Playing Defense (Corrigan Falls Raiders) (12 page)

She sighed, like the decision was too much for her. “Let’s just go to the next one that starts.”

“Okay,” I agreed. Casual. Easy. Yeah, it seemed like she was in a hurry to get into the theater so we could stop talking, but maybe she was just… Okay, I couldn’t really think of another explanation. But that was fine. Maybe Claudia and her mom would have worried about it, but not me. I was the opposite of them. They were the smart, refined ones, and I was the babbling idiot who didn’t know what was going on and couldn’t even pass math class without help. Fine. That’s who I’d be.

I jumped out of the truck and met Claudia around the front and we weaved our way through the parked cars between us and the entrance. I said hi to a few people and noticed Claudia leaning forward, letting her hair cover her face. Hiding. She was embarrassed to be seen with me. Excellent.

“You can still eat popcorn, right? Even though you’re vegetarian?”

She looked at me like she was trying to figure out how to break the news about corn being a vegetable, so I added, “The topping. They say it’s real butter, and maybe it is. So do you eat dairy?”

“I do,” she said. “Yeah, popcorn’s fine. I love it.”

So I paid for the tickets and she paid for the snacks, and we made it into the theater just as the lights were dimming and watched some stupid zombie movie, and for the first time since I’d met her, I was spending time with Claudia and wishing it was over. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with what we were doing.

It was just that I’d gotten a taste of how much better it could be, and trying to go back to not caring about her, trying to be casual, was pretty much impossible.

…

The movie was stupid, and Chris was…different. I know, we were sitting in a dark theater. We weren’t
supposed
to be having a conversation or anything. But still, he was off. Because I’d said I wasn’t sure I was going to stand up to my mom.

Which made sense, of course. How else
should
he react to that?

I spent the middle third of the movie—the part where the zombies were chasing everyone and killing people and generally being gross—trying to figure out how I wanted Chris to react. In a perfect world, one where he was crazy about me and I wasn’t just the latest in a long string of conquests, how would I want him to deal with my mom?

It took me longer than it should have to realize that I’d want him to do exactly what he was doing. I’d want him to sit back and follow my lead, since it was
my
mom being the problem. The trouble was, I wasn’t giving him anything to follow.

The band of human survivors had walled themselves up in an abandoned factory when I leaned over to Chris and whispered, “Are you really into this movie?”

He shook his head. “Not really, no.”

“Can we get out of here?”

We’d sat next to the aisle so he’d have somewhere to stretch his long legs, so it was easy to leave without disturbing anyone. “Right outside?” he asked when we were in the lobby.

“Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

Once we were outside, he hesitated on the sidewalk, clearly waiting for the next step in whatever my plan was. A few people were walking by and looked at him, but I couldn’t tell if they were interested because they recognized him from the team or just because he was tall, handsome, and immobile in a pedestrian area.

I made myself reach out and take his hand, and he looked at me with cautious surprise. “Can we walk a bit?” I asked.

He looked around, then said, “Where?”

It was a good point. We had the choice of the theater parking lot, the mall parking lot, or crossing the street and strolling through the Home Depot parking lot. “Maybe we could sit in the truck.”

“If you want to walk, we can walk. Or I can drive us somewhere and we can walk there. Whatever.”

I frowned at him. My mom wouldn’t see his response as politeness or kindness. She’d say he was indecisive, or maybe even weak. She’d say he didn’t know his own mind or didn’t have the courage of his convictions or was wishy-washy. “My mom’s full of shit,” I said, half to myself and half to him.

He raised his eyebrows. “Okay. Interesting. Hey, there’s a path behind the theater. It goes up over the ridge into the old houses there. You want to go that way?”

“Yes.”

So we walked around the side of the theater, stumbling a little once we were out of the glare of the streetlights, but Chris pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight function, so we were fine. We walked to the top of the ridge without talking, then Chris shone the light off the path into the forest. “I feel like we should be able to go through here and get to the clearing. You know the one? You usually walk up to it from behind the elementary school, but I think we can find it from this side, too.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I had grown up in this town, but Chris apparently knew at least parts of it quite a bit better than I did.

“Do you have somewhere you actually want to go?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Let’s try this, then,” he suggested. “The trees are pretty spaced out—we should be able to walk between them without getting all scratched or anything.”

It felt like a metaphor. Chris was striking out, off the beaten path, trailblazing, bravely exploring…something. And I was trailing along behind him, trying to keep up and not sure what the hell I was doing. A few times we ran into obstacles, fallen trees or undergrowth or something, and Chris either helped me over them or led me around them. It was all calm, all just gentle fun. Exactly the way Chris lived his life.

And after only a few minutes of walking, the trees faded out and we were in a clearing, on top of the ridge, looking down over the town. There was a small campfire at one end with some kids gathered around it, but they were quiet, not rowdy, just looking at the fire and the lights of the town and being peaceful.

Chris seemed satisfied with his exploration. “You want to go sit with them? Or we can go look at the lights.” He nodded his chin to the other side of the clearing, with no people, just a few big rocks that looked like they’d be good for sitting on.

“Lights?” I suggested.

We ended up far enough away from the others that we could hear a murmur of their voices, but no distinct words. I looked doubtfully at a ledge of rock that would probably hit me about the middle of my back. I probably should have been able to pull myself up on it somehow, but I have pretty much zero upper body strength. As soon as I thought about it, though, Chris was there in front of me, his hands gentle but strong on my waist. “Boost?” he suggested. I nodded, and he lifted me like I weighed nothing, settled me on the ledge, waited protectively until I settled myself, then turned around and… I swear, he levitated himself onto it. One second his feet were on the ground, his elbows up in the air behind him with his palms flat on the ledge, then he jumped, and then he was just
there
. Like it was nothing.

“I should go to the gym more,” I said.

He shrugged. “Or just get me to lift stuff for you.” He paused for a second, then said, “But, yeah, I guess that’d be a bit of a nuisance. You want to be more independent than that.”

“I’m scared,” I said. I’d meant to build up to that, but somehow it came out raw and unprocessed.

He moved as if to jump off the ledge. “You want down?”

“No. Not scared of heights. I’m happy here. This is great.”

His body relaxed a little, and he pushed away enough so he could pull one leg up onto the rock and turn to face me. “I don’t get it.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I know. Because you’re…brave. I mean, you moved away from your family when you were, what, fifteen? And you’re looking after yourself, making your own decisions. You have a job, and a car, and you have sex, and I…I’m like a little kid, compared to all that!” He started to say something, but stopped when I shook my head. I was almost crying, but I wanted to keep going. I wanted to get all this out before I lost my courage.

“I really like you. I know, I haven’t known you for that long and I’m just another girl and it’s stupid for me to get attached and lots of other stuff, but I can’t help it. And I
want
to grow up. I want to make my own decisions and one of those would absolutely be that I want to be with you. And the growing up part? That’s not…it’s not me changing to be what you want me to be, it’s me changing to be what
I
want to be. You know? It’s all stuff that I want. I want it a lot, but I’m not sure I’m brave enough to do it, not all at once, and even if I do the stuff
I
control, there’s still all the other stuff…like what
you
want, and I know I’m not…” I waved a hand in a totally random, overly energetic way, trying to illustrate
something
, even though I wasn’t sure exactly what the something was. “I don’t know. It’s scary. All of it. I’m scared.” I took a deep, quavering breath, and only then noticed that at some point in my little speech he’d reached out and taken my hand.

We sat there quietly for a bit. Then he softly said, “You’re not just another girl. Not to me. I really like you, too.”

I let the words sink in, then I said, “Why?” I wasn’t fishing for compliments, I just really needed help figuring it out.

“I think you’re awesome,” he said. His tone was light, but he squeezed my fingers and said, “The way you think about stuff.
Trying to be more awesome
—like that’s a thing you can decide to do. Do you have any idea how cool that is?”

“It was Karen’s idea. Well, both of us, maybe. But Karen at least as much as me.”

“Karen’s awesome, too. But you know what? She’s been around for a few months, and I’m pretty sure that if I were going to start being crazy about her, it would have happened by now. So, she’s a sister, and I like her. But not like I like you.”

“Oh,” I said. I know, I should have come up with something a bit better, but I was still savoring his words and didn’t have a lot of extra attention to spend on forming my own.

And then he kissed me. I felt like we kept discovering new ways to kiss. The curious, nervous kisses of the night before, the hot, passionate making out in the driveway, and now this. Comfort and sweetness. Oops, and then a move toward the hot and passionate!

I reluctantly pulled away. I was calming down, not really ready to cry anymore, but I didn’t think our conversation was quite over, all the same. “I’m making my own decisions on this,” I told him. “I can do that much. She’s my mom, and I can’t just stop listening to her. But
I’ll
decide things. Okay?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Okay.” He frowned thoughtfully. “I’m trying to remember all the stuff you said you were scared about. Trying to figure out if I can take any of it away.” A pause, and then he said, “Sex isn’t a big deal, you know.”

“What? Of course it is.”

He shook his head. “Nah. I mean…it’s good. I like it. I’m pro-sex, absolutely. But if you just mean, like…you know.
Sex
. Intercourse. There’s other ways to—” He stopped, and his teeth gleamed white in the darkness. “I think I can
feel
your blush from way over here. Sorry. I’m not trying to embarrass you. I just meant you shouldn’t worry about sex. Or about the other stuff, either. I’m fine.”

“Because you can just go bang a puck bunny whenever you feel like it?” I demanded.

“Whoa,” he said, pulling back. “Damn, I was trying to be all sensitive and shit, and you start talking about banging puck bunnies?”

I felt foolish, but I was pretty sure I had a point. “But is that why you don’t care about having sex with me? Because you can have it with someone else?”

“Okay, I don’t want to embarrass you again, but I don’t really need
someone else
to get off, you know?”

I could feel the blush coming back, and could tell by his grin that it wasn’t going unnoticed. His voice was a little gentler when he said, “If you want us to be exclusive, we can do that. I’m in. Nobody else. Doesn’t mean you have to have sex before you want to. Okay?”

I squinted at him, looking for the catch. “Because you don’t really
want
to have sex with me?”

“Because I’m not a total asshole,” he corrected. “Seriously, this is getting a little insulting. Are we back to the gorilla thing again? I mean, if I were somebody else—someone who didn’t play hockey, or someone who was smart and good at school and everything—would you be having so much trouble believing that I was a decent human being who didn’t want to have sex with someone who didn’t want to?”

“I don’t know. It’s definitely not about thinking you’re a gorilla. But, you know, if you were…okay, let’s just say it. If you were a nerd like me, it would make sense for us to be together. You’d probably be a virgin, too, and even if you weren’t, you sure wouldn’t have a gang of available women just lined up waiting to have sex with you. A nerd wouldn’t be giving up all that much, but you?”

“I’m not giving up anything. Being with you isn’t a sacrifice.” He frowned. “Also, puck bunnies don’t really line up. It’s more of a cluster, usually.”

“Shh,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about them.”

“Thank God. I was starting to think you were a bit obsessed.”

“Shh,” I said again.

“You want me to shut up? Why don’t you give me something better to do with my lips?”

So I did. And at least for a while, everything was perfect.

Chapter Nine

Sunday morning when I showed up at Claudia’s house for tutoring, she kissed me, right there at the front door. Her mom wasn’t actually watching, but I wouldn’t put it past that woman to have had security cameras installed or something. And Claudia clearly thought she was being pretty daring. It seemed like a good sign, at least.

We finished the hour and a half left in my original challenge and were well into the overtime when Claudia’s mom came into the kitchen and started her poking-around-in-the-fridge thing again. And again, no hint of inviting me to stay for lunch. Mealtimes with my mom had always been a bit of a zoo, with my friends and my brothers’ and sister’s friends and often my parents’ friends all throwing food on the table and then gathering around and grabbing what we could. The vibe here was obviously different, and I found myself picturing Claudia at my parents’ place. She’d probably be a little overwhelmed at first, but she’d fit in fine, eventually.

But that was a useless daydream right then. I made my exit, with an excellent bonus visit with Claudia out in the driveway, and left. The guys were hanging out at Sullivan’s, as usual, so I went over there and messed around on PlayStation for a while, but I was kind of restless. When Karen showed up with Tyler, she grilled me a bit about how things were going with Claudia, and I tried to be as discreet as I could without actually telling her to mind her own business. Then I went back to my place, made small talk with the Bradfords, and went up to my room.

Where I sat down and did my chemistry homework. Crazy but true. I liked the idea of having something to show Claudia the next day, a sign that I wasn’t a complete slug with no self-discipline.

Karen sent out a mass text that night telling everyone to get to school early the next morning for a meeting of the Sisterhood. I had the morning workout with the team so my time wasn’t too flexible, but I raced through my shower and skipped shaving, and arrived at school with my hair still wet but about ten minutes before the first bell.

The Sisterhood was in the cafeteria. Claudia and Karen, Miranda and Sara, Oliver and Dawn, and me. It was kind of a weird group, but I remembered that was part of the idea. We didn’t even have to like one another, really, we just had to back one another up.

I pulled up a chair and when everyone looked at me I said, “Sister Topher, reporting in. I completed my core four-hour mission and have done about two of the three-hour supplemental.” I nodded in satisfaction. “I’m awesome.”

Karen handed me her tablet, and I poked at a few images on the screen. There were shots of Karen and Sara smiling widely as they handed out coffee at what looked like some sort of church function, of Karen crouched down talking to a little kid, and then one of Claudia at the hockey game, her face glowing with happiness and humor. “It’s just a start,” Karen said.

“It’s already awesome. I’ll take a picture of my next math test, okay?” She nodded, and then I said, “So what’s everyone else doing? What are the challenges?”

“I’m doing a mudder race in two weeks,” Miranda said with grim determination. “It’s the last one of the season and it’s going to be freezing cold as well as filthy, but my sisters in awesomeness have promised to wrap me in blankets as soon as I cross the finish line and rush me home so I can shower and fix my manicure.”

I didn’t know Miranda well, but she definitely gave the impression of always wanting to be put together. A mudder would be interesting for her.

“Sara and I are taking a pottery class together,” Dawn said with an encouraging smile in the younger girl’s direction. Dawn was great at looking after people, so I bet the sisters had persuaded her to join something by saying Sara needed company. Sisters are sneaky. Dawn shrugged self-consciously. “It’s nothing big, but we’re both feeling a bit…well, we’re feeling like we’d like to start slow.”

“Awesome,” I said. “Pottery. Do you get to use the wheel thing?”

“We’d better,” Dawn replied.

I looked around the rest of the table. There was a silence, then Oliver sighed loudly and said, “Fine. I’ll do it.”

Claudia beamed at him. “Really? You’re okay with the idea? I didn’t want to
push
you, just encourage you.”

“What’s your challenge?” I asked.

“Claudia thinks it’s time for me to stop being ‘gay’ and just be gay. You know? Like, ease off on the theory and the self-examination and get going with the hot man-on-man action.”

“Only if you’re ready for it,” Claudia said quickly, with a nervous glance in my direction. “And I’m not saying it has to be hot action!”

“She wants me to go to a gay youth group,” Oliver told me. “To
pick up
. I ask you, is that the appropriate venue for such things?”

He seemed to be really asking. “I have no idea. I guess there’s—what’s that app, to meet gay guys? But it’s probably all old pervs, right? And it’s not like there are gay bars or anything up here. So if there’s nobody you like at school, a youth group makes sense?”

He made a face. “It’ll probably be boring.”

“I said I’d go with you,” Claudia said. “It might be fun.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Oliver retorted. But he seemed to need
something
.

“I can go with you,” I said. “Unless I’ve got hockey.”

Oliver shook his head. “That would kind of blow the ‘picking up’ part of it, if I showed up with a hot guy. They’d think we were together.”

“But you weren’t sure you wanted to pick up. If you’re just there to, like, scout it out? I could be your date if you wanted to have an excuse to avoid people, but you could ditch me if you found someone interesting.”

“And how are your hockey player friends going to treat you if they find out you went to a gay youth group?” Oliver sounded genuinely curious.

I shrugged. “Not something you need to worry about.” He didn’t look convinced, so I added, “Not something
I
need to worry about, either. If they don’t like it, that’s their problem, not mine.”

“Easy to say that when you’re six four and weigh over two hundred pounds,” Oliver retorted.

I grinned at him. “Yup. It’s easy. So it’s not something we need to worry about. What do you say, baby? We going out?”

Oliver looked over at Claudia, like he needed her permission, and I kind of liked that. I wasn’t sure what she’d told anybody, or whether he was just guessing, but either way, people were seeing a connection between the two of us.

Claudia smiled at him. “I’m not sure if it’s a good strategic move, showing up with a guy, but if it makes you more comfortable, maybe it’s worth it. Your call.”

“I’ll think about it,” he promised, then looked around the table before focusing back on Claudia. “So, speedy pants, you’re the only one who has completely finished her first challenge. What’s your next one going to be?”

“I’m open to suggestions,” she said, and then the bell rang. I managed to get a little almost-alone time by walking her to her locker and opening the doors on either side of hers, making a cubby where I could kiss her in peace. But she shoved me off way too soon, saying something insane about not wanting to be late to class.

I stood and watched as she hustled away down the hall, and I felt like I should be running after her, trying to catch up and just…I don’t know, just
being
with her, all day if she’d let me. Well, if the
teachers
would let me, which they probably wouldn’t. And Claudia wouldn’t appreciate the disruption to her studies. So I heaved myself off the locker I’d been leaning on and went to geography. But my thoughts were even further from my schoolwork than they usually were, and I couldn’t make myself worry about that.

…

Annalise was already in class by the time I got there. I’d almost forgotten about her and her squirrelly behavior. But not quite.

I took my usual seat and gave her the coolest gaze I could come up with. For once, she wasn’t reading, just sitting there waiting for me. “Is there anything you want to say to my face?” I asked her.

She shook her head, her jaw set stubbornly. “Just the same things I said to your mom. I’m worried about you. You aren’t acting like yourself. You’re letting yourself be influenced by people who don’t have your best interests in mind.”

“What are my best interests, Annalise?” I waited a moment, then said, “Really, I want to know. You and I have been friends for years, so you must know me pretty well, right? So you tell me—what are my best interests?”

“You want to be an engineer,” she said firmly. “So whatever makes that more likely to happen is in your best interest.”

“Okay, that’s one thing. But what
else
?”

She stared at me like she didn’t understand.

“Am I just an engineering robot? I do my work, then plug myself in to recharge and start work again the next day? Is
that
my best interest?”

“Your marks this semester are crucial—” she started, but I cut her off.

“My marks are excellent. Way higher than required. I really don’t need to worry about my marks.”

“They’re excellent
now
. But if you let yourself be distracted, they might not stay that way.”

“They will. I’m…” I shook my head. “Annalise, I
am
still me. I still care about school, and I’m still working at it. I’m just doing other stuff, too.”

I think we both had more to say, but Karen arrived, and then the bell rang for class and Ms. Coyne started handing back poems that we’d turned in on Friday. “I invite any of you to share your writing with the class on Wednesday,” she announced. “We’ll have to keep it short and intense—no more than a couple minutes per student.” That was clearly directed at Annalise, although Ms. Coyne was kind enough to not look in her direction as she said it. “But I’ve written comments on a few poems
urging
their authors to share. These are poems that I felt were of high quality, but
also
poems that seemed as if they would speak to other students in the class.”

She laid my assignment down on my desk then, and made eye contact with me as she tapped the
PLEASE share
note on the top corner.

I looked away, and that was when Karen leaned over and saw the note. She grinned, clearly happy for me but also strangely triumphant. Then she mouthed the word “challenge,” and nodded in satisfaction.

I wanted to refuse. I was shy enough speaking in front of people about math or science, things that were just facts and theories. A poem, though? I’d done what Ms. Coyne had asked and tried to really look inside myself and put part of me on the paper. And my reward for trying so hard was public humiliation?

I realized that Annalise was staring at my page. She’d seen the note, and I was pretty sure she hadn’t gotten one herself. I mean, no matter how good her writing was, I really didn’t think it would speak to the class, not unless they were secretly a lot more interested in elves than I’d ever noticed.

And maybe it was petty—well, no, definitely it was petty—but I was still pissed at her for going behind my back and talking to my mom. Annalise was so concerned about my grades and about me not taking school seriously? Then I guess she wouldn’t want me to pass up a chance like this, an opportunity to earn some brownie points with the teacher.

“Fine,” I whispered to Karen.

She beamed at me. “And you’ve got to really
give it
, you know? Like, don’t just read in a monotone. You need to
perform
that bad boy!”

Okay, that had
not
been whispered, and the kids around us were laughing. But it was fine, somehow. They were laughing at what Karen had said, but not in a mean way. And somewhere I found the courage to primly say, “My poem is not a bad boy. It’s just misunderstood.” And then people were laughing at what
I’d
said, and it felt really, really good.

I knew Annalise was staring at me, and I could tell she disapproved. She’d think I was being fake. But I wasn’t. I was performing, maybe, but I was also showing off a part of me that people didn’t usually see. Chris thought I was funny; we laughed a lot when were together. And he’d given me the courage to share that part of myself more widely, and people
liked
it.

I
liked it. I let myself laugh a little. Then I looked down at the poem in front of me and my happiness changed to something quieter. Determination. I was going to read—no, I was going to
perform
my poem on Wednesday. That was my challenge. My next opportunity to be awesome.

I wanted to do it. But first I wanted to tell Chris all about it.

…

I actually understood what was going on in math class. Not all of it, maybe, but the times when I was confused there was always someone else lost, too, so I didn’t feel too bad. The whole thing was weird, but good. I could actually learn stuff in class instead of just sitting there killing time and thinking up the best way to get cows into the staff room.

Still, I wasn’t sorry when the bell rang and I could go find Claudia. She was at her locker, talking to Oliver, and I managed to play it sort-of cool, leaning down and kissing the top of her head instead of tackling her to the ground and rubbing all over her. So I was pretty proud of myself.

“This Wednesday,” Oliver told me. “From seven to ten o’clock at the downtown community center. Can you come?”

“I’ve got a ten o’clock curfew all this week. So I could go as long as we can leave early. But I’ve got practice until probably six thirty, and then I need to eat something, and…I don’t know, am I supposed to, like, get dressed up? Gay guys like getting dressed up, right?”

“Yes, the gay monolith is in favor of formal wear,” Oliver snarked, but it was lost on me because I didn’t know what a monolith was.

“So I could be ready by seven thirty or so if you want me regular, or maybe a bit later if you want me pretty.”

“You know we’re not
actually
dating, right? You don’t have to pretend to be gay.” His face froze. “Oh my God, you weren’t going to pretend to be gay, were you? That would be so uncool. No, no, no…”