XL

by Scott Brown

  Naturally, that’s when Drew ignited the turbines. It happened in a series of steps. A “plan,” if you will.

  First he pretended to lose control of the ball, way upcourt. That sent two giddy, overconfident San Lo guards lurching in the wrong direction. Drew recovered the ball and bounced it hard to Embry as he ran downcourt. Embry pump-faked, then lofted it over the center lane, where it was met in midair by Drew, who escorted it—

  GUH-DONG! Right in for the slam. The buzzer exploded just as Drew’s feet reconnected with terra firma.

  Somewhere in there, I was on my feet, and so was Monica, and we were screaming so hard, sincerely and with no subtext whatsoever, in praise of this thing of beauty Drew’d just pulled off that Monica jumped into my arms and I was swinging her around and around—

  That’s when I noticed: we fit.

  I had a great view of her earlobes.

  Still unpierced.

  Seeing that sent the worst, the wrongest thrill through me.

  I could smell her.

  My head was full of her, in a way my head had not been full of her since, I realized, BoB. Since last spring, my birthdaypocalypse. The night I’d been so painfully conscious of how uneven we were.

  Yet here we were, her face in the crook of my neck. My arms holding her. She weighed nothing to me now, I realized. And yet the mass of her felt meaningful and right. This term from chemistry came swimming up out of my head. Specific gravity.

  Monica’s gravity felt so specific.

  Specific to me.

  I looked down at the court and saw Drew, mobbed by teammates, but staring up at us with a crooked smile. He was doing his pointing thing, his For you guys!

  But I saw his victory smile wobble when he saw us.

  It was like he’d just seen what I’d just felt:

  The fitting thing.

  I felt like I’d just gotten away with something, like I’d robbed the Mob or something. I didn’t want to feel like I’d robbed the Mob. I had so many perfectly licit things to feel good about—like Sidney, like not being dead, like finally feeling strong—why would I want something illicit on my books?

  Monica saw it, too, when I set her down. She gave Drew a plain wave. He waved back. And we didn’t talk about any of it. How I could still feel the outline of Monica on my body a day later, for example—I had no plans to talk about that with anyone.

  * * *

  —

  But not too long after, the whispers changed.

  I was used to the looks in the hall. They’d started in the fall: Is that the same guy? The little guy? No! Him? What happened?

  They evolved: There goes That Guy. He’s even bigger! Swear he was shorter yesterday….

  And now: You know what I heard about Big Guy? Drew’s stepbro? Bigger than Drew is now? Hangs out with Drew’s girl. Well: this is gonna come as, like, zero surprise…

  [jacksquatch]: hey! hey there! u heard?

  WillD: …

  [jacksquatch]: this is big

  WillD: …

  [jacksquatch]: this is…will daughtry big

  WillD: …

  [jacksquatch]: i hear…will daughtry…is a damn DOG yo

  WillD: …

  [jacksquatch]: EPIC dog

  WillD: …

  [jacksquatch]: didnt know he had it in him

  WillD: …

  [jacksquatch]: not only is he putting wood to sidney lim…him gots him a SIDE piece…

  WillD: Hey asshole?

  [jacksquatch]: and its his BROTHERS GIRL!

  WillD: When they catch you

  [jacksquatch]: drew tannenger hoop hero gettin all CUCKED by his BIIIIIIIIG bruvver PUT THAT ON NEWS 8 & SMOKE IT!

  WillD: you’re going to jail.

  [jacksquatch]: hahahahaha…u funny…anyway crazy rumor huh bruh?

  WillD: Or we could just meet, the two of us.

  [jacksquatch]: why? r u flirting w me big boy? dont u have enough going on?

  WillD: Blind date. Let’s meet and I can beat the shit out of you and dump your dickless troll corpse in the ocean BRUH. Name a place.

  [jacksquatch]: look at us. we r finally having a real conversation. proud of us!

  WillD: Name a place. I’m serious. Let’s finish it.

  [jacksquatch]: all that blocking was hurtful big man

  WillD: Name it goddamn coawrd

  [jacksquatch]: aw. u mad. dont b mad. thats how u make misteaks…

  * * *

  —

  Suddenly I wasn’t just a curiosity, I wasn’t fascinating, I wasn’t even a freak. It was worse:

  I was a character. In a drama.

  And I was a villain. An orc. And I had an arc. I was an orc with an arc.

  And my orc arc was: Will’s Gone Dark.

  My story was about Power Gone Wrong. An unnatural gift—abused! A family—torn apart! Good stuff. Compelling. Now everybody was waiting for the steroidal hobbit’s inevitable comeuppance.

  Where was all this coming from?

  Well, from [jack], of course. And from video. Irrefutable GIFage. The evidence that keeps on evidencing, in four-second cycles.

  There was this smidge of News 8 footage, a cut from Drew’s buzzer beater to Monica and me, celebrating: I was hoisting Monica, all very innocent on the surface. But somebody ([jack]) had trimmed it to GIF length and given it to the winds of douchery that blow ceaselessly across this great internet of ours. Arrows had been inserted, thoughtfully, to interpret our body language. Where my hands were. How her legs wrapped around me for a second.

  The trial was swift, the jury back with a guilty before the GIF even fully unspooled.

  The assumption was that justice would come at the hands of Spesh, who got his own story line: the great warrior, the Harps’ record-breaking small forward, betrayed…backstabbed…cuckolded…by his own brother! An epic, Bible-y tale! What a world!

  And then there was Monica, the femme fatale, turning brother against brother. Classic character, never gets old.

  Finally there was Sidney: the wronged girlfriend.

  “I have the shittiest role” was Sid’s only comment. “Worst lines. All the crying.” She didn’t believe the rumor, having been on the receiving end of many rumors over the years. Her advice was: Just wait it out, do nothing, say nothing, don’t feed it, let it pass.

  Monica’s take was similar.

  “Enjoy being Every Girl Ever,” she told me. “Your changing body is the object of fascination. Then disgust. And finally: furious anger. Just gotta wait it out.”

  “Great,” I said. “So I wait. For what?”

  “Menopause.” She clapped me on the shoulder. “Relax.” She smirked. “At least you’re not ‘Yoko.’ That’s what they’re calling me. We’ve all got our trolls, right? Modern life. ‘And a thousand thousand slimy things lived on; and so did I.’ ”

  “Hell’s that from?”

  “Hamilton.”

  But for once, I wasn’t in the mood for banter. I didn’t have Monica’s surfer chill, I guess. I wanted to throw her phone into the ocean. I wanted to throw the whole internet attached to her phone into the ocean, let the slimy things thrash and drown down there, caught in their own drift net.

  Slimy things don’t drown, though.

  Slimy things, as a rule, float.

  * * *

  —

  The Lims were in Singapore again, and Sid and I were in bed again.

  We were getting better.

  And I was getting bigger. Sid seemed okay with that. Truthfully? I felt a little like a piece of gym equipment.

  That wasn’t such a terrible feeling. I wasn’t, after all, a neglected piece of gym equipment, with laundry draped on it. No, I was very much in use when the Lims were in Singapore, “impor
ting” or whatever.

  One afternoon, we were in Sid’s bed, and she reached over me for her water on the nightstand—and what feels more grown-up than a girl reaching across you in bed for a glass of water?—and her fingers grazed it there, on the nightstand.

  The ring.

  I was usually pretty good about getting it off discreetly, but I’d gotten sloppy, comfy. I’d plunked it in plain view.

  Sid wove the leather thong around her fingers. “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Maybe I can wear it? Like, I’m your nerd bride?” She laughed. “You know I’m a total dork, right? I’ve even been to a Ren fest. I won Ethan a fried pickle at the dagger throw. Oh yeah, this damsel? Yaaas, queen! Bull’s-eye. I’ve worn a goddamned ear cuff. Daughtry, c’mon! I’m bona fide.”

  She thought this was hilarious. I wasn’t sure.

  No “total dork” says or needs to say, You know I’m a total dork, right?

  And Sidney Lim was nobody’s nerd bride. This whole conversation felt, in my innermost gut, wrong.

  I found myself with nothing to say, except: “Uh…”

  Sid frowned. Untangled herself from the thong. “Or not,” she said.

  She handed the ring to me, got out of bed, and went to the bathroom.

  None of this had anything to do with Monica, not really. Definitely not.

  This was just irrefutable fact: Sidney Lim and the One Ring went together like chocolate and ball bearings. All relationships have limits, have boundaries. I’d read that somewhere.

  I listened to her peeing for a solid minute.

  I thought, This is the most grown-up I’ve ever felt.

  [dayofdajackal]: r we having fun yet

  WillD: we will be soon

  [dayofdajackal]: oooh

  WillD: when and where

  [dayofdajackal]: patience

  * * *

  —

  “Maybe we just start beating the shit out of people?”

  “Yeah?” said Drew, contemplating his subpar turkey sub, then setting it down on its wax-paper wrapper. (Mine, of course, had been consumed in three bites.) “Which people?”

  “Thinking we could start with Spencer Inskip.”

  “Huh.”

  “He’s my top pick. For [jack].”

  “Logical,” said Drew. We were decompressing at the Lowlands. Drew was enjoying some rare downtime.

  But enjoying might’ve been the wrong word. This whole topic annoyed him. And I knew it. And I kept on going with it. I just wanted to say some things I was ashamed to feel out loud, and I wanted to say them to another guy. To see if that other guy’d ever felt the same shameful way. Was that so wrong?

  “I mean, there’s Spencer’s whole Sidney history,” I rattled on. “Plus, I flipped him at football tryouts. Hey, think we could take him and a couple of his meat-cube pals?”

  Drew was staring at the apes. Like he was trying to pretend I wasn’t there, and succeeding.

  “I’m kidding. Of course.”

  “I know,” said Drew. “But…you’re still talking to this [jack] guy? This troll?”

  “Talking is dignifying it a little—”

  “You know what I mean: you…respond?”

  “I block him like crazy, he respawns, comes back. But sometimes, yeah, I try to draw him out a little—”

  “Will.”

  “Just, y’know, keep him talking, so he’ll make a mistake.”

  “You’re making the mistake. This isn’t a movie, and it’s not your job to ‘draw him out.’ You know what your job is? Don’t feed the troll.”

  “I know, but…”

  “Let’s stick to the Plan, huh, buddy?” said Drew, tossing his lunch wrappers. “Beating up sad little men, or even big ones—that’s not the Plan.”

  Son.

  Then he just floated off, back to practice.

  He left something behind, though. A scent. Detectable.

  Not the plan, Will.

  Irritation?

  Anger?

  Hell, I was irritated, too. I was angry.

  And, as long as we’re being honest, not just at [jack].

  At Drew. Drew and his practice, Drew and his Plan. Drew and his Dad Voice.

  At Monica. For dropping all these hints about friction with Drew, friction with Martin, friction with the world—but never wanting to talk about any of it. For keeping me at arm’s length while making it harder and harder for me to stay at arm’s length and still be her friend.

  At Rafty. For filming everything. Everything. Like I was this caged freak he was trucking from town to town.

  Even at Sidney. For being so goddamned understanding. For not being (at least not obviously) jealous of the other girl I spent a shit ton of my time with. For not asking more of me. For being 1,000 percent out of my league and still so…indulgent. Did that mean she didn’t really care? Did it mean she cared too much?

  At Brian and Laura. For being concerned. For pretending not to be concerned.

  Brian, in particular, had become deeply annoying. He’d gotten (how can I put this?) keepery around me. I was starting to feel a little overkept.

  “Last week, I was in the commissary, talking to Duning about his saltwater crocs,” he said “casually” one day, over turkey subs at Keeper Access, “and it hit me how wrong observational data can be.”

  Most people wouldn’t hear parental meddling in a statement that nerdy and dense. But I did. I knew where Brian was going with this. I squirmed.

  “I mean, for years, people just assumed indeterminate growth in crocodilians, and most other large reptiles, and it’s not until 2011 that you get—”

  “Thanks, Dad, but I’m kinda…all biologied out for the day.”

  Fact is, now that I was busier, now that Sidney and volleyball and doctor appointments took up so much of my life, Brian and I saw each other less. When we did cross paths, it was usually at the zoo.

  The zoo used to be where I went to observe other animals, to try to feel better about myself. Now it’s where I went to be observed by primate keeper Brian Daughtry.

  Being classified, taxonomized, observed by your own father—well, it’s probably unavoidable, even under the best of circumstances. Which these weren’t. Worse, Brian was starved for data. That was my fault. I wouldn’t let him take me to HUGE for my sessions with Dr. Helman. He was never thrilled about that. Lately he’d been saying so.

  “I think I really ought to be at those appointments, Will, don’t you?”

  I remained pretty convinced that Brian in that waiting room would make me unbelievably nervous.

  “I’m fine. Really. I like it this way.”

  I really, really didn’t want to feel Brian Daughtry on-site, classifying and reclassifying my problems, or nonproblems, or future problems, or whatever. I always felt like he was fitting me for a habitat anyway. I couldn’t be Brian Daughtry’s kept behemoth.

  Speaking of: Guinness had sent a letter of introduction and a packet of info on requirements for world record verification. I’d handed it all to Rafty. Honestly, that whole idea—of being a record in somebody else’s collection, somebody else’s taxonomy—made me feel queasy. Like I was already in a jar, on display. Pickled. Mummified. One more weird, dead thing awaiting a theory.

  ONE DAY, AFTER a typically inconclusive appointment at HUGE, Monica smelled my fear. So she did what she generally did: took me to BoB.

  For the usual hydrotherapy, I assumed.

  I assumed wrong. I was off by 150 feet or so.

  “Okay, ready?”

  Acrotherapy. We were standing on the cliffs. Instead of descending to the cove, we’d climbed up, and now we stared down the barrel of a killer drop, with waves gnawing rock at the bottom. No, I was not “ready.”

  “That depends. Does pissing myself mean I’
m ready?”

  “Hold out just a little longer,” said Monica, eyeballing the chasm. “We’ll be at the top soon. Then you can piss off the edge of the world.”

  And before I knew it, I was spread-eagled between two giant boulders at the far end of BoB’s southern jetty, my sneakers providing just enough friction to keep me there. I couldn’t have done this even two weeks ago; I wouldn’t have had the span. Monica knew that, of course. That’s why she brought me, I thought. Another lesson in fear, and how to shank it.

  “Make me a stirrup,” said Monica. “You’re my way over.”

  So I made a stirrup with my hands, and Monica put her foot in it to spring across and grab a high handhold at the top of the rock.

  She then turned, braced herself, and offered me her hand. I shook my head.

  “What if I don’t make it? I’d take you with me.” The wind screamed, underlining my point.

  Monica smiled, shook her head. “I don’t see it going down that way.”

  “Nice,” I muttered, adjusting my footholds, “choice of…words…”

  “Will?”

  I looked up. “Yes?”

  And there she was. The ocean behind her. The sun starting its long slide. Green eyes, copper on fire. “Take my hand.”

  I did. Monica had a steadier grip on the rock than I’d thought. When my back foot left its safe perch, I had a moment of panic—

  —I’m falling, she’s falling, we’re falling, and it’s my fault—

  —followed by the absolute thrill of being still alive, and higher on this goddamned rock than I’d ever climbed.

  The view was cloudless and 100 percent bug-nuts, eye-crossingly insane: angles that didn’t seem processable in three-dimensional human vision, an endless sky forced into this fish-eye parabola, and down below, far, far below, the hungry Sawtooth, noshing on sandstone. It was another planet up here, another dimension. A cormorant sailed past at eye level. I thought of a picture I’d seen in a history book of a workman with a hammer, strapped to a church steeple above some black-and-white city that’d been bombed down to the subcellars, everything flattened except this one stubborn spire, sticking up above the rubble like a flag or a middle finger or both.