Out of Order by A. M. Jenkins Page A

doesn’t say please. He just reaches toward the bag at my feet.
    â€œFuck, no.” I put my foot on the bag. Eric, Patrick, and Stu say nothing. Patrick, I know, likes cats. But he’s stuck between liking cats and having one very big, very mean senior on his ass for the rest of the year.
    Me, I don’t care about cats one way or the other.There’s just no way Gutterson can order me around like that.
    â€œCome on, Trammel,” says Gutterson. “Don’t be a—”
    â€œPut it in the freezer,” I say. “In the concession stand. Let ’em find it in the spring.”
    I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t even really think it—it just popped into my head. I’m actually a little shocked, that it came out of my mouth like that. Fortunately, I’m still sitting there with just the right amount of coolness, like Hey, whatever.
    Gutterson grins. He never thought of that. The concession stand’s locked up. But rumor has it there’s a key. Rumor has it that more than one girl’s buffed the concession stand floor with her back, courtesy of certain members of the varsity team.
    Gutterson’s staring at me. “You are one sick little bastard,” he tells me with approval.
    I shrug. I don’t figure Gutterson’ll really do it. I don’t figure he’s one of the guys with a key. Now Palmer, I’m sure, has one. But Gutterson would have been bragging about it all the time if he had one.
    Gutterson disappears to the back of the concession stand. I can hear the sound of a key in the padlock, and then a bang! as the door swings all the way open against the wall.
    Eric and Patrick and Stu are just sitting there, suddenlysilent. Eric and Stu are very interested in their shoes, but Patrick’s staring at the concession stand, and he looks really miserable. Of course, he’s not going to do anything about it. None of them are. That’s my crew for you. They’re afraid to help the cat, but still they’ve got to make me stop and think about what I just started.
    All of them, Patrick especially, are sitting there ruining my peace of mind, rubbing it in that I was the one who said to put the cat in there. And the thing is, they’ll probably all be moping around for days when all one of us has got to do is take a beating for the cat. Or maybe get put into the freezer himself for a little while. If he’d fit. I don’t know how big it is, I just know they got room for hot dogs back there.
    Finally we hear the sound of the door closing, and the scrabble and click of the lock, and Gutterson appears again.
    â€œGreat idea, Trammel,” Gutterson says. “You may turn out not to be a total waste of space after all.”
    Then he’s walking back up toward the school with an empty equipment bag.
    One frozen kitty, coming up.
    â€œHow long do you think it’ll live?” Patrick mutters to me.
    â€œWhat am I, a vet?” I’m leaning back with my elbows on the bench behind me. It’s a nice day for October. Nottoo breezy. Warm in the sun.
    Out here, that is.
    Okay, now I’m actually thinking about the stupid cat. About what it’d be like to freeze to death. Little paws on the cold, cold ice. Little meows in the dark. With nobody to hear.
    â€œHey,” I tell the guys. “Freezing to death beats getting your skull bashed in with a baseball bat.”
    Nobody says anything.
    â€œFreezing’s just like falling asleep,” I insist. I really think I heard that somewhere. Although I don’t know how anybody would know—if you froze to death, you wouldn’t be able to tell anybody how it felt because you’d be dead.
    â€œIt’s too late now,” Eric says, almost to himself. “There’s no way to get in there anyway. Not without a key.”
    Not without a key.
    â€œThere might be,” I point out.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWe could beat the