by Allen Zadoff
“Do you ever get angry?” he says.
“All the time,” I say.
“Not just angry. Seriously pissed off. Like you want to hurt someone.”
“I guess.”
“That’s the secret. You have to go to that place and spend a little time there,” he says.
I want to ask him more, but he peels away to set up for the next drill.
No more sleds. Coach has us form two lines and face each other man-to-man.
“Look at the man across from you,” Coach says.
I’m standing opposite Cheesy. He’s got the sweatbands on his arms, too. He pulls them up across thick muscles.
“This man is not your friend,” Coach says. “He is an interloper, an invader of your private territory. He is the son of a bitch who eats the last ice-cream sandwich from the freezer without replacing the box.”
“Get some!” Rodriguez screams.
“You will push this man back,” Coach says. “You will protect the ice-cream sandwich.”
The guys grunt loudly.
Cheesy leans towards me. “Jurassic Pork,” he says. “You ain’t so tough when you get around the real dinosaurs.”
“Set!” Coach says.
O. said I had to go to that place. What is that place?
I think about someone eating my ice-cream sandwich. That’s irritating. Then I think of a tray of Mom’s mini muffins, wanting them, but Mom saying I can’t have them. That kind of makes me mad.
I think about Dad all alone in an apartment in downtown Boston.
I think about Justin with his arm around April’s shoulders the other day.
My jaw clenches and I bite down hard.
I think about walking through the cafeteria, how my fat makes me feel like some giant Jell-O mold that everyone laughs at when it shakes.
“Go!” Coach says.
I explode off the line, crashing head-on into Cheesy. I hit and bounce, and then I slap and hit again like I see the guys doing. Coach blows the whistle to stop. I look at the line and realize I’m exactly where I started. I haven’t pushed forward, but I haven’t been pushed back.
“All right!” Cheesy says. “A little challenge. Me likey.”
It’s the exact opposite of what I expected. I thought Cheesy would be angry with me for banging into him. I assumed fighting back would get you killed like it does in the hall with Ugo, but the rules are different out here.
“Reset!” Coach says.
I glance over to the girls, and I catch a blur of hair and moving limbs. More things I can’t have.
“Go!” Coach says. “Go, go, go, go—”
I roar and leap at Cheesy, only he’s not Cheesy anymore. He’s Mom/Dad/Jessica/Justin all rolled into one. I attack, pushing, grunting, and swinging my arms. I can’t see the field or any of the players. I can’t even see Cheesy in front of me.
Before I know what’s happening, O. and a bunch of guys are pulling me back by the waist. Cheesy has his arms up like he’s trying to surrender, and I’m hitting him. There’s a piece of torn fabric in my hand. One of Cheesy’s armbands.
“You stop when I blow the damn whistle!” Coach says.
“I didn’t hear it,” I say.
“Dude,” Cheesy says. “It’s just practice. Take it easy on my bands.” He rubs his arm where I ripped the sweatband off him.
Bison steps up like he’s going to beat the crap out of me. “You want me to school the boy?” he says.
O. jumps into the middle of things. He pats Bison on the shoulder and motions for him to back away. He checks to make sure Cheesy is okay. Then he turns his attention back to me.
“Let’s grab a Gator,” he says.
He walks me towards a red tank.
“Everything copasetic?” he says.
“I did what you said. I went to that place.”
“No kidding,” O. says.
He takes a shot of red liquid, offers one to me.
“Now we have to teach you how to get back,” he says.
how not to limp in front of your mom.
“I’m going to take a bath,” I tell Mom when I get home.
“You don’t take baths,” Mom says.
“I’m in the mood. So kill me,” I say.
“Don’t get angry with me,” Mom says.
“I’m not angry,” I say.
But I am angry. I feel like breaking something. Maybe it’s because of football. You get used to hitting things. It’s hard to stop.
Also, I’m pissed off about the end of practice. I can’t shower in the locker room because it’s one of those group showers where everyone can see you. That’s not showering; that’s a Public Display of Fatness. Definitely not an option. So when the guys started to get undressed and put on those little towels, I flew out the door.
“Do you want some bath salts?” Mom says when I’m halfway up the stairs.
“I love bath salts,” Jessica shouts from the den. Eavesdropping as usual.
“I’ll run the water for you,” Mom says, and she shoots up the stairs.
Very strange.
I walk upstairs slowly, trying hard not to limp in front of Mom. My body feels like it was put through a medieval torture chamber. I saw a special about that on the History Channel. In medieval times they would torture you, throw you into a dungeon, and feed you gruel. The narrator said “gruel” like it was a bad thing, but on the TV show, the gruel looked a lot like oatmeal. I wouldn’t mind eating oatmeal several times a day. Unless Mom ran the dungeon. Then I’d probably get mini gruel.
When I go into the bathroom, Mom is stirring purple salt into the water with her hand.
“I don’t want to smell like flowers,” I say.
“It’s not flowers,” Mom says. “It’s lavender.”
“Lavender is a flower, Mom.”
“Since when?”
“Look at the label,” I say.
She holds up the bottle. There’s a picture of a purple flower.
“Well, what do you know?” She says. “Forty years and I never knew what lavender was!”
That makes me laugh. Mom laughs a little, too. She hasn’t done that in a while.
“I’ve been hard on you lately, haven’t I?” Mom says.
“No,” I say, even though the answer is yes.
I check the flap on my robe to make sure Mom can’t see my underwear. The tag says ONE SIZE FITS ALL, but I must be larger than “ALL” because the robe doesn’t fit me too well anymore.
Mom says, “You’ve been helping me out so much at events—I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
It’s small in the bathroom and we’re almost touching. The smell of lavender makes me a little woozy.
“I worry about your weight,” Mom says. “That’s why I’m on you so much.”
“It’s okay, Mom. Really.” I don’t want to have this conversation for the ten-thousandth time.
“I know what it’s like to be a heavy child. Especially in high school. Kids can be cruel.”
I’ve seen pictures of Mom from her senior year. She wasn’t exactly fat, but she had chipmunk cheeks, and she looks uncomfortable in front of the camera. I can always tell when someone looks uncomfortable. It’s my special gift. Probably because I’m so uncomfortable.
“Maybe I’m a bad mother.”
“You’re not a bad mother.”
“Then why won’t you listen to me? If I was a good mother, I’d be able to get through to you. Other mothers get through.”
“No, they don’t.”
“The good mothers do.”
“Trust me. They don’t.”
I can’t tell if Mom’s crying, or if it’s just the steam from the bath making her cheeks red.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say.
“It’s my job to say things like that,” Mom says.
Mom smoothes down my hair, and I wince. I can’t help it. I don’t like to be touched.
“I hope you have the best year ever,” Mom says.
Mom wipes her eyes. I think she really was crying.
She pauses at the door. “I know you talk to your father during the week,” she says.
I pull the belt on my robe into a tight knot.
“No, I don’t,” I say.
“Well, if you do, you might just mention … he’s a month behind with the check.”
Mom has this amazing ability to ruin any moment. I thought Mom was being nice to me because she wanted to give me a pep talk. Now I feel like I got set up.
Mom says, “We’re trying to avoid going to court. To keep things friendly, you know.”
“I know,” I say.
“So if you mention it to him, that would help a lot.”
“Fine,” I say.
“You’re not angry, are you?”
“Of course not.”
Mom closes the door. I get in the stupid tub that smells like flowers. The water scorches my skin, but it feels good on my muscles, too. Pain and pleasure at the same time. Like buffalo wings. Like high school.
how to lie to your best friend.
I’m hanging around outside AP History, pretending to tie my shoe for the eighteenth time. I’ve been waiting for April for ten minutes, all the time pretending I’m not. Love at second sight is a lot of work. That’s what I’m starting to think.
I bend over again, and I feel my pants ride down my butt.
“Attractive,” Eytan says from behind me.
“It’s the Eighth Wonder of the World,” I say.
“Eighth and Ninth,” Eytan says.
“It’s these stupid new pants. If I pull up the front, they fall down in back. If I pull up the back, my stomach pops out.”
“It’s the movement of the cosmos. Where something is born, something else dies.”
Eytan adjusts his John Lennon glasses and stares at me.
“Speaking of ass—what happened to you yesterday?”
“Sorry about that,” I say. “I had an emergency. I think a Russian agent slipped me something. Insta-poops.”
“The Russians took your colon hostage?”
“Anything to prevent Estonia from rising.”
Eytan eyes me suspiciously, but he knows that I really do get the runs a lot. You can’t blame a guy for IBS.
Suddenly April walks by. Before I can say hello, Eytan swirls his arm in the air a bunch of times and bows deeply from the waist.
“Good day to you, madam,” he says in a fake British accent.
April doesn’t answer, just walks by with her head down.
“Ouch,” Eytan says. “Is my Jew-’fro singed?”
“It’s not you. I’m still socially radioactive. She saw that soccer game.”
We go into class together. April is sitting alone on the other side of the room next to the pencil sharpener. If I have to sit through a whole class watching Justin try to flirt with her, I’ll kill myself.
I have to do something.
That’s when a crazy thought occurs to me. If I can face off against Cheesy, I should be able to talk to a girl for two minutes.
I drop my books on the desk next to Eytan, hold my pencil by my side, and snap the point off with my thumbnail. “I’m going to sharpen this bad boy up,” I say.
I walk across the room, silently praying for my ass crack to stay under wraps. As I pass April’s desk, I chicken out. I don’t say a word. I just stick my pencil in the sharpener and start grinding away. It gets shorter and shorter while my mind whirls. Freud would have a heyday with this one.
“I saw you on the field yesterday,” April says out of the blue.
“Really?” I say. I pretend I didn’t notice her sitting right there.
“How’d you do?”
“I did great,” I say. “Not at all like that stupid soccer game last week.”
I mime my shorts falling down. She looks shocked at first, but then she laughs. It’s a big risk reminding her of that day, but that’s what the guys on the team do. When they make a mistake, they’re not shy about it. They make fun of themselves, and it makes everything better.
“How’d the cheerleading go?” I say.
“Great,” she says. She bites at her lower lip. “Actually, not so good. I’m really out of shape, you know?”
I glance down at her legs. I can’t help it. She’s wearing a skirt, and I can see her thigh muscles. They’re tight and muscular, which has me wondering about her definition of “out of shape.”
“I might get cut,” she says.
“No way. You have nothing to worry about. I was watching you.”
“You were?”
I feel my face turning red. I don’t want her to think I’m a stalker or something.
“Were my jumps high enough?” she says. She tugs nervously at an errant piece of hair.
“They were really high,” I say.
“The girls didn’t say anything.”
“Maybe they’re jealous.”
April laughs. “What do they have to be jealous about?”
Ms. Hartwell clears her throat. “Let’s get started,”
she says. “See you soon,” April whispers.
I walk across the room with my stubby little pencil, and I notice everyone’s looking at me. That’s probably because I’m the ballsy guy who made April laugh. Or maybe it’s because my pants are riding low again.
“I thought you were radioactive,” Eytan says when I get back.
“I guess my reactor has been contained,” I say.
Eytan looks at April. “Are you putting your rod in the core?”
“Of course not.” I feel my cheeks getting hot.
Eytan crosses his arms. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’m going to figure it out.”
Ms. Hartwell flips on the overhead projector. She stands framed in the spotlight.
I glance across the room, and April smiles at me.
“War breaks out in Lexington,” Ms. Hartwell says, “and it all begins with one, unexpected shot.”
back in the big leagues.
I’m rolling a kickball to a girl in a scoliosis brace while Warner looks on and smiles. I want to elbow him in the head. What is there to be happy about?
Suddenly Coach pops through the door of the gym. A ripple of fear passes through the Slow Gym kids. Coach might ask us to do something. Like stand up.
“Zansky!” He motions me over.
“Yeah, Coach?”
He puts an arm around my shoulders and whispers, “You don’t need to be playing patty-cake in here, son. Why don’t you come outside and join the party?”
“I don’t know, Coach. I’m not too good at soccer.”
Coach chuckles. “Tell you what,” he says. “We’ll put you on goal today. You can guard it rather than knock it down.”
I look back at the Slow Gym kids. Warner is watching me, the little eyes in his big face staring. He’s not smiling anymore. He looks sort of pitiful, like those puppies in the store window at the mall when you walk away from them. I want to punch him for looking at me like that.
“What do you say?” Coach asks.
“Good idea,” I say.
I walk onto the field and the game stops dead. The whole class turns at the same time to watch me. A guy in an ankle brace gives me a dirty look. One of my unfortunate victims.
April is talking to a cute blonde girl. They whisper to each other when they see me.
“It’s the Thunder Down Under,” Becky Samuelson says. Becky’s dad is practically a movie star, so she thinks she’s one, too. Anyway, her comment gets a big laugh.
I just stand there on the field with an empty ten-foot zone around me. It’s like the time I had gas in temple.
“Take it easy on my bands!” someone shouts. It’s Rodriguez from the football team, grinning and smoothing down his facestache. I didn’t even know he was in this gym class.
“You’re back in the big leagues, huh?” he says, and he gives me a rough handshake.
“I guess.”
“Even great players
go down to Triple-A sometimes. They work on the skill set until they get called up again.”
Rodriguez head-butts a soccer ball. It rolls into the center of the field.
“Vamonos,” he says.
We jog back onto the field. I kick the ball back and forth with Rodriguez for a minute. With the two of us together, nobody dares to say anything. They just form back into teams, and the game starts up like nothing ever happened.
A second later April runs by.
“Welcome back,” she says, and she gives me a wink.
the elephant in the living room.
“When it’s time for nominations, remember,” Eytan says, “nothing below Commerce Secretary. It’s degrading.”
We’re rushing down the hall towards the Model UN meeting. Eytan is wearing an old sports coat over a Radiohead T-shirt. Business attire.
“I’m not sure I want a position this semester,” I say.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m really busy. I may need to fade into the background.”
“We’re sophomores now,” Eytan says. “No more fading.”
What I don’t say is that yesterday was the last day of football tryouts, and everyone’s waiting for the list to go up. I keep trying to tell Eytan what’s happening, but it never seems to be the right time. Maybe that’s how it was with Dad and Miriam. He wanted to tell Mom, but he never found the right time.
We stop in front of a door with a handwritten sign: REPUBLIC OF ESTONIA.
“I really played you up during the meeting last week,” he says, “so walk like you got a pair.”
“A pair of what?”
“Massive Estonian gonads.”
“Dude, I’ve got a lot on my mind,” I say.
Eytan looks at me strangely. He says, “What’s with the ‘dude’ stuff? Let’s switch to polysyllabic mode, huh? We’re heading into the diplomatic trenches.”
He throws open the door.
I spend the rest of the afternoon discussing what Eytan calls the great balancing act—ways to protect our tiny republic without pissing off our giant and powerful neighbor, Russia. An hour in and we’ve switched to debating military strategy.
“Historically, diplomacy has proven to be an effective deterrent,” Eytan says.