The Sweetest Thing

by J. Minter

  “Not too much.” He noticed my tank top. “Hey, that’s awesome. School spirit.”

  “Yeah, totally.” I rolled my eyes. Judging from the way he’d reacted to the pep rally, I figured he was being sarcastic. “I hope you don’t mind me dragging you to this game. I know sports aren’t really your thing.”

  “You’re not dragging me. Actually, after talking to Adam the other day, I switched my assignment at the paper to the sports column for this week. My first article will be about tonight’s game.”

  “Wow.” I looked over at him in surprise, but he was dead serious. We reached the Fourteenth Street subway station and made our way down the puddly concrete steps—somehow subway stops are always drippy and wet even when it’s not raining. Bennett swiped me through the metal turnstile with his MetroCard, and we walked along the platform, waiting for the next 1 train to come.

  “Yeah. You know, Adam’s pretty cool. We’ve e-mailed back and forth a couple of times, and I might be going over to his apartment later this week to hang out with him and his brother. They have a Wii.” We stopped walking and Bennett leaned against a steel girder with peeling yellow paint. He looked thoughtful. “I guess he just seems a lot smarter than I expected a football player to be. Nicer, too.” The train rumbled into the station, and Bennett raised his voice over the noise. “I’ve been doing some research for my article, and the amount of strategy involved is really kind of fascinating.”

  When we arrived at the stadium, it was like the pep rally times a thousand. The place was teeming with people, and concession stands selling hot dogs, nachos, and soda were overwhelmed with long lines of teenagers. The walls and floors were concrete, and hand-painted posters were taped up everywhere. A GO PEGLEGS! sign was hanging from a kiosk some enterprising Stuy students had set up to sell eye-patches, armbands, and knit hats with pictures of Pegleg Pete embroidered on them. When it was our turn in line, Bennett bought an armband for me.

  “You’re so sweet, Bennett. You didn’t have to do that,” I said, sliding it up on my arm. He kissed the top of my head.

  “It looks cute on you.”

  We let the crowd pull us along into the stadium. I squinted, glancing around for Meredith and Judith, then looked down at the football field. The cheerleaders were turning cartwheels and forming pyramids and spelling out VICTORY, and behind them some guy in a gigantic foam pirate head was dancing around. The band had set up down on the field, and they were playing “Louie Louie” at top volume. The musicians were so into it that some of them were swinging their tubas and saxophones in time to the music. Already, the crowd was getting riled up, and even though I’m really more used to ballet and Broadway musicals than I am to sports games, it wasn’t hard to get in the spirit. People were doing the wave, and we got up and sat down twice before we even had a chance to make sure we were in the right seats. We were sitting fairly close, but the football field was farther away than I’d imagined, and I started to wonder if Adam would even be able to see us from so far away before I checked myself and put the thought out of my mind.

  “There they are,” said Bennett, pointing down at the crowd filing into the stadium. I almost started laughing; the way they were dressed definitely made me glad I’d changed clothes. Meredith had on a halter-neck dress with little flowers patterned all over it, with white patent leather heels and pink fabric roses in her hair. Judith was wearing a striped bubble skirt and a tight, low-cut black sweater she’d bought the other day at Bebe. Halos of black eyeliner framed her chocolate brown eyes. The two of them spotted us and hurried up the bleachers, elbowing each other to get there first.

  “Hey, great seats,” said Judith, stretching her legs out onto the bleachers in front of her so no one could block her view of the star QB. She smoothed her hair, inspected the field, then quickly took her compact out of her purse to check her makeup.

  “How’re you two doing?” Meredith asked, leaning in front of Judith to see us. Judith pushed her away.

  “You guys look fancy,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Didn’t you hear about the after-party?” Judith swiped on some lipstick and shut her mirror. “Everyone’s going to be there.” She stared into my eyes significantly. “Everyone.”

  “Not me,” said Bennett.

  “Oh no, really?” I asked.

  “Yeah, unfortunately Mr. Neil, our teacher advisor, wants to look over all our articles before they go to press on Sunday. So I’ve got to e-mail it to him tonight.” Bennett noticed my disappointed expression. “Hey, don’t worry. You guys’ll have fun without me. There’ll be lots of cool people there. You know, like Adam.”

  Meredith, Judith, and I all fell into a deep, awkward silence.

  “Hey, look. Eric and Jules.” Bennett stood up and waved to his friends. They scaled the stairs and came over to us. Jules was holding a tray of nachos; Eric looked perfectly manicured in a brown turtleneck sweater and a pair of tan slacks. When we’d first met them, Judith had considered Eric the cutest guy in tenth grade, but now she hardly batted an eye in his direction. It made me kind of sad; why were Meredith and Judith both fixating on Adam where there were perfectly nice guys right here in front of them?

  “Hey, what’s up?” Bennett asked his friends. “I didn’t know you guys were coming.”

  “I don’t think we’ll stay,” Jules explained. “I got press passes to take pictures for the school paper, but when I got here they told me they already have a team of professionals working on it. Which is really just as well—I don’t particularly want to be down there on the field without a helmet. Hey, Meredith.”

  “Oh. Hi, Jules.” Meredith broke her concentration on the football field for a second to give him a quick smile. His eyes lingered on her, and after a second he cleared his throat to speak again.

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you, I read that book of Beat poetry you recommended. It was really something.”

  “Really?” She turned her head to one side, surprised, and for a second I swore she was crushing on him again. But then it was gone, and her eyes drifted back toward the football field, where the cheerleaders were throwing each other into the air. “I’m thinking of writing some poetry myself,” she added absently. I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew who the inspiration might be.

  Eric looked bored and slightly annoyed that Judith was ignoring him, too. “You know what? Let’s get out of here,” he said to Jules. To the rest of us, he announced. “Football’s overrated.”

  The two of them pushed back down the big concrete steps, past the hordes of people still flooding into the stadium. Jules stopped once to look back at Meredith, but she was too busy watching Adam to notice.

  Out of the four of us, Judith was the only one who’d watched a whole football game before, so she had to explain the game, play by play, for about the first twenty minutes. I’m not sure how much it helped, though, because about half of her sentences trailed off when she caught a glimpse of Adam down on the field, doing something athletic and heroic looking. As quarterback, he was at the center of the offensive action: throwing passes, running at top speed, even getting tackled, which made all three of us gasp and leap to our feet.

  “You guys are really getting into this,” observed Bennett, jotting down some notes in his Captain America notebook. “Maybe we’ll all be sports fans by the end of the season.”

  Bennett was right: I hadn’t been expecting to care about it nearly so much, but practically the whole time, I was on the edge of my seat. During halftime, I realized that my throat was sore from all the cheering, so when Meredith went to the concession stand, I gave her money to buy me a Coke. The minute she left her seat, though, a guy in a Space Camp T-shirt and wraparound sunglasses came over and stood awkwardly in the aisle, staring at us.

  “Hey there, Judy,” he called in a strange, nasally voice.

  Judith looked at me with an “oh my God” expression, but I just shrugged. I had no idea who he was. She turned back toward him with a forced-looking smile.


  “Hi, Kelvin,” she called back.

  “Mind if I sit here till your friend gets back?” He picked his way between the seats and plunked down next to her, then waved over at us. “Heyyy.” When he smiled, I could see he had glow-in-the-dark green rubber bands on his braces.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Flan, this is Kelvin, my lab partner from bio,” Judith said with a desperate, “get this guy away from me” gleam in her eyes.

  “Have you guys been doing that amphibian life unit?” I asked politely.

  “Yeah. Yeah, we sure have.” Kelvin rubbed his hands together. “I can’t wait till we do the dissection.”

  “The dissection? What?” I glanced over at Bennett anxiously. He shrugged.

  “Yeah, the dissection. When you get to slice the frog’s skin off and label all its nerve fibers with pushpins. Heh heh.” He wheezed and wiggled his fingers in delight. “I’ve been practicing with a digital imaging program on my computer, and some of the models I’ve made are pretty badass. Did you know some toads have jewels in their backs?”

  “I’m not going to dissect my tadpole!” I thought of my little Bogie, swimming around in his jar so trustingly. Maybe I was crazy, but I could have sworn that Bogie was really starting to love and depend on me. His little frog lips always seemed to curve in an adoring amphibian smile when I took him off the shelf in bio. Then at the end of class, when I had to put him back, he seemed to look longingly at me, as though he wanted me to take him home. How could they expect me to treat him like an alien autopsy? “Bennett, when you took bio, did they make you do this?”

  “I don’t know. I took botany instead. Cutting up rose stems wasn’t nearly so gruesome.” Then he looked up from his notebook and saw that I was really upset. “Flan, I bet you can talk to the teacher about it. If you’re really uncomfortable about it, maybe somebody else could do the incisions. Like Adam—he’s your lab partner, so …”

  “I don’t want either of us to kill the frog! Why can’t the poor thing just live a full life?” I felt almost ready to cry. “I won’t do it! I can’t!”

  “I think we have to, Flan,” said Judith. “It’s part of the final.”

  Bennett threw his arm around me. “Don’t worry, Flan,” he murmured, stroking my back. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”

  I wanted to believe him, but all I could think about was how when I opened the jar to feed Bogie on Friday, he had reached out with his little budding webbed hands and touched my finger.

  When Meredith came back, creepy Kelvin finally had to leave her seat, and before too long, the game started again. It was a close one. By the final quarter, our team was down 13 to 17. It really looked like we were going to lose. I’ve always thought it was funny when Patch’s friends yell at the TV during football games, but for the first time that evening, I really understood. Along with the rest of the stadium, Meredith, Judith, and I were on our feet, screaming at the top of our lungs, and I could feel my heart pounding, as if I was the one running back and forth across the Astroturf field. For a minute, the outcome of the game seemed like the most important thing in the world. But then something funny happened. Our coach called a time-out, and, as the players were jogging to the side of the field to have a huddle, Adam stopped for a minute to pull off his helmet. When he looked up again, it was straight at me. And even though he was way down there on the field, I swear our eyes met.

  At the beginning of the next play, Adam had the ball in hand on the forty-yard line, with only twelve seconds left on the clock and the other team’s whole defensive line right in front of him. He looked left, then right, and I thought he’d get tackled for sure. But just as a hulking linebacker barreled straight toward him, Adam gracefully leapt to the side. At the exact same moment, he threw the ball. The pass arced down the field like a giant rainbow and the whole stadium went silent. We were all transfixed by the ball. I looked at Adam and I could swear he was smiling as he watched his pass. Down in the end zone a receiver looked almost surprised as he jumped up, grabbed the ball to his chest, and fell to the ground.

  Out in the stands, everyone went insane. “TOUCHDOWN!” Meredith, Judith, and I screamed, giving each other high fives. Then we looked down at the field. Adam was holding his helmet in one hand, pointing it at us. Meredith and Judith practically swooned. I felt my face turning bright red. And it only got redder when I looked over and saw the confused expression on Bennett’s face.

  CHAPTER 17

  STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT

  “I better get going,” said Bennett, packing up his stuff. “This article’s due in an hour and a half. Say congratulations to Adam for me, okay?”

  “You’re sure you don’t want to split a cab with us?”

  “Nah, I’ll just take the subway.” Bennett kissed me on the cheek. “Have a good time at the party. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I gave him a big hug. “Happy writing.”

  Meredith, Judith, and I squeezed our way through the crowd of celebrating students and hailed a cab to Crockett’s, the club where they were throwing the after party. Crockett’s is this really cool underground lounge on the Upper West Side that’s owned by a Stuy alum. It kind of reminds me of one of those speakeasies from the ’20s: it’s in a basement room with antique couches and tasseled lamps, and on some nights a jazz band comes in and plays on a little stage in the back.

  Tonight, though, there was no live music, and even if there had been, we wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the noise of the crowd. Practically everyone from school was there: at one point, I even thought I glimpsed one of the math teaching assistants drinking a pomegranate martini. The football players arrived a little less than an hour after we did—I guess they had to shower and change clothes—and when they walked through the door, I had to cover my ears, because the whole crowd cheered liked we were back in the stadium again.

  At the front of the pack of players, Adam flashed a humble smile, and I thought Meredith and Judith were going to hyperventilate. He did look pretty cute—he’d put on a clean white shirt and a pair of khakis, and except for a little white bandage on one elbow, you’d never have known that he’d just spent the last few hours getting body-slammed by three-hundred-pound defensive ends. A week ago I would’ve scoffed at how everyone was congratulating him like he’d just been crowned king or something, but now I was cheering wildly along with everyone.

  At first, everything was great. Loud hip-hop music blared from the speakers, and some people had started dancing up by the bar. I recognized a lot of faces and said hi to kids from my classes, which really made me feel like I was a part of the whole Stuy community. But things started to go downhill when we decided to order drinks—a Red Bull for me and Cokes for Meredith and Judith—and sat down at a free table by one of the windows.

  “The game was so much fun! I’m glad we decided to go!” Meredith exclaimed, crunching on an ice cube.

  Judith flipped her hair back. “Well, you’re lucky I was there, because I was the only one who actually understood what was going on.”

  Meredith narrowed her eyes, “I really enjoyed connecting with the poetry of the game, which is way more important than the stupid rules.”

  “Right.” Judith laughed condescendingly, pointing her red drink straw at Meredith for emphasis. “Because if you understand the poetry of a triangle, you’ll pass a geometry test.”

  “You’re just jealous because I felt the game on a different level from you.” Meredith put her hand over her heart. “I had more of a visceral reaction to it all.”

  Judith snorted. “No offense, but I think you’re being kind of pretentious. I mean, football’s not about poetry or watercolors. It’s about who wins and who loses.”

  “I don’t care who wins or loses.” Meredith rummaged through her purse and pulled out her watermelon-flavored Chap Stick. “I’m interested in who has the most passion.”

  I finished off my Red Bull with a gulp and said loudly, “You know, I think I’m ready to leave! W
ant to head out?”

  Meredith and Judith agreed right away. I think the escalating tension was starting to freak them both out, too. But in a way, it was really weird: for all their obsessing over Adam, neither of them seemed too sad that they were leaving without talking to him. It was almost like he was a cute actor in a movie we’d just seen. It didn’t really occur to them to go and try to hang out with him like he was a regular person.

  I was so anxious to get them out of the club that I didn’t realize I’d left my purse at the table until we were outside.

  “You guys go on without me,” I said. Meredith and Judith only lived a couple blocks away, so it wasn’t like we were all going to split a cab anyway. “I’ll see you in school on Monday.”

  “You sure, Flan?” Judith asked. “We could help you look for it.”

  “No, it’s fine—it must be right under our table or somewhere nearby.” I waved good-bye and headed back to the club.

  Inside Crockett’s, I picked my way through the crowd, sidestepping swaying classmates who’d clearly ordered drinks a teensy bit stronger than my Red Bull. In the few minutes I’d been gone, my table had been taken over by a bunch of empty shot glasses, salt-shakers, and chunks of half-eaten lime slices, but I didn’t see my purse anywhere. Trying not to panic, I dropped down to my knees and peered under the table.

  “Anything good down there?” a voice asked from above me.

  Startled, I twisted around.

  Adam. I quickly stood up and brushed off my jeans.

  “I’ve been looking for you. Are you leaving already?” he said, leaning against the wall and grinning at me somewhat flirtatiously.

  “Trying to.” I tried to sound as unflirtatious as possible. “But I can’t seem to find my purse.”