All Good Children - Catherine Austen [27]
“You don’t have to cheer. Just watch for a few minutes.”
She puts me under a microscope, examines my shoes and haircut, decides what I’m worth.
“Like we’re judging them?” her friend asks. She’s small and slippery, with spiky black hair, green eyes and clothes like lingerie. My hands could meet around her waist.
“Sure,” I say. “Judge them.”
They stare from me to the soccer field. They shrug, smile, follow me over.
Immediately, the football players try to fill out their uniforms. Even Saffron toughens up under the new surveillance.
The girls flaunt their power by shouting praise and insults. “Hit him harder!” the blond likes to say. The elfish one hops and claps.
I’m starting to enjoy myself when Xavier appears at my side, shirtless and sweaty. “Hi, Max. Your mom said you were here. Do you want to run cross-country when your practice is over?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Once the girls catch sight of Xavier, they couldn’t care less about midget football. They flank him, brushing up close, not even faking nonchalance. Their voices slide from their mouths, their giggles flutter like lashes. They whisper questions and lick their lips.
“Bye, Max!” Xavier shouts thirty seconds later. “I have to cancel our run. I’m going for ice cream!” The girls laugh as they pull him away.
Mr. Hendricks checks his watch. “Oh, boy. I have to pick up a vehicle at ten. Just run them through fumble drills before you send them home, all right? Put the balls and pylons in the storage room. Make sure it locks, would you? Thanks, kid.”
This is my Saturday morning.
I end the practice ten minutes later. “Premium work,” I tell Saffron. To Chicago and Frankie, the hulks who hogged the ball, I say, “Not so premium for you guys. Stick to the plays next time and let everyone do their jobs.”
“Yeah, whatever, midget,” Chicago says. Frankie laughs.
“Here, Coach.” A tiny blond boy holds out the pylons he collected from the field. He’s the most timid player on the team, a seventh grader drowning in his aquamarine jersey. He’s feeble, but I like the way he called me Coach. “Do you know where my sister went?” he asks.
“Sorry, kid. I think she left.”
He looks around, nodding. “Okay. Thanks.”
There’s no trailer and the gymnasium’s locked, so the kids walk home in their uniforms and cleats, helmets dangling from their fingers.
I tuck the pylons and balls in the storage room. It’s crammed with maintenance tools, gym gear and school supplies: hula hoops, soccer balls, ladders, light bulbs, garbage bags, gardening tools, cleaning solutions, rolls of tape, bottles of glue and ink, buckets of storage chips, stacks of paper and cardboard, and a stunning spectrum of paint that leaves me breathless.
Ever since I flipped open my first box of sixty-four crayons at the age of three, art supplies have made my heart race. Paint, ink, my mother’s nail polish, even the juxtaposition of wet and dry concrete makes me tremble. My mind reels around tonal variation, the sheer number of blues you can lay side by side.
The paints in the storeroom are impossibly numerous, a rainbow sliced and dehydrated into tempera cakes stacked in knee-high columns on the floor. And on a shelf above them, dozens of aerosol cans in banner red, regal blue, ivory, glossy black, aluminum.
It’s too much. I can’t help myself.
I toss a basketball from hand to hand, trying to look casual. I throw it higher each time. I let it get away from me twice before I hurl it against the wall and—oops—smash the surveillance camera above the door. Bang, crash, thunk. I stuff two garbage bags with paint cakes and cans, so excited my tongue hangs out. I don’t take it all, but I take a lot.
I spend the next three hours spraying the back wall of the middle school conservatory. I fill the background quickly, choking on vapor, then take my time with my subject. I make a premium end-to-end piece: two baby white boys who look like Frankie and Chicago pick their noses in shitty blue diapers and jerseys while eleven supreme black females jog past them in spotless red uniforms, helmets tucked under their