by Tim Green
So, my mouth ran away from my brain and spit out some words on its own. “Yeah, I know you’re a girl, Izzy. Maybe you should find a girls’ table to sit at. This table is for football players.”
Jackson’s mouth dropped open in shock. Izzy’s mouth became a thin flat line.
“You, Ryan Zinna, are a jerk.” With a curt nod, she packed her lunch back into her bag, got up, and left.
“Hey, little buddy.” Jackson frowned. “What’d you do that for? She’s really nice.”
“We’re football players, Jackson.” I glared at him, strong and confident. “Don’t you think we should act like some?”
Jackson’s face grew dark and he stared right back, unafraid of me. “I think we should act like football players on the football field, Ryan. Otherwise I think we shouldn’t act like total jerks.”
Jackson and I stared each other down. I felt like I had to show him that I wasn’t afraid, and I had no idea which one of us would blink first. But as we gave each other the evil eye, my bigger concern became losing the only real friend I had left.
18
I cast my eyes down at my hands and folded them on the table. “Sorry, Jackson. I’m going goofy. With everything that’s happened, it’s like I don’t even know who I am. Does that make sense?”
I looked up and Jackson was back to himself in a heartbeat. He shrugged and sipped at his milk. “That’s okay, but maybe you should say something to Izzy?”
I looked over at where Izzy had sat down next to Mya at the table of brainiacs, deeply regretting my words to her. “Yeah, I’ll try. Let her cool off first, though.”
As impressive as Jackson was on the football field, he was an even better friend. He didn’t hold a grudge and he didn’t miss a beat. We were soon goofing around, eating and talking about how funny it would be if we walked over to the popular table, stuck our fingers down our throats, and threw up.
“We could, like, shower them with puke!” Jackson’s eyes became nothing but slits, and his teeth were bare and white as he howled with laughter.
I couldn’t help but think I’d really like to do that to Markham.
On the football field that afternoon, I was like a pinball, smacking people in every direction. I wasn’t necessarily knocking them down like Jackson did, but I was stinging them so that pretty quickly I became an annoyance a lot of my other teammates were happy to avoid. Only Markham really delighted in colliding with me, and he got the best of me. When you’re the size of Markham or Jackson, you win almost every one of those football battles against a smaller guy. But I shy away. I walked off the practice field that day with a golf-ball-size welt on my forearm, three bloody knuckles, a sore back, and an aching head.
“Nice effort out there, Zinna.” Coach Hubbard slapped my shoulder pads as we walked toward the locker room. “I wish you weren’t such a peanut or you could play strong safety or something.”
I glared at my coach, but he never even saw me. He marched on, handing out compliments to my teammates like they were Halloween candy. All the joy I’d had running around during practice smashing into people suddenly melted away. I clenched my teeth and my hands and felt a steady burn in my head and chest. A peanut?
Just like that—snap—I felt like a loser. Funny how an offhand remark by a grown-up can do that to a kid, but I think it happens more than people know. I mean, he didn’t even say it to be mean, but there it was, a crater in my soul.
I changed my clothes in silence, ignoring Jackson’s cheery remarks about our opening game against Hutchinson Middle, an opponent everyone figured we could beat, and slammed my locker shut before heading for the exit.
“Hey, wait up.” Jackson fumbled with his book bag. “We’re gonna go swimming at your house, right?”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
Jackson grinned at me and when he did, his bag tipped. Books and papers slipped to the floor in a mess.
I had to catch myself from calling him a bumbling bear, control my short fuse, and not insult him the way people seemed to feel they could insult me.
I’d acted like a jerk once already to Izzy and I wasn’t going to do it again. Instead, I waited silently, holding the locker room door for Jackson, which had the negative effect of clearing the way for Simpkin and Markham, who strutted past.
“Hey, Zinna, at least you’re good for something,” Markham said. Simpkin smirked next to him as they bumped me on their way out the door.
“You’re the jerks,” I said beneath my breath.
Markham spun around, his faced twisted up hatefully. “What’d you say?”
“I said, ‘I’m glad this works.’” I stared right back at him, the new me, unafraid. Sort of. “Me. Holding the door. I’m glad it works for you.”
Markham gave Simpkin a puzzled look before he turned and kept going. Jackson caught up, out of breath. “Thanks.”
“Might as well be good for something, right?” I grumbled.
“Hey, you’re running around like a maniac out there. You’re doing good.” Jackson slapped my back, too hard.
“You see how many reps I got at quarterback?” I asked. “Three. One during team period and two during our seven-on-seven drill.”
“That’s three times more than one, right?” Jackson forced a smile and gave me a hearty nod.
“You see how many times we had to run that bootleg pass?” I asked. “I could’ve done that right the very first time. Simpkin can’t read on the run. You gotta key on the free safety. If he’s over the top, you throw to the tight end on the crossing pattern. If he jumps the crossing pattern, you throw deep. It’s not that tough. Quarterback is about brains, not brawn.”
I looked around to make sure no one could hear me. “I swear, Coach Hubbard can be so thick sometimes.”
“I wondered why we kept running that play,” Jackson said.
“Because Simpkin can’t get it right, and I’m a half . . .”
“Half what?” Jackson wrinkled his brow.
“Nothing.” I wasn’t going to call myself a half-pint shrimp like some kids did. Instead, I looked at my feet and scuffed them as we went out through the back entrance of the school to where my mom would be picking us up.
When I looked up, I saw Izzy’s shiny golden ponytail. She’d come out of the girls’ locker room and was still dressed in her soccer uniform with grass stains on her shorts and the backs of her long, pale legs. I didn’t even warn Jackson, and I didn’t care who else saw me, I just bolted right for her, grabbed her arm as gently as I could, and darted directly in front of her with a half spin sort of dance move that left us face-to-face.
“Hey, Izzy. I’m sorry.” I spoke the way a woodpecker attacks a tree. “Like, really, really sorry. I know you said I’m a jerk, but I’m not. I acted like a jerk, but I’m not a jerk. Markham and Simpkin and all of them were making fun of us for sitting with a girl and then I called them girls because I was so mad and . . . stupid. Please. Sit with us at lunch tomorrow, Izzy. Let me have another chance.”
She looked down at me in total surprise—more surprise than when I’d insulted her out of nowhere—but then she recovered and her face turned dark.
“Please.” I spoke in a sad and urgent whisper and closed my eyes, waiting and hoping.
19
“You’re really sorry?” she asked.
I opened my eyes, wanting to read her face. Her voice didn’t sound too forgiving. “Yes. I am.”
“What would you do for me?” Her blue eyes were cold and hard and squinty.
“Uh, anything?” My mind whirred. “I guess.”
“Read a book?”
“A . . . sure. That’s easy,” I said, relieved and confused at the same time.
She fished into her book bag and pulled out the book I’d seen her reading before English class. “I finished this in the locker room before practice. Here. Read it, then we’ll talk.”
I took the baby-blue book from her and she marched right on by. I stood and stared. “Talk in lunch tomorrow?”<
br />
“Sure.” She hollered without turning around. “Can you read that fast?”
“Sure!” I shouted, grinning at Jackson, who caught up to me just as Izzy disappeared into the passenger seat of her mom’s dark-blue Range Rover.
“Dude, she’s kinda pretty.” Jackson stared at the Range Rover as it pulled away.
“Better than that,” I said. “I think she’s really nice.”
“That’s what I said,” Jackson pointed out.
“Great minds think alike.” I studied the cover of the book, which was called Wonder, and saw that the childlike drawing of the face on the cover had just one eye and it was out of place. “Weird.”
“Now I’m weird?” Jackson growled.
“No, not you.” I stuffed the book in my own bag. “If anyone’s weird, it’s me. Come on. There’s my mom.”
Jackson was seriously disappointed with me when we got to my house. He splashed and dove and flopped around the pool, hooting joyfully and making all kinds of noise. The neighbors probably thought we were having a party. But nothing could get me out of my chair in the shade of the cabana. I sat glued to that book, ate dinner with Jackson and my mom, and jumped right back into it, barely saying good-bye to Jackson when his own mom came later to get him. It’s true when I say that I didn’t read the whole thing that night just because of Izzy. I could have easily faked it, right?
But this book got me.
I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about it either. It’s the story of a kid who is seriously deformed. People see this kid and literally run or scream or both. He’s just like me or you, but he’s trapped inside this really bad face. Fortunately, he’s got these awesome people around him who don’t care what he looks like, and by the end of the book, everyone loves this kid. Not because he got some life-altering surgery, but just because people started seeing him for him. Who he was, instead of what he looked like.
It’s pretty extreme, and the reason I didn’t know what to think was because I wasn’t so sure who I was supposed to be in that story. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we’ve all got something, some disfiguration—inside or out—that sets us apart from others. I mean, who’s “normal”? Anyone? Is never knowing who your dad was “normal”? Don’t think so, even though a lot of kids don’t know their fathers. And, trust me, even suddenly inheriting the Dallas Cowboys doesn’t make up for that hot mess.
Izzy wasn’t trying to say we were necessarily freaks, me and Jackson, but that we were different. I think she was saying that it was okay to have a friend who was different and to sit at their lunch table instead of the popular kids’. Well, that’s what I thought about when I closed that book and sat propped up on my pillows, all alone, the lights now off, and me staring out the window at some tattered ghosts of clouds as they drifted past half a moon peeking down from the trees.
It was hard to get to sleep . . . again. This was becoming a habit. But tonight, my heart thumped steadily up against my ribs, and I kept thinking about the lunchroom tomorrow, and the things I planned on saying to Izzy about the book.
20
I headed for my cafeteria table the next day, slicing straight through the roar of noise. In a way, it was like being alone. I didn’t care about the hundreds of other kids, their antics, their food, the insults they served back and forth at one another like Ping-Pong balls. I saw only Izzy, head bowed, quietly unwrapping a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, freeing it from its plastic wrapping and taking the smallest of bites before sipping at her milk through a straw.
Jackson was nowhere to be seen—late, I assumed, since he had a math teacher who liked to keep them after the bell about every other day. I stood beside her without speaking until she looked up and smiled and offered me the chair next to her. I had to believe the popular kids were looking on, hopeful for some more fireworks. I sat down and started to eat my lunch, doing my best to mimic Izzy’s finer manners.
She took another bite and then a sip before dabbing her mouth on a napkin she produced from her lap. “So?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes. I read it. All of it.”
“And?”
I had to look at her, even though those eyes turned my insides to jelly. “Are you saying I’m Austin?”
She stared at me with those big eyes. Hypnotized, I couldn’t move.
Her face erupted into a smile. “Aren’t we all Austin?”
Relief flooded through my body. The tension drained through my feet. I nodded.
“I was thinking more Jason than Austin, though,” she said, and now I warmed with pride and something else because Jason’s character was pretty awesome, even though he started out not so great.
Was she saying that about me? I didn’t dare to ask. I just soaked it up until Jackson walloped me on the back.
“Dude, it’s her.” Jackson beamed with joy, nodding at Izzy.
“She has a name,” Izzy said, but not meanly.
“I told Izzy I was really sorry for being a jerk,” I said, “and I finished this book she gave me to read last night. I think she’s—you are, right?—sitting with us again?”
“Watch out.” Jackson sat down heavily and started emptying his big bag of food onto the table in front of him. “This will be the popular table before you know it. Then I’ll have to leave.”
Izzy laughed and dabbed her mouth with the napkin, then suddenly stopped and stared over my shoulder. I turned around and saw Bethany Bracewell standing there with her diamond earrings glinting and her freckled arms folded across her chest, staring down in disgust. “Izzy, don’t even think you’re coming back to our table again.”
I looked back at Izzy and watched the surprise on her face turn to something else. This time she didn’t dab her mouth, she just laughed out loud at Bethany and her stupid lunch table. I held out my fist and Izzy gave it a bump.
“Do you like football?” I asked.
“Not at all.” She shook her head, still grinning.
“Well, you’ll have to start liking it, because this is the . . .” I pulled the first thing that came to mind out of my head. “. . . football superstars table.”
“This is the sports superstars table.” She stuck a thumb into her chest. “And I’m the best athlete we’ve got.”
I looked at Jackson to see what he thought of that, but all he did was nod.
“I was kidding,” she said. “Not about being the best athlete part, but about football. I love football, especially the Cowboys, and not just because you own them.”
“Finally, you say something about it! I’ve been waiting for you guys to talk about me owning the team.” I grinned.
Izzy shrugged. “It’s cool and all, but what does it mean? What’s even happening?”
I gave them a recap of when I found out about my dad, of the will reading, and how my mom was trying to schedule a press conference. “It’s really still all with the lawyers to get things worked out. At least, that’s what my mom says.”
“I’m sorry about your dad,” Izzy said.
“Yeah, me too.” Jackson paused, then said, “So what changes can you make, you know, to the team or players and all?”
“Oh, I don’t know! I haven’t even thought about it!”
“Well, don’t you think you should?” Jackson laughed.
And as we started talking about which players were good, we moved on to the ten all-time greatest players in a friendly argument that took us to the bell. We got up and moved through the halls together, ignoring the rest of the world. It felt good to have our own small group, just like the three best friends in Izzy’s book.
At practice later that day, we headed out onto the field and Coach Hubbard divided us up, telling me I should go with the wide receivers during passing drills. It frustrated me that the fact that I was the kid owner of the Dallas Cowboys didn’t seem to have any impact on him. He wasn’t treating me that much better than before and I wondered if he somehow might not have heard the news. It didn’t seem possible. He was probably
just being a football coach, focused on coaching our middle-school team. That’s how they were, especially in Texas.
But now I hesitated, fearful that the change back to receiver was going to be permanent. “Coach, I’m really good with reading defenses and stuff. You might need me at QB when things get going.”
“Get going?” Simpkin muttered under his breath, even though he kept throwing the football back and forth to Estevan Marin. “Take a walk, shrimp.”
I looked hard at Coach Hubbard, pleading with my eyes because I knew my hands weren’t much to talk about, small and hard as stones. Even the passes I got during warm-ups with other quarterbacks seemed to bounce off my hands. It was all I could do to take the snap, make a handoff to a runner, or throw a pass that didn’t wobble. Catching wasn’t in it for me.
“Well . . .” Coach Hubbard seemed to be thinking about it.
“Zinna, seriously? You don’t question the coach!” Simpkin stopped throwing and stared at me, faking outrage and taking a step toward me as if to emphasize my lack of height. “Ever! Part of being a quarterback is calling the play you get. You don’t argue when a coach tells you something. What, you think you’re special ’cause you supposedly own the Cowboys? Please, that means nothing here.”
Coach Hubbard scowled and looked confused before he said, “That’s right! Get going, Zinna, or would you rather run a lap?”
At that moment, I wished I were Jackson. If I were, I would have pummeled Simpkin into the dirt. Instead, I just narrowed my eyes at Simpkin, turned, and jogged over to where the receivers were, a place I knew I shouldn’t be.
21
Practices went like this for the next two weeks. And even though I was frustrated, I was still happy to be practicing out on the field. But, while I was pretty pumped up about that for the first few days of practice, wearing the bruises and cuts on my arms and hands like badges of courage around school, the pride and joy didn’t last.