Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (18 page)

Jessica, Mom, and I sit at the table tonight, chewing in silence. Maybe they’ve got their own things to drown out. I don’t know.

I look at Jessica’s plate. There are six lettuce leaves in a pile, and she’s wiping dressing off of one. She won’t eat it until it’s practically bare. Mom is moving salad around on
the plate but not really eating. Just making angry scraping sounds.

That’s our dinner. Three silent people and one empty chair. Lots of lettuce.

And then the doorbell rings.

Our doorbell never rings. Not at this hour. Not at any hour.

“Are you expecting someone?” Mom says. It sounds like an accusation. Like she’s had enough surprises for one year.

“No,” I say.

This is the most conversation we’ve had in seventy-two hours.

“I’ll get it!” Jessica says. She’ll use any excuse not to eat.

“Be careful,” Mom says.

While Mom is distracted by the door, I put a second huge tong of Caesar salad on my plate.

“Mom!” Jessica shouts. Her voice sounds funny, like there’s some kind of problem.

Mom gets up and goes to the door. I drop the tongs and use my fingers to pick croutons out of the bowl. Big fat ones.

“Andrew! Come here!” Mom shouts.

What the hell’s going on out there?

I walk into the living room and I see—get this—half the football team standing in our doorway. O. is in the front with
Cheesy next to him. April’s there, too. So is Lisa Jacobs and some other girls I barely know.

“Are these your friends?” Mom says.

Are they? I’m not sure.

O. says, “We’re sorry to bother you at home, Mrs. Zansky, but we were hoping to talk to you and Andy.”

“Who are you?” she says.

“We’re the football squad,” he says.

“Varsity,” Cheesy says, as if that makes a difference to Mom.

Mom looks at me strangely, like maybe I planned a surprise attack.

“It’s okay with me,” I say.

Mom sighs. “Who’s hungry?” she says.

I was wrong about it being half the team. Actually, it’s the whole team and the entire cheer squad. They’re stuffed into our living room now—sitting, standing, leaning, girls sitting cross-legged on the floor. Mom quickly goes into catering mode, whipping out trays of mini egg rolls. She’s doling them out defensively like little missiles.

Nobody has said why they’re here yet. They’re just chewing and thanking Mom. Cheesy tries to pick a mini egg roll off the tray. He’s got hands like snow shovels, so he really has to concentrate to take just one.

Jessica’s eyes are jumping around in her head. She’s got twenty hot guys in her house, and ten beautiful cheerleaders. She goes from flirting with guys to being shy to asking the
girls about their hair. She keeps walking past O., trying to get his attention.

I sneak looks at April. I want to be angry with her, but when I see her in my house, it’s impossible. My head is angry, but my heart keeps opening up all on its on. It pisses me off that I can’t just close it and keep it shut.

Mom runs back to the kitchen for more missiles. I’m wondering how long this is going to go on when O. finally says, “If it’s all right with you, Mrs. Zansky, we’ll get down to business.”

Mom freezes like a trapped animal.

“Of course,” she says, and smoothes down her apron.

She looks for a place to sit. Rodriguez jumps out of the armchair and brushes it off for her. Mom hesitates. It’s Dad’s chair, but Rodriguez wouldn’t know that.

“Andrew is a very important part of this team,” O. says.

Mom sinks into the chair.

“We know he made a mistake, and he has some health problems, but we’d like to help him if we can.”

“I don’t understand,” Mom says.

“We need him,” April says.

“You do?” Mom says.

I feel like I’m going to faint.

O. says, “We’re hoping there’s some way we could work this out.”

Mom looks upset. “Of course I want Andrew to be happy,” she says.

What else is she going to say? She’s sitting across from a thousand pounds of offensive linemen.

“Andrew’s our boy,” Rodriguez says. “You should see him out there on the field, Mrs. Z.”

“I did see him,” Mom says.

In an oxygen mask. But she doesn’t say that.

“Things won’t be the same without him,” April says, and she bats her eyes at Mom. I notice Mom soften a bit.

“Andrew has a serious asthma problem,” Mom says.

“Is there medicine he could take?” O. asks.

“There is medicine …,” Mom says tentatively. She glances at me. I keep my face neutral. “But football is a dangerous game, isn’t it?”

“It’s a tough game, there’s no question,” O. says. “But there’s a lot of protective technology that’s applied in our gear. Safety comes first. Always.”

“And we’re a team,” Bison says. “We protect each other.”

“Yeah!” the guys grunt. It comes out really loud in our living room. O. holds up his hands like he doesn’t want things to get out of control.

Mom looks around the room, her eyes flitting nervously from person to person.

“I didn’t know Andrew had so many friends,” she says. She looks at me proudly. “It’s nice for a mother to see.”

I try to see what she sees. Thirty people, all here to support her son. That’s when I notice it’s not the entire team. There’s one person missing. The Neck.

“Andrew,” Mom says, “do you want to play football?”

The whole team looks at me. It’s a really strange moment. Mom never asks me questions directly like this, like I might actually have a choice in the matter. She always decides things for me, then we fight over her decision.

“Andrew?” Mom says.

“Earth to Andy,” April says, and everyone laughs. But they do it in a nice way, like we’re all in this together.

“Do you want to play?” Mom says.

“Yes,” I say.

“Even after what happened?” Mom says.

“More than anything,” I say.

The room goes quiet. Cheesy crunches down on an egg roll, and it sounds like thunder.

Everyone’s waiting for Mom now.

“Okay, then,” Mom says softly. “We’ll find a way to make it work.”

The team bursts into applause.

I get up fast and go to my room to get the consent form. Before she can change her mind.

the sidewalk, the moon, and april.

The party lasts for an hour after Mom signs the form. Everyone is in a great mood, and Mom keeps the hors d’oeuvres flowing. It feels like we just won a game together, only we did it in my living room.

Eventually things start to break up. People drift out to the driveway. I’m walking outside when I notice O. standing alone looking into the backyard.

“Thanks a lot,” I tell him.

He motions back towards everyone in the driveway. “We need you. For real.”

“At the game last week,” I say. “You saved my life.”

“You make it sound like some major deal. I just stuck an inhaler in your mouth.”

“It was more than that.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

O. squeezes my shoulder briefly, then heads back to the driveway. I watch him as he goes, half of him in shadow, half
lit up by our porch light. He seems like a hero in that moment. Even the way he refuses to take credit. It’s something a true hero would do.

The players say their good-byes and pack themselves into a few cars. Lisa Jacobs get into the passenger seat of O.’s 4Runner. O. climbs in next to her and fires up the engine.

“Are you coming, April?” one of the cheerleaders says.

I look around, and April’s still in the driveway behind me.

“I’m going to walk home,” April says. She smiles at me. “I live a few blocks from here.”

“I didn’t know that,” I say.

The cheerleader winks and gets in the car with the other guys. O. drives past us slowly. He doesn’t look over, just faces forward like he’s concentrating on the road.

April and I stand at the end of my driveway. I look back towards the house and see the living room curtains move. Jessica, of course. Harriet the Spy.

“Will you walk me a little?” April says.

“Sure,” I say.

We walk through the neighborhood together. April pulls her sweater around her. It’s the time of year when summer is definitely over, but it’s not completely fall yet.

“What are you thinking?” April says.

“I’m happy.”

“Because your mom signed the form.”

“That and other things.”

April’s lips look soft and wet in the moonlight.

“What’s going on between you and O.?” I say.

I didn’t plan to say that. It just popped out.

“Nothing,” April says.

“You said you liked him.”

“Everyone likes him.”

“Like
like. You know what I mean,” I say.

“That’s over. I mean, he has a girlfriend.”

“So you don’t like him anymore?”

“Why are you asking so many questions? I feel like I’m being interrogated.”

That’s what Dad used to say when Mom attacked him.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Why are you so interested anyway?” April says.

There’s a long pause.

This is the moment. It’s time to tell April the truth about how I feel. How I’ve never met anyone like her. How I knew she was different from the first moment I saw her.

But all I can think is that I probably have Caesar salad stuck in my teeth. I’m going to declare my love with a giant, disgusting chunk of lettuce in my gap. I run my tongue around the inside of my mouth. I can’t feel anything, but that’s no guarantee. Lettuce is tricky like that.

April says, “I don’t want you to get hurt, Andy.”

“Why would I get hurt?”

We stop in the middle of the sidewalk. She puts her hand on my arm.

“I’m just worried,” she says.

My entire body is tingling. Everything is telling me it’s time.
Kiss the girl
, the song says. The song is right. I’m sure of it.

But there’s another song. The one in my head. It says,
Fat guys don’t get to kiss the girl
. This song comes with a YouTube clip. It’s a scene of a big fat kid trying to kiss this little, cute girl. She’s sitting at a desk, and he’s talking to her. Suddenly he’s overcome with passion. He leans in to kiss her, and he loses his balance and ends up knocking both of them over and practically crushing her. The title of the clip is “Elephant in Love.” When I last checked, it had three million hits.

“You look like you want to say something,” April says.

Three million hits of “Elephant in Love” are playing in fast motion in my head.

Screw it.

I take a deep breath, suck in my stomach, lean in, and kiss April.

I’m not sure if I should aim for the lips or the cheek, so I hedge my bets and go in between. I catch the skin next to her nose, but she adjusts at the last second, and our lips meet.

It turns into a long, slow, soft kiss that completely takes my breath away.

My first.

“Well,” she says. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Was it okay?”

“It was nice. How about for you?”

“Nice,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says.

I look up at the sky. There are real stars out here. They twinkle and go on forever, not at all like the ones on my bedroom ceiling.

“Thanks for helping me with Mom,” I say.

“Oh, no problem,” she says.

It’s completely dark now, and there’s a chill in the air. It’s just a little cold, but there’s something serious about it, like when your chest hurts just before you get the flu.

“I should get home,” April says.

“I’ll walk you.”

“It’s just a few blocks from here. I’ll be fine.”

“I guess I should get home, too,” I say.

April smiles. “Do you have my number?”

“No.”

“Why don’t I give it to you?”

I pull out the iPhone, and she taps it in.

“You’re an amazing person, Andy.”

“I know,” I say, even though I don’t.

April laughs.

“And modest, too,” she says.

people standing, person sitting.

The whole school is cheering for us.

It’s not really the
whole
school, because pep rallies are voluntary now. They changed the policy five years ago when some parents complained and said it was undemocratic to force kids to cheer, even for their own school. So now kids have a choice. If you don’t want to go to the pep rally, you can go to the library. That’s what I always did—sat in the library studying with Eytan while the school walls echoed with cheering.

Kind of ironic. The first time I go to a pep rally, I’m in it.

Caroline Whitney-Smith kicks things off. She talks about our rivalry with Brookline, how it goes back for nearly one hundred years. One hundred games, one hundred pep rallies before the games. I don’t want to be influenced by such a sappy speech, but it’s impossible not to be.

Being on a team. Supporting the school. Tradition.

The stuff we used to laugh about in the library. I’m starting to think maybe it really matters.

By the time Caroline Whitney-Smith finishes her speech, I’ve entered the Matrix. I’m cheering along with everyone else.

Coach starts to introduce us, one player at a time. It seems like I’m on the sideline forever when I hear him say, “Now I’d like to introduce someone really special. Our new secret weapon, the point of the arrow, three hundred and seven pounds of pure grit and muscle—Andrew ‘Big Z’ Zansky!”

Cheesy gives me a push, and I run onto the gym floor. I’m absolutely mortified. Coach just said my weight in a microphone in front of eight hundred people. I want to grab the mic back and tell everyone that I’ve lost a lot of weight during practice. I’m probably 290 now, or maybe even 285. Definitely not 307. No way.

But here’s the really crazy thing. The crowd
roars
. More than roars. They
explode
. My name, my size—everything about me gets a cheer. I look behind me and the team is applauding, and the cheerleaders are jumping up and down. When I take my place in the lineup, I wedge my helmet against my hip like I’ve seen O. do, and all the guys pat me hard on the back.

I’m big, and everyone knows it. Maybe they even like it.