Loser's Bracket

  Dedication

  For all who have survived crazy families . . .

  which is like, everybody

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Books by Chris Crutcher

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter

  One

  The fact that life’s not fair doesn’t bother me. If the universe had distributed the IQ points allotted to my bio family evenly, we’d all dwell at the extreme low end of the range. But it made me “gifted” and the rest of them . . . not so much. That might sound like bragging but it’s . . . yeah, bragging; but hey, this is my story. If they see it differently, let them tell it.

  So, anyway . . . the universe also made me super coordinated and quick. Nobody in the rest of my family can juggle, like, one ball, though I have to leave open the possibility that Nancy—who contributed half my DNA—ate and drank and snorted away her athleticism. I hear my sis, Sheila, is a pretty good athlete in bed. Hard to believe we’re sisters. My bio dad, Rance, is this ghost Nancy keeps at the edge of her life just so she can berate him.

  I now live with another family altogether, which should be good news, but there’s something about real family; you’re connected, and that’s it. Most times when I’m with Nancy or my sister Sheila, we fight like hungry pit bulls over table scraps, but when we’re apart there’s this crazy pull to get back, so historically I’ve done crazy stuff to make that happen. If the foster system really worked, it would have put Nancy with us in foster care. That way the person who needed help most would have gotten it.

  But that didn’t happen and Nancy lost three of us; there’s an older brother, Luke, somewhere. Sheila was in and out like a ping-pong ball for most of her first ten years before social services stuck her in residential treatment. They took me before I dried off; no mother’s milk for this future point guard, for which I should be grateful because God knows what all it would have been fortified with. But, no permanent home early on because if Nancy was better at anything than picking bad boyfriends, it was tricking social workers into thinking she was working on her “issues.”

  Service providers? I’ve known a few. Bet I could give you the first names of enough public health nurses to populate a softball team. FRS workers? Too many to name. FRS stands for Family Reconciliation Services. That’s where your caseworker sends in a parent educator to help your mom deal with issues that arise when you’ve been sent back home for one more last chance. Issues like, should I duct tape my two-year-old daughter to the toilet seat in response to her shooting out nuclear tag poop. It’s called that when you crap so much volume with so much force that it runs all the way up to the tag in the neck of your filthy Dora the Explorer T-shirt.

  Issues like, can this nice man I met at a “cocktail lounge” last night live in the basement to help with rent? No? He seems nice. Is a level-three sex offender better or worse than a level-one sex offender? Doesn’t matter? I promise I won’t leave Annie alone with him.

  So here I’d be, living with well-to-do people who provided for me and funded all my passions: youth basketball, parks and rec cross-country, and track. They kept me in the finest Nike gear and runners, gave me my own room with a walk-in closet and separate bathroom. And they bought me books. Then Nancy would save up enough drug money for some shyster lawyer to petition juvenile court to send me back for that one more last try and there I’d be again, in her three-room shack that smelled like the bottom of an ashtray, waiting every morning outside the one bathroom—while her new boyfriend sat on the throne reading the entire paper after he’d used all the hot water—so I could get in to run a comb through my ratty hair and brush my teeth, and then be late for school where my counselor could give me the third degree about why my attitude, and my appearance, had taken this unexpected downturn.

  You don’t tell her it’s because you’re back with your mom.

  But here’s the deal: if Nancy had been serious; if she’d stopped with the drugs and the creepy brand-new best friends, I’d have aired out that hovel and lived with her till I turned eighteen—wrapped myself in athletic gear from Play It Again Sports, walked to all my practices, and complained not a second. Because in the end, blood is thicker than good sense.

  But the bouncing back and forth makes you crazy.

  So what you do—or at least what I do—is figure a way to get as much bio-family time as possible while living in the lap of relative luxury. This does not necessarily sit well with your bios, because when you get together you’re the one with the fancy clothes, the iPhone with the Bluetooth headphones, and the superior attitude.

  It also grates on your foster family, because they notice a serious behavioral downturn after your day with anyone with the surname Boots. Pop Howard says it’s like I’ve been hanging out so far up the holler I can’t see the sun. In fact, once Nancy’s parental rights were terminated, Pop put grave restrictions on my time with her and my evil sis. Like, none.

  Which turned me into a liar.

  For someone continuing to get the benefit of extreme doubt, Nancy was a master at getting on the bad side of social workers. See, if you choose the life of a social worker you’re not going to make a lot of money, and people your age who majored in business and make four times your salary building websites and inventing software that lets you download free books and music snicker behind your back while they’re telling you how much they admire your selflessness. Social workers don’t so much get exasperated because five or six years of college has left them among the working poor, but if you don’t cooperate with their do-gooding, it makes their career choice look ill-thought-out. At least that’s the gospel according to my good friend and long-suffering caseworker, Mr. Novotny.

  It was a whirlwind ending. I’m in fourth grade, nine years old, back at Nancy’s because she peed clean for a month, which means she snuck somebody else’s pee into the bottle. I’m trying to stay home from school to spend as much time with her as possible because this never lasts. I play sick but that doesn’t work, because Nancy wants to look like a good parent and if I don’t look sicker than she does when she’s cold turkey, I’m not sick enough to stay home. I abandon that plan and tell her my teacher doesn’t like me and lets the other kids bully me on purpose. Hey, I’m nine.

  Next minute we’re in the car headed for school, and from Nancy’s raving I know I’m about to have some serious explaining to do. We shoot past the VISITORS PLEASE CHECK IN AT THE FRONT OFFICE sign so fast she couldn’t possibly read it even if she could read, and head straight for my classroom, which I lead her to directly due to the pressure on the back of my neck. She kicks the door open so hard it breaks the doorstop and screams, “How dare you not like my Annie!” loud enough that three kids dive under their desks. “She’s the sweetest girl in the world and she has a hard life! Her father is a no-good, two-timing drug dealer (like there are good two-timing drug dealers?) and her mother just ain’t always done her best!” She jabs her thumb into her colossal chest.

  Mrs. Granger puts a hand up to calm the kids, who stare at me like I just brought a giant p
ython for show-and-tell, and walks calmly toward us.

  “Get back!” Nancy says, raising an arm in defense. “I’ll kick your ass!”

  Mrs. Granger tells me to go to my desk and asks Nancy to step into the hall so they can discuss this away from her students.

  “We’ll discuss it right by-God here,” Nancy bellows. I don’t go to my desk because I can’t break free.

  “I like Annie just fine,” Mrs. Granger says. “I like all my kids.”

  “That ain’t what my Annie tells me an’ my Annie don’t lie!”

  Mrs. Granger raises her eyebrows at me, because she’s caught me in plenty of lies, and Nancy takes that as a sign she thinks I’m a devil child. “This little girl been through hell,” she says. “She been left by her daddy and treated like a little piece of shit by me!”

  Somebody laughs because we don’t hear language like that in our classroom—from adults, anyway—but Nancy looks toward the sound like a pissed-off vampire and silence reigns.

  Mrs. Granger tries to guide her gently into the hall, but that is not happening.

  “Don’t you even think yur gonna duck this humiliation, stickin’ me out in the hall! I spent half my schoolin’ in the hall!” Nancy’s eyes narrow like a gunfighter’s. “Raise yur hand if this woman don’t like you, either.”

  No hands go up.

  “RAISE YUR GODDAM HANDS!” and three shoot up involuntarily. I figure I am in about as much trouble as I can get into with this little effort.

  Mrs. Granger quietly tells Nancy if she can’t get herself under control, she’ll have to call security, which has already heard the commotion and is on the way. Good luck. Two skinny security guys trying to get a five-foot five-inch, two-hundred-fifty-pound woman out a regular-sized door while she’s grabbing desks and whiteboards and the globe, then going deadweight . . . again, not happening.

  One of the guards is on loan from the city police force, so with help from the vice principal they’re finally able to wrestle Nancy to a patrol car, and I am stuck with no credible explanation as to why my mother thinks my teacher doesn’t like me. Luckily Mrs. Granger isn’t like that and she just motions me toward my seat.

  That was the end of the one-more-last-chances. Rance, my aforementioned sperm donor, hadn’t participated in any services, so terminating on him was a no-brainer and by the end of the day I was back at the Howards’ for good, oddly proud of my mother for her messed-up way of standing up for me.

  June 29—Session #Who’s Counting?

  ANNIE BOOTS

  Looking healthy in jock gear; got her basketball; mood seems fine. Got started a little late because of a crisis with the preceding client. Annie let me know right off she had to leave at the assigned time anyway. Typical Annie.

  Annie: Nothing personal. I’ve got a shootaround with my Hoopfest team.

  Me: Going up the losers bracket again, I assume.

  Annie: (nods in the affirmative)

  Me: Do your teammates know what’s behind that?

  Annie: Leah does. I tell Leah everything. The other girls don’t need to know.

  Me: You tell Leah everything? That’s new.

  Annie: Well, you know, everything you can tell out in the real world. I tell you everything.

  Me: What do you want to talk about today? I’m assuming you don’t want my take on your losers bracket one more time.

  Annie: You are an astute assumer.

  Me: So . . .

  Annie: Do you remember the last time I got removed?

  Me: Like it was yesterday. You broke a vase; said your removal was all my fault. Said your caseworker and I and all the teachers at your school made a secret plan to trick Nancy. Pretty rough language for a nine-year-old, if I remember.

  Annie: Do you remember what really happened?

  Me: I sure do. You lit your mother’s fuse by lying about your teacher; thought you’d get to stay home from school, but instead of no people going to school, two people went to school.

  Annie: Do you think it was my fault I got taken? Like if I hadn’t said that about my teacher . . .

  Me: I think it was your doing that you got taken on that particular day, but that incident was the very small straw that broke the camel’s back. Nancy and Rance had already piled up an impressive stack. Why? What’s bugging you? More dreams?

  Annie: (big sigh) Yeah, I just keep seeing the look on Nancy’s face when they told her at the next supervised visit that it was all over.

  Me: I was told that “look” was a gunslinger’s stare, followed by an impressive meltdown.

  Annie: Yeah, but there was a second right before that. She was whipped.

  Me: I don’t know, Annie. You can see that look, you can dream that look, you can believe it was all on you. We both know how hard it is to outthink your feelings, but we also know there was no way Nancy was going to get it together to be your mom. You just got a bad draw, honey. What else you got?

  Annie: You know, war with Pop.

  Me: I thought we decided that’s a battle, not a war. Come on, Annie, one year and you’re on your own. Off to college, calling your own shots. Just hold it together.

  Impression: Conflicted, which I see as normal for her age and time of life. The intensity comes from her history. Her swagger and trepidation will both get tested.

  Emily Palmer, M.A.

  Chapter

  Two

  So here comes summer between junior and senior year and Hannah, Mariah, and Leah (I know, a lot of h’s) and I are making our way through the massive Hoopfest crowd, looking for our court. Hoopfest is the largest three-on-three street b-ball tournament in the country. We’ve played together every year since we were ten and we’ve won our age group every time but once . . . when we came in second. After this year we go our separate ways.

  Hannah and Leah are small and quick, I’m about middle, and Mariah owns the paint. You play three with one sub, so we can go big or small. A few other teams will give us a run, but in the end, we rule.

  “Let’s get through today undefeated,” Leah says. “It’s going to be in the high nineties, like our shoes could melt. We’ve had to come up through the losers bracket three years in a row.” She frowns at me. Leah knows my “Losers Bracket” strategy and the reasons behind it, and she is not a fan, probably because we always win, but I seldom see any Boots. But she’s my best friend, so most years she tolerates it; but it is hot. Leah’s real sport is swimming—though it could be any sport she chooses—and Simone Manuel and Cullen Jones aside, she’s well aware she could count the other top-notch black swimming studs on one partially amputated hand. Her plan, along with her younger sister, is to blow that trickle into a river.

  “I know,” Hannah says now, “we play three extra games when that happens; just one year I want to win straight through. We could die in this heat.”

  So we blow our first game on a missed short jumper by me, followed by shoddy defense. This girl I could spot ten points in a one-on-one game to eleven and beat ten times out of ten drives around me and lays one in to end it. She snags the ball as it comes through the net and flips it to me in a take that gesture that will cost her big when we see them again coming up through the losers bracket.

  My teammates are scary quiet as we throw half-drunk Gatorade bottles into our workout bags. Leah takes me aside and whispers, “Un means ‘no’; defeat means ‘loss.’ What do you get when you put them together?”

  I shrug. “Slow start.”

  “Uh-huh. Hoopfest has emergency room statistics about days like these.”

  “But think how much better we’ll all feel when we come all the way back and win it,” I say. “I mean, what feels better than, like, pressure?”

  “Flu, acne, your period . . .”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  She gives me her look.

  Mariah squints and points at me. “You do know there’s something wrong with you, right?”

  I assure her I do.

  Here’s why the losers bracket. After the shoo
t-out between Nancy and Mrs. Granger, my hopscotching between homes was done. The Howards told Mr. Novotny they’d keep me until I was grown if and only if social services stopped bouncing me in and out like a bolo ball. They didn’t adopt because that would have let the state off the hook if they decided to bail on me when I turned into Lizzie Borden at thirteen, which many experts told them was not only possible but likely. (I’m seventeen and it hasn’t happened yet, but I’m not making any promises.) At any rate, they wrote up a long-term foster care agreement, which puts me permanently with the Howards until I’m eighteen, or until Pop Howard kills me.

  So I didn’t get the parents I want, but I got the ones I need. A childhood with the Boots does not lead one to Yale or Stanford or U-Dub or even Spokane Community. It leads to the corner of McDonald’s and Walmart. Plus, certain times when Nancy and I get around each other, we fight from the time we’re within earshot until one of us irritates the other so bad somebody uses the c-word; which is crazy because when I can’t see her or Sheila or any of their lunatic entourage, I get really, really anxious. It’s like when you go to IHOP and order the chocolate chip pancakes with Hershey’s Syrup and a cup of hot cocoa; you know it’s bad for you, but do you change your order to the omelet? You do not. So when I asked Mr. Novotny if we could have sporadic, supervised visits, he smiled, brushed his hands together, and said, “When your mom’s rights were terminated, she became a nonentity to me. Non. Over. Finished. Done. Free at last.”

  There’s a restraining order on Nancy for the Howards’ place because she has stalker in her DNA. Having Nancy lurking in a neighborhood like ours is like parking a rusted-out Chevy minivan on the Mercedes lot. It wouldn’t be beyond her to threaten to kidnap Marvin, then hold a prisoner swap. Marvin is the Howards’ real kid, and though he has a scary IQ and vocabulary, he’s not exactly what you’d call tough. Five minutes alone with Nancy and he wouldn’t be able to put a sentence together.

  The reason I know that particular threat isn’t beyond her is, I’ve heard her make it.