What They Always Tell Us (6 page)

Mr. Ramos tells them to talk about the weather, but Alex can barely concentrate. He wants to be outside, back in his sweats, running in the fall air.

“Alejandro?” Patty asks, using his Spanish-class name. Patty’s Spanish-class name is Patricia. Pa-TREE-see-ah. Their names are prettier in Spanish.

“Sí?”
he says, breaking out of his spell. Patty frowns and continues droning on, her accent mangling the language.
“El
weather
esta nublado y frío, uh, hoy,”
she says. The classroom is filled with such manglings, all about the autumn air and cloudy sky, the orange and yellow leaves, whatever else they can manage to say with their limited vocabularies. When the bell rings later, he dawdles so that Kirk, Tyler, and Lang leave before him.

The next and final class of the day is study hall. Each week a new teacher fills in as the class babysitter. This week it’s Mr. Wiley. He mostly ignores them and grades a stack of papers.

Alex received special permission to skip gym this semester, which he is thankful for. Still, it’s not like the incident made him an invalid or anything. And starting in January he will have to join the gym class throng again—the people not good enough to qualify for a varsity sport. Varsity athletes practice during sixth period—so right this very moment James is at tennis and Nathen is at cross-country, enjoying the air outside. Alex barrels through some chemistry reading and gets a jump on a set of trig problems. His work is sloppy, lackluster. Mostly he stops, puts down his pencil, and stares outside, waiting for the jolt of the bell to announce yet another end to a school day.

When he gets home, Henry is sitting on the curb in front of his house, wearing jeans and an oversized green sweater.

“Hi, Alex! How was school?” he shouts the second Alex gets out of his car.

Alex lumbers over to him, his school satchel on his shoulder. “The usual.”

“I like school.”

“Just wait till you’re my age. Then you won’t.”

Henry squints up at him and smiles. “Whatcha doing now?”

“Some homework. I may go jogging later.”

“Mom is taking me to a movie tonight.”

“Oh yeah?”

“And pizza after.”

“That’s nice,” Alex says. Henry’s mother had finally come home that Sunday after Henry had stayed over. Alex had watched her with Henry, from the living room window, as she got out of her car, acting as carefree as if she’d just come home from a haircut. He’d walked outside with Henry, and when she saw them she just waved at them and shouted, “Hi, sweetie!” Alex had wanted to say something—but what? It wasn’t his place.

“Yeah, it should be fun. Mom doesn’t let me eat pizza much—she says it’s junk food. But she knows I like it.”

He should ask what movie. But he just wants to go inside. “Well, I better get started on my homework.”

“Oh, okay,” Henry says.

An hour later, while grabbing a Coke from the fridge, Alex spies Henry outside, still on the curb, staring off into space.

James walks into the kitchen and grabs an apple from the fruit bowl. He follows Alex’s gaze out the window. “What’s the deal with that kid?”

Alex shrugs. All of a sudden he feels protective of Henry. “I dunno.” He wants to say,
What’s the deal with
you?

James is still in his tennis clothes—black, shimmery nylon sweats and a long-sleeve T-shirt that all the players got for playing in the state finals last spring. “Nate said he ran into you jogging last night.”

“Yep. I’m going tonight, too. Need to get back into it.”

James takes another crunch out of his apple. “Good,” he says, before climbing the stairs and shutting himself in his room again.

Alex guesses that was James’s attempt at brotherly conversation. It’s better than nothing.

When he turns to look out the window, Henry is gone.

Alex takes the same route tonight, starting at the same time. His muscles are a little sore from yesterday’s jog, but his lungs feel stronger. He focuses on breathing, on keeping his stride nice and steady, while also watching for Nathen. Running by the later golf holes, Alex can see the houses of Pinehurst, their lit windows, beautifully landscaped yards, driveways full of nice cars. The Rao house is on a street a few blocks away from the course, one story, flat-roofed and modern-looking. But he doesn’t see any sign of Nathen. And as he loops around the course, down and up and down mini hills, past the mucky pond by the fifteenth hole, closing in on the end of his jog, he feels a stupid clunk of disappointment. Why should he care if Nathen isn’t out jogging? And just then, Nathen zooms by him from behind, as if summoned by his thoughts. “Come on, slow ass!” he says, glancing back and shouting, barely breaking his pace.

For the next ten minutes—ten minutes longer than Alex meant to jog—he follows Nathen, who glances back every now and then, checking to see if he is still following. It’s a struggle, his lungs start to burn, his legs want to give out, but he keeps on. Nathen follows the course at first, but then he veers off across a fairway and onto a makeshift trail through a small thicket of forest, then out onto a street Alex doesn’t recognize. It might be a part of Pinehurst, but who knows—it’s like Nathen has led him to a new world.

“To the river!” Nathen shouts, continuing down the street, past more big houses.

They run down a small slope and finally Alex realizes where they are—at the back entrance to Pinehurst, right on Rice Mine Road. Across Rice Mine is another small band of forest that borders the north bank of the river. When there are no cars coming, Nathen dashes across the road and starts running along the shoulder. Alex doesn’t care that it is late, that it is getting darker, and that he is now a good twenty-minute jog from home. He just follows Nathen, who has finally slowed a bit, allowing Alex to run alongside him.

“Where are we going?” he says between breaths.

Nathen smiles and finally veers left into a new, unfinished subdivision that has sprung up along the river. There are only a few half-built houses set on dirt lots, but all with views of the river. The exposed dirt here is orange-brown, fresh and wet-looking. Nathen jogs up to one of these skeletal houses and finally stops. “Good job, Alex.” He is breathing heavily, but not as heavily as Alex is. Now that they’ve stopped, Alex feels ready to collapse.

“Thanks, I guess. But I may drop dead in a sec.”

“You did good. I thought I would have left you in the dust by now, but you kept on.”

Alex sits down on the curb, not caring if his sweats get muddy. Nathen sits down next to him.

“You should consider joining the team,” Nathen says.

“You mean cross-country?”

“Yeah. Matt Jones sprained his ankle real bad, so he’s out for the rest of the year. There’s an opening now.”

“I doubt I’m good enough,” he says.

“You kept up with me, and we all know what a stud I am.” Nathen laughs like he is joking, but also like he means what he says. “Plus, I guarantee you that you’re better than some of the other guys on the team.”

This doesn’t seem possible to Alex, but he says, “Maybe.”

“I bet you can outrun your brother, even,” Nathen adds.

“I doubt that.”

“No, seriously. I bet you can.”

“Maybe.” Maybe, maybe, maybe—can’t he say anything else? It’s like he has bubble-gum mouth again.

Nathen leans back into the orangey dirt lot and clasps his hands under his head. Alex can see a peak of his underwear—black Calvins—and then his flat stomach, where his sweatshirt rises up from his hips. He veers his eyes away and stares straight ahead.

“I can talk to Coach Runyon if you want,” Nathen says. “I mean, you need to train more and get better, for sure. But I bet he’d want you on the team next semester. We need a full team to be competitive.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess it would beat gym class.”

“Hell, yeah—sixth-period athletics rocks. Seriously. Plus, we get to go to meets in Birmingham and Mobile and other places. It’s fun. It’s a good group of guys. You’d like them.”

“So you’ll really talk to your coach?”

“I said I would. Unless you don’t want me to.”

“No, that would be cool.” Alex suddenly envisions himself running triumphantly across a finish line, bursting that red tape, his arms raised in glory. “But Mom will be mad if I’m not home for dinner.”

“Yeah, I guess we should get back.” He propels himself up and stands and shakes his limbs. Nathen is Alex’s height, lean-limbed, but muscular up top, with broad shoulders and a defined chest that pokes out a little, just like James’s.

Alex stands, dreading the walk home—and it will be a walk, because he can’t possibly run anymore. But when Nathen starts to jog off, shouting for him to get moving, he somehow summons the energy to follow him back down Rice Mine Road, up through Pinehurst.

“Okay, I’m headed this way,” Nathen says, jogging in place before hanging a left down his street. “But I’ll talk to Coach Runyon, like I said. Wait for me in the parking lot after school tomorrow. I should know something by then, okay?”

“Okay,” Alex says, “that’s great.”

“Cool. Okay, buddy, see you later.” Nathen winks at him and makes a clicking sound and then runs off, turning once to hold up his hand in a wave.

Without Nathen to spur him on, Alex walks—back to the course, back along the trails, all the way home. He has been away for over an hour, it is dark now, and he knows his parents will be worried, wondering where he is. He smiles thinking about his very real explanation—that he was running with Nathen.

The halls and walls of Central High seem a little less depressing the next day. Maybe it’s because the sun is shining outside, after days of a gray November funk. Or maybe it’s because Alex has something to look forward to. He cautions himself not to get too excited—maybe the coach won’t even let him try out—but he can’t help feeling, like it’s lodged in the pit of his stomach, a tiny kernel of hope.

The day is a chore to get through: a government quiz on the judiciary branch. An experiment in chemistry, which beats listening to Mrs. Alexander lecture. During lunch Alex tries to study for his Spanish quiz, but he can’t focus. He thinks only of Nathen and running and the coach who holds his fate in his hands. At least Coach Runyon isn’t like the other coaches Alex knows—meatheads who teach shop and health ed, flirt creepily with the pretty girls in class, and treat the jocks like their best buddies and everyone else like negligibles who are taking up too much space. Coach Runyon teaches calculus, so Alex thinks he’s probably smart.

On his way to Spanish Alex doesn’t see Nathen or his brother, as he usually does. Bad timing. It’s not like Nathen would have anything to report anyway. They both won’t know anything until after school, which makes study hall torturous. All day he has been a space cadet, staring out the windows, imagining himself as an actual team member, running alongside Nathen through the city streets, on running trails, around the golf course, wearing the crimson school colors.

Finally, the bell rings and Alex gathers his stuff and heads to his car. All around him his classmates drive off or else linger at their cars, sneaking puffs of cigarettes, talking shit to each other, making plans for that night or the weekend or whenever—plans that don’t include Alex. Not that he cares.

A few cars over, he sees Kirk chatting with Beth. Beth is petite and has wavy dark brown hair that rests on her shoulders. Alex wonders if the two of them are finally a couple now, after months of flirting and claiming to be “just friends.” The thought of them as a couple makes him feel a little queasy. Tyler and Kirk have never had serious girlfriends, and neither has Alex, and this seemed to bond them together. But after the summer, both of them started acting like they were girl magnets. They talked about the things they had done with girls—more than kissing and groping—but Alex had no stories of his own to tell. And it made him feel panicked and uneasy, because he knew this was loosening his ties to them.

As he stands there, Alex tries to keep his eyes away from Kirk and Beth, but the more he avoids looking at them the more he can feel their presence. In a flicker, he sees Kirk staring straight at him, mouthing something to Beth, who is holding in a laugh. He wants to shout,
What’s so funny?

He waits and waits, maybe ten minutes, which feels like eternity, and there is still no Nathen in sight. He has his appointment with Dr. Richardson in fifteen minutes, and if he doesn’t leave soon, he will be late. He starts to have an odd feeling about the whole situation, like the delay means bad news. And wouldn’t it suck to get the bad news right here, in this lot, under the eyes of Kirk and Beth? His heart starts to race, so he gets in his car and drives off, both disappointed and relieved.

Later, in his room at home, Alex sits on his bed and starts reading
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
for English class. Mrs. Winters says it’s one of the great American novels. He’ll have to take her word for it, because so far it just seems like homework. But at least this homework—reading—is more enjoyable than translating some Spanish sentences or, worse, the set of trig problems due tomorrow. The sine function, the cosine function, the tangent function. And even more functions. All of it pointless. His parents took math all through high school and college and they both admit to not remembering any of it. So why should he even bother with it? Because he has to. It’s what you do. He sighs, letting out frustrated air.