Neal Shusterman - Bruiser

“He didn’t want to. It was his choice to stay.”

“Well, he should have given me a choice!” I can hear my voice rising again as I think back to the game. It’s great to get all the glory when you’ve earned it; but when you haven’t, you feel like a fraud. Maybe other guys get their kicks by seizing attention they don’t deserve, but not me. “All I’m saying is that you can’t play a sport without the threat of injury! It’s like they say, ‘No pain, no gain’—without the pain, the gain means nothing!”

Brontë weighs my words and nods, finally admitting that maybe I have a point. “Fine. So explain that to him.”

“I will when I can stop yelling!”

Then Brontë, bless her annoying little heart, says the exact thing to put out my fire. She heaves a colossal sigh and says, “Listen to us! We sound like Mom and Dad.”

And since that’s the last act in the world I want to mimic, my anger is snuffed so completely, all that remains is an intense desire to pout.

“Are we done here?” I ask.

“Yes. But don’t stay mad at him,” she says. “That will hurt him worse than any lacrosse game.”

Mom and Dad come home within fifteen minutes of each other, both the bearers of ethnic takeout. Mom has Chinese; Dad has Indian. It’s a strange thing for your parents to be sort of separated but living under the same roof. Brontë and I still get the same fast food, but now there’s always twice as much, because both of them feel obliged to feed us. It’s fine when the food comes staggered; but at times like this, when it comes simultaneously, it’s very awkward. Whose food do we eat? And does it imply we’re taking sides? Can we eat equal portions of both without feeling like puking? When an eggroll becomes a crisis, there’s definitely something wrong.

That night I lie on my bed bloated beyond belief, having eaten enough to feed an entire subcontinent. My brain is bloated, too, and I try to wrap my mind around the events of the day.

I’m not usually one to spend endless hours dissecting my own emotions. Brontë does enough of that for both of us. When it comes to such open-heart reflection, I’m a firm believer in the observer effect, which states that anything you try to observe is automatically changed by the mere fact that you’re looking at it. The way I see it, if you try to study your emotions on a microscopic level, the best you can do is understand how it feels to hold the magnifying glass.

As I lie there listening to India and China waging war in my intestines, I keep trying to analyze the feelings I had at the end of today’s lacrosse game. Perhaps it’s just the observer effect and my perceptions are all changing as I examine them, but it seems to me there was something inexplicable running under the anger I felt toward Brewster. Kind of like the undertow tugging at your feet even as the wave slams into you.

What I felt was this: an unexpected quietus of everything bad I was feeling. An extinguishing of all my anger and frustration. The numbing came just as I told off Brewster. Once I vented at him, I couldn’t hold on to my rage. By the time I had stormed back to the team, I was feeling okay about everything. But feeling “okay” was absolutely wrong—it felt like another level of fraud on my part. I saw him hurrying away then. Hurrying away in fury. Was he angry at me for being angry at him? Maybe. Or maybe it was more than that.

That’s the real reason why I don’t want to face Brewster quite yet. Because I’m not sure whether it’s just me being weird…or if that undertow is the first hint of a much more powerful riptide.

Once in a while Dad and I go out to shoot some hoops. He does this because basketball is the only sport where he still has a fighting chance against me since he still has a height advantage. Early on Sunday morning I go over to Brew’s place and invite him to join us. It’s my way of apologizing, because the actual words I’m sorry don’t come easy to me— unless, of course, I’m saying it to Brontë. It seems I’m always apologizing to her.

We’re on his porch, because Uncle Hoyt is sleeping after a hard night flattening asphalt. Cody’s out in their ugly acre trying to fly a cheap cellophane kite; but the weeds are too tall, and he can’t get up enough momentum when he runs.

“Consider it the next phase of our workouts,” I tell Brew. “Basketball builds agility—you can’t get that with free-weights.”

“Aren’t you worried you’ll skin your elbows and make me bleed?”

To which I respond, “Are you calling me a klutz?” It then occurs to me for the first time why he seemed so exhausted after our weight-lifting sessions and why I didn’t. I start to feel ticked off that he never said anything; but I let it go, because anger is not our friend.

“Thanks for the invitation,” Brewster says, “but I can’t. My uncle likes weekends to be family time.” Which is ridiculous, considering the man has a night job and sleeps all day. “It’s easier for everyone if I just stay home.”

“Easier doesn’t make it right,” I point out. And then I hear a voice from behind me.

“Tell Uncle Hoyt you won’t like him no more.”

I turn to see Cody standing there holding that sorry little kite. It’s a typical thing for a little kid to say; but Brew seems to be struck by the words, like they contain divine wisdom. I have no idea why a man like Uncle Hoyt would care what Brew thought of him.

Brew reaches to a Band-Aid on his forearm. I wonder what kind of wound it conceals. He rubs the wound, mulling over what Cody said. Then he turns to me. “Which park will you be at?”

I don’t know exactly what Brew says to Uncle Hoyt, but the result is that both Brewster and Cody show up at the park. My dad and I are feeling pretty down, although we try not to show it. Mom wasn’t home when we left; I suspect she’s probably off with her boyfriend, the Muppet. I have no idea whether she’s in the process of breaking it off, making it stick, or just escaping from everything. I don’t think Dad knows either. A cloud of gloom follows us to the court, but when Brew arrives, it seems to dissipate. Maybe because there’s someone else to focus on.

Cody immediately escapes from the court, having no use whatsoever for basketball. He’s much more engaged by a malfunctioning sprinkler head in the grass.

It’s immediately clear to Dad and me that Brew’s experience in basketball is limited to the wonderful world of phys ed. He can dribble standing still, and he has just the right trajectory on his foul shots to sink some of them; but he lacks any real-world game.

“Didn’t you ever shoot around with your uncle?” Dad asks, completely oblivious to the Uncle Hoyt situation.

“My uncle is more of a baseball kind of guy.”

And that’s all my dad needs to hear. Brew is hoop impoverished. Suddenly my dad’s in his element; and for the first time in years, the teacher in him has a blank athletic slate—a new subject to whom he can impart all the family basketball moves.

“You know, I played in college,” Dad brags, doing some Globetrotter stuff that was only impressive the first hundred times—but Brew’s eating it up. Even Cody looks up from his irrigation project as Dad deftly handles the ball. I suppress the urge to roll my eyes, hoping that someday my own children will return the favor.

“Stick with me,” Dad says, “and you’ll own the court in no time.”

It feels good to see my father in this altered state —actually enjoying himself, with no thoughts of Mom and the nest of termites that’s eating away at the foundation of our family. In fact, none of that seems to bother me either. It all feels far, far away.