Love All: A Novel

by Wright, Callie

  When the bell rang for first period, I muscle-memoried to math class, eyes on my feet, sensing Carl in the hallway up ahead.

  Mr. Robin was already stationed at the chalkboard, pumping his arms and marching in place as though he were going to lift off.

  “Quiz day,” he said, setting a kitchen timer for ten minutes. “Eyes on your own papers. Good luck.” With a flick of his wrist, the projector screen sailed up, revealing five quadratic equations all requiring Carl’s formula.

  It felt like a month had passed since Monday night, when Carl had tried to get me to study with him. I could feel his finger poking my ribs, picture his mom’s translucent orange pill bottle in the cabinet—but the pulse of the memory was still.

  “Julia,” Mr. Robin called, beckoning me to his desk. Arms out, palms up, he appeared genuinely baffled. “You’ve already wasted one-tenth of your time.”

  “I forgot my notebook,” I said. “I don’t have any paper.”

  Mr. Robin tapped his number-2 against his forehead, then pointed the eraser at me. “Who could help Miss Obermeyer with a sheet of paper?” he called.

  No one responded—bungholes—then Carl opened his notebook and ripped out a piece without removing the fringies. Mr. Robin nodded in his direction.

  Inside Carl’s halo of desks, he reached up from his chair and handed me the white sheet without looking at me. There was a word, maybe. An open sesame or an abracadabra; a Perkins tardmore or a super big H. I closed my eyes and tried to see it. Ten times a day, through spontaneous acts of our imaginations, we pioneered new slitters for our lexicon: Sam whippoorwilled a forehand into the net; I went Cecil, letting a drop shot bounce twice; Carl’s plan to get the goods was the key to salvation. Words burst out, broke in, and we played them, played with them, tasting them on our tongues. File, file out, you’re filed out, that was the all out, I’m going all out, I’m going professional, profesh, provides, profit, please, oh please, take an order please, tardmore, two by two, file in, file. Let me have Sam. Dunghi, mayhi, bihi, sky high. Let me have Sam. My lights, my stars, for my sake.

  “Carl,” I said.

  Carl glanced up, his jaw set, his gray eyes like stone, and I saw that this wasn’t the Carl I knew, and there was no word for this.

  Back in my seat, I wrote my name at the top of the page and copied down the first problem, but I couldn’t concentrate. Suddenly I stood to lose both of my friends—Carl, when he found out I liked Sam; Sam, who had already taken Carl’s side. The note about Carl’s mom wouldn’t fix anything—I wanted my friends back.

  If I could reschedule the exhibition match, or somehow give it to Carl, maybe I might buy back their collective affections. This time I’d do everything out in the open and there’d be no ditching, no silent treatments. I practiced explaining it to Claw:

  It’s not that I don’t want to play—

  No.

  I’m into—

  No.

  I want to play—I do want to play, but I can’t on Thursday.

  I exhaled and repeated it. The English language. Not so hard.

  When Mr. Robin’s timer went off, I passed my blank paper forward and asked permission to go to the bathroom, then headed off to the main office.

  The secretaries’ phones were reserved for emergencies, and it took a song and dance to convince Mrs. Bryant that I was having a tennis emergency.

  “Honey,” she said, “are you even on the team?”

  I told her I was, but she had an official roster and my name wasn’t on it.

  “I’m co–team manager,” I lied. “It’s probably in the addenda.”

  Mrs. Bryant blinked. “Shouldn’t you be in class right now?”

  “Please, Mrs. Bryant. This is really important.”

  She glanced around the office and saw that Mrs. Hoeke wasn’t listening, then bent low over the phone to dial. Her frosted hair fanned her face, hiding her mouth, and she spoke softly into the receiver before passing Claw to me.

  I heard a saw buzzing in the background and then the sound of Claw’s voice, pitched up a note.

  “This is Barry,” he said.

  “Coach Klawson, it’s Julia Obermeyer.” For a second there was only the sound of the saw.

  “Yes,” he said. “What is it?”

  “It’s about the exhibition match tomorrow. I do want to play, but I can’t on Thursday.”

  For a second I thought the line had been disconnected, then I heard him clearly, sharply. He seemed to have stepped into a private office and closed the door. “I went out of my way to arrange this for you,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “But Sam and Carl aren’t speaking to me. I can’t just go behind Carl’s back and take a match without telling him.”

  “You didn’t seem to have a problem with that yesterday,” Claw pointed out.

  “Right,” I agreed. “But I’ve changed my mind.”

  “I see,” said Claw. “Well, I guess that runs in the family—changing your mind.”

  My heart started to thump, sweat clamming my hands. He was talking about my father, I gathered, but just then it seemed incidental that I should be related to my parents—Sam and Carl were my family—and I didn’t care what my father had done.

  I turned my back to Mrs. Bryant and cradled the receiver with both hands. “Look—” I began.

  “No, you look,” said Claw. “I’m the coach. I run the team. If we’re being honest here, you’re not even on the team.”

  I said nothing.

  “If you want to play, you do it my way. If not, don’t bother coming back.”

  “Okay,” I said, and okay that Poppy had backhanded me, and Teddy could buy a Jeep, okay. I pictured my brother halfway to Albany; Nonz was already gone. 59 Susquehanna, which had once felt enormous, had lately shrunk to the size of my parents’ marriage. Okay was wishful thinking. Okay was willing it to be true.

  “I’ll think about it,” Claw conceded. Then, “See you at practice.”

  I handed the phone to Mrs. Bryant. “All done?” she asked, but I was already backing away.

  I went to the nurse’s office. Mrs. Henderson took one look at me and forked over the Kleenex. “Are you sick?” she asked. I shook my head. “Do you want to lie down?” I nodded and she pointed to the back of her office.

  On a cot in the dark, I hugged the Kleenex to my chest and pictured 122 Chestnut Street, where I’d had a room down the hall from the one that’d been Mom’s when she was a little girl. Maybe Poppy missed Nonz, and maybe that was why he’d drummed my ear. He didn’t hate me; he just didn’t want to live with me. But he couldn’t go home, because home wasn’t a place, really; it was a set of people acting a certain way—alive, married, happy-ish—and when that was gone, you were sunk. I pictured Sam traveling between his parents’ houses with two sets of everything. Two of everything, and still it wasn’t enough.

  * * *

  Second period, for the first time in months, I made my way to the girls’ locker room for gym class, spinning my combo 17-27-37, the same as homeroom, the same as Sam and Carl’s—we’d shared everything back when we were friends.

  “Is that Julia Obermeyer?” called Miss Horchow, following me to my locker bay near the showers. She stood with her legs apart, her arms crossed over her chest, her wraparound sunglasses perched on her head. “Glad your injuries have finally healed.”

  Two girls from my French class—Carrie Bosworth and Trisha Pashner—exchanged looks and I felt something pass between them, unspoken and knowing, and I thought of all the billions of words and signs coursing through the air at that very moment, electric pulses, signals picked up, signals ignored.

  “Girls,” said Miss Horchow, tapping her Timex.

  “We’re going as fast as we can,” said Trisha.

  I removed a pair of stiff gray sweatpants from my locker and pinched the plug of fabric jutting out where the hook had pressed through.

  “Help yourself to the lost-and-found,” said Miss Horchow. “The janitors cleaned over spr
ing break. The clothes are mostly clean.”

  Carrie giggled and I turned in time to see her rounding the corner toward the field exit. Trisha followed, hopping on one foot, her left sneaker still in her hand. The smell of bubble gum—gym-class contraband—hung sweetly in the air.

  I suited up in a long-sleeve T-shirt and a pair of cardinal mesh shorts with ONEONTA COLLEGE ATHLETICS printed on the leg. My socks were ossified at the bottom of my locker, so I went barefoot in my old Nikes, doubly sorry that I hadn’t thought to shave my legs the night before.

  Pausing at the full-length mirror, I thought of Sam in the boys’ locker room on the other side of the painted cinder-block wall. Would he look for me on the bleachers? Would he be surprised not to see me? Did he even care? In the past, when Carl and I had fought, Sam had gone Switzerland; this time he’d taken Carl’s side.

  He likes you, you know.

  In all the years we’d been friends, I had never taken Sam’s hand, never taken his warm cheek in my hand, never touched his wheat-colored stubble with my fingertips, more golden than the hair on his head. And Sam had never pressed his callused palm to my cheek or run his hands along the ripples of my ribs. I had wished for it a thousand times. Eyes open, eyes closed. Clothes on, clothes off. Not just Sam but all of Sam.

  He likes you, you know, he’d said, and now I saw Sam’s words as a coin in the air. Maybe in telling me Carl liked me, Sam had really been asking if I liked Carl.

  At the field exit, I pushed open the metal door and a blast of cold air penetrated my thin T-shirt. It was just past nine in the morning, the sky overcast, the grass thick with dew. I crouched and hugged my knees, rubbing the goose bumps on my shins.

  “Bring it in,” called Miss Horchow. She dropped a stack of Frisbees in the grass and started to hand out orange cones.

  I saw my friends Katie and Em huddled with an orange cone at their feet. It’d been a couple of months since we’d last hung out, but I’d known them forever. In elementary school we played Cabbage Patch Kids and jumped Chinese jump rope and pierced our ears on the same day. In the fifth grade, we’d used Em’s older brother’s razor to nick our fingerprints, pressing our index fingers into the shape of a tepee, blood trailing our fingers to our wrists and staining our shirt cuffs red. It wasn’t only me who’d drifted away this year. Katie had been farming Luke Fletcher since September, and Em had gotten mayhi into a group of juniors who did theater stuff. Somehow we’d remained friends, though, which gave me some hope for Sam and Carl and me.

  I crossed the field toward them, waving once. “Hey,” I said. “It’s freezing.”

  Em twisted in place with her arms tucked inside her sweatshirt, her sleeves beating her like a drum.

  “What are you doing out here?” said Em. “I thought you were too cool for gym.”

  “She’s not too cool for gym,” said Katie. “She’s too cool for us.”

  Katie smiled—kidding!—her button nose wrinkling at the bridge. When we were little, Nonz had called her peppy, by which she’d meant that Katie was small and blond and pretty. Sam and Carl called her Teen Spirit.

  “I heard Sam hooked up with someone in Myrtle,” said Katie, frowning sympathetically.

  I shrugged. “It was a dare.”

  “It didn’t look like a dare,” said Em.

  Had she seen it? I kind of wanted to ask her what it had looked like. The way I kept picturing it was broad daylight, Sam and Megan holding hands on the boardwalk and stopping every few steps to make out. Sam would’ve been wearing a T-shirt and his baseball cap—he burned easily—but this girl? Short-shorts, bikini top, SPF 4. In that outfit, it might not have mattered how Perkins she was.

  “Okay, ladies,” said Miss Horchow. “Teams of three. You know the drill. Miss Vincent, Miss Chatham—Miss Obermeyer is on your team.”

  “Go, team,” said Em, stooping to pick up our cone. She set it on her head and walked heel-toe, with her chin in the air, her pigtails bobbing.

  “Are you and Sam going out?” asked Katie. She tossed me our Frisbee and I caught it in my stomach.

  “No,” I said.

  “Everyone thinks you are,” said Katie.

  “What does everyone think Carl’s doing with us?”

  “Carl’s so cute,” said Em, nodding the cone into her hands. “I think my sister should go for him.”

  Em’s sister, Maggie, was in the eighth grade and had enormous boobs. I earmarked the idea.

  “We’re just friends,” I said finally.

  “Do you like him?” asked Katie.

  “Do you guys hook up?” asked Em.

  I held the Frisbee in front of me like it was a plate I was afraid to break. In the last few months, Sam had found at least as many reasons to brush up against me as Carl had, and he’d called at night without even the pretense of homework, and in the dark on the path down to the tennis courts the night before, I had to believe that he’d been trying to tell me that he liked me, too, Sam did, it had to be.

  “Do you?” asked Em again.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then you’re not going out,” she said.

  Miss Horchow blew her whistle and Em staked our cone near a rickety goalpost still used for youth soccer games. It was the same field we’d played on when we were little, Em and Katie and me in the backfield, goals scoring one after another while Katie’s dad screamed his head off from the sideline and we made daisy-chain crowns for our heads. The field had stayed the same size but we’d grown up, gone coed.

  Back in the locker room, Em did an impression of our elementary school gym teacher pulling us up by our ponytails to correct our postures. I laughed, wondering if maybe I’d missed them after all, and then the bell rang for third period and I asked if I could eat lunch with them later that day.

  “I have rehearsal,” said Em apologetically. “We eat in Mr. Drury’s room. And Kaaaay-teeeee—”

  “Shut! Up!” said Katie.

  “Katie has lunch in Luke’s big, huge—”

  Katie clamped a hand over Em’s mouth and then their hands and arms were intertwined, their long hair masking each other’s faces, their voices lashing at each other’s unfinished sentences. I tried to follow, I wanted to get the joke, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and after a while I got bored and wandered away.

  The rest of the day passed quickly—no one spoke to me, and I spoke to no one. At lunch I sat by myself in the corner of the cafeteria and worked on the Daily Star crossword puzzle. Halfway through the period, our lunch monitor asked me where my friends were, and I looked over my shoulder and saw that they weren’t at our table. “Did something happen?” she asked. I stared at her blankly, then shook my head no.

  After school I went to the gym to wait for Claw to bring the Womb around—without a ride to Bassett Hall, I’d have to take the team bus. It was strange to be spending so much time by myself. I tested my voice on Claw, told him I hadn’t brought my tennis clothes, and when we got to the courts, he sent me home to change.

  Back at Bassett, I joined the drill line behind Alan, who was six foot four, our center forward, and an excellent barrier to Sam and Carl.

  “What are you doing?” asked Alan.

  “Practicing,” I said.

  Doug snorted. “This should be interesting,” he said.

  At three thirty, Claw dragged the hopper of tennis balls to the middle of Court 1 and called for everyone’s attention. “Evan,” he said, pointing to the baseline. “Ground stroke, approach shot, volley.” Nothing about my unexpected participation. “Ready?”

  He fed Evan three balls and we watched our captain pound three straight into the back fence.

  “Evan,” Claw groaned.

  “Sorry,” he said, scuffing his toes on the dark-green surface.

  “End of the line,” said Claw, and practice was under way.

  Next up was Sam, who advanced on the ball, kissed the sideline with a topspin forehand, then picked up Claw’s short ball at the T and hooked it into the deep
ad court. At net, he finished with a slice volley to Claw’s feet, impossible to return, and jogged away, satisfied.

  This was what practice would’ve been like if I’d tried out, if I’d made the team—someone behind me said, “Your turn,” and I stepped to the baseline and crouched low. Claw fed me a forehand and I looped the ball down the line, sailing it just long. Eventually I would’ve gotten better, started making my shots, reducing my unforced errors. I approached the net and punched a volley crosscourt.

  “Back of the line,” said Claw.

  I went to the back of the line. Sam and Carl were right in front of me but it was also like we’d never met and I didn’t watch to see how they played; I didn’t want to know.

  “Points,” said Claw, when he introduced the next drill. “Play them out. We’ve got our first match tomorrow. Settle in, think about your footwork, think about your placement. Hit high-percentage shots and control the play.”

  I listened to the sounds of the points, and as the rallies went on I found that I could identify the shots by the pitch they made coming off the strings. I’d hear a solid thunk and feel my feet backing me up to the baseline. An uncertain thwink brought me up to the T. But when my turn came, I fluffed the first feed into the net.

  “Concentrate,” said Claw.