The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Chris Fuhrman

garbage bag up front. Mr. Thomas, the janitor,came in at the end and licked his lips archly and took the bag away.
    At lunchtime we trooped downstairs to the cafeteria, into the oily crusty smell of, yes, fried chicken.
    “Coincidence my ass,” Rusty said. “These cheap bitches don’t waste a thing.”
    We cut past all the seventh-graders in line and took plates of chicken and butter beans. It wasn’t the dissected chicken, but I still didn’t want it. So much trouble and change was occurring that my stomach had rebelled.
    Tim had brought a coconut for lunch. He punched holes in the soft parts with a ball-point pen, then sucked out the milk through a straw. He cracked the shell open on the floor and peeled out pieces of white meat.
    We huddled at the end of our table and talked about the Wildcat Caper. Rusty, Tim, and Wade shared sly looks that made me think they had a secret from me. I only ate about half my chicken. My hands still smelled like the raw stuff. Tim gave me some coconut, and on the way out I bought SweeTarts at the candy window.
    All of us walked to the corner and waited for the patrol boys to stop traffic, then crossed over to Daffin Park where we had our recesses. Wade and Rusty bounced a soccer ball between them. Tim drummed a ragged copy of Orwell’s
Animal Farm
on his leg. We passed our old merry-go-round and the swings and the ladder tower, all of them made of smooth dirty pipe that smelled the way dimes taste.
    On the other side was the community swimming pool, empty inside a locked fence, and beyond that the pond, its surface carpeted with green algae. White ducks, minus the injured one, drifted across in search of picnickers likely to fling bread.
    Father O’Leary was waiting in the field already, a whistle dangling below his Roman collar. Rusty tossed the ball to him and he kept it in the air with little kicks.
    The young priest coached us once a week now. Before that, we sometimes played a version of rugby whose only rule was you couldn’t touch the ball with your fingers. The players obeyed this by carrying it in their fists, and you could do anything, even punch a kid in the mouth to get the ball from him.
    Father O’Leary taught us soccer rules, sportsmanship, positions, the way they did it in Ireland. He talked about organizing a school soccer team.
    I couldn’t do all the running and kicking anymore because of the hernia. Tim sat out sometimes to keep me company and to read. He was always one of the last picked for a team anyway, because he was so small.
    We sank down at the field’s edge, on the roots of a giant oak. I could feel the little scabs on my legs pull, from the whipping. I munched my candy. The others scurried across the field, kicking the checkered ball, shouting. The seventh-grade boys gathered farther up, on the red clay of the softball diamond. Steven, Wade’s younger brother and also the tallest in his class, tossed some poor kid’s glove up and popped it into the outfield with an aluminum bat. He laughed wildly, slung the bat after it. Wade claimed their parents’ divorce was responsible for this behavior. Behind the chain-link of the batting cage were some old bleachers where the girls were pairing up to gossip. Margie Flynn, I knew, sometimes stayed in the library after lunch.
    Rusty hustled across the field, Wade beside him. Rusty kicked the ball along, ran after it, kicked again. Father O’Leary, on the other team, ran out to block him, the stringed whistle bouncing on his black shirtfront, and Rusty hooked the ball with his orthopedic shoe and it swished out sideways and Wade kicked it at the goal line. Donny Flynn flung himself vainly at the ball and thumped to the ground, plaster cast first. “Motherfucker!” he shouted.
    Father O’Leary squinted towards the pond as if he hadn’t heard. Donny raised up on his belly with a “so what?” sneer.
    O’Leary was slight and dark with a droopy mustache like abandito. He had devilish pointed eyebrows and