Behind the Curtain Read Free Page B

eighty-five, and lowered the bar into the cradle with no help.
    “Hey,” Ingrid said.
    Ty lay on the bench, chest rising and falling, the muscles stretching his T-shirt. RED RAIDER FOOTBALL it said on the front. BIGGER , FASTER , STRONGER .
    “What was Sean doing over here?” Ingrid said.
    “Nothing,” said Ty, reaching up for the bar. He took a few deep breaths. “Ready,” he said, and lifted on the last exhale.
    “One,” said Ingrid. This was what being a slave master in a Roman galley must have been like, easy work but boring and a bit smelly. Ty grunted louder, got redder and more bug-eyed, but did ten more.
    “Good job,” she said.
    He got up, rubbing his shoulder. Ingrid turned to go. “One more set,” he said. He fetched two tens from the weight stack, added them to the bar.
    One eighty-five plus twenty? That made—“What are you doing?” Ingrid said.
    “Just three reps,” said Ty.
    “Whoa,” said Ingrid.
    “Did I ask for your opinion?” said Ty.
    He lay on the bench, grasped the bar, planted his feet, took a huge deep breath, pushed. The bar lifted off the cradle. Ty lowered it to his chest, grunted, tried to heave the weight back up, a vein popping out in his neck, all blue and throbbing. Slowly, oh so slowly, the bar rose. Ingrid heard his teeth grinding, got ready to say one. But at that moment, the bar still maybe six inches below the cradle, Ty’s arms started shaking and the bar stalled.
    “A little help,” he said, almost in a normal tone of voice.
    Help? What was she supposed—
    “Help!” This time not normal at all.
    Ingrid stepped forward, grabbed the bar, her hands between his, his upside-down face, purple now, right under all that iron. She bent her legs, drove up with all her might. The bar didn’t budge, except for the quiver from the way Ty’s arms were shaking.
    “Damn it,” said Ty. “Lift.”
    Ingrid found a little extra. Now she was grunting too. They grunted together, fighting the weight of that bar. It rose, inch by inch, up to cradle level and clanged into place. For a second she felt lighter than air, as though she could float up to the ceiling.
    “That was lucky,” Ingrid said.
    “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Ty said.
    “Huh?”
    He sat up, pulled off his T-shirt, mopped his face. “I’m so damn weak.”
    “Maybe mentally,” Ingrid said.
    His voice rose, that deep man voice he sometimes had now. “You’re such a jerk,” he said, throwing the T-shirt at her.
    Ingrid ducked. For just a second, a scary second, she thought he might hit her. They’d had an incident or two like that in the past. Instead he turned and drove his fist into the padded bench, very hard, making a sound that boomed through the house. He was acting so weird. What was wrong with him? And his back: Ty had always been one of those lucky acne-free kids, and his face still was smooth and unblemished. But under the ceiling lights, she could see dark-red pimples all over his upper back. He rose and started stripping off the weights.
     
    In the morning when Ingrid went downstairs, Mom and Ty were already gone. Echo Falls High started half an hour before Ferrand Middle, and Mom wentright by it on her way to work. That meant Ingrid and Dad ate a lot of breakfasts together, Dad never going in before his nine-o’clock meeting with Mr. Ferrand. Dad would read her little snippets from The Wall Street Journal , and Ingrid would eat the kind of things she ate when no one was paying attention. But today The Wall Street Journal was still in its plastic wrapper and Dad was already packing his briefcase, tie knotted, suit jacket on.
    “Morning, Dad.”
    “Morning,” he said, barely looking up. “Going in a little early today.”
    “Something special happening?”
    “Probably be going in a little early for the foreseeable future.”
    “How come?”
    “Globalization, if you want to put it in one word.”
    A word that was in the air, even if Ingrid didn’t really