Fowl Play (Tuft Swallow)

55. Kodi

CHAPTER 55

“Again!”

Groans echo across the falling twilight of the park. Everyone’s exhausted, but we aren’t done yet. As things stand now, we’ll never beat Spitz Hollow.

Brian taps my shoulder.

“What?” I mutter.

“Don’t you think it’s been enough? It’s almost nine o’clock. You have work in the morning.”

“Not until everybody sinks at least one bag.”

“Kodi, don’t let me hold everybody back. Seriously. It isn’t worth it.” Nick’s chin falls to his chest, and his shoulders sink. “I’m probably not even going to play on Saturday unless we’re way ahead, so what does it even matter?”

“That’s not our motto anymore, Nick. We need everybody to work together. This isn’t just one person’s team. It’s all of our team.”

“That doesn’t mean everybody has to be as good as you, Kodi. It means that you accept people where they’re at,” Lily says.

“Yeah, even if they’re fucking horse shit.”

“Ginger!” I glare at her. “Not helping!”

I take a deep breath, and look out at all the shadowy faces, backlit by the sidewalk’s bright street lamps that flickered to life almost an hour ago. “Look, everybody. The championship game is going to be back at the Spitz-Shein Sports Complex, which means we’ll be using those Godforsaken plastic boards again. We’re not used to them, so we’re going to have to sink as many bags without counting on sliding or knocking them in as we can. I know last time we lost on a technicality, but–”

“Technicality? You mean we lost because of Lily’s giant tits!”

“You fucking bitch!”

Lily and Ginger start throwing hands, Nick and Jonah both crowding in to pull them apart from each other.

“Guys, if you get hurt before the game this weekend we’ll stand even less of a chance!” Geneva whines. Ginger snaps another comment about Lily throwing her own back out with the weight of her boobs, and then Callie has to help Nick restrain the red-faced redhead.

“Stop it! You’re acting as bad as them!” I shout, but they’re way beyond listening to me. “Seriously, guys, stop–”

Then Ginger yanks her elbow out of the police chief’s grasp, and the momentum sends her careening forward. She trips over Mr. Landon’s feet, which causes him to topple into Delilah. Jonah, seeing this, immediately jumps to grab her before she falls onto her ankle, trampling D’Shawn’s toes in the process.

The history teacher’s howl catches everyone’s attention. Unfortunately, it also distracts Nick and Callie enough that Lily springs free of their hold, and then she and Ginger are grappling on the ground.

I start to run to pull them apart, but Brian holds me back.

“Are you crazy? You’ll hurt your knee again.”

“I need to stop it!”

“Not by putting yourself in danger–”

“That’s enough!”

Everyone freezes as Police Chief Jonah Woodcock’s commanding voice pierces through the night. His deep blue eyes look black in the limited light, and he’s all the more menacing for it as his muscular chest inflates with authority.

Even Brian sucks in a breath at the sight of him. I, meanwhile, feel miniscule under his cop’s glare.

“Kodi Gander, if this is the way practices are going to go for the cornhole league, then Delilah and I are out. I can’t endorse this kind of behavior.”

Delilah nods, fingers wrapped securely around the Chief's biceps. I swallow.

“Sir, I–”

“I’m out, too. You bimbos can’t even take a joke,” Ginger snaps, flipping her mussed hair and baring the bottom of her ass cheeks as she bends and snaps up from the ground like she’s impersonating Elle Woods. Geneva averts her gaze, but some of the other members of the team nod along with Ginger’s statement. “Good luck on Saturday without me. Not.”

She twitches away, and about half the remaining players follow her and the Woodcocks out to the sidewalk, leaving only Lily, Callie, Nick, Mr. Landon, Geneva, Brian, and me standing in the middle of the grassy field.

“Fuck,” Lily mutters. “She took half the team.”

My jaw drops. “What the hell, Lily? This is partially your fault!”

“My fault?”

“Yeah! You and your temper!” I let out a growl of frustration. “Why can’t you just ignore it when people say shit about your boobs? You’ve had them for over a decade now! Ginger’s always picking fights. You don’t see me trying to punch her in the face over it!”

“Oh, way to deflect the blame!” Lily shouts back. “You’re the one who pushed us all past our limits! After we all told you to chill the fuck out!”

Her words are like a slap in the face. I stumble back into Brian, who holds his hands out to steady me. “You, of all people, know how important this is to me!”

“Yeah, and it’s high time you fucking let it go!” Steam practically rises out of Lily’s ears as she shakes with fury. The remaining players back away from her slowly, giving her space. “How many more people have to suffer because of that softball game, Kodi? Huh? How many? It’s bad enough that Coach got you hurt. Why are you still letting it control you?

“You don’t have to be like him! You don’t have to hurt us! So why? Why do you insist on training us as hard as he trained you?”

Tears spring to her eyes as she screams at me, the words scraping out of her throat like claws. Tearing into me and exposing parts of my past I thought I’d gotten over.

“I’m not hurt anymore,” I say, realizing as I do that I’m also crying. It makes the words sound bubbly and weak. “I’m better now. I’m stronger now!”

“You’re not stronger because of him, Kodi. You’re stronger in spite of him. You’re better now because of all of the work that Callie and Brian and m-me?—”

A big sob wretches its way into her words, and my view of everyone else blurs as I blink repeatedly at Lily. Her shoulders shake up and down with her uncontrollable breathing and Callie steps forward and wraps an arm around her shoulder. I see her tense, like she’s going to shrug it off, but then she sinks into our friend’s embrace.

Then, all their shapes get fuzzy. My tears well up, until all I can make out is how separate Brian and I are from the rest of the team.

Or what’s left of it.

“Go home,” I mutter finally, wiping my eyes. “Practice is over.”

“But what about the match?” Geneva asks.

She sounds so concerned. So oblivious.

So young.

“We’ll figure it out Friday.” I let out a shaky sigh. “If we even have enough players.”

“We don’t,” Lily says, stronger-voiced than I would have expected. “Because I quit.”

“What?”

“I can’t watch you go through that again, Kodi. I quit.”

She and I meet eyes. For a long moment, the only sounds are the chirping of the evening crickets as we stare each other down. And then, Mr. Landon breaks the silence.

“Well, then, I’ll uh…see the rest of you on Friday.”

That breaks the spell. People drift away until only the four of us, Callie and Lily, Brian and I, are left.

“Lily…”

“What?” She wipes her nose, but her gaze doesn’t leave mine. “What?”

But I don’t know what to say. What can I say? I can’t beg her. She’s made her position perfectly clear. She’s been telling me to let go of my ‘trauma’ from high school for months now, but what she doesn’t understand is I’ve never been trying to relive my glory days. I’ve been doing everything I can not to repeat them.

But nothing’s worked. I’m still the town’s biggest failure. I’m the reason everyone’s quit the team. I’m the one that the Nosy Pecker’s going to blame for our loss. And worst of all…

“Everyone’s going to hate me again.”

There. The truth. She might think she’s helping me, she might think she’s proving a point, but really, the only thing she’s doing is condemning me to repeat the worst parts of my past. The whole town is counting on me. And now I can’t bring home the gold.

Again.

She looks away, squeezing her eyes shut as if she’s in pain. Fresh tears trail down her cheeks, and she shakes her head.

“Everyone didn’t hate you then, Kodi. I wish you understood that. Maybe then, everyone wouldn’t be leaving you now.” She gives Callie a look over her shoulder, and she nods. “I’ll see you around.”

As she walks away, the finality of her tone sinks into my chest, and I realize that even though she’s crushing me right now, I still don’t want to lose her. She’s my best friend. She helped me open up when no one else could. If it weren’t for her, I never would have admitted my feelings to Brian. I would be truly alone.

So I cling to the one thing we’ve always made a priority, ever since we moved out of our parents’ houses and needed something just for us. The thing that’s always endured, between all the spats and boyfriends and job changes and injuries. “Girls’ Night?”

I sound pathetic. Small. Pitiable. It’s like everything I hate about myself bares itself to the world in those two words.

She shrugs. “Maybe.”

And then she walks away, and my world narrows down to two.

Brian drives my Subaru back to his place, and as soon as he parks I burst out of the door and start pacing. I bounce my foot as he unlocks the door, and once I’m inside I’m storming up and down his living room in a tight circle.

“Baby girl, calm down.”

“I can’t right now. I don’t want to stand still, okay?”

If I stop moving, then I lose momentum. And I need momentum to keep moving forward. If I stop, then all the consequences of tonight are going to catch up to me, and I’ll be well and truly fucked.

“Baby g–”

“Shut up!” I yell at him. “I don’t want to be sexy right now, okay? This isn’t something you can just seduce away this time.”

Hurt flashes across his face, and I wince. Fuck. Now I’m pushing away the only person I have left.

He pauses for a moment, and I hear him inhale a deep breath as I turn away, wearing a path into his old wooden floors. He exhales, and I can feel my shoulders inch towards my ears to protect myself from the yelling I’m sure is about to start. How could it not? I deserve it.

“Kodi, you need to talk to Lily.”

My feet stop dead in their tracks. “Huh?”

He walks forward and puts a hand on my shoulder, rubbing up and down my arm. I’m torn between whether to lean into the comfort or get back to moving, but my brain is fuzzy from his random response.

“She doesn’t want to talk to me,” I say slowly. Maybe he didn’t understand what he just saw. That wasn’t a normal Kodi-and-Lily fight. Honestly? We hardly ever fight. This summer, we’ve been at odds more than we ever have.

In the past, I’ve just listened to whatever vapid topic she’s monologuing about, then she pesters me until I finally get something off my chest that I didn’t even realize was bothering me. And then we go back to talking about her latest sexual conquest and at the end of the night, we both feel better.

But we don’t usually go deeper than that. Or at least, we haven’t in a while. That night with the ice cream was one of the only times like that I can remember since…high school? Maybe even earlier.

It may have been a bit shallow and repetitive, but that’s how childhood friendships age, isn’t it? People grow apart, life gets monotonous. That’s just what happens. And it would have been fine, if not for…

Brian and I lock eyes, and I can’t stand still anymore. I pull away from his arm, and he shakes his head.

“Running isn’t gonna help.”

“I’m not running. I’m pacing.”

“You’re trying to pace around the problem.”

“No, I’m trying to come up with a solution to the problem. We don’t have enough people to play this weekend. We need six, and without Lily, we only have…” I tally the members on my fingers as I list them. “Callie, Geneva, Mr. Landon, Nick, me, and…”

My eyes widen and I look at Brian. “You could–”

“No,” he cuts me off. “I’m not the answer to this problem, Kodi.”

“Why not? Don’t you love me? Why won’t you play for me?” My voice has gotten whiny, and those fucking tears are back, stinging the backs of my eyes as I try desperately to blink them away. “Why don’t you want to help me now?”

“I do want to help you. With the actual problem.”

“This is my problem!” I throw my hands in the air to keep them from bunching into fists. “Fuck, why aren’t you listening to me? Why does everyone think they know what my problems are better than me??”

He runs his fingers through his hair and sits on the couch, watching me as I cross from one corner of the living room to the other. He leans his elbows on his knees as he leans forward. “Okay. What is your problem?”

“My problem is—is…” My throat catches on my brain, and suddenly all I’ve got in my head is static. Static and rage. “Like—the fact that, you know, everyone is…ugh! You don’t understand, okay?”

“What don’t I understand?”

“You don’t get what I went through when I lost us the championship before, okay? How awful it was.”

“Explain it to me,” he says simply. As if it’s the rules of baseball or how to microwave a Hot Pocket, and not the single worst thing to ever happen in my life.

I scoff. “Oh, like you’ve explained all your trauma to me? What happened with your parents, huh? What if you were in my shoes, and you had to face all of that rejection–” I cut myself off as I watch Brian’s face twist in a mix of grief and pain and something else I can’t place.

He hangs his head over his lap for a moment, and then rubs his hands together.

“Okay.” He inhales a big breath and lets it out slowly, adjusts his posture. “Let’s start there then. But you have to sit down.”

He pats the couch beside him. I cross my arms and tap my foot, refusing, but he just stares at me expectantly.

I stare back. Then I sit.

“Thank you,” he breathes again. “Yes, my parents kicked me out. I was eighteen, and luckily I was able to stay with a friend, a classmate of mine who was also queer. He ended up being my first boyfriend, actually.”

I tilt my head. “What does this have to do–”

He holds up a hand. “Let me get through this, okay? I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.” I nod. He continues, “I was desperate for people who’d accept me for who I really was back then. I’d just lost my scout troop and my family, and life was moving fast—like it does for everyone at that age. I was about to leave for college, which also meant I was abandoning what little support system I had left. So when Jeremy and I hooked up that summer before college, I clung to him. When we went our separate ways, I called him every night. Until he finally stopped picking up, and I was abandoned again.

“Then it became a string of relationships, one after another. Men and women. Some better than others. I stayed safe, explored my sexuality, learned a lot about sex, relationships, and, I thought, love.

“I was always the first to say ‘I love you.’ Until a few partners in a row told me that I was coming off as too clingy, and I stopped talking about my feelings so openly. I started fantasizing about my partners instead, building futures in my head that weren’t there. I did that all throughout chiropractic school too, until my long-term boyfriend moved away after graduation and broke up with me. Then it was Grindr and Tinder dating for a while, where I found Zeke.”

“That makes sense,” I cut in.

He chuckles. “Yeah. He’s definitely the Tinder type. But I’m not. I didn’t do too well with the apps. I wanted something serious, something more than a hookup, so that’s what I gave to Zeke. Whereas he…well, you’ve met him. He wasn’t interested in anything serious. So when I moved to start my own practice, specifically looking for properties closer to him, I didn’t tell him what I was doing. I thought I’d surprise him with some grand gesture, and then, finally, I’d prove to him that I was worth being serious about.”

Sadness for the man beside me starts to saturate my other emotions. I’m angry at Zeke, too, for being such a shitty person to someone so amazing. I put a hand on his knee, and he quickly covers it with his own, holding it there. “Brian, you weren’t the problem. He was!”

He shakes his head. “Not entirely, no.”

I start to interrupt, but Brian holds up his hand. “I was part of the problem, too. I can admit that now. I wasn’t being a good partner by putting all of my unrealistic expectations on him. By making him the emotional support I needed in my head, I was just as guilty of ignoring his needs as he was of ignoring mine. Did it hurt when he dropped me so callously? Of course. But I wasn’t good for him, and he was never going to be what I needed. Truthfully, no one ever could be.

“I’m still processing how much my family fucked me up. But in order to do that, I had to see how healthy families, friends, and communities are supposed to be. School, martial arts, work…they’re all very structured. There’s a hierarchy to them. I couldn’t get my bearings as a single person in a community there. Not when I didn’t have any good examples to look to.

“And then I moved here.”

I stare at him, mouth open. I clarify, “here? Tuft Swallow?” He nods, his eyes crinkling at the corners a bit as he grins at me. “You think this town is healthy?” I snort.

He’s lost his fucking mind.

He laughs, a true belly laugh, and some of my concern ebbs. “Oh, it’s got its issues, don’t get me wrong. That gossip paper in particular is something else.”

“You can say that again,” I mutter.

“But the people support each other. The whole fucking town turns out for cornhole games.”

“Yeah, but that makes sense.”

I’m not sure I’m understanding the point he’s trying to make. That’s just what all communities do for each other; we turn out for our teams.

He blinks at me. Then shakes his head. “Okay, you’ve lived here your whole life, so I’m not going to burst your bubble. The point is, people here actually care about each other. That’s not the case in other cities, where people just hope they can pair up with someone to get through life with. Here, it’s not just one person being someone else’s everything. It’s a whole network of folks looking out for each other.

“Look at my business.” He spreads his arms around the downstairs living room, which doubles as a foyer and waiting room for his practice. “I’ve got patients here every week because people refer them to me. I have a network with Nick, and Caleb, and friends of patients who come in because people want them to feel better. It’s hard to build a business like this in a big city, because everyone wants to know what they’re getting out of it when they help someone out. But here, I had one or two people have a good experience, and suddenly everybody knows about it. People talk to each other, people share. That’s a pretty amazing thing.”

“I guess…” I think about that for a second, wondering if that’s really so special. Then realize we’ve gotten off track. “But what does that have to do with your trauma?”

He squeezes my hand. “I cling to people, to partners, because of my trauma. Too hard, too fast. Probably because I don’t want to be abandoned again, or something like that. I’m still working on it, and honestly I should get therapy—I’m sure there’s a lot more messed up about me under the hood that I’m missing.

“But you,” he lifts my hand then, shaking it between us. “You pull away from people because of your trauma. You try to fix everything yourself, when you don’t need to. You live in a supportive environment. You can ask for help. In fact, I’d argue you need to.”

“Yeah,” I scoff. “Because everyone’s been so willing to help me in the past. Like it wasn’t all down to me in the end anyway.”

“See? That’s your trauma. You were part of a team, but your fuckwad coach made you think it was all up to you. It wasn’t. Your injury was not your fault, or the team’s failure. Your coach’s insistence on winning at all costs was the problem.”

“But I was the one everyone blamed,” I argue.

“Hence the trauma.” He gives me a knowing grin, but I don’t share it.

“So you’re saying I couldn’t have done anything to prevent it?” This is ridiculous. Obviously, I could have worked harder or done something better–

“Exactly.”

I stare at him as his words sink in. What?

He continues, “You trusted the adults in your life to set you on a positive path, and they failed you. Some part of you recognizes that, otherwise, you wouldn’t try to do everything on your own. You’d have more faith in Lily, in me, in the people around you.”

For a solid minute, I don’t say anything.

Is that right? Do I actually think, deep down, that I was betrayed by Coach or my parents, and that it’s fucked me up somehow? That now, I’m incapable of asking for help because I couldn’t depend on them when I needed someone the most?

It’s a lot to process.

He squeezes my hand again, which I’d forgotten he was holding. “I’ll be right back,” he says, before letting go and running up the stairs.

When he comes back down, a notebook in his hands, I’m still chewing on his explanation. Trying to parse out my own feelings around it. Do his words ring true? Have I actually pulled myself away from trusting people because I felt betrayed after my injury?

I think about my job with Dr. Cratchet. How for the most part, I just keep my head down and let him be the absolute worst, most insecure boss and doctor in the world, treating me like crap, even sending me to spy on his competition. How that kind of manipulation and bullshit didn’t even phase me until I cared too much about Brian to keep up the ruse. When I finally put my foot down.

I think about moving out of my parents’ house, as soon as I was physically able to. Not because they were outwardly hurtful or abusive to me, but because I felt like I wasn’t truly welcome in my own home. I wonder if maybe I’ve actually resented them, for not standing up for me when the whole town whispered about me behind my back.

And reluctantly, I think about Coach: everything Lily’s been saying about him this whole time. How even now, after I’ve been out of high school for almost six years, I still don’t go back to visit my teachers or attend softball games for fear that I might run into him. How I don’t even let myself think about him. How I’ve been convinced this whole time that I pushed myself to the nth degree because I wanted it, and how that had to mean that it was my fault that I failed everyone.

Is this what Lily’s been trying to say?

And has it all been holding me back? Not just from enjoying cornhole or recovering from my injury, but from enjoying my life to the fullest?

When Brian sits back down beside me, I look over to the book he’s holding in his lap, and am shocked to see something I haven’t seen in years.

“Where did you get this?” I whisper, reaching for the highlighter-colored composition notebook.

“I promise I didn’t read any of it. I found it in your closet back when I got your crutches. At the time, I thought it was funny, but the longer I sat on it, the more I realized it might be kind of important.”

“I haven’t even thought about this since middle school.”

The cardstock cover crackles as I open it, groaning at the movement after so many years frozen in time. On the first page, there’s a game of M.A.S.H. for both Lily and I, circling our eventual futures in red sparkly gel pen. She was going to live in an apartment with her husband Chief Woodcock and drive a 2005 Ford Mustang to her job as a marine biologist. Whereas I was going to marry our classmate Rowenna Swan’s older brother Cooper, live in a shack, and drive a toilet-on-wheels to my job as a veterinarian.

Oh, man. I remember wanting to be a veterinarian. That was my dream back when I was like, nine years old. Mom wouldn’t let me get a dog, but I was convinced that I would love nothing more than to raise a puppy.

“It’ll destroy our couch, Dakota! Absolutely not.”

In the margin, I saw Lily’s loopy purple scribble spelling out, “Suck it, Mrs. Gander!”

A giggle bubbles out of my throat, along with more waterworks. I wipe at my eyes, turning the page to see some sketches of our future wedding parties. Lily’s bridesmaids’ dresses are hot pink, of course, with sweetheart necklines and poofy mini skirts. Mine are a more tasteful powder blue sheath style, with spaghetti straps.

I remember Lily fighting me on that. She hates spaghetti straps. Says they accentuate her armpit pouches, whatever that means.

A pain shoots through my heart so intense, I almost crumble right there on the couch. Wet spots bloom on the lined paper as tears fall freely from my eyes, staining the page.

I shove the book away, not wanting to ruin it, and Brian wraps his arms around me, cradling me to him. I snot all over his t-shirt, but he doesn’t pull away. Just rubs his hands up and down my trembling back and shoulders until the sobbing calms.

“I wish I’d had a friend back in high school who cared half as much about me as Lily cares about you.”

“You mean cared,” I cry. “She’s done with me.”

“No she isn’t,” he mumbles into my hair, cradling me closer. “Not if you let her know you still need her.”

“How do I do that?”

I lean back, searching his face for the answer. Her loss writhes in my stomach like a living, dying thing. I need to fix this. Need my friend back.

To help me remember who I am outside of competition.

He wipes my cheeks with his thumb, presses the sweetest, softest kiss to my lips, and then touches his forehead to mine before answering.

“Why don’t you start with admitting you need her help to win this championship?”