Don't Get Caught(35)

“Chaos!”

“Club!”

“Is!”

“Coming!”

It becomes a chant, something you’d hear rising from a crowd of overly enthusiastic political protesters. I try to watch any student behaving oddly, but I can’t take my eyes off Stranko, waiting for the moment he realizes what’s happening.

And then he does.

He covers the gym floor in a blur and rips the cards from the cheerleaders’ hands to a wave of boos. Then Stranko gives Benz and Chloe a move it along motion with his finger. The confused cheerleaders walk off the floor, a couple of them looking on the verge of tears. An equally puzzled Benz and Chloe stammer through the first couple of lines from their script and announce that’s it time for a tug-of-war competition between senior football players and members of the lacrosse team.

“Really? A dick-measuring contest?” Malone says.

Ellie starts giggling. “Now that’d be a good pep rally.”

Some heavy metal song Boyd would no doubt recognize erupts from the gym speakers, and the guys from the football and lacrosse teams sprint into the gym from a side door like professional wrestlers entering the ring. No surprise, Stranko has the lacrosse guys all in identical black-and-gold lacrosse jerseys. Following them out is the assistant coach, Tim’s dad.

A rope with a red ribbon tied around the middle is laid evenly across center court, and out comes a table with a Gatorade cooler and a plastic bowl of powdered white chalk so the guys can better grip the rope. Most of the dopes do the LeBron James chalk toss, flinging it into the air where it floats like white smoke.

“There’s Tim,” Wheeler says, pointing down to Adleta. He’s chugging Gatorade with the others, who pound it down like it’ll help them ’roid-out in a few minutes. Some of them even have three cups. I’m convinced that in twenty years, they’re going to discover that energy drinks cause leprosy or blindness. When that happens, professional sports will be really interesting to watch.

The two teams move to opposite sides of the rope, with the three-hundred-pound Hugo King, the football team’s left offensive tackle and only hope of a football scholarship, anchoring one side, and Drew “Sully” Sullivan anchoring the undersized lacrosse team. I’m not sure whose idea this was, but it doesn’t take a professional sports analyst to see the lacrosse team’s going to lose. And I don’t just mean lose but get their arms ripped from their torsos lose.

After way too much arranging and rearranging of positions by guys on both sides, which in the case of the lacrosse players is sort of like straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic, Benz announces we’re ready to start.

“The first team to pull the ribbon past the black tape markers on either side wins,” he says. “Let’s countdown from five.”

“Can the football players count backward?” Wheeler asks.

“Shh, this is exciting,” Ellie says.

The crowd counts down, and before they hit one, both sides are leaning back on their heels, their faces red and strained, trying to yank the other team out of their shoes. After a full minute of no give on either side, I realize I’m wrong about the lacrosse team, and I quickly see why. They’ve rooted their legs to the floor, hoping the football team will tire themselves out. The football team tugs at the rope, pulling only with their arms and not their entire bodies. It’s the perfect display of the immovable object versus the unstoppable force.

“Who’s going to win?” Ellie asks.

“Who cares? If we’re lucky, they stay this way forever,” Malone says.

But they don’t. It’s not that one team suddenly overpowers the other. It’s because almost simultaneously, guys on both sides drop the rope like it’s gone electric. A few jocks get caught up in the quick release and hit the floor. Others double over, some grabbing their knees, some with their hands out but heads down, like they’re trying to ward off some approaching enemy.

“What’s happening?” Wheeler says.

From the floor, Hugo King answers by grabbing his stomach, shaking his head hard, then puking all over the gym floor.

“Oh yuck!” Ellie yells.

Then other guys involuntarily follow Hugo’s lead, painting the gym with their watery guts. Their mouths are geysers, erupting orange-colored Gatorade into the air and onto the floor. They slosh around in the puke, clutching their stomachs, pointlessly trying to stop the never-ending torrent. It’s a galactic pukefest, a history-making vomitpalooza.

The student section breaks for the gym doors, pushing past teachers who are fighting to get out themselves. Because we’re up top, the four of us can do nothing but watch the chaos and wait for the stench to envelop us and disintegrate our faces.

“Everyone, remain calm,” Mrs. B says, standing closer to the puke party than I’d ever go. “It’s going to be all right.”

Yeah, tell that to the guys who can’t stop vomiting.

Stranko and Mr. Adleta stand on the edge of the team, watching in horror as the guys stumble about, their shirts, pants, and shoes drenched in vomit.

“Poor Tim,” Ellie says, pointing.

Like the others, Adleta’s covered in puke from the first one, two, or three barfings, but now, he has a hand over his mouth, his cheeks puffy as he tries to stop himself from spewing again. He turns his head—looking, looking, looking—his cheeks growing bigger, like a professional trumpet player—and then he begins staggering away from the team.