The Winners Circle Read Online Free PDF Page B

of several operations to join her cleft palate, and a hideous wire assembly strapped her jaw together. It looked moist and red, a gash across the middle of her face. It wasn’t the least bit pretty, and the class let her know, gawking, speechless. Sometimes, not uttering a word is worse than a quick and brutal slip of the tongue.
    Jerry felt their silent rejection. He knew what it meant to be of no use to people. When his mother had passed away from emphysema, the kids kept their distance from him. He hadn’t meant to scare them. He’d only told them how she died. She was eating strawberries when she became violently ill. She collapsed on the bathroom floor, coughing up blood. He thought it was the strawberries. He should’ve gotten on the phone sooner. Someone—his father, the doctor—needed to know. They called it a tragedy, and his father echoed that thought every day afterward. It was in the way he never really looked Jerry in the eye, the way he swam each night in scotch, bottled himself up along with any decent thought he’d ever had. His father behaved as if he was the only one in the family who had been abandoned.
    In school, Jerry and Chelsea didn’t speak. They formed islands of uncertainty and hurt. The fall season took hold, and the hardwoods of Chesterfield turned golden brown in the fading light. After class, Jerry used the shortcut through the woods, while Chelsea ran ahead of the others in her yellow dress with the pink flowers. She never talked to anyone. With all that equipment, Jerry wasn’t sure if she could utter a word.
    It was late October, and plump orange caterpillars clung to the branches and fading foliage. Dried leaves rustled beneath their feet, and the stream rambled over the stones and fallen logs, the dialogue of the forest. Jerry stuck to the path, heading for the large cement drainage pipe that fed the stream. He heard the boys up ahead. Their voices bounced off the water and echoed through the tunnel.
    Chelsea stood on the path, staring at the ground. Her knapsack lay in the yellow grass beside her feet.
    Peter Kruk and his two pals formed a barricade.
    “ What’s wrong with your face, freak?” Kruk displayed the tight veneer of a kid who’d been whipped too many times by his old man. His jaw jutted forward, and his hands constantly balled into fists. He even wrote with his fingers clenched around a pencil, ready to poke someone that got too close.
    Chelsea tried to pass, but Kruk threw his elbow to block her.
    “ Freak.” Kruk laughed, joined by his simpering cronies.
    She reached down for her knapsack.
    Kruk stamped on the shoulder strap to keep it down. “Where you goin’?”
    Jerry ducked into the flagging stalks of dried rushes, waiting for the kids to break up. He was curious too. He wanted a peek at the girl. She excelled at keeping out of people’s faces.
    She covered her mouth with her hand. Her hair was fastened into a ponytail that curled upon the nape of her neck.
    “ Can’t you speak?” Kruk spit on Chelsea’s legs. He was a spitter too, destined for life as a man whom people sidestepped.
    Kruk pushed her again, fishing for a reaction to toss in her face. “Speak!”
    Jerry heard Chelsea crying. She sobbed, so quietly it hardly rose above the din of the stream. Water swished through the cement tunnel and over a fallen tree. One of the boys plunked stones to the bottom, but Chelsea’s whimper wove through it all, penetrating Jerry’s ears.
    Kruk saw Jerry approaching. “It’s the goon.”
    The insult fell short of wounding Jerry. Kruk said it so many times a day that it was almost funny. Jerry stomped forward. He was taller than the other boys, but he never imagined that he’d silence Kruk until just then.
    “ The goon and the freak,” Kruk barked. “It’s an early Halloween party.”
    Jerry scooped up a stone from the path. The smooth rock tucked into his palm, as if cut to fit. He cocked his arm, taking dead aim on Kruk and his filthy little