Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (19 page)

Coach waits for the cheers to die down before he starts to announce the next player. He doesn’t even get past the “O.” before eight hundred people leap to their feet in unison. It’s a prison-riot scene from a movie. I’m sure the windows will shatter.

O. takes a breath as the cheers swell to gargantuan proportions, then he slowly jogs towards me, relaxed and completely unselfconscious, exactly the way he was in the hall that first day when we met. It’s as if eight hundred people calling his name doesn’t even faze him.

He holds out his fist to me, and we bump knuckles. The crowd totally flips out. I’m caught up in it just like everyone else, a huge idiot smile pasted across my face as I call O.’s name and clap my hands, cheering for my own quarterback. It’s the O-Effect in full force.

I look out across the stands where everyone is standing and cheering, and a glint of metal catches my eye. There’s a guy sitting in a wheelchair off to the side of the bleachers. He’s got a cast going all the way up his leg. At first I think he’s one of the Slow Gym kids who maybe wants to feel like a part of the action, but when I look carefully I realize I’ve never seen him before. While everyone else is cheering, he just stares.

Suddenly our eyes meet. There’s a strange expression on his face.

I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure he hates my guts.

percentages.

The guys are really excited in the locker room after the rally. Rodriguez is describing some girl in the crowd who was giving him the eye.

Coach says, “Can I get your attention, gentlemen?”

People stop talking. There’s a creaking sound as the wheelchair guy slowly rolls in.

“Holt!”
someone shouts, and the guys run over to him, shaking his hand and patting him on the back.

“Who’s that?” I ask Cheesy, but he ignores me and joins the group.

“How’re you feeling?” O. asks as he gently taps Holt’s cast.

“Better every day,” Holt says. “Another four and I’ll be up walking again. That’s what the doctor says.”

“Four weeks!” Rodriguez says.

“Months,” Holt says.

“Oh,” Rodriguez says.

“Hey, I want you to meet someone,” O. says. He waves me over.

“This the new guy?” Holt says.

O. nods.

Now that I’m close to him, I can see that Holt’s huge. He only looks small because he’s sitting in the chair.

“Are you tough?” Holt says with a smirk.

“He’s hard-core,” Bison says.

“He’d better be,” Holt says, and everyone chuckles uncomfortably.

“Hey, Coach,” Holt says, “you ready for Everest?”

“More than ready,” Coach says.

Holt’s face goes slack. He looks up at O. “Sorry I let you down,” he says.

“You didn’t let me down,” O. says.

“I let you all down,” Holt tells the team. They grunt, disagreeing with him.

Coach interrupts. “It’s time to hit the field,” he says. He looks down at Holt. “You want to watch practice? Get a little of the old flavor?”

“Nah,” Holt says. “I got things to do.”

Coach says, “All right then. Let’s motivate, ladies.”

The guys bark like Marines and head for the stairs. I check my sock and realize I forgot my backup inhaler. I’m taking the pills now, so I probably won’t need it. But I have to keep it with me just in case. That’s what the doctor told Mom.

I run over to my locker to get it. When I come back, Holt is still there.

“You know who I am?” he says.

“No.”

He grunts. “They didn’t tell you, huh? Out of sight, out of mind.”

“What happened to you?” I say.

He looks down at his cast. “Broken in three places. More than broken.
Shat-tered.”

He says the word like it’s got extra syllables.

“That sucks,” I say.

“Not your fault,” he says. “Everest.”

There’s that name again. The mountain in the Himalayas. I’m thinking maybe Holt went on a climbing expedition and fell. It’s not like a lot of high-school kids have climbed Everest, but then again, we’re in Newton. There’s plenty of money floating around. You get back from winter break, and people have pictures from African safaris and stuff like that.

“I have to get to practice,” I say.

“Sure, bud,” he says. “Keep your head down out there.”

“I will.”

I climb the stairs towards the field. At the top, I sneak a glance back down.

Holt is sitting there, not moving, staring at the lockers like he’s looking for something that’s not there anymore.

*  *  *

“What’s Everest?” I ask O. in the huddle.

“Nothing to worry about,” he says.

“He’s a friggin’ monster,” Cheesy says.

“Shut up, Cheesy!” one of the guys says.

“You can handle him,” O. says.

“It’s a person?” I say.

O. seems upset now. He ignores my question and calls the Trojan Horse.

It’s our big sneak play. Pretend to hand the ball to a guy who can run, then hand it to a guy who can’t.

Me.

It’s a great fake-out. Even our own team gets fooled by it in scrimmages.

That’s what happens now. O. fakes the handoff to Bison then drops the ball into my bread basket. An opening appears in the defense right in front of me. So I take it.

I run for all I’m worth. I’d like to score a touchdown against our own guys. That’s would feel good. I see the goal line coming up before me. I’m pretty sure I’m home free when someone hits me from behind and I go down hard. I struggle to turn over, and I end up face-to-face with the Neck.

“Get out now,” he says.

I’m in shock. He hasn’t said more than two words to me the whole year.

“I’m not a quitter,” I say.

“You’re going to get hurt,” he says.

“Screw you. You’ve been trying to get rid of me from the very beginning.”

“You got it wrong,” he says.

Coach is blowing the whistle, but the Neck isn’t moving. He’s lying on top of me, talking to me quietly, three inches from my face.

“Listen to me,” he says. “Holt was you last year.”

“What happened to him?”

“Everest happened.”

Guys are running over and shouting for us to break it up. They think maybe we’re fighting. The Neck talks even faster.

“You think you’re popular,” he says. “You think you’re part of the team, but you’re not.”

I think about the team in my living room the other day. Everyone except the Neck.

“Go to hell,” I say. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

That’s when the guys pull him off me.

I lie on the field, his words bouncing around inside my helmet.

One percent of me doesn’t believe a word he said.

The other 99 percent knows it’s true.

man meets mountain.

I make it to the school library fifteen minutes before it closes. I jump online to look at archived copies of
The Newtonite
.

I’ve never really read the newspaper before. Who reads their school newspaper, right? I mean, unless you’re in it, then you examine it like it’s the Dead Sea Scrolls. I’ve been in it exactly once, a group photo of the Model UN team going to New York City last year. I made sure I was in the back row peeking out from behind Eytan so my fat wouldn’t show. I brought home two copies, one to put on Dad’s desk, and one to give to Mom.

I’ve never taken the paper too seriously, but I take it seriously now.

I read the sports section.

I read about O.’s amazing performance last season. I read a sports column that claims Newton is not an amazing all-around team, but more of a good team with one amazing player. The column says that O. is so good, he’s like human
steroids. He boosts the performance of everyone who comes in contact with him.

I find another article about O.’s chances of playing college ball, how even in his junior year scouts were looking at him. Division One scouts. That’s unusual for Newton.

I follow the team’s record last year. Win after win. They add up during the season until it seems all but fated that they will have a perfect record. The perfect season with the perfect quarterback.

Until the Brookline game.

Until Everest.

Junior Injured in Football Game
.

That’s what the headline says. There’s a picture of a bunch of players in a circle watching while paramedics strap Holt onto a stretcher. I look at the numbers on the uniforms. Rodriguez, Cheesy, Bison. And #
I
—O.

They were all there.

I scan the article. As far as I can tell, Everest was a late transfer from another school. He appeared out of nowhere and changed everything. O., who had never been on the ground before, was sacked eight times that game. Holt, the center, went to the hospital with a shattered leg. O. hurt his shoulder. A couple of other guys got banged up pretty good.

And Newton lost their first game of the season by seventeen points.

The Neck was telling the truth. Holt was me last year.

Suddenly I feel like an idiot. I never asked why the center position was open in the first place. Maybe I assumed somebody had graduated. Maybe I didn’t think about it at all. I was so excited to be part of the team, I just went along with it.

I wanted to be popular. That’s like a dirty word in my old circles, but it’s easy to make fun of something when it’s not an option. When you couldn’t get it even if you wanted it.

I’m popular now.

I don’t care what the Neck says. Eight hundred people applauded for me at a pep rally. They heard my weight and they didn’t care. I imagine the faces of the cheering people. They were smiling at me, but I wonder, were they really smiling?

Or were they laughing at me?

I print out the article and put it in my pocket.

enojado.

I walk into homeroom the next day and the class bursts into applause. I guess when the whole school sees you at a pep rally in your football uniform, word gets around. Anyone who didn’t know me before knows me now.

What do you do when your homeroom applauds for you? It’s weird. I nod and wave like I’ve seen O. do. I thank a couple people and accept their congratulations. Then I move to my regular seat in the back of the room.

I notice Nancy Yee isn’t applauding. She’s buried neck deep in a copy of
Infinite Jest
. It looks like she’s reading a phone book.

I ignore her and sit down.

Almost.

I’m halfway in my chair when I suddenly get stuck. I push a little harder, thinking maybe I hit it at the wrong angle, but I don’t slide in like I normally do. I jam.

I know I’ve been getting bigger the last few weeks. Coach calls it bulking up.

“You need mass to work the line,” he told me. “Eat carbs. And for God’s sake, try to enjoy it. Things change when you get older. Believe you me.”

So I ate carbs. I enjoyed them, too.

Now my mass is greater than the chair will allow. I’m not getting in, so I reverse direction and manage to extract myself with a loud
pop
.

The Physics of Fat. Lousy timing.

Nancy Yee is looking at me now. She’s wearing a frayed denim skirt and a T-shirt with colored threads coming out of it in every direction. Her hair is all shaggy. She looks like a big ball of yarn that was attacked by a cat.

“You actually like sitting in the back row, don’t you? Sitting alone and reading.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she says. She lifts her hands like she’s not interested in fighting with me. I look at her shirt again. I squint my eyes and the threads form into a shape.

Sushi. She’s wearing a sushi shirt.

Jesus Christ.

“Have you ever heard of the Gap?” I say.

She doesn’t say anything.

“It’s where normal people shop. In case you didn’t know.”

I go to the back of the room. Warner’s there, of course. He’s been standing back there all semester.

I stand next to him. Now neither of us fit.

I slam my books down on the counter. There’s a poster that says,
¿CÓMO ESTÁ USTED?
with a lot of pictures of faces with different expressions on them.
TRISTE. FELIZ. CONFUDIDO. ENOJADO
.

I’m
enojado
.

“Thanks for the other day,” Warner says. “With Ugo. You know.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You saved me.”

“I can’t save you,” I say. “Nobody can save anybody.”

Warner smiles uncomfortably. “What’s going on?” he says. “You seem upset.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

He just looks at me. Doesn’t say a word.

“It’s football, Warner. I don’t expect you to know anything about it.”

“I didn’t want to play football,” he says.

“What do you mean you didn’t want to?”

“Coach asked me, and I said no.”

“Which coach?”

“You know. Coach Bryson.”

“He asked
you
to play football?”

“The first week. He told me they needed a big guy to play center this year. He asked me, like, two or three times, but I said no way.”

My mind is spinning. I’m thinking about the Neck, the newspaper article in my pocket. I’m remembering the time I saw Warner coming out of Coach’s office at the beginning of the semester.

“It’s cool that you’re doing it,” Warner says. “But you’re a lot braver than me. I didn’t want to get killed. That Everest guy, you know?”

“You’ve heard of Everest?” I say.

“Everyone’s heard of him.”

I’m the biggest idiot in history. This proves it.

Ms. Weston is in the middle of taking roll when I say, “I have no place to sit.”

She glances up, nods, and goes back to calling roll.

“I said I have no place to sit, Ms. Weston.”

She looks at Warner and me, maybe wondering why she’s suddenly got Easter Island in the back of her room.

She says, “Can I ask you to take your seat, Mr. Zansky?”

“I don’t fit in my seat,” I say really loudly. “I’m too big for that little seat.”

The class shifts around uncomfortably.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know. Maybe we could find another—”

“I don’t fit anywhere,” I say.

Everyone’s looking at me now. Even Warner has backed away.