Our guy could have hit that. I would have hit that!
A stutter-step to the left—that’s what I would have done. Juke out the linebacker, and … gone! My shoulders shimmy as I make the imaginary cuts in my head.
I see it now. I was a player!
Correction: I am a player. And as I picture it, the image of the headless teddy bear starts to fade.
After all, it’s just a stuffed toy. Helene is perfectly happy now. No harm, no foul.
I’ll bet she’s forgotten it ever happened.
After the scrimmage, I head down to the locker room to get some player interviews. I arrive just in time to see Aaron slamming the heavy metal door in Hugo’s face. He staggers backward straight into me, and lets out a whoop of shock.
“Take it easy, Hugo,” I tell him. “It’s just me.”
“Hi, Chase,” he manages, his voice faltering. “I’m trying to shoot some footage of the team.” He hefts his own flip-cam.
“I thought Ms. DeLeo put me on that,” I tell him.
“Oh, sure, totally,” he says quickly. “We were just afraid you might, you know, forget.”
“What do you mean, forget?” I ask, a little annoyed.
He retreats a step, blushing and looking plenty worried. “N-n-no offense,” he stammers.
Before I can reply, the door opens and there’s Bear.
“I told you it was his voice!” he shouts. He hauls me inside, shutting Hugo out again.
“Hugo’s with me,” I protest.
“Ha—good one!” Bear laughs.
“Seriously. We’re covering the Hurricanes for the video yearbook.”
So Hugo gets in with me. He’s grateful, but it doesn’t make him very happy. He acts like he’s tiptoeing around a minefield.
I get some high fives, but the team’s not in the best spirits. After all, they just got steamrolled. And when it sinks in that I’m there as a reporter, and not to give them the good news that I’ve been cleared to play, they can’t hide their disappointment.
“Well, I can’t see anything wrong with you,” Joey complains. “You’re not even in that sling anymore.”
I get it. Joey laid an egg at quarterback today. A good running game would take a lot of pressure off him.
“It’s the concussion,” I try to explain. “The doctor wants me to be really careful.”
Landon Rubio—the kid with the giant neck I saw on the first day—glances dubiously from Hugo to me. “So you have to miss a few games. But what gives with him?”
Hugo attempts to point his camera and is beaten back by a hail of dirty sweat socks.
I bristle. “The video yearbook is doing a segment on every sports team including golf and badminton. So when you’re not in it, don’t come crying to us.”
“Yearbook?” Joey echoes. “Bad enough you’re off the team. Now you’re on yearbook staff?”
“Video yearbook,” Hugo amends.
A snapping towel nearly takes his ear off.
“Guys—chill out!” Aaron steps between the other players and Hugo and me. “It isn’t our boy’s fault his doctor’s a wuss! Cut him some slack!”
“That doesn’t explain why he’s running around with the video losers,” Landon challenges.
“He’s not running around with anybody,” Aaron explains reasonably. “He’s covering the Hurricanes, man, making sure we look good in that yearbook thing. That’s how he’s helping the team while he’s on the sidelines.”
“Yeah, Rubio,” snorts Bear. “If I had a face like yours, I’d appreciate anyone who could make me look good. So shut up.”
I jump in as peacemaker. “Believe me, guys—I’ll be back as soon as I get the word from my doctor.”
This makes the team happy, I can tell. Hugo shoots me a strange look, but how can I expect him to understand? He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who plays sports—except maybe in video games.
Joey chucks a ball my way. I watch, almost as a spectator, as my hands reach out and snatch it from the air. Reaction time: A-OK.
It feels good—like I’m back to an old self amnesia couldn’t quite rob me of.
We do a few interviews. The guys are chatty with me, hamming it up for the camera like I’m running a selfie service. Hugo gets mostly one-word answers. When I notice, he mumbles that we can fix it in editing. I don’t see how any amount of editing can fix: Q: What are your thoughts for the upcoming season? A: Good.
Then again, I’m just the newbie nobody even trusts to show up for my first video club assignment.
When we’re done, Hugo can’t get out of there fast enough. This is hostile territory for him. But me? I feel like I’m home.
“Well, I’d love to talk your ear off about my road to NFL glory,” Aaron drawls, “but Bear and I have to go water some old people.”
“Wait—I’m going with you,” I tell them.
They stare at me like I’ve just announced that I’m flying to Jupiter.
“Dude, you don’t have to go,” Aaron reminds me. “They cut you loose because you got hurt.”
“It’ll be—fun.” That falls flat, so I try again. “We’re teammates, right? You go, I go.”
Bear’s eyes narrow. “Exactly how much do you remember about the Graybeard Motel?”
“Nothing,” I reply honestly.
He grins. “If you want to go there when you don’t have to, you didn’t just scramble your brains. You knocked them out completely!”
“Come on, how bad can it be?” I’m semi-joking, but those two are so stone-faced that I start to wonder, Yikes, what is this place—Frankenstein’s lab?
“Your call,” Aaron says. “It’ll be good to have you back with us—even if you’re nuts.”
The Portland Street Assisted Living Residence is about a ten-minute walk from school. I know I was on community service here before, but the place is brand-new to me. It’s a boring three-story building with a wide circular drive and a broad landscaped front dotted with benches and outdoor picnic tables. There are several elderly people outside, enjoying the warm weather. A couple of them wave and call out greetings to us. I wave back. Aaron and Bear ignore them.
As the main door slides open in front of us, Bear mumbles, “Hold your breath.”
It’s an odd combination of two smells that don’t mix—fresh flowers and hospital-like antiseptic. Not great, but you get used to it in a hurry.
We report to Nurse Duncan, who’s the head nurse on duty. She’s surprised to see me.
“I got better,” I tell her. “So I figured I should finish off my community service.”
“The court told you that?” she asks dubiously.
I shake my head. “I came up with it on my own.”
“We don’t believe it either,” Aaron jokes with mock solemnity.
“That’s very—noble,” Nurse Duncan says. “Well, I’ve got you boys on the snack cart today. It doesn’t normally take three, but we’ll give Chase a soft job on his first day back.”
We get a rolling cart laden with juice boxes, cookies, crackers, and free newspapers. By the time we get off the elevator on the third floor, Aaron and Bear have helped themselves to half the merchandise.
“Believe me, they have more Oreos than these mummies could ever gum down,” Aaron says when I look disapproving. “And, I assure you, oh perfect one—you’ve sampled plenty of cookies off this cart.”
I reach back for a snack-jacking memory, but come up empty. I’ll have to take his word for it.
Bear tears open a bag and dumps a small pile of gingersnaps into my hand. I take a tiny bite, glaring at my partners in crime, who are chowing down in a blizzard of wrappers and crumbs.
“We played a football game this morning,” Bear reminds me. “You work up an appetite. Not everybody’s too delicate, like you.”
“I guess I’m not too delicate to bend over and pick up your garbage,” I snap back. I might be getting the hang of being friends with these two.
We go door-to-door, offering the resident
s snacks and papers. When I was in the hospital, all the staff and volunteers who came into my room were really nice and friendly. Well, Aaron and Bear are the opposite of that. Aaron’s the polite one. He flings the door wide and barks, “Snack cart!” This is followed by a “What do you want?” from Bear.
They call all the men Dumbledore and all the women Dumbledora and respond to any questions with a combination of shrugs and grunts. When I can’t stand it anymore, I ask what I can do for everybody, and usually end up adjusting bed heights, searching for lost TV remotes, and occasionally calling nurses.
“You’re slowing us down, man,” Aaron complains. “At this rate, we’ll never blow this Geritol stand.”
“Quiet!” I hiss. “They’ll hear you!”
“You’re joking, right?” Bear sneers. “Most of these old fossils can’t remember to change the batteries in their hearing aids. The last thing any of them heard was the A-bomb test at Yucca Flat.”
“They’re not as deaf as you think,” I shoot back. “The lady in two-twelve definitely heard it when you ripped one in her living room.”
Aaron laughs. “Now that’s the Chase we know and love.”
Those jokes are funny when it’s the three of us; not so much when the old people are around. Most of them are pretty frail. They definitely deserve more respect than they’re getting from us. Maybe Aaron and Bear ran out of patience because they’ve got no choice about community service and I’m here on purpose. Maybe I was out of patience too before my amnesia made me forget it. But I find the residents kind of interesting. They remember stuff in real life that you can only read about in history books. There’s a lady in 326 whose father was one of the firemen on the scene of the Hindenburg disaster. The guy in 318 was a communications expert at Houston Mission Control when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. In room 209 lives a guy who’s totally blind, yet tells the most vivid stories of growing up two doors down from Baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio.
The rule is that if someone is not in or sleeping, we leave a juice box and a packet of cookies on the table. The man in 121 is snoring enthusiastically in an easy chair when I notice the black-and-white photo on his nightstand. It’s a picture of a young soldier bowing his head to receive a military decoration from an important-looking man with round steel-rimmed spectacles.
“Is that President Truman?” I whisper.
Aaron looks bored. “Who cares? Let’s get out of here. If this Dumbledore wakes up, he’ll talk your ear off.”
But I’m hooked. “The only medal you get straight from the president is the Medal of Honor. This guy’s a hero.”
“Big deal,” Bear scoffs. “Back in the day there were so many wars that they handed out medals like Hershey’s Kisses.”
I sigh and start to follow them to the door. “I wonder what he did. They don’t give out the Medal of Honor for just any old thing.”
“Probably slew a triceratops or something,” Aaron suggests with a shrug. “Come on. We’re almost done.”
“It was a pterodactyl,” comes a sarcastic voice from behind us.
We wheel around. He’s sitting up now, an elderly man, a little bent at the shoulders, with a shock of white hair.
“And I slew it with my stone knife.”
I step forward. “Mister, that’s you in the picture, right?”
“No, it’s Harry Truman. Can’t you see I’m busy? It takes me half an hour to get out of bed and twice that to haul myself across the room with this stupid walker.”
He’s obviously not busy. He just wants to be left alone. Maybe he doesn’t like us very much. Apparently, not all the residents are hard of hearing.
Aaron and Bear are already slouching out of the room. “Sorry,” I mumble, following them into the hall.
“You’ve got a lot to learn, Ambrose,” Aaron tells me. “Get one of these Dumbledores talking about his war days and you’ll be here till you’re as old as he is.”
I have to admit, it’s probably good advice. “All right,” I say. “Let’s just finish.”
We work our way down the hall to the last room on the floor. “Almost done,” Aaron groans. “Just Cloud Ten and we can get out of here.”
“Cloud Ten?” I echo.
“You’re going to love this one,” Bear assures me. “You know Cloud Nine? Well, this old bag’s at least one cloud up from that. Half the time she’s convinced this is some fancy hotel and we’re room service.”
I see their point, but I feel kind of bad for Mrs. Swanson, who bustles around her living room in a frilly pink dressing gown dotted with sequined flowers. She’s obviously losing touch with reality, and there’s nothing hilarious about that. At first she thinks we’ve come for a visit, and she asks us to move the furniture into what she calls a “conversation grouping.”
Aaron and Bear ignore her, but what harm will it do, really? So I shuffle a few chairs, no big deal. My friends are mugging at me behind her back the whole time, trying to make me laugh. They might be the smart ones. By the time I’m finished, sweaty and breathing hard, Mrs. Swanson is looking at me like she’s too polite to ask who I am and why I’m rearranging her apartment. Aaron and Bear are snickering out loud now.
We drop off her cookies and juice and head for the door, but she comes bustling after us, waving her pocketbook. She digs around, comes up with a twenty-dollar bill, and offers it to me.
“Don’t leave without your tip,” she says.
I take a step back. “Oh, no, I couldn’t accept—”
Before I can manage another word, Bear’s meaty hand snatches the money away. “Enjoy your stay,” he tells Mrs. Swanson with a big phony smile. And he’s out the door like a shot, Aaron hot on his heels.
I catch up to them in the hall. “You can’t take that money! That’s like stealing!”
“No, it’s not,” Bear replies. “She gave it to me. Actually, she gave it to you, but you were too dumb to take it.”
“Yeah, but”—I fumble for the right words—“you know as well as I do that the lady’s not all there.”
“That’s discrimination,” he says righteously. “I’m not biased against dizzy old bats who haven’t got a clue what the deal is. They can give me money just like everybody else. You don’t know her—she would have gotten really upset if we hadn’t taken it. She wants to believe what she believes.”
“We’re not here for kicks, you know,” I insist. “We got sent here by a judge. If we get caught accepting money from the residents, we could get a lot more than community service.”
Bear rounds on me in genuine amazement. “You don’t even have to be here, man! You made us bring you!”
I’m stubborn. “Give the money back.”
Aaron tries to be reasonable. “The museum pieces in this dump—they’d forget their own saggy butts if they weren’t attached. By the time the door closed behind us, I guarantee Cloud Ten forgot we were ever there. If we go to her and try to straighten this out, it’ll be like showing her how crazy she is. You want to be responsible for that?”
I know he’s snowing me, but he’s also kind of right. I doubt we could explain to Mrs. Swanson that she just tipped the community service guys. But even if we could, she’d be embarrassed and upset and probably more confused than before.
“We should give that money to charity,” I mumble.
“Done,” Bear agrees. “It’s going to my favorite charity—the Take a Bear to Lunch Fund. Who’s up for pizza?”
We all laugh—but I’m laughing a lot less than those two. The whole thing leaves a sour taste in my mouth, and pizza is the last thing I’m thinking about.
We stop in to see Nurse Duncan so Aaron and Bear can get their time sheets signed. I’m not technically on community service anymore, so there’s no time sheet for me.
Then we’re heading for the pizza place like nothing ever happened. I keep looking at Bear, expecting to see the twenty glowing orange and burning through the pocket of his jeans. I can’t explain it, but the more they goof around,
tripping and shoving each other, the less appetite I have for lunch.
“You okay, Ambrose?” Aaron tosses at me in concern. “You don’t look so hot.”
“I—I’ll catch up with you guys later!”
I pound back in the direction of Portland Street. I hang a left and sprint up to the assisted living residence, then dash in the sliding door and straight to room 100.
I pull a fistful of crumpled bills from my pocket and fish out a twenty. Aaron’s right—I’d never be able to explain to Mrs. Swanson why I’m giving her money for what she could only see as no reason. No, my plan is simpler than that: I’ll slip it right under her door. When she notices it, she’ll just assume she dropped it.
As I squat down and pass the bill through the gap between the door and the carpet, it occurs to me that if anybody sees me, it’ll look like I’m the one doing something sleazy, not the one making it right. Luck is with me, though. I’m able to return the twenty unobserved.
No, not “return,” I remind myself. I’m out twenty bucks in this deal. I feel a little resentful when I picture Aaron and Bear feasting on pizza that I’m essentially paying for. But it’s a small price tag for being able to sleep at night.
As I make my way out again, I pause in front of 121—the Medal of Honor guy’s room. I squint at the small plaque on the wall: MR. JULIUS SOLWAY.
The door is open a crack, and I catch a glimpse of Mr. Solway struggling across the room on his walker. Suddenly, a baleful eye is glaring at me through the opening.
“You’re back?” Mr. Solway’s raspy voice growls from inside. “What do you want now?”
My instinct is to flee, but curiosity gets the better of me.
“Which war was it?” I ask the old man. “You know, where you won the medal?”
“The Trojan War,” he barks. “Remember Achilles? I was the one who got him right in the heel.”
It stings, but I say, “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” and start away.
“Korea,” he calls after my retreating back. “1952.”
I turn. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Solway. You must have done something really heroic.”