Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (8 page)

“Maybe I’m a bad mother.”

“You’re not a bad mother.”

“Then why won’t you listen to me? If I was a good mother, I’d be able to get through to you. Other mothers get through.”

“No, they don’t.”

“The good mothers do.”

“Trust me. They don’t.”

I can’t tell if Mom’s crying, or if it’s just the steam from the bath making her cheeks red.

“It’s going to be okay,” I say.

“It’s
my
job to say things like that,” Mom says.

Mom smoothes down my hair, and I wince. I can’t help it. I don’t like to be touched.

“I hope you have the best year ever,” Mom says.

Mom wipes her eyes. I think she really was crying.

She pauses at the door. “I know you talk to your father during the week,” she says.

I pull the belt on my robe into a tight knot.

“No, I don’t,” I say.

“Well, if you do, you might just mention … he’s a month behind with the check.”

Mom has this amazing ability to ruin any moment. I thought Mom was being nice to me because she wanted to give me a pep talk. Now I feel like I got set up.

Mom says, “We’re trying to avoid going to court. To keep things friendly, you know.”

“I know,” I say.

“So if you mention it to him, that would help a lot.”

“Fine,” I say.

“You’re not angry, are you?”

“Of course not.”

Mom closes the door. I get in the stupid tub that smells like flowers. The water scorches my skin, but it feels good on my muscles, too. Pain and pleasure at the same time. Like buffalo wings. Like high school.

how to lie to your best friend.

I’m hanging around outside AP History, pretending to tie my shoe for the eighteenth time. I’ve been waiting for April for ten minutes, all the time pretending I’m not. Love at second sight is a lot of work. That’s what I’m starting to think.

I bend over again, and I feel my pants ride down my butt.

“Attractive,” Eytan says from behind me.

“It’s the Eighth Wonder of the World,” I say.

“Eighth and Ninth,” Eytan says.

“It’s these stupid new pants. If I pull up the front, they fall down in back. If I pull up the back, my stomach pops out.”

“It’s the movement of the cosmos. Where something is born, something else dies.”

Eytan adjusts his John Lennon glasses and stares at me.

“Speaking of ass—what happened to you yesterday?”

“Sorry about that,” I say. “I had an emergency. I think a Russian agent slipped me something. Insta-poops.”

“The Russians took your colon hostage?”

“Anything to prevent Estonia from rising.”

Eytan eyes me suspiciously, but he knows that I really do get the runs a lot. You can’t blame a guy for IBS.

Suddenly April walks by. Before I can say hello, Eytan swirls his arm in the air a bunch of times and bows deeply from the waist.

“Good day to you, madam,” he says in a fake British accent.

April doesn’t answer, just walks by with her head down.

“Ouch,” Eytan says. “Is my Jew-’fro singed?”

“It’s not you. I’m still socially radioactive. She saw that soccer game.”

We go into class together. April is sitting alone on the other side of the room next to the pencil sharpener. If I have to sit through a whole class watching Justin try to flirt with her, I’ll kill myself.

I have to do something.

That’s when a crazy thought occurs to me. If I can face off against Cheesy, I should be able to talk to a girl for two minutes.

I drop my books on the desk next to Eytan, hold my pencil by my side, and snap the point off with my thumbnail. “I’m going to sharpen this bad boy up,” I say.

I walk across the room, silently praying for my ass crack to stay under wraps. As I pass April’s desk, I chicken out. I don’t
say a word. I just stick my pencil in the sharpener and start grinding away. It gets shorter and shorter while my mind whirls. Freud would have a heyday with this one.

“I saw you on the field yesterday,” April says out of the blue.

“Really?” I say. I pretend I didn’t notice her sitting right there.

“How’d you do?”

“I did great,” I say. “Not at all like that stupid soccer game last week.”

I mime my shorts falling down. She looks shocked at first, but then she laughs. It’s a big risk reminding her of that day, but that’s what the guys on the team do. When they make a mistake, they’re not shy about it. They make fun of themselves, and it makes everything better.

“How’d the cheerleading go?” I say.

“Great,” she says. She bites at her lower lip. “Actually, not so good. I’m really out of shape, you know?”

I glance down at her legs. I can’t help it. She’s wearing a skirt, and I can see her thigh muscles. They’re tight and muscular, which has me wondering about her definition of “out of shape.”

“I might get cut,” she says.

“No way. You have nothing to worry about. I was watching you.”

“You were?”

I feel my face turning red. I don’t want her to think I’m a stalker or something.

“Were my jumps high enough?” she says. She tugs nervously at an errant piece of hair.

“They were really high,” I say.

“The girls didn’t say anything.”

“Maybe they’re jealous.”

April laughs. “What do they have to be jealous about?”

Ms. Hartwell clears her throat. “Let’s get started,”

she says. “See you soon,” April whispers.

I walk across the room with my stubby little pencil, and I notice everyone’s looking at me. That’s probably because I’m the ballsy guy who made April laugh. Or maybe it’s because my pants are riding low again.

“I thought you were radioactive,” Eytan says when I get back.

“I guess my reactor has been contained,” I say.

Eytan looks at April. “Are you putting your rod in the core?”

“Of course not.” I feel my cheeks getting hot.

Eytan crosses his arms. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’m going to figure it out.”

Ms. Hartwell flips on the overhead projector. She stands framed in the spotlight.

I glance across the room, and April smiles at me.

“War breaks out in Lexington,” Ms. Hartwell says, “and it all begins with one, unexpected shot.”

back in the big leagues.

I’m rolling a kickball to a girl in a scoliosis brace while Warner looks on and smiles. I want to elbow him in the head. What is there to be happy about?

Suddenly Coach pops through the door of the gym. A ripple of fear passes through the Slow Gym kids. Coach might ask us to do something. Like stand up.

“Zansky!” He motions me over.

“Yeah, Coach?”

He puts an arm around my shoulders and whispers, “You don’t need to be playing patty-cake in here, son. Why don’t you come outside and join the party?”

“I don’t know, Coach. I’m not too good at soccer.”

Coach chuckles. “Tell you what,” he says. “We’ll put you on goal today. You can guard it rather than knock it down.”

I look back at the Slow Gym kids. Warner is watching me, the little eyes in his big face staring. He’s not smiling anymore.
He looks sort of pitiful, like those puppies in the store window at the mall when you walk away from them. I want to punch him for looking at me like that.

“What do you say?” Coach asks.

“Good idea,” I say.

I walk onto the field and the game stops dead. The whole class turns at the same time to watch me. A guy in an ankle brace gives me a dirty look. One of my unfortunate victims.

April is talking to a cute blonde girl. They whisper to each other when they see me.

“It’s the Thunder Down Under,” Becky Samuelson says. Becky’s dad is practically a movie star, so she thinks she’s one, too. Anyway, her comment gets a big laugh.

I just stand there on the field with an empty ten-foot zone around me. It’s like the time I had gas in temple.

“Take it easy on my bands!” someone shouts. It’s Rodriguez from the football team, grinning and smoothing down his facestache. I didn’t even know he was in this gym class.

“You’re back in the big leagues, huh?” he says, and he gives me a rough handshake.

“I guess.”

“Even great players go down to Triple-A sometimes. They work on the skill set until they get called up again.”

Rodriguez head-butts a soccer ball. It rolls into the center of the field.

“Vamonos,”
he says.

We jog back onto the field. I kick the ball back and forth with Rodriguez for a minute. With the two of us together, nobody dares to say anything. They just form back into teams, and the game starts up like nothing ever happened.

A second later April runs by.

“Welcome back,” she says, and she gives me a wink.

the elephant in the living room.

“When it’s time for nominations, remember,” Eytan says, “nothing below Commerce Secretary. It’s degrading.”

We’re rushing down the hall towards the Model UN meeting. Eytan is wearing an old sports coat over a Radiohead T-shirt. Business attire.

“I’m not sure I want a position this semester,” I say.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m really busy. I may need to fade into the background.”

“We’re sophomores now,” Eytan says. “No more fading.”

What I don’t say is that yesterday was the last day of football tryouts, and everyone’s waiting for the list to go up. I keep trying to tell Eytan what’s happening, but it never seems to be the right time. Maybe that’s how it was with Dad and Miriam. He wanted to tell Mom, but he never found the right time.

We stop in front of a door with a handwritten sign:
REPUBLIC OF ESTONIA
.

“I really played you up during the meeting last week,” he says, “so walk like you got a pair.”

“A pair of what?”

“Massive Estonian gonads.”

“Dude, I’ve got a lot on my mind,” I say.

Eytan looks at me strangely. He says, “What’s with the ‘dude’ stuff? Let’s switch to polysyllabic mode, huh? We’re heading into the diplomatic trenches.”

He throws open the door.

I spend the rest of the afternoon discussing what Eytan calls the great balancing act—ways to protect our tiny republic without pissing off our giant and powerful neighbor, Russia. An hour in and we’ve switched to debating military strategy.

“Historically, diplomacy has proven to be an effective deterrent,” Eytan says.

Justin leaps out of his seat.

“Why don’t we just f-ing attack?” he says.

“It’s true,” another kid says. “The best defense is a good offense.”

“We barely have an army,” I say. “What are we going to attack with?”

“Nuke them,” Justin says. “It’s tough for dust to invade.”

“That’s crazy,” I say.

“Let me get this straight,” Justin says. “We’re a tiny little do-nothing country, and we’re going to trust this giant, powerful country not to screw us over?” He coughs and says, “Bullshit” at the same time.

Eytan stretches, completely unperturbed. He says, “What’s your idea, Delegate Zansky?”

It’s a softball pitch. He’s setting me up to knock one out of the park.

Justin stands on one side of the room and I stand on the other. The Model UN geeks look from one to the other, waiting for fireworks.

This is my comfort zone. Geeks and obscure geopolitics. Two of my best subjects.

Anyway, it beats the hell out of getting pounded on the field by sweaty strangers. Here we pound each other with our brains.

“Well?” Justin says.

I stand up slowly. “Allow me to quote Sun Tzu: ‘He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Justin says.

“We cooperate with them. We let peace be our war.”

The geeks applaud. Eytan jumps out of his seat.

“Thank you, Delegate Zansky for that subtle and compelling analysis. Fellow delegates, it is my honor to nominate Andrew Zansky for Secretary of the Defense Committee.”

“Second!” someone screams.

“I respectfully decline,” I say.

“All in favor?” Eytan says, steamrolling me.

A resounding “Aye!” thunders through the room.

“Motion passes,” Eytan says. “Congratulations, Mr. Zansky. The defense of the Republic now rests squarely on your shoulders.”

the center of it all.

Friday afternoon. My stomach grumbles like it’s filled with greasy Chinese food. I’ve been to the bathroom six times since this morning, and I haven’t eaten a thing. Mom calls them the nervous poops.

Why am I nervous?

The list is going up at 1:00 and it’s 12:59.

I’m walking towards the gym when Nancy Yee intercepts me.

“I heard a rumor that you were going out for football,” Nancy says.

She’s wearing this crazy frock dress with old-lady shoes and socks that go up under her knees. I swear she’s from a different planet.

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” I say.

“Do you know what happened on the team last year?”

“I know we won.”

“We?” she says.

“The team.
Our
team. School pride. You’ve heard of that, right?”

We turn the corner and there’s a huge crowd standing around the bulletin boards outside the gym. I have to ditch Nancy so I can look at the list. I don’t want her to know anything about this. Plus April’s down there, and I’m afraid she’ll see us and get the wrong idea.

“Oh, shoot,” I say, “I forgot something in my locker. I have to go all the way back up.”

I’m hoping Nancy will go away, but she turns like she’s attached to me. I’ve grown a barnacle. Unbelievable.

“Do you like her?” Nancy says.

“Who?”

“The new girl.”

“Which new girl?”

Nancy sighs. “The Korean girl,” she says.

“She’s really smart.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Nancy hooks her bangs with two fingers and pulls them tight behind her ears. Her acne glares at me angrily.

“I have to go,” she says, and runs up the stairs. Barnacle removed.

“What’s your problem?” I say, but it’s not like I go after her. Honestly, it’s a relief that she’s gone. Now I can go where the action is. Down the hall.