Expelled(47)

“Sasha’s guilty, too. You know that, right? But at least Sasha didn’t take anyone down with her when she went. At least she had the courtesy to be stupid in a way that didn’t screw over anyone else.”

Parker’s still walking, silent and hunched, and I have to jog to keep up with him. “You have anything to say for yourself?”

“If you don’t shut the fuck up,” he says through gritted teeth, “I’m going to punch you back. For real this time. And it’s going to hurt.”

So I bite my tongue, but I keep hurrying along next to him. Up ahead, the street ends in a cul-de-sac. Beyond it there’s a fence and a grassy field and, on the far side of that, the road heading out of Pinewood.

Parker stops at the fence. He leans against the top railing, and I can hear it creak in protest. “Shit,” Parker mutters. “Goddammit. Fine.”

“Fine what?” I demand.

Parker pushes himself off the railing again and stands in front of me. I hold the camera on him.

“I’m the reason the picture got on your Twitter account.”

“I knew it,” I yell. “How’d you do it?”

“I didn’t do it. Jere-seven-my Sharp did.”

No shit. “Why did—”

Parker sneers at me. “Cuz I asked nicely,” he says. “No, because I paid him, dumbass, and because I’m the only jock who never pissed in his gym shoes.”

“Aren’t you a prince,” I say.

He laughs bitterly. “Yeah,” he says, “I was.”





45


Even though I already guessed Parker’s guilt, I’m still reeling. Apparently I didn’t want to believe my own suspicions. I exhale slowly.

But I still wish I could kick the shit out of him.

“Okay, leaving aside the Jere-seven-my question—why in the hell did you do it?”

Parker kicks at a clump of unmowed grass. “Because I felt trapped, okay? Because I hated where I was, and I hated what I was doing.”

“Oh, poor you,” I say snidely. “It must be so difficult to be the emperor of football.”

“You try weight lifting two hours every day. Protein shakes and Muscle Milk. Weigh-ins. My dad waking me up every morning at 5 a.m. and making me run eight miles in total goddamn darkness—”

“Maybe consider yourself lucky that you still have a dad,” I interrupt.

But Parker doesn’t even hear me. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I wanted any of it. But it’s not even my goddamn dream. It was his.”

I shake my head. “You were too much of a pussy to admit you hated it, so you got yourself kicked out? And you got me and Jude kicked out, too? Tell me, because I’m dying to know, just what’s so hard about playing a sport?” I practically spit the word.

“You have no idea! They tracked my food and sleep—they monitored my shit schedule like it was national breaking news. They shot me full of chemicals like I was a prize-winning steer!”

“Wait—what?”

Parker looks around, and then, seeing no one else, he unzips his jeans and starts to pull the backside of them down.

“Whoa,” I go, “I don’t want—”

“Shut up,” Parker hisses. He works his jeans down lower so I can see half of his left ass cheek, where the skin is puckered and red—a big, angry scar.

“What the hell?”

“It was an abscess,” Parker says. “A bad reaction to pinning juice subq.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I say.

“It means that I shot steroids into my ass, dude, and it got infected.” He laughs darkly. “You don’t think we got to be champions just because of our natural talents, do you?”

“But I did,” I say. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. What I’m seeing. “Did Coach Higgins really make you take steroids?”

Parker pulls his jeans back up. “He didn’t hold a gun to my head. But, yeah, he pretty much made me. And I’m not the only one.”

Suddenly this conversation is a much bigger deal than my own expulsion. And now that Parker’s confessed, he won’t stop talking.

“I tried other ways to get out, bro. I showed up wasted on Higgins’s front porch, and he should’ve kicked me off the team right then. But he said I was too valuable to lose. So he made me a fucking pot of coffee and then drove me home.”

“But why couldn’t you talk to your dad?” It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Parker picks up a stick and starts breaking it into pieces. “Football’s his life. He had me throwing perfect spirals by five. He quizzed me on plays over dinner. He never cared if I did my homework—he only cared if I could analyze the weakness in a team’s defenses. I studied that shit, man! And what good is it going to do me? I’m not good enough to go pro. I know that.” He looks me right in the eye. He’s forgotten that I’m recording him. “And maybe, deep down inside,” Parker says, his voice almost breaking, “he knows that, too. But he’s not letting himself believe it.”

“But why does he care so much?”

“It’s sick, right? He was NFL—the Seattle Seahawks. But he got hurt in the sixth game of his first season. When they didn’t think he was getting better fast enough, they cut him.” Parker grabs a pinecone from the ground and pitches it so far into the meadow I don’t even see where it lands. “So I guess now I’m supposed to live his dream for him.”