Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (7 page)

Before I know it, I’m speed walking down the hall, doing my best to catch up to O. and his group without making it too obvious.

Maybe it’s because of April. Maybe I’m just sick of being me. Or maybe it’s something bigger. I don’t know.

The hall leads all the way to the back of the school. I can see sunlight pouring in through the back door. I’ve never even gone out the back door. I’ve got nothing to do back there.

Until now.

O. and his posse crash through the door to the outside, and a minute later, I follow.

the secret world behind the school.

The field is crowded with people I don’t know, all hanging around and talking to each other. I feel like I’ve wandered into something top secret. I imagine one of those horror films where everyone at school is slowly turning into aliens, and there’s one guy who doesn’t know about it until it’s too late. He’s walking towards danger while the audience is screaming, “Don’t go out there, you idiot!”

I’m that idiot.

A whistle blows over to my left, and about twenty-five of the hottest, most popular girls in school crowd into a circle around the dance teacher. One of them pinwheels her arms like she’s doing a cheer.

Cheer tryouts. Duh.

Maybe I’m not such an idiot after all.

April is there, too, biting nervously at her lip. April wants to be a cheerleader? It makes no sense.

On the other side of the field, about forty guys fall into rows in front of Coach Bryson. Coach looks at them while he spins a football on his finger.

Football. Cheerleaders. This is
Twilight Zone
stuff.

I walk over to the group of football jocks gathering around Coach. He does a double take when he sees me. He stops twirling the football and starts twirling the corner of his moustache.

“You gotta be yanking my yak,” Coach says. “What do you want, Zansky?”

“I want to play football,” I say.

Forty guys look at me like I’m crazy. Thirty-nine, actually. O. Douglas looks at me a little differently. He has a half smile on his face, like he’s kind of curious.

“Uh—look, Zansky,” Coach says, “have you ever played football before?” He says it like I’m a little kid.

“He only plays soccer,” a goofy-looking guy says, and everyone laughs. Jurassic Pork. Hysterical.

“Have you even touched a football?” Coach says.

I think about Dad and me on the quad at Harvard, throwing a ball around. He started taking me there when I was eight, hoping I’d get a taste for football and Ivy. Instead I got a taste for the warm rolls at Bertucci’s.

“I can throw a little,” I tell Coach. Throwing was always easy. It’s catching that was the problem.

The girls’ cheer rings across the field:

N-E-W-T/
Add O-N-S and you will see/
How lizards fight for victory!

“You have to let him try out,” a Latino guy says. “Equal opportunity and all that.”

He has a line of facial hair that starts above his nose then winds its way all over his face like he was attacked by a Sharpie marker. It’s not really a moustache. More of a facestache.

“Yeah,” a short, thick guy with acne says. “You remember that girl who wanted to wrestle in Wisconsin?”

“If girls wrestled, I’d be wearing tights and grabbing guys’ asses,” the goofy guy says.

The acne guy says, “You tired of wrestling with your mother, Cheesy?”

“Not tired,” Cheesy says. “I’m just looking to expand my dating horizons.”

A bunch of guys laugh. All except that guy with the thick neck. The Neck just stares at me, expressionless. He’s got white sweatbands pulled up above his elbows that make his arms look massive.

Coach looks at me and sighs.

“I just want to try,” I say. It sounds feeble, even to me.

“We all deserve one chance to fail,” Facestache says.

“Rico Suave is right,” a huge black guy says. “Even girls get to try out.”

Coach has had enough: “Rodriguez, Cheesy, Bison—all of you. Haul ass!”

He blows a double tap on the whistle and the guys break into a run, circling around the perimeter of the field.

Coach steps towards me. He pats his belly like he’s petting a dog. “You sure you’re up for this, son?”

I’m not sure of anything. But with April behind me, the jocks in front of me, and Ugo back where I came from, it’s an excellent time to lie.

go.

It begins with running, moves on to calisthenics, and then it really gets ugly. I’m struggling along as best I can, sneaking sips on my inhaler when nobody is looking. But who am I kidding? I can’t do any of this stuff. My idea of sports is Grand Theft Auto. I can run for hours on that, and I’m not tired at all. At worst I have a thumb cramp.

In the pause between drills, O. quickly introduces me around. The guy with the bad jokes is Cheesy. Facestache is Rodriguez, aka Rico Suave. The big black guy is Frison, aka Bison. Everyone has a nickname. Except me.

I barely exist. Guys won’t even nod when they meet me, much less say my name. They just stare, challenging me. Everyone looks like they’re ready to fight.

I glance at my watch. It’s been six minutes, and it feels like I’ve been out here for ten years.

I’ll be honest. Model UN is sounding better and better.

We set up for a sled drill. The sled is this thing that weighs
about three million pounds. Coach blows his whistle and six guys at a time run and slam into them.

When you watch football on TV, people bang into things all the time. They even put mics down on the field so you hear the
crack
when the bodies hit. No big deal, right?

Very big deal.

It hurts.

We’re supposed to hit the sleds hard enough to push them backwards. Guys scream and crash into them without blinking. When it’s my turn, I try to do the same, only when I hit the sled for the first time, it’s like running into a wall. Every bone in my body hurts.

I limp back to the line, panting and clutching my chest.

“Die on your own time,” Rodriguez says.

“I’m not dying,” I say. But I can’t be too sure.

Coach blows the whistle again.

“Get some!” Rodriguez screams, and he hits the same sled I bounced off of and moves it back about four feet. He steps away and surveys the distance with a frown.

“I suck,” he says.

“There’s always girls’ softball,” Cheesy says.

“I’ve got experience with big balls,” Rodriguez says, and grabs his crotch.

“So does your mother,” Cheesy says, and grabs his crotch, too.

The mother stuff again. Unbelievable. These guys are obsessed.

I give the sled another try, imitating Rodriguez’s run style, but when I hit, there’s no crack. There’s a thud, and I bounce off again.

“Good hustle,” Coach says. He says it like it’s a good thing, but he’s got a look on his face like Dad used to get when I played T-ball. I’d swing and miss the ball, and Dad would sigh and look away.

As I’m walking back to the line, O. puts his hand on my shoulder and walks with me.

“These guys are not just running at the sled,” he says.

“What are they doing?”

O. pauses like he’s thinking of a way to explain it to me.

“Do you ever get angry?” he says.

“All the time,” I say.

“Not just angry. Seriously pissed off. Like you want to hurt someone.”

“I guess.”

“That’s the secret. You have to go to that place and spend a little time there,” he says.

I want to ask him more, but he peels away to set up for the next drill.

No more sleds. Coach has us form two lines and face each other man-to-man.

“Look at the man across from you,” Coach says.

I’m standing opposite Cheesy. He’s got the sweatbands on his arms, too. He pulls them up across thick muscles.

“This man is not your friend,” Coach says. “He is an interloper, an invader of your private territory. He is the son of a bitch who eats the last ice-cream sandwich from the freezer without replacing the box.”

“Get some!” Rodriguez screams.

“You will push this man back,” Coach says. “You will protect the ice-cream sandwich.”

The guys
grunt
loudly.

Cheesy leans towards me. “Jurassic Pork,” he says. “You ain’t so tough when you get around the real dinosaurs.”

“Set!” Coach says.

O. said I had to go to that place. What is that place?

I think about someone eating my ice-cream sandwich. That’s irritating. Then I think of a tray of Mom’s mini muffins, wanting them, but Mom saying I can’t have them. That kind of makes me mad.

I think about Dad all alone in an apartment in downtown Boston.

I think about Justin with his arm around April’s shoulders the other day.

My jaw clenches and I bite down hard.

I think about walking through the cafeteria, how my fat makes me feel like some giant Jell-O mold that everyone laughs at when it shakes.

“Go!” Coach says.

I explode off the line, crashing head-on into Cheesy. I hit and bounce, and then I slap and hit again like I see the guys doing. Coach blows the whistle to stop. I look at the line and realize I’m exactly where I started. I haven’t pushed forward, but I haven’t been pushed back.

“All right!” Cheesy says. “A little challenge. Me likey.”

It’s the exact opposite of what I expected. I thought Cheesy would be angry with me for banging into him. I assumed fighting back would get you killed like it does in the hall with Ugo, but the rules are different out here.

“Reset!” Coach says.

I glance over to the girls, and I catch a blur of hair and moving limbs. More things I can’t have.

“Go!” Coach says. “Go, go, go, go—”

I roar and leap at Cheesy, only he’s not Cheesy anymore. He’s Mom/Dad/Jessica/Justin all rolled into one. I attack, pushing, grunting, and swinging my arms. I can’t see the field or any of the players. I can’t even see Cheesy in front of me.

Before I know what’s happening, O. and a bunch of guys are pulling me back by the waist. Cheesy has his arms up like he’s trying to surrender, and I’m hitting him. There’s a piece of torn fabric in my hand. One of Cheesy’s armbands.

“You stop when I blow the damn whistle!” Coach says.

“I didn’t hear it,” I say.

“Dude,” Cheesy says. “It’s just practice. Take it easy on my bands.” He rubs his arm where I ripped the sweatband off him.

Bison steps up like he’s going to beat the crap out of me. “You want me to school the boy?” he says.

O. jumps into the middle of things. He pats Bison on the shoulder and motions for him to back away. He checks to make sure Cheesy is okay. Then he turns his attention back to me.

“Let’s grab a Gator,” he says.

He walks me towards a red tank.

“Everything copasetic?” he says.

“I did what you said. I went to that place.”

“No kidding,” O. says.

He takes a shot of red liquid, offers one to me.

“Now we have to teach you how to get back,” he says.

how not to limp in front of your mom.

“I’m going to take a bath,” I tell Mom when I get home.

“You don’t take baths,” Mom says.

“I’m in the mood. So kill me,” I say.

“Don’t get angry with me,” Mom says.

“I’m not angry,” I say.

But I am angry. I feel like breaking something. Maybe it’s because of football. You get used to hitting things. It’s hard to stop.

Also, I’m pissed off about the end of practice. I can’t shower in the locker room because it’s one of those group showers where everyone can see you. That’s not showering; that’s a Public Display of Fatness. Definitely not an option. So when the guys started to get undressed and put on those little towels, I flew out the door.

“Do you want some bath salts?” Mom says when I’m halfway up the stairs.

“I love bath salts,” Jessica shouts from the den. Eavesdropping as usual.

“I’ll run the water for you,” Mom says, and she shoots up the stairs.

Very strange.

I walk upstairs slowly, trying hard not to limp in front of Mom. My body feels like it was put through a medieval torture chamber. I saw a special about that on the History Channel. In medieval times they would torture you, throw you into a dungeon, and feed you gruel. The narrator said “gruel” like it was a bad thing, but on the TV show, the gruel looked a lot like oatmeal. I wouldn’t mind eating oatmeal several times a day. Unless Mom ran the dungeon. Then I’d probably get mini gruel.

When I go into the bathroom, Mom is stirring purple salt into the water with her hand.

“I don’t want to smell like flowers,” I say.

“It’s not flowers,” Mom says. “It’s lavender.”

“Lavender is a flower, Mom.”

“Since when?”

“Look at the label,” I say.

She holds up the bottle. There’s a picture of a purple flower.

“Well, what do you know?” She says. “Forty years and I never knew what lavender was!”

That makes me laugh. Mom laughs a little, too. She hasn’t done that in a while.

“I’ve been hard on you lately, haven’t I?” Mom says.

“No,” I say, even though the answer is yes.

I check the flap on my robe to make sure Mom can’t see my underwear. The tag says
ONE SIZE FITS ALL
, but I must be larger than “
ALL
” because the robe doesn’t fit me too well anymore.

Mom says, “You’ve been helping me out so much at events—I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

It’s small in the bathroom and we’re almost touching. The smell of lavender makes me a little woozy.

“I worry about your weight,” Mom says. “That’s why I’m on you so much.”

“It’s okay, Mom. Really.” I don’t want to have this conversation for the ten-thousandth time.

“I know what it’s like to be a heavy child. Especially in high school. Kids can be cruel.”

I’ve seen pictures of Mom from her senior year. She wasn’t exactly fat, but she had chipmunk cheeks, and she looks uncomfortable in front of the camera. I can always tell when someone looks uncomfortable. It’s my special gift. Probably because I’m so uncomfortable.