The Field

by Tracy Richardson

  There is a general murmuring in the room as everyone digests this bit of information. It’s usually a pretty competitive group in the AP classes, so there’s sure to be some interest. “Also, we have a new student in the class who happens to be Dr. Auberge’s daughter. Please welcome Renee Auberge.” He extends his hand toward the dark-haired girl by the classroom door. Renee. She inclines her head and smiles.

  “Vous-êtes Française, mademoiselle Auberge?” Cole asks. Geez.

  “Oui,” she answers in a clear, lilting voice—at least to my ears.

  “Bienvenue à Monroe High,” says Cole, and he stands up and actually bows.

  “Merci. Thank you,” she answers. It looks like she’s trying not to laugh. She’s looking at Cole, but could she also be looking at me? I nod and smile at her and she nods back. Will turns around slightly in his seat and gives me a lecherous look. Great. I hope that doesn’t mean that she’s caught his interest too. Maybe he’s thinking about the internship. I raise my eyebrows at him and shrug.

  “Thank you Mr. Rosenberg for acting as our welcoming committee,” Mr. Ogle says. Cole makes a flourish in the air with his hand and inclines his head slightly before sitting down. “Okay, now we have a lot to cover this year, so let’s get started. First semester we’ll focus on human energy consumption and its effects on the environment. We’ll look at the current practice of extracting and burning fossil fuels and compare that to alternative sources such as solar, wind, nuclear and so-called clean coal.” I see Will bristle at Mr. Ogle’s remark. “Hence the field trips.”

  I take out my binder and start taking notes. The lecture is actually pretty interesting and I’ve been looking forward to this class. Mr. Ogle is one of the cooler teachers, but he’s still kind of goofy in his corduroys and button down shirt—like he’s trying to dress like one of the hipster crowd instead of being stuck in the same ’80s time warp as Cole.

  Forty-five minutes later the bell rings and everyone slams shut their notebooks and starts gathering up their stuff. I glance toward the door at Renee. She’s putting her books into her book bag. I grab my backpack, slide out of my chair and make my way over to her before I lose my nerve. I stop in front of her desk and she looks up at me.

  “Uh, hi, um, I’m Eric Horton. And, ah, I can’t say it in French like Cole, but welcome to Monroe.” She looks at me with a slight smile like she’s waiting for me to say something else. My mind goes completely blank for a moment. Then I quickly say, “I could show you around school, ah, if you want, sometime. It’s a pretty big place.” Whew—hopefully that didn’t come off as completely stupid.

  “Thank you.” She smiles and it lights up her face and crinkles the corners of her green eyes. “I did get a tour and I have a map, but I could use some directions in finding my next class.” She says in perfect, slightly accented English.

  “Sure. Show me the map. What room is your next class in?”

  “Uh, let me see.” She stands up propping her book bag on the desk and reaches into its outside pocket with long, slim fingers to retrieve her schedule and a map of the school. “It’s comparative lit in A238. What section are we in now?”

  “We’re in C section—science and math—second floor. You’ll need to go back over to the rotunda and then into the English department in section A. Here, let me show you.” I reach for the map and my fingers brush hers. Her skin is smooth and I feel that jolt to my gut again. I glance up at Renee and her eyes are wide with surprise. Does she feel it too? I quickly take the map, unfold it and smooth it out on her desk. “Just follow this hallway to section C’s center hallway and then over to the rotunda down this hallway and into section A. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. Each section is like a spoke coming out from the rotunda and they’re all the same.”

  “If you say so,” she says with a laugh. “Well, thank you again, Eric Horton. I’m pretty sure I can find my way now.”

  “No problem. See you in class tomorrow.” I hand her back the map, careful not to brush her fingers this time and smile what I hope is a confident, friendly smile.

  “Bye.” She slings her book bag over her shoulder and enters the crowded hallway.

  I pick up my own backpack from where I dropped it on the floor. Maybe I should have offered to take her to her class. Then I feel a hand on my shoulder and Will’s voice in my ear. “She’s hot!”

  “Yeah, but I got to her first.” I say lightly, but I really don’t like hearing him talk about her like that. No matter how hot she is.

  Will backs away and holds up his hands in mock surrender. “I see how it is. Anyway, I already have a girlfriend. She’s all yours big guy.”

  “It’s not like that,” I say, annoyed. Will raises his eyebrow questioningly. “I mean I just said hello to her.”

  “Whatever.” He says. “Gotta get to U.S. History. What lunch do you have? I’ve got B lunch.”

  “Me, too. I’ll catch up to you then.”

  “Later.”

  As I jostle through the crowd in the hallway on the way to my Calculus class, I wonder about my reaction to Will and the weird feeling I got around Renee. I mean I barely know her, but … what? There was something there between us. At least for me. And I just didn’t like Will saying that about her. I shake my head to clear my thoughts and head toward the central stairwell.

  ACROSS THE CAFETERIA I see a table with some of my friends from soccer. I make my way over to them with my tray and take a seat.

  “Eric, hey!” Paul says and gives me a five-star right between my shoulder blades. Uoof—the air is forced out of my lungs. Thankfully, I hadn’t started eating yet. I return the greeting by punching him in the arm—hard.

  “Yow! You been working out?” He feels my biceps. “Coach Swenson says we’ve got a great team this year.” He’s talking through a mouthful of garlic toast. “We’re stoked to have you on Varsity.” Paul’s a senior and team captain. “When do you find out if you’re starting?”

  I swallow a mouthful of spaghetti before responding, “I don’t think we’ll know until the first game.” I’d thought about it all weekend. I am going to beat out the other keeper. My dad’s real big on visualizing the outcome that you want, and I’ve read some sports psychology stuff about it, so I’ve been imagining myself making great saves in practice and walking out on the field to start in the first game. I’m not sure how effective it really is, but what the hell? Our first game is a home game on Friday night. Will and Cole join the table and sit across from me.

  “So, what do you think about AP Enviro? That internship sounds interesting. And Renee is definitely interesting.” Will says.

  “Yeah, it could be cool. It would definitely look good on a college application.” I ignore his comment about Renee. I know he’s baiting me.

  “Well, I have something interesting to share.” Says Cole. “I’ve already paid a visit to the Dean’s office.” He looks almost proud of himself.

  “What?! We’re not even through the first day of school. What happened?” asks Will.

  “During the Pledge of Allegiance in third period home room, I exercised my right not to stand and say the pledge. Mr. Smitson insisted that I do so and when I respectfully refused, he sent me to the Dean’s office.”

  “Oh, man! On the first day,” exclaims Will.

  “He must not know that your mom’s a civil rights attorney,” I say, laughing.

  “Apparently not.”

  “Why didn’t you just stand and say the damn pledge?” asks Paul.

  “It’s my right not to, as an American citizen, granted by the Constitution.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. You object to the pledge using the rights granted to you by the Constitution?” Paul says.

  “It’s ‘the man’ that I object to, the establishment, the right wing government. Not the Constitution.”

  “Okay, whatever, let’s not get off on that tangent. So what did the Dean do?” I ask.

  “Well, on the way down to the office, I called my mom to alert
her to the situation. When I arrived at the Dean’s office and explained my position, she laughed and told me to go easy on Mr. Smitson. She sent me back to class with a note. On the way back I called my mom to tell her the situation was handled.”

  “Wow. This would only happen to you, Cole.” I lean back in my chair and balance it on two legs while holding on to the edge of the table. “You just can’t go with the flow.”

  The bell rings. “Man, they only give us like ten minutes to eat,” Paul says and shovels the last few bites of spaghetti into his mouth.

  “Paul, that is just gross. Would you at least close your mouth?” says Will. He pushes back his chair and picks up his tray. “See you guys at practice.”

  “Adios.” I reply. I walk over and deposit my tray on the conveyer belt piled high with trays and trash slowly disappearing through a flapped window into the kitchen. Our first team practice is after school today. The hard part about competing with the other keepers for the starting spot is that most of the time we all train together, separate from the field players, since our position is so specialized. I’ll have to strike the right balance of competitiveness and cooperation to make the cut, I think as I make my way to my afternoon classes.

  3

  MY MOM IS in the kitchen when I get home from practice. I toss my backpack on the kitchen table, open the fridge and take out a gallon of milk.

  “How was your day?” She asks me the same thing every day.

  “Good.” I pour myself a glass of milk and rip open a package of Oreos from the pantry.

  “Anything interesting happen? And don’t eat too many of those; dinner’s in about half an hour.” This question must be from one of her parenting books, designed to elicit conversation, since she uses it a lot.

  “Well, Cole wore rainbow-striped toe socks and got sent to the Dean’s office,” I reply, pulling a stool out from under the counter at the island and sitting down.

  “For wearing toe socks?” She’s rinsing green beans in a bowl at the sink and turns to look at me incredulously.

  “No, for refusing to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t they have more serious discipline problems than that? Really.” My mom’s actually not that bad, just kind of lame. She and my dad are pretty easy to talk to about stuff—when I want to talk, that is. They don’t freak out too much when you bring things up.

  “Yeah, the Dean just laughed about it and sent him back to class.” The back door to the garage opens and my dad walks in. He puts his keys and wallet in one of the cubbyholes over the desk and his briefcase on the floor, then comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “Hey! How was the first day back at school and the first day of practice?” He sits down on the stool next to me and takes a cookie.

  “Not you, too! No more cookies please! Dinner’ll be ready soon,” Mom exclaims as she fills a pot with water and dumps the beans into it.

  We ignore her and keep eating. “It was okay. AP Environmental Science seems pretty good. Lots of field trips.”

  “Where to?”

  “The Benton County Wind Farm and the Coal Gasification Plant. Maybe some others.”

  “The wind farm is pretty amazing. I drove past it last spring on my way to one of our satellite campuses. All of a sudden in the middle of the cornfields, these giant turbines appear. There must be hundreds of them. I’ve read that it’s going to be the biggest wind farm east of the Mississippi when it’s completed. Not what you’d expect from the coal belt. Makes you proud to be from Indiana.” He puts his hand over his heart in an exaggerated gesture of pride.

  “I guess so.” I’m about to tell them about the internship when my dad asks where Marcie and Drew are.

  “Drew’s down the street with some friends and Marcie should be dropped off from cross country practice any minute now,” my mom answers. Marcie is my fourteen year old sister—she’s a freshman this year, and Drew is in third grade.

  “All right, then. Is there time for me to go for a run before dinner?” Dad asks.

  “Sure, if you swing by the Reeds’ on the way back to get Drew.”

  “Consider it done.” He starts getting up from the island.

  I quickly say, “Have you heard anything about an important physics professor visiting at the university from the Overet Lab in France? He’s going to teach a couple of AP Enviro classes.” I pause. “And he’s offering an internship in his lab for second semester.”

  “Wow, really?” My dad sits back down. “So, you’re interested? I haven’t heard about him, but I wouldn’t in the English department. What about you, Jill?”

  “I might have heard something, but archeologists don’t mingle too much with the physics department, either.” I have their full attention now. My mom’s leaning on the island, dish towel in hand. As professors at the university, my parents are really big on education, so I figured they would be all over this.

  “He’s a nuclear physicist studying alternative energy sources. The internship could be cool.”

  “So, do you want us to look into it for you or anything?” my dad asks a little too casually. “We could call some of our colleagues to put in a good word.” My parents are always so helpful. It can be annoying.

  “No, definitely not. I don’t even know anything about it or how he will choose the intern.”

  “Okay. Well, let us know how it goes.”

  As I’m gathering my gear to take upstairs and get in the shower, Marcie comes in nosily from the side door and dumps her bags—she has at least four, and I have no idea what she has in all of them—all over the floor by the door.

  “Hey!” my mom says. “How was your first day of high school?”

  “It was great! Sara is in my English class and I have ‘A’ lunch with a lot of my friends.” She takes my stool at the island and I decide I’d better get upstairs quick to shower before she gets in and uses all the hot water.

  AFTER DINNER I go up to my room to get started on my homework. Even though it’s just the first day of school, my teachers didn’t hold back on assignments. It’s mostly reading, so I stack the pillows on my bed against the headboard and get my iPhone so I can listen to music while I start the novel we’re reading for English. It’s A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway, which is supposed to be pretty good, so I figure it’s a good place to start. Ralph, the mutt we got from the pound last year, jumps on the bed and makes a nest in the comforter by my feet. He circles around several times and then lies down with a sigh, nose to tail.

  My room’s not too bad. I’ve got a full-sized bed and matching dresser that was once my grandparents’, and even though my mom wanted to ‘decorate,’ I held out and only let her paint the walls. It’s kind of a mess, but I like it that way. Actually, I just don’t put away my clothes, so they’re all over the floor, and fortunately my parents aren’t too crazy about making me keep my room clean.

  I settle in and start reading. After a while I feel myself getting sleepy. I have to keep re-reading the same words over again and my eyes are drooping. Even the tunes aren’t enough to keep me awake. A full day of school and then two hours of practice really take it out of you. Then two or three hours of homework on top of that? It’s nuts, really, what they expect us to do.

  I close the book and lay my head back on the pillows. I’m thinking I’ll just close my eyes and rest for a few minutes and then start back in. That feeling you get of floating away just before you fall asleep starts to come over me and I must have dozed off for a while. The explosion rocks me from my sleep.

  Flashes of orange, black and yellow light explode in my head along with a tremendous crashing noise. I jerk abruptly awake and cry out. Ralph is so startled, he jumps up and barks at me. At first, I think something must have happened outside or downstairs, because my room looks the same as always. But then I realize it was some sort of awful dream. A nightmare. I sit on the edge of my bed with my feet hanging over the side and hold my head in my hands. I’m so shook up that I’m ac
tually trembling. I take a deep breath and blow it out. What the hell? I don’t usually have nightmares. I know I must dream, but they never stay with me long in the morning. This was really vivid. Scary. It felt like I could actually hear the explosion.

  Studying isn’t going to happen until I can get my heart to stop pounding, and I figure I could do with a little fresh air and change of scenery. “You wanna go for a walk?” I say to Ralph. He definitely knows that word because he immediately jumps down from the bed and starts wagging his tail. He races ahead of me down the stairs, looking back to see if I’m coming for the promised walk. In the kitchen, Drew is sitting at the table doing his homework with my parents nearby in the family room ready to offer their help. Like I said, they are very helpful. Not that it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying. After a certain point, you don’t want their help all the time anymore.

  “I’m going to take Ralph on a walk around the block.”

  “Take Speck with you, too.” My dad calls from the couch.

  “Alright. Speck, do you want to go for a walk?” Speck leaps down from her spot on the arm of my mom’s chair and scampers over to me, her whole body wagging with excitement. She’s our Cairn terrier and she wouldn’t be my first choice for a walk because she has to stop and sniff everything, but how can I deny her such joy? Their leashes are hanging on a hook by the back door. Ralph sits stock still waiting for me to snap it to his collar, as if to say, “I’m a good dog, look how good I’m being for my walk.” At least that’s what I imagine he’s thinking. Speck, on the other hand can’t keep still, and wiggles all over the place in anticipation, making it hard for me to clip on her leash.

  I open the back door and they scramble down the steps, pulling me along. Night comes late in August, and the sun is just now setting. It’s a fantastic sunset with streaks of purple, blue, pink and orange in the western sky over the trees and the rooftops. Large, dusky blue clouds on the horizon almost look like low hills in the distance. The eastern sky is dark with a few stars already winking.