by Scott Brown
Not bad, little man. Not bad.
He’d even caught the attention of the sports photographer for our yearbook, the Pequod. The shutterbug was this skinny white kid who showed up at every game (I could never remember his name, or I’d subliminally forgotten it out of spite because he was always click-click-clicking over me) and was now sprawling on the sidelines to get a low angle on the St. Augie guard. Looked like Drew’s new nemesis had already made Pequod’s “Worthy Adversaries” page.
“But watch,” said Brian, “Drew’ll come out of the locker room a new player. They came here with a perfectly good game to play against him, but in five minutes, he’ll be someone else, playing a new game, just watch. Adaptation. Name of the game.”
My dad applied a lot of evolutionary biology to high school basketball, maybe a little more than it could bear. Maybe a little more than I could bear, sometimes.
“That’s why invasive species throw everything out of whack. Often, they’re overadapted to their new environments. Everybody in town’s got all these automatic assumptions, how big you have to be, how fast, etc. Then in comes the tegu, or the northern snakehead, or Japanese knotweed—and bam! None of it matters anymore….”
Truth is, I loved my father’s zoo stories, even when they were what one might call patronizing (if one were an unbridled ingrate dick face). Brian’s fables tended to have morals, pretty unsubtle ones, which always boiled down to Don’t underestimate yourself! Needless to say, Drew did not receive lavish inspirational animal fables packed with scientific facts, because he didn’t need them. He was doing just fine in the adaptation department, thank you very much.
I loved the animal stories, because they were a language only Brian and I spoke.
But it was already time for the third-quarter tip. Back to reality.
“Consider the tegu, for ex— Uh-oh, here it comes, here it comes!” And Brian was suddenly on his feet, because biology in motion is tons more fun than biology in theory, and Drew was making his move. Adapting.
First he hit a big three off the dribble, and the stands exploded. Then, very next play, before our eyes stopped vibrating from the last shot, Drew zeroed in on St. Augie’s little guard, who was in the process of reading the bigs inside, deciding how to come off his pick. Drew came off his man unexpectedly and just stripped Number 19, candy from an armless baby. Spesh then proceeded to lope downcourt for a casual dunk that took the roof off the joint.
Meltdown. The bleachers combusted. The shutterbug jerked excitedly, practically in seizures, as he snapped away. As the third quarter passed into the fourth, the stands could feel the game’s tectonic plates sliding in the Harps’ direction, and so could the St. Augie guard, who was obviously off his axis. Rattled. Slinging brick after brick. He was a more than competent player and had put on a good show, but now, all of a sudden, he was a different person, just like Drew was. But not in a good way. He wouldn’t pass, couldn’t see the lifelines his teammates were throwing him. In a matter of seconds, he’d gone from giant killer to just another victim of Number 38, the Special.
Next play, the defense tried to close over Drew, tried to swallow him, but he wouldn’t be swallowed. He Euro-stepped, launched himself, rose from this tangle of minor giants, and found the free air above the paint. Then fed the hoop again with a satisfying GA-GONG.
Now Keseberg was only down by two. Thirty seconds to go.
Brian stood up. “Do it, Drew! C’mon!” And I got the strangest feeling….
Sympathy.
For the devil.
I felt really bad for that little guard.
I wanted him to show Drew that he was still the same person, underneath. That he was still the winner he’d seemed to be just fifteen minutes ago. That he couldn’t be so easily shaken, so forcibly changed.
It was not to be.
Because Drew suddenly, humiliatingly stole the ball from him again.
He was on a breakaway for an easy tie, the little guard scrambling in pursuit. The clock had seven seconds, plenty of time to even the score with a safe, uncontested layup. But Drew stopped—
—and pulled up for the three. Released. Just as the little guard—as surprised as the rest of us at this move—plowed into Drew from behind…and bounced off harmlessly. The ball was at the top of its parabola…
…and I realized…
…suddenly, demonically, and out of nowhere…
…that I was praying for a brick.
Swish.
And the foul.
The stands went insane. The shutterbug’s camera had a grand mal.
Drew drained the free throw.
Of course he did. He was 90 percent from the line.
With two seconds on the clock, the little guard launched a half-court Hail Mary. It landed in the pep band with a cartoon clatter of cymbals. A witty Keseberg trumpeter made the waaaah-waaaah with her horn mute, and Harp Nation thundered down the risers to the court and dog-piled my blood brother, who stood a head above all comers until he got pulled down into the boil. Before he disappeared into it, his eyes found mine. He looked right at me, raised a fist, and pointed a finger.
You, he was telling me, that was for you. Which made me feel so grateful.
But by now you know how I feel about feeling grateful.
He’d just dedicated his JV championship win to me. To the guy who’d just prayed for him to brick, who’d just prayed against his own brother. I watched the St. Augie guard slink out the side door of the gym, out of the light, out of the gene pool.
I was glad my prayer hadn’t been answered.
But I still had a kind of faith that night. Faith in my own adaptation.
Adaptation’s a funny word for betrayal.
* * *
—
I was changing.
An hour early, I’d lemured down the rock face to BoB, vanished into the cave, opened my small duffel, laid out my Batsuit:
Jeans from the internet, expensive ones, tailored by a guy in LA whose website said he made costumes for child actors. (They’d cost me most of my Lowlands earnings.)
A beige linen shirt, cut for a short torso. (Most off-the-rack shirts blouse on the little man, making him look square and low and boxy.)
I stared at Rafty’s lifts for thirty solid seconds, asking myself, Really? before slipping them into my sick-ass brand-new Bred Jordans (boys’ size 7, the Space Jam logo carefully blotted out with Liquid Paper).
I fussed, I straightened. I flossed and Listerined.
Then I waited.
And waited.
For over an hour.
Eight-fifteen came and went. No Monica.
Nine came and went. No Drew.
There’s one inconvenient thing about BoB I forgot to mention: no signal.
I know, I know: Hold up, halfling. Why didn’t you just head back up to civilization and check your messages?
Two reasons. One was logical. There was more than one way down the cliff, and I didn’t want to miss them, a whales-passing-in-the-night sort of thing.
The other reason was less logical, and little unhinged: I didn’t want excuses. Short of apocalypse, they should’ve been there. No excuse was enough.
She’d bagged. So much for love.
He’d bagged. So much for brotherhood.
My greatest friends in the world (whose trust I’d planned to betray, but only a little, only surgically, and for all the right reasons) somehow couldn’t find a way to make it to the most important night of my life.
Maybe it was a sign, or just evolution taking its course. This was a half plan by a half man. Nature had eliminated it before it could even climb out of its shell, and that was for the best, probably.
The moonlight shivered on the water off the reef as I sang ancient Billy Joel sea chanteys, and the whales ignored me. Rightfully so. I was a
solitary male. Pulling my hair out. Talking to myself. Out of step with my conspecifics. Stranger in a strange biome. I’d asked just one little favor of the universe: for everything to change. And the universe had blown it. Big-time.
I stomped back into the domed cathedral of the BoB cave, looking for the ceremonial beverage, that which was allegedly better than beer. I found it, behind a boulder: Cap’n Chad’s Apricot Spiced Rum.
Deprazing.
I almost opened the bottle. Maybe that’d be a proper response—get trashed, then try to catch a wave. Die mythically, like a rock star. But no, cliché alert: teen drinking tragedy. With an absurd twist:
TINY DRUNKEN CORPSE WASHES ASHORE AT TORREY
FIRST RESPONDERS BAFFLED, AMUSED
I had happier thoughts, too. Like Maybe everyone is dead?
That’d explain it. How both of them could flake on me. Why hadn’t I considered it before? Ebola outbreak. Terrorist attack. Nuclear carrier meltdown in the harbor. Zoo jailbreak, mass carnage. I was Omega Man, last of my kind. When the aliens came to pick over what was left, they’d find me and think, Adorable. “Zarlok! Fetch our tiniest terrarium.”
I was sitting in the cave, calculating how long I could live here on rum—apricot spiced rum had to have some nutritional value, and my dainty metabolism wouldn’t need much—when a skittle of pebbles rained off the rock overhead.
I popped up way too fast. Way too eager.
“Monica?”
“Will?”
She was preceded by a smell I did not recognize, not in the context of BoB nor in the context of Monica: perfume. I associated three smells with Monica. Ocean. Old wet suit. Hot sauce. This was none of the above.
Then a pair of what can only be described as sexy sandals hit the sand. Monica dropped down after them.
Sexy sandals? Decorative danglies and leather thingies?
It wasn’t the last shock of the night. Not by a long shot.
For instance: Monica climbed into BoB wearing the most un-Monica outfit imaginable. Pants that had a silky sheen to them. Pants that had some kind of shape to them. Pants that suggested Monica had a shape. And what was going on with this shirt? It was bright red, fire-truck red, and sheer, with a lower-flying neckline than I’d ever seen on Monica, and sleeves that flared like little wings and ended halfway down her upper arms. Also: mascara?! Was that really mascara? Holy God, it was. She had on enough mascara to fuel an emo revival single-handedly.
What was happening? Had I hit my head on the way down here? Was I dead? Had I already reached the inexplicable finale of my low-rated television series?
Monica’s head was cocked a little sideways, like an owl’s. She was studying me.
“You look weird. What’s wrong?”
“I look weird? What’s with the sandals and…stuff?”
She looked down at her outfit, shrugged. “Not working? Mascara too much? Or just too much mascara? I honestly don’t know. Took forever to get this shit on. ’S why I’m late.”
“I mean,” I said, my mouth suddenly full of cotton candy, “it…works.” I really had no idea where to go with that. What did works mean, in that context? For whom? On whom? I just stopped talking for a second, and let the Angel of Awkwardness pass over.
“Well,” said Monica finally, “it’s my best friend’s sixteenth birthday. Is that not a special occasion?” And she sat down next to me, in a plume of…perfume? I must’ve winced or something. She noticed. “Look, I never wear this crap. Don’t know when to say when.”
“What…flavor is that?”
Monica shrugged. “Some kind of flora.” She looked like she was really trying to remember what flower reek she’d bought. That, or gathering her thoughts. Again: a weird look on her. You generally didn’t see Monica gathering her thoughts. She came into every situation with thoughts pregathered.
Finally she said: “You didn’t get our messages.”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you go back up?”
I gave her the logical answer that didn’t matter, instead of the irrational one that did: “I was afraid I’d miss you.”
Monica thought about that. “I get it.”
“So what happened?”
“Drew got jocknapped.”
“Ah. Varsity.”
“Varsity. They took him to the Party Toilet. I think he’s trying to get an Uber. Could be here any minute.”
And it hit me: for all my wailing and gnashing of teeth, and despite four mournful choruses of Billy Joel’s “Miami 2017” (to which no whales had responded), this was exactly the time alone with Monica I’d imagined. Everything I’d hoped for. Just an hour late.
Nothing was canceled. It was all happening.
So tell her.
Here’s what I’d planned to say: We’ll be ridiculously mismatched together! We’ll be the weirdest silhouette against a romantic sunset! We’ll show ’em asymmetric love in a square world! Robbing banks and surfing! A lot of this didn’t make sense, but the point was: Hell with everything, let’s do this!
“So…this morning, if I was acting a little…off…” Holy shit. I was doing it. I was starting!
Monica squinted at me in the dark.
Beyond the Sawtooth, something big breached, breathed, dove again.
“Well,” I went on, feeling my way into the dangerous fissure I’d opened, “it’s ’cause I’ve…I’ve been thinking a lot…”
The moon dove behind a cloud. Like it was taking cover. The night had gone all cinematic, for sure, but…maybe the wrong kind of cinematic? Maybe not the romantic dramedy I’d half planned. Wait. Was this a horror movie?
Too late. I’d started.
Tell her.
“…thinking about all the times you’ve…saved me…”
“Hey,” said Monica, smelling toast burning and coming to my rescue—again!—even though she had no idea what she was rescuing. “You know how many times you’ve helped me through shit with my dad? Actually, you don’t know. That’s what’s great about you, Daughtry. You don’t keep score.”
She was wrong. She was so wrong. I had kept score. I knew precisely how much I was losing by. It was my worst feature—
Oh, God. Her hand had landed on mine. She left it there long enough for me to feel its weight. Its warmth. I couldn’t believe how good it felt. My big love confession, just starting to take shape, began twiddling its lips like a cartoon rabbit.
Blubbityblubbityblub.
Tell her.
The words were live and chambered, and I was opening my mouth with the very real intention of saying them, when Monica asked, “So you want your present now or after the party?”
This was a trick question.
Because Monica gave trick presents.
Once, she gave me, no kidding, bleached squirrel bones (culmination of a running joke too complex to go into here), only she’d packed them in a Lego box, organizing them in the little trays, so I was deep into unpacking the damn thing (Legos, that’s cool, I’m a little old for Legos but—What the Jesus? Bones!) before I realized I’d been handed an itemized rodent autopsy.
Before I could answer, she dropped it in my hand: something warm from the pocket she’d kept it in (I tried not to think about that).
Small. But heavy. Round.
A ring. Plain. On a leather thong.
On pure nerd instinct, I immediately peeked at the inscription. There it was.
“Not out loud,” Monica warned.
Ash nazg durbatulûk…
The Black Speech of Mordor. Not to be spoken here.
It was, of course, the One Ring.
And what the inscription said, in the Dark Tongue, was One Ring to rule them all…
“Etsy,” whispered Monica, mock mysterioso. “Custom job. Many, many long and confusing conversations with a m
etalsmith in Venice Beach who, I’m pretty sure, has more pewter gnomes than friends. Anyway. Happy birthday.”
I turned the ring over and over in my hand, searching for the right response—in Elvish, in English, whatever. Because this had, for real, cost Monica precious time and money, neither of which she had. And because, for the third time that day, I had no idea how to feel about a birthday present.
There was another reason I was Dark Tongue–tied.
Monica, Drew, and I, see, we’d been dweeby Tolkienoid Middle-earthers together forever…but we didn’t assign roles, y’know?
Maybe the bigger issue was: we all knew what role I’d be assigned.
And Monica had just assigned it to me.
Frodo.
I love you and I’ve always loved you isn’t something you say after someone’s just made you Frodo. Frodo’s great, don’t get me wrong. But Frodo doesn’t get the girl. Frodo lives in the Shire, which is another name for the friend zone.
I’d come here wondering, Does love conquer all? Or is it always eleven inches away? And Monica had just answered my question with Here is your hobbit ring from Etsy, and also a complimentary ballectomy because no, I do not consider you any kind of man. Now off to Mordor with you! I packed you a little lunch!
Not what she intended at all, of course. And part of me knew that. The rest of me still said the really dumb thing I said:
“You do know I’m already invisible. Right?”
Ever watch a building get demolished, like, professionally? One of those detonations done from the inside out? That’s how Monica’s face looked, the second I said that.
After a pause just long enough for me to regret what I’d said and my whole loathsome existence, she said: “No, dummy. You only turn invisible if you give in to the darkness. If you put it on. That’s the whole point. You carry the burden, you don’t…Shit. Just forget it.”
She looked at the ring. Seeing it from another angle. My angle. My low angle. My low, shitty angle.