Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (21 page)

“Very big deal,” I say. “You know I like her.”

“You’ve got a crush. What do you want me to do about it?”

“It’s not a crush. I’m in love!”

O. laughs. “Dude, that’s not love. You want to dip your wick.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing? Dipping your wick?”

“I can’t control who likes me and who doesn’t,” O. says.

“That’s the problem,” I say. “Everyone likes you. Everyone wants to be with you. You’ve already got everything in the world. Why do you have to take what’s mine, too?”

“She’s not yours. She’s a girl. She makes her own choices.”

That stops me. I don’t want to hear things like that. I’m afraid they might be true.

“I tried to help you,” O. says. “I gave you advice. I told you what to do.”

“And meanwhile you were moving in on her.”

“It just happened,” he says. “It wasn’t my plan.”

“Just like Everest, right? That just happened, too.”

O. is quiet. He looks at the ground.

“You went Philip Morris on me,” I say.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means you’re a liar.”

“You knew what you were getting into,” O. says.

“I didn’t know.”

“You knew what the job was, what the center does. If you didn’t know at the beginning, you found out fast.”

The door to the locker room opens and Cheesy sticks his head out. O. snaps his fingers, and Cheesy goes back inside quickly.

“You set me up,” I say.

“That’s what you think?”

“That day with Ugo. Why did you help me?”

“I don’t know,” O. says.

“It was just a coincidence? You happened to be on the third-floor hallway near my locker the day of tryouts?”

“Yes,” O. says. He pauses and cracks his knuckles. “No. The truth is Coach asked me to take a look at you.”

“A look?”

“We needed a center, and he saw you knock a bunch of guys down in some soccer game. He said I should check you out.”

“See how big I am.”

“If that’s how you want to think of it, fine. I went to look at you. That part’s not a coincidence. But that stuff with Ugo, that just happened.”

“You decided to save me?”

“You were in trouble. I thought maybe you needed help.”

“I didn’t.”

It’s quiet in the hall now. I stand there with my arms folded, looking at the number on O.’s shirt. Number 1.

“You used me, O. Just like you used April. And my mom. You win everyone over so you can get what you want. That’s all you care about.”

O. takes a long breath and lets it out.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says.

We stand like that, both of us in uniforms and pads, all
alone in the middle of the hall. It’s funny how the pads make it so you can’t feel anything on the outside, but you still feel it all inside.

“Maybe I did use you,” O. says. “But what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You used me, too.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say.

“You got exactly what you wanted from me. From all of us.”

“What did I get?”

O. doesn’t answer.

I think about the stuff April said. How my stock has gone up since I met O. I think about when I walked into homeroom and everyone applauded.

Then I remember the newspaper article, and it all goes away.

“I have a game to play,” O. says. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to let you,” I say.

And I walk away.

why?

Why would I take the field now? I’m going to get crushed by Everest. If I’m lucky, I’ll spend the rest of the year rolling around in a wheelchair with a special key for the handicapped elevator tied to my wrist.

Why?

I walk through the dark halls in my football uniform, wandering, not knowing where I should go. Everyone is outside waiting for me. Mom and Dad, April, the team. They’re all expecting me to play. I know the scouts have come to see O. today. I know how important this is for him.

“You think you’re popular, but you’re not.” That’s what the Neck said.

If I’m not popular, then what am I?

I turn the corner, and I notice some light glowing at the end of the hall. The Bio lab.

Maybe this is the final chapter. This is how the horror film always ends. I’m going to walk into the lab, and all the geeks will be frozen, hanging up in bags. I deserted them, and this is what happened. There will be one bag left. An empty one. With my name on it.

I open the door slowly.

There are no frozen geeks, only one live one.

Eytan.

He’s got his glasses on, the little round ones that make him look like a Jewish John Lennon. There’s a frog opened up on the table in front of him. He peers inside the frog, then writes something in his notebook, then peers again. He looks up and sees me standing there in my football uniform, and he doesn’t even flinch.

“Hi,” he says. Like he was expecting me or something.

It’s good to hear his voice. I want to run over and hug him, but I doubt that would go over too well. Especially since he’s got a scalpel in his hand.

“Am I a bad person?” I say.

He thinks about that for a second. “Let’s just say I returned the Friend of the Year T-shirt I bought you.”

I look at the frog pinned to the board, his arms raised above his head like he’s surrendering to the authorities.

“I’m really sorry,” I say.

“You went BLBC. You’re not the first.”

“BLBC?”

“Bright Lights, Big City. It’s a blues song about how people change when they hit the big-time.”

I pull at my football jersey. I suddenly feel stupid wearing it.

“I changed a lot, didn’t I?” I say.

“Um, yeah,” Eytan says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “But I don’t blame you completely. It’s sexy at the top, right?”

“Maybe it’s sexy at the bottom, too.”

“What does that mean?”

“You and Nancy Yee.”

“I’m not doing Nancy Yee.”

“Why not?”

“We’re study partners. You don’t do your study partner. Anyway, she has other plans. And I’m not the one with yellow fever.”

Touché. I sit on one of the Bio tables. Eytan puts down the scalpel.

“Let me ask you a question,” he says. “Did you even like Model UN?”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“So why did you join?”

“You’re my friend,” I say. “I didn’t want you to be angry at me.”

“So you spent a year and a summer bullshitting me about Model UN?”

“I guess.”

“That’s twisted.”

“It’s not like I hated it. I mean, I’m pretty good at it. And I liked hanging out with you,” I say.

“But you were pretending. You’re always pretending. You can’t make everyone happy, you know.”

A roar crescendos outside the school. It vibrates long and low through the corridor.

“Shouldn’t you be out there?” Eytan says.

“I’m supposed to be.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Play. Not play. I don’t know.”

“Do you want to know what I think?”

I nod.

“It doesn’t matter what you decide. Just do it for yourself.”

“I hate when people say that. I don’t know what it means.”

Eytan shrugs. “I don’t really know, either. But I felt required to say it.”

I look around the room. There’s an invisible man on the teacher’s desk. Instead of skin, he’s got clear plastic so all his muscles and organs are revealed. I think how it would suck to be him, to walk around with everyone able to see what’s going on inside you all the time.

“I’ve got a question for you,” I say.

“Shoot.”

“What are you doing dissecting a frog on a Friday night?”

“I was in the mood.”

“You didn’t come to watch me play, did you?”

“Play what?” Eytan says. And he smiles. It’s the first smile I’ve seen from him in a long time.

because.

I listen to the sound of my cleats clicking on the hall floor. The cheers rise and fall on the field outside, growing louder and louder as I move towards the back of the school.

I stop and lean against a locker.

I think about what O. said a long time ago. Why did I try out? What was the real plan?

It was all about April. April and Dad.

April is a lost cause. I should have known it that day at the party. She got too close to the O. magnet. Nobody gets that close and gets away.

I thought April would get to know me, and the love-at-second-sight stuff would kick in. I could win her over. Maybe I thought my magnet was stronger than O.’s. The Z-Effect.

Now I see that I was kidding myself.

It seems crazy now. I play football and get a girlfriend, and somehow that makes Dad and Mom get back together? They come to games every week and hold hands in the bleachers?

Stupid. Embarrassing.

So what now?

April has a crush on O. Dad’s leaving with Miriam. Mom’s probably sitting in the stands with her trash bag full of bagels, wanting to hit Dad over the head with them. Jessica is next to her doing leg lifts, thinking I’m a loser again.

Playing football won’t change anything. It doesn’t really matter.

Only when I think about it, it does matter.

It matters to me.

I’ve been practicing for months. I knocked down Ugo. I’m different now.

I want to go up against Everest. Not because I have to prove anything to anyone.

I just want to see if I can do it.

take the field.

“What happened to you?” Coach says. “You gave me a heart attack.”

“I had some thinking to do,” I say.

“How’d that go?”

“Pretty good, I suppose. I’m here.”

The stands are packed from top to bottom. Everything is a swirl of colors, cheerleaders going nuts, the crowd shouting their heads off. Brookline on one side, Newton on the other.

Mom and Jessica are sitting together on the Newton side. Dad and Miriam are sitting about ten rows below them.

“I want to tell you something,” Coach says. He leans in so nobody else can hear. Three thousand people are watching us, but nobody can hear.

“I recruited you,” Coach says. “But it was because I saw something in you.”

“You talked to O.,” I say.

Coach shrugs that off. “I’m talking to you now. Man to man. Can you handle that?”

“Talk,” I say.

“It’s true that you’re big,” Coach says, “and Warner’s big, and I needed someone big.
We
needed someone big. But big is just the prerequisite. It’s like being tall in basketball. You have to be tall to play. But being tall doesn’t make you an athlete. It doesn’t mean you’re any good at it. You get my point?”

“I think so,” I say.

I glance at the Brookline players. They’re standing together on the opposite sideline. One of them is taller than the others, almost like he’s standing on a box. He’s a lot wider, too.

Coach says, “Maybe I was wrong not to tell you about Everest.” He clears his throat. “What am I saying? I was completely wrong. Maybe that was a mistake. So shoot me. I wanted to win.”

I nod. Coaches. Dads. All the people you want to be perfect end up being human. It kind of sucks.

Coach says, “If you don’t want to play today, I’ll understand. I’ll be disappointed, and I think the guys will be, too, but I couldn’t blame you. Not after everything that’s happened.”

“Um … this is a pretty crappy pep talk, Coach.”

“I already gave my pep talk. You missed it.”

“How was it?”

“Hey, Rodriguez!” Coach shouts. “How was my pep talk today?”

“Out
standing
, Coach! One of your best,” Rodriguez says.

“See?” Coach says.

That cracks me up. Coach laughs, too. The team looks at us like we’re crazy.

Coach bites nervously at his lip. “What do you think?”

“I’m playing,” I say. “But if you keep talking, I might change my mind.”

Coach lets out a long breath. “Thank God,” he says. “I thought we were screwed there for a second.”

something big, coming towards me fast.

O. and I stand next to each other before the kickoff.

“You decided to play?” he says.

I nod.

“Don’t do me any favors,” he says. “I can dance around Everest. I can quick-release. He won’t get anywhere near me.”

“That’s fine.”

“I’m saying I don’t need you.”

“I’m playing anyway.”

O. kicks some turf with his cleat. “Good for you,” he says.

Four quick downs and we get our first possession. In the huddle, O. calls a standard pass play, but before we can break, Rodriguez puts his hands up to stop everyone.

He places an arm around O.’s shoulder, and the huddle goes quiet.

“Protect our boy,” Rodriguez says.

He’s talking to everyone, but he’s looking right at me.

“Newton!”
the guys scream, and we clap and break.

I step up to the line, and Everest settles in front of me. I see him up close for the first time. He’s not so much a mountain as he is a massive, square thing, like one of Mom’s industrial freezers. I catch sight of April over his shoulder. She’s screaming something. A few weeks ago I might have imagined she was screaming to me, but now I don’t think so.

I feel O.’s hand on the small of my back. “Steady,” he says.

He shouts, “Hup, hup,
haa-eee
!”

I snap the ball.

Badly.

My fingers feel like they belong to someone else. I nearly fumble, but I recover at the last second and make a sloppy transfer to O.

I instantly convert my backward energy to forward. There’s a
crash
as Everest and I connect for the first time. It’s the hardest hit I’ve ever felt. It’s not even right to call it a hit. It’s more like a car accident.

Before I know what happened, I’m looking up at the sky. The shadow of Everest passes over me as he moves quickly to crush O.

Instinctively I reach up for his ankle, and even though my hand slides right off, the grab slows him down for a half a second—just enough time for O. to scramble out of the way and complete a five-yard pass.

I try to stand up, but my body doesn’t work like it should.
The best I can do is to roll over on all fours like a dog and moan for a few seconds.