by Allen Zadoff
Mom passes me with a platter of mini knishes, and those remind me of April, too. I can’t figure that one out. Why would Jewish food remind me of her?
When I see the mini meatballs, I realize it’s not the nationality at all—it’s the food. Food in general reminds me of April. So I’m pretty much screwed.
As soon as Mom disappears into the kitchen, I stuff three spring rolls into my mouth. I gulp down a knish and nearly burn the roof off my mouth. Then I pop in a meatball to wash it all down.
True colors.
I’m trying to distract myself, but it doesn’t work. I keep looking behind me thinking April is going to walk up at any minute.
And the thing is, she’s not even at this wedding.
I turn right.
It’s the end of the day, and I’m rushing to put books in my locker and get down to the auditorium for the first Model UN meeting. Eytan has been talking about it nonstop for two weeks. “Are you excited?” he asked me yesterday for the three-thousandth time.
“Absolutely,” I said. “But aren’t you a little worried about being Estonia?”
That was my subtle way of reminding him that nobody gives a crap about Estonia, and maybe he shouldn’t get his hopes up.
“That’s the great thing,” Eytan said. “We’re the underdog. Nobody expects the underdog to do well. It’s perfect.”
I don’t see how it’s perfect. I see another long year toiling in obscurity, arguing about sheep-grazing rights with Latvia. When I told Eytan I was excited, I was lying. I just didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Now I have to go down to Model UN and fake it for two hours.
I slam my locker closed and spin the dial twice. I turn around and run right into Ugo’s sweatshirt.
“People call you JP now. That’s funny,” Ugo says.
I look up and down the hallway. Nobody. Why is it you can’t get two seconds alone all day in high school, but when you actually need people, there’s nobody around?
“Jurassic Pork,” he says, trying to get a reaction out of me.
“I’m not scared of you,” I say.
It’s a total lie, and he knows it. He cracks his knuckles.
It’s go time.
Suddenly I think about Dad. If I get into it with Ugo, Dad’s going to be pissed. Ugo and I had a fight last year, and Dad had to come in for a thirty-six-minute conference. That’s $210 in Dad’s world. If you add drive time back and forth from work, one stupid fight cost Dad $455. I know the exact number because he wrote me up a fake bill to teach me a lesson.
Now I’m thinking it’s going to happen again, only Mom will have to deal with it alone, and she’ll freak out. Dad will have to spend seventy-six minutes on the phone talking her down, and forty minutes yelling at me for making his life difficult. I don’t want to see what that bill looks like.
So when Ugo makes his move, I do something different.
I run.
It’s total wuss behavior. I won’t deny it. It’s not only wuss, it’s just plain stupid because I’m fat, and I can’t run. They don’t put you in Slow Gym because you set records in the hundred-meter dash.
But I’m not thinking clearly in the moment. I’m running for my life.
I’m barely halfway down the hall before Ugo snags me by the back of the shirt and reels me in like a whale on a harpoon. He jerks me around and sends me flying over his thigh. It’s like I weigh nothing at all. That’s how strong he is.
Once I’m on the ground, he starts kicking me in the ass. “Holy shit,” he says, “you’re so fat my foot almost disappeared!”
I wish I had super ass cheeks. I’d grab his foot and tear it off with my ass. That would teach him a lesson. But I don’t have a super ass or super anything else. I have protective fat and the good sense to cover my balls. That’s about it.
Ugo leans back on one foot, getting ready to kick me again. I close my eyes and nothing happens.
I open my eyes and he’s not there anymore. I roll over just in time to see him traveling backwards, pulled by some invisible gravitational force. I don’t know what’s going on until I notice there’s an arm pinned around his neck. Someone is pulling him from behind.
O. Douglas is pulling him.
He spins Ugo around, unwinding him like a top until they’re face-to-face. It’s an expert move, like something you’d see on WWF.
“What the hell?” Ugo says.
“Back off the kid,” O. says.
“What’s it to you?” Ugo says.
He waits for an answer.
I wait, too, because I’ve got no idea. I’ve never even met O. Douglas before. He’s got no reason to save me. He doesn’t give a reason. He just holds his hands out to Ugo, palms open, and shrugs. Ugo looks at me over his shoulder. He’s like a lion who can’t get to his meat. I’m practically pooping my pants, but O. doesn’t flinch.
“Take off,” O. says quietly.
“Whatever,” Ugo says, and he drifts away down the hall.
I’ve never seen anyone stand up to Ugo. This is one of those historic moments in the history of high school. I wish I had it on video so I could play it back for Eytan. He’d upload it to YouTube, see if we’d get e-mail from some lonely girls in the Midwest.
But it doesn’t seem to be a big deal to O. Almost like business as usual.
“You okay?” he says.
“I guess.”
He holds out a hand to help me up, but I don’t take it. I don’t want him to think I’m some little kid who can’t stand up on his own. I get up by myself and brush dirt off my pants.
O. says, “The bigger they are, right?”
I don’t know if that’s right or not. Do the laws of physics apply to Ugo? Or is he some kind of anomaly? A giant, sweat-shirted version of a black hole.
O. motions towards the stairs. “You headed down?”
“Sure,” I say.
And just like that, we start to walk downstairs together. It’s hard for me to conceive of it—the head of the football team and me walking together through school. Surreal.
“What’s your name?” O. says.
“Andy.”
“I’m O.”
He says it like I haven’t heard of him. Like the whole school hasn’t. In one way it’s ridiculous, but it’s also kind of cool that he doesn’t just assume I would know him.
“Hold up a sec,” he says when we get to the bottom of the stairs.
He licks his fingers and starts to nervously fix his hair. It reminds me of an actor getting ready to go onstage. After a couple seconds he says, “Ready.”
And we walk out into the hall.
There are kids everywhere—talking, laughing, and splitting into groups before heading for their various clubs. The minute we step out, people begin to say hi to O. Not just a few people. Practically everybody. I’m used to walking down the hall without really being seen—fat but invisible—but O. is like a celebrity. Some people call his name, others nod, still others stop to ask him how he’s doing. He negotiates it effortlessly, moving in a straight line while everyone reacts around him. He seems comfortable with it all, except I notice he reaches up and checks his hair from time to time.
I check a lot more than that. I make sure my fly is up and my stomach is sucked in. I hold my head up a little so it doesn’t accentuate my double chin. Mom taught me that one.
But then an amazing thing starts to happen. I begin to feel like I’m taller. Thinner, too. I know I haven’t changed in the last ten minutes, but I feel different. I walk with my shoulders up, and I nod at people I’ve never met in my life. All this just from standing next to O.
Just as I’m starting to enjoy myself, a guy with a thick neck cuts between us. He gives O. some kind of triple handshake that ends with them bumping fists.
The Neck notices me standing there.
“What do you want?” he says.
“We were talking,” O. says.
“Right. Whatever.” He turns away from me. “You ready to kick ass and take names?” he asks O.
“Let’s do it,” O. says.
O. nods to me once, and then he’s off, walking side by side with the Neck. Actually, it’s less like walking than it is strutting. They own the hall. People move out of the way to let them by.
I’m so stunned by what just happened, I stand and stare.
There’s a group of people stopped at the end of the hall waiting for them. Lisa Jacobs and crew. The popular girls. One of the girls reaches down to unzip her backpack, and I see April.
O. slides into the middle of that crowd, and they all greet each other. He even says hello to April. It’s not like they hug and kiss, but I’m amazed they even know each other. How did April get to Hello Level with O.? A week ago she was at You Don’t Exist Level.
I’m too far away to hear what anyone’s saying. I watch it all like a scene through a window. April nervous, shifting from foot to foot, playing with her hair and smiling a lot.
Suddenly I feel sick to my stomach.
Eytan walks up doing a stiff-legged march and singing something unintelligible. I cover my ears.
“What the hell is that?” I say.
“Estonian National Anthem,” he says in a thick accent. “We must hurry—glorious future UN triumph awaits.”
“Okay, Borat.”
Eytan pulls me down the hall towards the auditorium. Usually he’s a pretty cool character, but today he’s so excited he’s practically skipping. I look back at O.’s group down at the opposite end of the hall.
“For what purpose do you suspend forward movement?” Eytan says.
“I have to go to the can,” I say.
“There’s no time for Number 2 when the fate of our Number 1 country hangs in the balance.”
“It will be the fastest dump in history,” I say.
He looks at me through squinted eyes. “You’d better set a land speed record,” he says.
“I’ll bring you the digital readout.”
He pats me on the elbow and runs towards the auditorium.
I stand there for a minute. I don’t really have to go to the bathroom. I just need a second to breathe.
I look back and forth down the hall. It’s one of those moments when you know something big is happening, but you don’t know what it is yet.
If I turn left, I’ll follow Eytan to the Model UN meeting. Those are my people, the UN geeks. Any kind of geeks, really. I know what’s going on in there, and it might even be fun. I can talk in a stupid accent like Eytan and try to score with the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The thing is, I don’t really like Model UN. I’ve never really told anyone.
Still, I belong there. I belong on the left.
I turn right.
Before I know it, I’m speed walking down the hall, doing my best to catch up to O. and his group without making it too obvious.
Maybe it’s because of April. Maybe I’m just sick of being me. Or maybe it’s something bigger. I don’t know.
The hall leads all the way to the back of the school. I can see sunlight pouring in through the back door. I’ve never even gone out the back door. I’ve got nothing to do back there.
Until now.
O. and his posse crash through the door to the outside, and a minute later, I follow.
the secret world behind the school.
The field is crowded with people I don’t know, all hanging around and talking to each other. I feel like I’ve wandered into something top secret. I imagine one of those horror films where everyone at school is slowly turning into aliens, and there’s one guy who doesn’t know about it until it’s too late. He’s walking towards danger while the audience is screaming, “Don’t go out there, you idiot!”
I’m that idiot.
A whistle blows over to my left, and about twenty-five of the hottest, most popular girls in school crowd into a circle around the dance teacher. One of them pinwheels her arms like she’s doing a cheer.
Cheer tryouts. Duh.
Maybe I’m not such an idiot after all.
April is there, too, biting nervously at her lip. April wants to be a cheerleader? It makes no sense.
On the other side of the field, about forty guys fall into rows in front of Coach Bryson. Coach looks at them while he spins a football on his finger.
Football. Cheerleaders. This is Twilight Zone stuff.
I walk over to the group of football jocks gathering around Coach. He does a double take when he sees me. He stops twirling the football and starts twirling the corner of his moustache.
“You gotta be yanking my yak,” Coach says. “What do you want, Zansky?”
“I want to play football,” I say.
Forty guys look at me like I’m crazy. Thirty-nine, actually. O. Douglas looks at me a little differently. He has a half smile on his face, like he’s kind of curious.
“Uh—look, Zansky,” Coach says, “have you ever played football before?” He says it like I’m a little kid.
“He only plays soccer,” a goofy-looking guy says, and everyone laughs. Jurassic Pork. Hysterical.
“Have you even touched a football?” Coach says.
I think about Dad and me on the quad at Harvard, throwing a ball around. He started taking me there when I was eight, hoping I’d get a taste for football and Ivy. Instead I got a taste for the warm rolls at Bertucci’s.
“I can throw a little,” I tell Coach. Throwing was always easy. It’s catching that was the problem.
The girls’ cheer rings across the field:
N-E-W-T/
Add O-N-S and you will see/
How lizards fight for victory!
“You have to let him try out,” a Latino guy says. “Equal opportunity and all that.”
He has a line of facial hair that starts above his nose then winds its way all over his face like he was attacked by a Sharpie marker. It’s not really a moustache. More of a facestache.
“Yeah,” a short, thick guy with acne says. “You remember that girl who wanted to wrestle in Wisconsin?”
“If girls wrestled, I’d be wearing tights and grabbing guys’ asses,” the goofy guy says.
The acne guy says, “You tired of wrestling with your mother, Cheesy?”
“Not tired,” Cheesy says. “I’m just looking to expand my dating horizons.”
A bunch of guys laugh. All except that guy with the thick neck. The Neck just stares at me, expressionless. He’s got white sweatbands pulled up above his elbows that make his arms look massive.
Coach looks at me and sighs.
“I just want to try,” I say. It sounds feeble, even to me.
“We all deserve one chance to fail,” Facestache says.
“Rico Suave is right,” a huge black guy says. “Even girls get to try out.”
Coach has had enough: “Rodriguez, Cheesy, Bison—all of you. Haul ass!”
He blows a double tap on the whistle and the guys break into a run, circling around the perimeter of the field.
Coach steps towards me. He pats his belly like he’s petting a dog. “You sure you’re up for this, son?”
I’m not sure of anything. But with April behind me, the jocks in front of me, and Ugo back where I came from, it’s an excellent time to lie.
go.
It begins with running, moves on to calisthenics, and then it really gets ugly. I’m struggling along as best I can, sneaking sips on my inhaler when nobody is looking. But who am I kidding? I can’t do any of this stuff. My idea of sports is Grand Theft Auto. I can run for hours on that, and I’m not tired at all. At worst I have a thumb cramp.
In the pause between drills, O. quickly introduces me around. The guy with the bad jokes is Cheesy. Facestache is Rodriguez, aka Rico Suave. The big black guy is Frison, aka Bison. Everyone has a nickname. Except me.
I barely exist. Guys won’t even nod when they meet me, much less say my name. They just stare, challenging me. Everyone looks like they’re ready to fight.
I glance at my watch. It’s been six minutes, and it
feels like I’ve been out here for ten years.
I’ll be honest. Model UN is sounding better and better.
We set up for a sled drill. The sled is this thing that weighs about three million pounds. Coach blows his whistle and six guys at a time run and slam into them.
When you watch football on TV, people bang into things all the time. They even put mics down on the field so you hear the crack when the bodies hit. No big deal, right?
Very big deal.
It hurts.
We’re supposed to hit the sleds hard enough to push them backwards. Guys scream and crash into them without blinking. When it’s my turn, I try to do the same, only when I hit the sled for the first time, it’s like running into a wall. Every bone in my body hurts.
I limp back to the line, panting and clutching my chest.
“Die on your own time,” Rodriguez says.
“I’m not dying,” I say. But I can’t be too sure.
Coach blows the whistle again.
“Get some!” Rodriguez screams, and he hits the same sled I bounced off of and moves it back about four feet. He steps away and surveys the distance with a frown.
“I suck,” he says.
“There’s always girls’ softball,” Cheesy says.
“I’ve got experience with big balls,” Rodriguez says, and grabs his crotch.
“So does your mother,” Cheesy says, and grabs his crotch, too.
The mother stuff again. Unbelievable. These guys are obsessed.
I give the sled another try, imitating Rodriguez’s run style, but when I hit, there’s no crack. There’s a thud, and I bounce off again.
“Good hustle,” Coach says. He says it like it’s a good thing, but he’s got a look on his face like Dad used to get when I played T-ball. I’d swing and miss the ball, and Dad would sigh and look away.
As I’m walking back to the line, O. puts his hand on my shoulder and walks with me.
“These guys are not just running at the sled,” he says.
“What are they doing?”
O. pauses like he’s thinking of a way to explain it to me.