by AnonYMous
I woke up sweating, with my heart racing.
Turns out Jon needs zero help from me defending himself. He posted his blog about our first football game right after school yesterday. I don’t remember ever hearing anybody talk about going online to read The Battalion before, but by the time I was walking out of practice yesterday, like, fifteen people had texted me about it.
In the write-up, Jon called what was happening on the field Friday before Tyler got sacked “a slaughter.” He wrote that the only decent play Tyler pulled off was the fake out to me, and even that he managed to do only once before getting permanently sidelined. He wrote that everybody in the stands breathed a sigh of relief when I took the field and started nailing pass after pass. He ended with a comment about “the injured QB cussing a blue streak this morning in English class.”
I decided to try to head this one off at the pass. I had a hunch Tyler hadn’t read it yet, and after practice, I drove straight to his house. His mom opened the door and gave me a hug. Downstairs in his room, I waited while Tyler read the article. Then he turned to me and said, “Dude. Why did you tell me to read that?”
I told him because I wanted him to hear about it from me.
He just shrugged. “Whatever, man.”
“What do you mean, ‘Whatever’?” I asked him.
He stared at the screen of his laptop for a long time and then flipped it closed. “It’s all true.”
“So . . .”
“So what?” he said.
“So you’re not mad?”
He shook his head once and snorted. Then he picked up one of his crutches and yelled louder than I have ever heard him yell as he threw it against the door of his bedroom. The foam part of the crutch that goes under your arm splintered a hole in the cheap paneled door and stuck there.
I had never seen Tyler cry before last night. He didn’t even try to hide it; he just sat there and sobbed like people do on TV when somebody’s mom dies or something. Tyler’s mom was very certainly not dead, and she came running down the stairs, calling his name. When she burst through the door, the crutch fell out of the hole it had made and wedged itself down behind the door, effectively keeping her out. I finally wrangled the door open, and she just stood there, staring. She walked toward Tyler and tried to touch his face and his shoulder, and he just shrugged her off, then grabbed a pillow and yelled into it.
His mom smoothed his bangs out of his face and said, “I’m so sorry, son.” He pulled away from her again, and she turned and smiled sadly at me as she slowly walked toward the door. “You’re a good friend to come over and check on him.”
The truth is, I feel like the worst friend of all. I’m the one who benefits from Tyler’s injury. I’m the one who is all worried about what the kid who wrote this blog post thinks of me. What would Tyler do if he knew that every time I close my eyes I see the hem of Jon’s T-shirt riding up his stomach? What would his mom say?
She wouldn’t think I was such a great friend then, would she?
Maybe I’m not.
After she left the room, I sat down on the bed next to Tyler. I reached over and gave his shoulder a squeeze. He shrugged my hand away.
“Dude. Get off me. Just get outta here.”
“What?” I asked. “So you’re just gonna push away everybody who tries to help you?”
“What the hell can you do to help me, man? What can my mom do? Jack shit. That’s what everybody can do.”
I sat there, feeling helpless. I wanted to run and get as far away from Tyler as I could. He felt lethal at that moment—like he might explode and take me with him.
“I can just . . . be here.” I said it so quietly, I wasn’t sure he heard me.
He did.
“Wouldn’t you rather be off somewhere with New Jon?” he scoffed.
“What?”
“You heard me,” he snarled.
“Tyler, you’ve been my best friend since seventh grade. Jesus.”
He wiped the back of his hand under his nose, and his cheek across the shoulder of his shirt. Then he looked right at me. His eyes were rimmed with red and puffy from crying.
“Really? Have I been?” he asked.
I frowned. “What the hell are you talking about, dude? Of course.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m not sure I even know who you are.”
My heart started racing. The beat was thumping out He knows He knows He knows against my rib cage. He was saying it without saying it.
I tried to laugh it off—like every other time Tyler was ever a hothead, like every other time he’d lost his temper and thrown his fist against a locker or a putter against the mini golf green.
“Christ.” I rolled my eyes. “Nice drama, dude. They should cast you in that damn musical.”
Tyler stayed quiet, so I reached over and grabbed the crutch he’d thrown and leaned it up against the wall beside his bed. “Dad got me a new rifle for my birthday. Come over on Saturday. Let’s try it out and hang.”
I don’t really care that much about hunting, but Dad’s a big deer hunter, and it’s something we’ve always done together. Usually Dad shuts down his construction business for the first week of the season in November and takes Tyler and me out for a few nights. We sleep in a tent, and he lets us have a couple of beers when we’re sitting around the campfire.
“I can’t even drive,” Tyler said. “I have to have surgery the end of this month anyway. No way I can go hunting with you guys.”
“Have Erin drive you over,” I said. “Monica’s stopping by after rehearsal. We’ll chill. It’ll be normal—like it was before all . . . this.”
I was headed for the door when his voice stopped me: “Don’t you get it?” Something about his tone stopped me midstride. I turned around and saw his eyes on fire. A chill ran down my spine. “It’ll never be like it was,” he said quietly. “This changes everything.”
I don’t remember driving home, or dinner, really. I stayed awake last night for a long time thinking about what Tyler meant by that remark.
I’m certain he wasn’t talking about football.
He was talking about us.
Wednesday, September 5
English—First Period
Mr. London, the drama teacher and choir director, posted the cast list for The Music Man yesterday right before lunch. The minute the bell rang in chemistry, Monica dragged me down the hall, practically running. The list was hanging on the bulletin boards outside of the choir room. We were the first ones there, and Monica started shrieking like a banshee. As she jumped up and down and was swarmed by half the cheerleading squad, I leaned in to read the list:
Hillside High Fall Musical Cast List—The Music Man
Harold Hill—Jon Statley
Marian Paroo—Monica Weaver
The whole cast was listed below that, but as I was reading, I felt somebody leaning over my shoulder to see the names. It had gotten crowded fast once the bell rang. People were jostling, and Monica was still jumping up and down, shrieking, but for some reason, I knew who it was.
I just . . . knew. It was so weird. That’s never happened to me before.
I turned my head slightly to the right for a glance, and Jon’s face was right there, his chin hovering over my shoulder. I hadn’t ever realized that he’s maybe an inch or so taller than I am. His face was really close to mine, and it sort of scared me. I turned my head to face the list again so my lips weren’t, like, an inch from his cheek, but I couldn’t really go anywhere because people were crowding around and knocking into us in their excitement. Somebody elbowed us, and I felt Jon put his hand on my back so he could catch his balance—but then he just kept it there.
I don’t even know why I’m writing this down. Mrs. Harrison put on the board today that the topic was SOMETHING MEMORABLE, and I thought I’d write about Monica seeing her name on the cast list. I guess if I’m completely honest, her reaction wasn’t the most memorable part of that moment. How is Jon touching me the thing I remember the mo
st in the last forty-eight hours?
I can feel it all again—like it’s happening right this second. We are just standing there in a river of people, pinned in by all these bodies, eyes locked on that damn board. In the middle of the ruckus, the two of us just stood there, still—motionless—like boulders in rapids, people bouncing off of us, left and right. I stared straight ahead at the list, not really reading the words, his hand on my back. We stayed that way for what? Two, three seconds tops. It seemed like so much longer.
I can still feel the heat of his palm where his fingers rested—just beneath my right shoulder blade.
Finally I turned my head again and said, “You did it.”
He glanced at me with a big smile, and I knew it was going to be okay between us. We hadn’t really talked this week—since that whole thing with Tyler at lunch on Monday and the post about the game. I saw him every morning in English, but he didn’t hang around to talk. He’d always jet out while I was helping Tyler juggle books and crutches.
Tyler’s been sort of quiet since we talked at his place after Jon’s post went up, and I feel like I need to patch things up with him somehow. I’ve been helping him get from class to class a lot—making sure he’s got his books and crap. I just don’t want him to think . . .
Shit.
I mean . . . what? What don’t I want him to think?
That I’m a fag?
That I’m into Jon?
What if both of those things are true? I don’t want my best friend to know the truth about me? I hate this limbo. After what Tyler said to me on Monday about things never being the same again, I’m pretty sure he knows. Or suspects.
What would it be like if Tyler knew who I really was? What if he knew that yesterday when I stood in front of the cast list at the water fountain and Jon put his hand on my back, my knees went weak like I’d been running line drills across the football field for a month?
It was like no sensation I’d ever had before; it was what I know Tyler talks about when he tells me stories about hooking up with Erin. Even the first time Monica and I got naked together, I didn’t feel a jolt course through me like I did from just the touch of Jon’s hand on my back in the hallway. Standing there yesterday, I felt like my legs might buckle underneath me at any moment, and somehow at the same time I knew that as long as Jon was there, no one could ever knock me down.
Later . . .
Big write-up in the Democrat-Gazette yesterday about the game last week—picture of me and everything. The reporter mentioned the scouts who were there to recruit Tyler, who was “felled early on by an injury,” and how they were “pleasantly surprised” by my “seasoned passing game.”
Mom had gone to buy five extra copies of the paper and had one spread out on the table while she put one into a scrapbook and stuffed envelopes with the other clippings for Grandma and Grandpa in Dallas. Dad whooped and squeezed me into a big bear hug when I walked through the door.
“You’re gonna get that full ride to Oklahoma! You’re the man!” He was red-faced and had the skunky smell of a man who was three beers into a celebration already, but it was fun to see him excited.
“There’s a YouTube video of that big pass you made, and it already has more than seven thousand views.” Little sisters are notoriously hard to impress—especially when they’re in eighth grade—but YouTube hits are apparently the ticket.
“Have you heard from that woman who was at the game on Friday yet, sweetheart?” Mom handed me a warm plate of meat loaf and potatoes au gratin—my favorite kind out of the box. She made them special for me.
I smiled. “This looks great. And no, not yet. I left her a voice mail on Sunday, but her message said she’d be away until Friday.”
“You’ll hear from her now,” Dad said, a little too loudly. Sometimes when he gets buzzed, it’s like the volume gets turned up too loud, and it drives me a little nuts. But not tonight. He beamed at me from the end of the table. “You’re golden.”
Thursday, September 6
It’s actually after midnight on Thursday night. I guess it’s technically Friday morning. I have been lying in bed for, like, two hours and can’t sleep.
Monica and Jon were waiting for me at my truck this afternoon when I was done with practice. Monica was talking one hundred miles per hour to Jon. She had her arm laced through his and was sort of hanging on him and laughing. It was weird because if it were anybody else, I might have felt jealous. Or at least had the idea that I should feel jealous. But not Jon. He was just leaning against the side of the truck, listening to Monica, but staring over her head right at me.
Sometimes there are these moments when I feel like I’m living a movie version of my own life. The sun was setting, and a breeze carried the smell of cut grass off the field. Something about all that and Jon’s gaze—as still and calm as Monica was animated and boisterous—made me feel this weird sense of excitement and relief all at once. Something about the way he looks at me makes me feel like I’m invincible.
Monica turned and saw me and came running up. She threw her arms around my neck and never stopped talking about their first rehearsal and how great Jon was and how much fun this is going to be, and on and on and on. . . .
And the whole time she talked, I just smiled and held Jon’s gaze.
Monica’s great—don’t get me wrong. I just . . . I don’t even know how to write it down. . . .
I just feel this thing when Jon is looking at me with those eyes. It’s like he sucks me into a freaking mind meld. I couldn’t even hear anything Monica was saying—something about . . . I don’t even remember. I forgot all about being worried about the quiz and tonight’s game and whether Tyler can tell I’m into Jon or not. As I stood there at the truck with the clouds turning neon orange, I just knew that everything was going to work out, that as long as Jon was looking at me, everything was going to be okay.
Monica finally stopped and realized neither one of us was listening to her.
“What?”
I glanced down at her. “Huh?”
“Do I have something in my teeth?” she asked, suddenly panicked. She whirled and playfully smacked Jon on the shoulder. “Um. You’re supposed to tell me. . . .” She ducked around me and peered into the side mirror on the cab.
Jon shook his head, laughing. “You’re beautiful, crazy.” Then he winked at me. “How was football practice?”
“Brutal. How was play practice?”
He arched an eyebrow. “It’s rehearsal. Only Philistines call it ‘play practice.’ ”
“I am the quarterback of the football team.”
“Philistine.” He sighed. “We’re gonna have to get you some culture.” His look of pity dissolved into a smirk that made me feel like I’d just popped over the top of a steep hill driving a little too fast.
“Fine, but first I need some food. And what the hell with this chemistry quiz?”
We wound up studying for the quiz together. I texted my mom and let her know I was having dinner with Monica and Jon so we could study. We went to IHOP and got a booth in the back. I ordered a burger and a stack of pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream. Somehow, between the two of them, they drilled the noble gasses and halogens from the periodic table into my head.
Afterward there was this weird moment when we headed into the parking lot. Monica gave Jon a big hug and said, “See you tomorrow,” then grabbed my hand and kind of waited. I saw this look pass over Jon’s face, and he nodded—sort of like he knew this was where he should say good night, but he didn’t want to leave.
Something flipped in my stomach right then—this weird knot of . . . what? Stress? Panic? I couldn’t tell what was happening. I just got . . . annoyed. With Monica. Of all things. Suddenly I felt miffed that I had to walk her to her car instead of walking Jon down to his. I even started to take a step toward him, but then I caught myself:
What the hell are you doing, dude? Monica is your girlfriend.
It was Tyler’s voice in my brain. Calli
ng me out.
I turned bright red. I could feel it happening. I was trying to cover, but I could tell Jon had caught this weird start-stop moment, and I didn’t know what to do. I put out an arm, sorta like I was going to hug him, but then stopped myself halfway through the motion, which was like this weird fumble. He sort of leaned in when he saw me raise my arm, and then stopped when I did, and finally he held out his hand, and we freaking shook hands. Which . . . I mean . . . Nothing could have been more awkward than that.
I kicked myself all the way back to the car, Monica talking ninety-to-nothing about . . . what? I don’t even know. All I could see was the smirk on Jon’s face as I turned away to walk Monica through the parking lot. I finally got her to her car, and she wanted to make out, but I told her I had to get home. We kissed a couple times, but I couldn’t stop thinking that Jon was gonna see us, and . . .
And what? Why did I give a shit if Jon saw us? I leaned in to Monica, pressing her up against the side of the car, and kissed her nice and hard. I could taste the watermelon lip gloss she’d just reapplied, and her mouth was fruity and soft and wet and warm, and for some reason, I just thought, This is like kissing Jell-O.
That made me laugh, and she pulled away and started laughing too. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Sorry. That lip gloss tastes like Jolly Ranchers.”
She giggled and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I have delicious lips.”
I watched her drive away and felt my phone buzz in my hip pocket. I pulled it out and there was a text from Jon:
Nice lip-lock. ;)
My heart sped up when I read it. I tapped out a single-word reply on the screen; then my thumbs froze for a second over Send. Finally I hit it. The word popped up in a little green bubble on the screen:
Jealous?
I almost couldn’t breathe while I waited for his response. I could see that he was texting something back, and my hands got so sweaty, I almost dropped my phone. Two seconds later, his response came through:
Maybe a little. ;)