthma attack, like he’s not seen panties before, or no, evidently because he has.

He keeps asking me if the safety seal is broken.

“Do what?”

We’ve got an audience now, watching Demon being a full fledge idiot. What Turp is asking me is: Clean, or did she wear them first? How the hell I’m supposed to know this, no idea. He snatches them from me, all scornful. “Dude,” he says. “Inhale!”

He pushes the crotch onto my face, and I get it. Full pussy, right between the eyes. And after this I’m supposed to go learn civics. The back of my locker is lipstick-signed, this is Vicki Strout. From that day forward to be known as Scratch-n-Sniff.

I feel bad for Vicki. This was a gamble on her part.

To this very day, her kids’ nasty little friends might be calling her Scratch-n-Sniff behind her back, and that’s on me.

If these ladies had caught me sooner, I would have been the dog on the bone.

But now I was wrecked for anything but the best. If I went to homecoming at all, I’d have one queen only. Not Vicki Strout.

And I didn’t even have the guts to call her. Because I knew about life. As long as you haven’t yet asked, you can still have another day with some answer in your head other than “Go fuck yourself.” So it happened the way it probably had to. Dori came to me.

This was a Monday. I’d been laying low at home a lot, which maybe she knew from asking around.

I was in bed, trying to go over plays in my head, winding up someplace between sleep, not sleep, Dori dream lap dance.

Not that it was all sexual thoughts, you don’t just bang a fairy nymph.

Or if yes, I’d not seen that particular manga.

Anyway I was dead spooked to roll over and see her looking at me from the doorway.

Zoo wee mama, standing there on her lace-up sandal feet like she’d flown in on my brain waves.

“Hey,” she said. That deep, running-water voice.

I sat up too fast, bunched the sheets around for adequate coverage. Shit. “Hey,” I said. “Where do you know me, I mean. Where I live?” Shitshitshitshit.

“How many other Coach Winfield mansions do you think I tried, before this one?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Weird time to be asleep. They’ve got me on stuff that kind of licks me.”

She came around the end of the bed to where all my crap was on the night table.

Picked up the pill bottles one by one and checked the labels.

Then sat down on the bed facing me, with one knee and foot hitched up, the other leg dangling.

Not really dressed for winter, it must have been warm out.

She had little silver rings on two of her toes. “So. How bad are you broken?”

“Most of me still works. The rest I reckon will come around.”

She grinned at me. Lord, that face, like scoops of vanilla, all rounded cheeks and creamy skin.

Little pixie nose. Shiny eyes, like the black middle had swallowed the rest. Her pink dress was made of something soft, a second skin, with a low, round neck smiling at me above the double scoop of her tits.

I was afraid of crying if I couldn’t touch her.

“I brought you something.” She slipped the strap of her purse off her shoulder.

“You needn’t to have.”

“Oh, I did. You have no idea. It was life and death.”

I felt cottony in the mouth and brain as I sorted through my many regrets. I’d gotten lazy about showers: that was one among the many. Her dark eyes were shimmying with a question.

“What? Am I supposed to guess?”

“You’d never.”

“But if I do,” I said. “I get to ask you out.”

Help me Jesus, her smile. A tiny dent in each cheek, and her bottom lip held out a little way out from her teeth, like the juiciest smile possible. Inviting you in.

I rifled the messy mental locker. Not underwear, surely. “Is it something I need?”

“Definitely not.” She looked tickled. The dangling foot bounced.

“Okay. So not a forty of Mickey’s or my geometry homework.”

She shook her head, solemn as church.

“Am I getting close though?”

“Very.”

“A jar of pickled eggs. No, wait. A Furby.”

Her laugh bubbled up. Like a glove box popping open and candy spilling out. I said a bunch more ridiculous things, just to watch that happen. Finally she gave me a hint.

“It’s the one thing I knew you’d love. Because you told me.”

No clue. I’d barely talked to her before this, in actual life.

“That time we first met at the feed store,” she teased. “‘Cute as buttons’ . . .”

“Oh shit. No way you remembered that. Baby chickens?”

She reached in her purse and pulled out a pink Tampax box.

The second she opened it the little guy started peeping.

I took it from her, surprised by the strong little claws digging in.

This one had real feathers, not like the day-old fuzzballs I’d handled at the store, both living and dead.

I tried to calm him down, petting his walnut head.

Dori watched us with that juicy smile. The foot still bouncing. Some part of her was always moving.

“Where’d you get it?”

“Where do you think?”