(C) 2010 by rmsl 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrival system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

The Silence Of Cranwood High

Tires screeched as the blue Cadillac pulled around to the back of the high school—Finally. Mr. Foster steered his car into his parking spot. Cory could get out of his car now, drag his duffle bag of school clothes and his backpack of schoolbooks out of his trunk along with his bat. The door to his red ’74 Chevy Impala creaked and groaned as if it hadn’t been opened in twenty years. He groggily stepped out into the morning air, rushing into his lungs, already beginning to prepare him for his early morning workout. He hurriedly stuck his key into the trunk lock and grabbed his bags, jogging over to Mr. Foster fumbling with his huge set of keys attached to a stretchy rope on one of his belt loops.

“What? Whoaah! Another day? I figured you’d have given up by now,” Mr. Foster said, without lifting his head. He pulled the door to the high school’s basement open and walked through.

Even though Mr. Foster’s greeting was the same for the last two years, it brought a smile to Cory’s face. He put his duffle bag of school clothes in his left hand with his bat and walked into the basement hallway. The lights weren’t turned on yet. When there were not students in the school it seemed to Cory that the building took on a life of its own and in a way, he felt his morning workouts interrupted the walls’ deep slumber.

“Good morning,” he said aloud. He walked down to the end of the hallway that opened itself up into an “L” shape. He carefully leaned his bat against a green locker and tossed down his bags; the metal on metal echoed through the halls and the thump of his bags lingered in the darkened hallway.

The lights flickered, as if asking him if he was going to workout again, really? Of course he was going to workout. He had made it to school at 6:00 a.m. for the last two years and wasn’t going to change anything this year. It was his last year, his only hope to keep playing. He felt if he kept it up—and he had for two years—he would finally make the varsity baseball team. He had played junior varsity for the last two years, and if he didn’t make the cut this year, it was all over. No more baseball. He had to make it this year. And he never doubted he would.

He stretched his legs and his arms in his usual routine. The school was not his first choice three years ago. The green, yellow, and reddish-orange lockers never appealed to him during visits in grade school and even now they made his stomach gurgle. The floors were checkered with black, white, and pea soup green blocks that never made much sense to Cory. Sometimes he felt like the floor tried to hypnotize him when he would walk through the halls to class; so when he ran his L’s he stared forward at the traditional tan walls at each end of the corridors. He found out this technique usually worked well enough without making him puke as he pushed his body to its limits. If he ever did get queasy, he would just close his eyes for a second, picture Kym smiling or laughing, and the queasiness would vanish, for she was the reason he even considered Cranwood High three years ago. His mom had wanted him to go private.

He began to trot down the first hallway. The lights were at full strength now and his eyes adjusted quickly. His shoes pounded on the oddly colored tiles, but soon enough he would be in his zone and the noises of an empty school would disappear behind his thoughts of playing baseball on the varsity field or what Kym had said to him the day before. But it was early, and by the time the school buzzed with students, slamming lockers, and gossiping teenagers, Cory would wish to be back down in the basement hallway running his L’s.

Mr. Foster stared at him as he came around the corner from a doorway to one of the classrooms. He was a peculiarly shaped man. His head seemed too big for his body, his stomach stuck out at least an inch from his waistline, and his legs appeared like cones, wide at the bottom and pointy at his waist. His hair was braided in cornrows and his dark skin contrasted against the dull colors of the school, making him look as if he walked inside of the walls when he toiled down the hallways.

“Never give up, that’s what I tell my kids. Don’t give in. No matter how much worse off you are, don’t give up.” Mr. Foster bobbed and swayed across the hallway as Cory zipped past him, his broom moving pointlessly across the floor.

He always ran L’s for twenty minutes before he did his bat and glove work. Sweat pellets formed under his shirt and his pace quickened. He felt Mr. Foster’s eyes watching him up one hallway and down another. Mr. Foster usually treated him like he wasn’t even there, moving from one morning duty to the next, but Cory knew it was because this was his year. He was in the best shape of his life and his summer batting average improved fifty-six points during his city league play.

His sun-lightened hair felt slick to his touch. He knew in about a month it would return to its brown shade, but for the few summer months he enjoyed being a semi-blonde. For twenty minutes the only sound he heard was the swooshing of his pants as he pushed his body to extremes. His thick chest bounced up and down slapping his stomach.

No matter what Cory ate or the amount of exercise he did, he remained a pudgy boy even though he was six feet two inches tall. During the first year of baseball the varsity coach, Mr. Hunt, nicknamed him “C.U.”—Chubbsy Ubbsy. It never bothered Cory much; he was used to kids making comments about his size and just figured it was Mr. Hunt’s way of motivating him to get in shape.

Cranwood High was a giant school, enrollment had to be over a thousand students, and it puzzled Cory that something couldn’t be done about the ugly painting jobs. Many students tried out for the sport teams, and many were disappointed when they were cut. The school had its share of state titles, none in baseball though. Basketball was the “in” sport. The boys’ and girls’ teams won consecutive state titles so the stands were always packed. The baseball games had their share of fans, but nowhere compared to the gym on basketball nights.

One game last year, Cory was called up to the varsity team. Not to sit on the bench just in case, but to start at first base. Four players on the varsity team went out partying the night before the game and didn’t come to school that day. Boy, was Mr. Hunt mad! If it had been Trenton High or Hamilton, Mr. Hunt probably would have arranged for the boys to play anyway. The principal probably would have made them clean classrooms or something, instead of observing the no-show no-play rule. But on May third, an uncommonly hot day, Cory filled out a varsity uniform, played first base, and hit ninth. He went 0-3 with a throwing error, but he played varsity baseball. The game was at Bedford, so his spikes didn’t get to churn up the dirt on their field.

Cory slowed down at a water fountain, took a short drink, and wiped his face with the towel around his neck. He could hear the announcer saying his name over the sound system at the field, his last name echoing through the stands, “Sut-ton, Sut-ton, Sut-ton, Sut-ton.”

Cory walked back over to his bags and picked up his bat. He held the bat out to the wall, made sure the distance was right, and swung. He needed to keep his short swing, and this drill did the trick. He would swing his bat over two hundred times. Next, he took his first basemen’s mitt and his rubber ball and headed to the end of the hallway where no pictures or lockers would get in the way. He threw the rubber ball against the wall, reacting to its return direction with his feet shoulder width apart, knees bent, butt down, sliding left or right. He did this drill until his knees burned and his thighs felt weightless.

He grabbed his ball bag and headed to the wrestling room. This was where he strengthened his arm and his accuracy. The room was completely padded, from ceiling to floor in a blood-red covering. He positioned himself in a defensive stance, as if playing first base. He pretended a ground ball came to his right and he scooped it up and threw. Thud! The ball fell to the padded floor and would remain there until he threw the entire bag. Then he would retrieve all the balls and repeat. By the third bag his head felt like it was going to explode and he wouldn’t have been surprised if his eyes were fireball red instead or their normal brown.

Weights. All he had left were four sets of biceps and forearm curls, reverse curls for his triceps, military presses for his shoulders, and four sets on the leg press machine. Mr. Foster must have realized Cory was ready for his lifting because he heard the large key ring cling and clang against the door to the weight room. He waited until he could hear Mr. Foster’s voice fade into one of the classrooms before he grabbed his stuff and sluggishly walked over to the weight room. The man always seemed to be talking to some imaginary person walking next to him.

Cory fiddled with his hair in the reflection of a picture on the wall next to his locker. Students started showing up only about ten minutes after he left the locker room. His shower was short, but effective. He put his bags inside his locker and headed towards homeroom. Even though his homeroom was only about three classrooms down from his locker, wading through the early arriving students still presented a challenge.

“Ha-hey! Somebody smells like flowers.” Joey Vaudester waved his hand in front of his nose, his expressing matching the action as if he was repelling the stink of four-day-old garbage. He continued to laugh as he walked past Cory and into the hallway.

Boy, he ached. That morning’s workout seemed to do more damage to his muscles than he expected and he wasn’t about to waste any of his remaining energy telling Joey to shut his hole.

“How was the future major leaguer’s workout? Sweaty?” Jason asked.

Cory sat next to Jason and rolled his eyes. Jason Setter was a junior who happened to always be in Cory’s homeroom because of his advanced schedule. This year he should’ve been considered a senior because all of Jason’s classes were with seniors. Jason took honors classes, including A.P. English with Cory. A.P. English was Cory’s only honors class and that was because writing was the only thing in school he did well. And Jason was usually the only person who talked to him besides Kym. This year Cory’s usual schedule had to be changed because he needed to fit in a Business Law class to fulfill his civics requirements for graduation. Most of the students in his classes now he had never even seen in school the last three years, let alone talked to. However, Jason somehow managed to still occupy his English class.

“Careful, Dude. Sutton smells like a girl again. You wouldn’t want it to rub off on ya,” Joey ribbed again, as he and one of his friends walked by to go to their seats.

Cory gave him a disgusted look, propping his chin in his hand with his elbow on the desk.

“Let me have a pencil.”

Jason rummaged in his pouch and handed him a newly sharpened pencil. What a sap, Cory thought. He probably owed him ten dozen pencils since sophomore year, when Jason first appeared in his homeroom. Cory pulled out his journal and started to write. Maybe if he hadn’t won that first writing contest back in freshman year, with a short story about a little girl who lost her house keys and got stuck in her extremely odd neighbor’s house until her parents got home, he wouldn’t be known as the “boy who thinks like a girl” among his male peers. But it didn’t bother Cory. He actually liked to write poems more—especially when he wrote to Kym.

Kym Sequeira was a girl he had went to grade school with and followed into Cranwood High. He fell in love with her in the fifth grade. He couldn’t remember why he did. One day he told himself that he should like a girl as all the other boys in his class and Kym looked pretty that day. He knew it had to be more complicated than that but it was how he remembered it.

During grade school Kym was all bones and knobs but she had an enchanting smile. Her mouth formed an almost perfect semi-circle when she smiled and mirrored her round, quarter-size nose. Her face was also circular, giving her plump, full cheeks. She had light blue eyes, but when she wore anything blue, her eyes sizzled with an intense blue that melted Cory into a pile of goo.

And then magically, by the summer before high school began, Kym’s body caught up with her face and blossomed. Her clothes seemed to shrink, her body pushed the boundaries of her tank tops and shorts, and her skin caramelized without losing the rosy complexion of her cheeks.

She knew he liked her a lot, and it was maybe for this reason that she became good friends with Cory during high school. Well, at least Cory thought they were good friends. He was never really sure. They lived on the same street and would take walks occasionally. He thought she agreed most of the time just because she needed to get out of her house and away from her arguing parents. They had remarried during Kym’s eighth grade year after being divorced for three years.

Mr. Kelso did role call while Joey pretended not to be able to touch his shoulders with his hands. The students who saw him laughed. He was a short man, extremely heavy, and bald. He had been in the army or the marines, Cory didn’t remember which, and had been injured. Whatever surgery they did left Mr. Kelso’s arms with limited movement and he couldn’t touch his shoulders. Cory let go a short chuckle. It was funny watching him try.

As Mr. Kelso took care of tardy passes and his other homeroom duties, Cory thought about the first poem he ever wrote. He wrote it for eighth grade English class, but he never had a chance to turn it in or give it to Kym. He hadn’t thought about that tragic day in his life for some time, but it always had a way of sneaking up on him. Usually when he wrote to Kym.

It went:

Kym is a very pretty girl,

when she walks by she makes my mind whirl.

Her beauty is her own special fate,

and when she smiles I can’t think straight.

Her eyes have their own special glare,

And when she laughs I say to myself it’s not fair.

Her hair is a very silky brown,

and I always dream about her when I lay my head down.

Now do you understand why I love her so,

and why without her I am always down and low.

The poem made him laugh now; how far he had come in his writing! Even though it was years ago every time he thought about it, he sat back in his desk in grade school, shocked, hurt, and devastated, listening to another boy reading it in front of the class, taking credit for it…

Jason sat at his desk in A.P. English writing down all the names of the new classmates who he and Cory didn’t know.

Jason leaned over and nudged his arm. He pointed to a girl sitting two desks over reading a book. “Look at that. She’s reading Hamlet already…boy,” he said in an awed whisper.

Out of twenty-six students, Cory didn’t know fifteen of them—nine girls and six boys. How could you go to school with people for three years and never see them before? His school was large, but it still made Cory feel weird, like he was starting out at a new school for his senior year.

He scratched his head and looked down at his schedule. That Business Law class really screwed up his whole routine. He didn’t eat lunch until seventh period now and his favorite class, English, was his first of the day. Nothing to look forward to—it stunk.

The students’ conversation around him hummed in his ears because the teacher had not called for attention yet. So Cory opened his journal. His poems were more important than other kids whose names he didn’t know.

“Let me have another pencil. I left the other one in homeroom.”