Gut Check

by Eric Kester

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  For Leigh and Alden

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  I guess I’ll start with how my parents came this close to naming me Thor. Seriously. And you know what? As ridiculous as the name sounds, I kind of wish it was mine. Thor is a beefy name and it would’ve fit me well since I’m a pretty beefy dude. Like, as a Thor, I’d proudly lumber down the hall and cute girls would stop and think, There goes 260 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal, rather than what they think now, which is probably more like, There goes 260 pounds of cheese cubes and man boobs. I’m sure girls would still laugh when I accidentally broke a pencil in my big clumsy paws, but it would be a flirty laugh, like a giggle, and they’d say, “Oh, Thor, your giant hands are so strong…” and I’d reply, “Well, you know what they say about guys with big hands…” and they’d grin and be like, “What “do they say about guys with big hands?” and I’d be like, “Greater risk for cancer” or something equally stupid because I’m so awkward around girls I blow it even in my fantasies.

  Thor, God of Thunder. Has a gritty ring to it, right? Much better than my actual name, which is just Wyatt. Apparently it was a compromise between my parents, back when they actually agreed on stuff. My dad wanted me to have a tough-sounding name like most of the men who live here in Grayport. Practically every guy in my town is called Hunter or Gunner or Archer, like they were named after what job they’d have if we were surviving in a postapocalyptic shantytown. Frankly, Grayport isn’t far from that. A postapocalyptic shantytown, I mean. Our local economy went to crap eight years ago, and half the stores in town are still boarded up. Our beaches, if you want to call them that, aren’t filled with people, but are littered with debris brought in from the storms that constantly rock our coast. Hell, even our high school football stadium, the jewel of the town, is falling apart. The whole thing is made from lumber we’ve recycled from shipwrecks, and our long row of state championship flags flies atop poles that are actually old ship masts.

  Grayport doesn’t have much to be proud of besides our football team and our general aura of blue-collar toughness, so it’s no surprise that my dad proudly claims that I’m named after Wyatt Earp. He was this legendary Old West gunslinger with a “don’t F with me” attitude and an absolutely savage mustache (google the guy—he had so much testosterone I’m pretty sure even his mustache had a mustache). But my mom says I’m really named for her uncle Wyatt, who, if legends of his greatness are to be believed, was an assistant librarian with a moderate case of asthma. I’ll let you figure out which Wyatt I take after.

  But I also have another name—a secret identity, if you will: Poncho Pete. Only three other people know about it, and frankly that’s three people too many. It isn’t exactly a privilege being Poncho Pete, so I’m relieved that so few people know I’m the loser hiding beneath that claustrophobic mascot costume. One person who knows is my best friend, Nate, a fellow freshman and my coworker. Nate helps me sell rain ponchos at our little wooden booth underneath the stands of Grayport High’s football stadium. Since most everyone in Grayport already has a rain jacket to protect against the constant storms, our poncho sales were lagging big-time, so our boss, Mr. Cliff, created Poncho Pete, a giant caricature of a fisherman whose nose comprised like 75 percent of his face. For some reason Poncho Pete wore a cape. It was a poncho.

  The third person who knows my secret identity is Dad, who made me take the job in the first place. My dad is not a guy you argue with, but I complained pretty hard since this job meant I’d be working during our home football games, and in Grayport you’re a nobody if you aren’t out there cheering on our boys to another state title. Plus there was the humiliation of being a mascot—what if somebody from school recognized me through the eyeholes cut into Poncho Pete’s nostrils?

  This argument seemed to really piss off my dad. A few days before the football season we were eating breakfast and I brought up the humiliation thing. He just sat in silence, stirring his whiskey and coffee. After a while he mumbled the word humiliation to himself, real bitter-like, and stormed off to his fishing boat in the harbor. I was still salty about the situation later that day when our landlord stopped by our apartment and handed me a letter addressed to my dad. I couldn’t see much when I held the envelope up to a light, but I did make out a faint final warning on late payments.

  I put the letter on Dad’s dresser and then called old Mr. Cliff to say, You got yourself a Poncho Pete.

  * * *

  “You feel that, Wyatt?” Mr. Cliff held out a wrinkled palm and caught a raindrop that seeped through a crack in the wooden bleachers above us.

  “I can’t feel anything in here, Mr. Cliff,” I shouted from the muted depths of my oversized fisherman head. It was actually the most comfortable part of my costume, since my bright yellow rain slacks were two sizes too small.

  Nate sat coiled on a stool behind our booth, an empty cash box in his lap. He was pouting because I’d convinced him to be our cashier. A second raindrop plopped on his nest of curly blond hair, and he pulled up the hood of his complimentary poncho.

  The rain must’ve been coming down hard. It was the opening night of football season—fourth quarter against our biggest rival, Blakemore High—and the electric excitement in the air seemed to have coalesced into an actual storm.

  I tilted my head back so I could inspect the bleachers above through the eyeholes in Poncho’s nostrils. Suddenly, as if responding to the mystical power of Poncho’s giant schnoz, the bleachers began to shake. Raindrops shook loose from the wooden boards and sprinkled down on us, and the long row of glowing lanterns began to sway from their creaking ropes, throwing creepy shadows across our stadium’s makeshift concourse. The rumble quickly crescendoed into a quake of cheering and clapping and foot stomping. You could literally feel the wooden boards of our shabby stadium rattling like a leaky ship in a storm.

  Grayport touchdown. Must’ve been.

  The dank underbelly of Grayport Stadium was suddenly abuzz with activity as dozens of vendors scrambled for their AM radios. Behind each booth a blur of hands frantically contorted antennas and twisted volume knobs to better hear Bobby Tingle deliver the play-by-play from the world above. Cliff, Nate, and I huddled around our radio, and I held my breath to better hear Tingle’s call through my fisherman head.

  “… and Grayport retakes the lead on Brett Parker’s thirty-three-yard QB keeper!”

  Tingle’s voice always trumpeted with pride, despite his moderate but passionate listenership. Since practically the entire town was packed into the five-thousand-seat stadium, the only radio listeners were us stadium vendors, the parking attendants outside, the lighthouse operator by the bay, and all those Grayport fishermen enduring another dark, wet night on boats bobbing somewhere in the Atlantic.

  “I’ll tell you what, folks: We just got our answer to whether the much-feared Blakemore linebacker, Derek Leopold, would be able to bottle up Brett Parker. The league’s reigning MVP just juked Leopol
d outta his socks on his way to his second score of the game. Parker’s sensational play has really got this place jumping … and on cue, here comes the rain, thick and heavy!”

  Mr. Cliff clapped his hands together. “Alright, boys, man your positions! Wyatt, this is your moment. Just like we rehearsed.”

  Mr. Cliff proudly referred to the rain dance as Poncho Pete’s Blood Rite of the Merciless Monsoon, but really it was just me swaying awkwardly while Nate tooted out “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on his recorder. I reluctantly stepped in front of our booth and began hopping around with my arms extended like an airplane. I always hate dancing in any setting. When people look at a guy my size dancing, they don’t see coordination or confidence or even comedy. They see jiggles.

  As I danced, the guys working the Italian sausage stand next to us shook their heads and smirked before averting their eyes when the secondhand embarrassment got too strong.

  Other than that, thank god, I didn’t have an audience.

  It really wasn’t a surprise. Other vendors (like the guys selling food, game programs, Grayport football shirts, etc.) rake in tons of cash on game nights. Nate’s right when he says that Grayport football is the life vest that keeps the town from drowning. But the poncho business was a real struggle-fest. It rains in Grayport like every freaking day, so you’d be certifiable if you didn’t already own a waterproof outfit. Besides, there was no way anyone was going to leave their seat right now. This was what Grayport lived for: fourth quarter of a tight game against Blakemore, our hated rivals who couldn’t handle the sloppy, difficult conditions that our team and fans thrived in. This was our home-field advantage—and the only advantage, it seemed, to calling Grayport home.

  But, man, was it a big advantage on Friday nights. It was like our pride in enduring storms gave us this magic ability to see through the thick coastal mist as Brett—our Brett, from just over there on 528 Pine Street—threaded passes that somehow got better the worse it rained.

  Midway through the fourth quarter the rain was pounding the bleachers so hard that we could barely hear Bobby Tingle on the radio. Somehow Blakemore wasn’t bothered by the torrential rain, and they were now beating us by five, causing the mood among the vendors to take on the same gloominess of our cavelike concourse. I took off my Poncho Pete head, confident that nobody I knew would come down and discover my secret identity. A few drenched scouts from USC (there to watch Brett, no doubt) slogged over to us, but otherwise it was quiet.

  That is, until a pack of six girls materialized through the fog into the concourse. The sausage guys stopped flipping their meat so they could concentrate all their energy on the girls. Each was rocking a matching pink sports bra, and on their skinny tan stomachs were the letters B-R-E-T-T spelled out in red paint. They were dripping wet, and coming right toward us.

  I noticed that one of the girls in the pack wasn’t matching her friends. She sported a crop top Grayport High T-shirt, which to me seemed braver, and in a way hotter, than if she was matching her friends. I felt a weird pull toward her, and as she glided forward through the dim orange glow of the lanterns, her aura sharpened into something real. Her brown hair was clumped in a wet tangle, and she had a cute perky nose like a little hill in a meadow of freckles. Actually, now that the girl was closer, she looked more and more like—

  Oh shit.

  I quickly grabbed Poncho Pete’s head and slammed it back on.

  “Nate,” I hissed. “We’ve got a problem. Haley. She’s coming.”

  “So…?”

  “So, the other day I might’ve kinda definitely told her that I’m on varsity football.”

  It wasn’t a planned lie, I swear. It just slipped out. A harmless little fib that was about to bite me in the butt. See, Haley sat in front of me in biology, and I had what you might describe as a debilitating crush on her. Every day throughout class I’d wonder about this cute girl in front of me, wonder who she was wondering about, wonder if she even knew my name, and wonder if my wondering would eventually have some sort of telepathic effect on her feelings for me. I also sometimes wondered why I was getting such a shitty grade in biology.

  Then, after two weeks of wondering if Haley’s world existed only in front of her, she turned around at the end of class and smiled at me.

  “Hey,” she said. “Did Mr. Benson say the test was next Monday or Tuesday?”

  I said, “Monday for sure,” which was a guess, and Haley smiled again and said thanks. Then, as she tossed her notebook into her bag, she asked if I was going to the game Friday. It was a simple yes-or-no question that vaporized my brain.

  “Uh, well, yeah,” I said. “’Cause I’m playing in it.”

  Nate listened to this news and looked at me like I had two heads, which I guess I technically did. “Why the hell did you tell her that?”

  “Because I’m a complete moron.”

  But also because I had to know, if only for ten beautiful seconds, what it was like to be somebody different. To be respected, to be a guy who really mattered. Earlier that day I’d been cut from football tryouts, and even though I had known I had no shot and had been preparing myself for the bad news, I was really disappointed. Or more accurately, I was disappointed with how disappointed I felt, how much I desperately wanted to play. As I scanned the list that Coach posted outside the locker room, every name I read had been a new opportunity to see “Wyatt Parker,” a new chance for my life to change. But in the end, each name had been just another mini disappointment until finally I reached the end of the list and was left looking at nothing. Just emptiness.

  So when later that day Haley turned to me and hesitated a second because she clearly didn’t know my name, it felt like some vague structure inside me, tall but flimsy, had toppled over. Buried in that rubble, I felt a sharp desperation and reached for anything that could pull me out, let me breathe. So I looked at Haley and pretended that I had reached my goal, that I had made the team, and that on Friday I would finally be wearing a Grayport jersey with my number stamped front and back. A jersey that, once you put it on, transformed you from just another fat kid into a varsity lineman.

  When the girls reached our booth, Mr. Cliff was bursting with excitement to finally have some customers. “Hey, Poncho Pete,” he called to me. “Quit hiding back there and show these nice ladies how you called down the rain.”

  I was making a “please don’t do this to me” face from underneath my mascot head. I was determined to stay in the shadows behind the booth.

  Mr. Cliff frowned. “Come on, Poncho! Nate, start the tune!”

  I slunk into position in front of the booth. Through Poncho Pete’s nostrils I could see Madison Wheatley, Mia Torres, Dakota Babson, and Samantha Betts standing in a semicircle of terrifying poses, their arms folded across their pink sports bras as they traded obvious whispers and snickers. Haley was standing to the side, but her gaze was leveled right on me. I felt epically lame. Like, by comparison Nate looked totally badass next to me, and he was holding a recorder.

  Nate brought the instrument to his lips, and I instinctively sucked in my stomach, as if that could actually squelch the unstoppable jiggle effect. I extended my arms into my pathetic airplane pose.

  “You know, it’s really okay,” Haley suddenly interjected, her voice warm yet firm. “I’m sure Poncho is pretty exhausted from all this rain.”

  The other girls grumbled small complaints—oh, come on, it’ll be funny!—but Haley just smiled and pulled a ten-dollar bill from her jeans pocket. Mr. Cliff shrugged and began stacking ponchos on the booth’s counter.

  Relief rushed through me, followed by a blast of gratitude. Haley, I realized, was one of those rare people who just get it, someone who can read social cues the same way Brett can read defenses and know exactly where to throw the ball. Then it struck me that maybe the other day Haley had known exactly when the biology test was, that maybe she just found a reason to brighten up the day of a kid who always trudged into the room, his shoulders a little slumped.

&nb
sp; I grabbed the pile of ponchos to hand out to the girls. Then I had the terrible idea of saying something to them.

  “So, are you guys, like, big Brett Parker fans or something?”

  “Geez, what gave it away,” snarked the girl with the R on her stomach. She snatched a poncho from me.

  I handed one to Haley. Was I imagining things, or was she giving me an odd squint, like underneath my costume she could see the real me?

  “Thanks,” she said. “You’re a lifesaver, Poncho. Really.”

  I was beaming under my mask. “Well, not all superheroes wear capes,” I said, surprising myself with the clever line.

  “But you are wearing a cape.”

  “Oh … right.” It was time to quit while I was only slightly behind. “Well, stay dry out there!”

  I spun around and BLAM, slammed Poncho’s head directly into a lantern. I frantically reached up to grab the head as it tipped backward, but it was too late. It toppled to the ground with a crash.

  I stood motionless, my back to Haley, trying to figure out a way to discreetly retrieve Poncho’s head. I could feel her staring a hole into my back. A silent freak-out exploded in my soul as I realized there was no way around this.

  I winced, took a deep breath, and slowly turned around.

  Then, just before I faced Haley, a violent burst of clanging rang out from the sausage booth. Everyone in the concourse, including Haley, turned to check out the commotion.

  The sausage guys were wildly banging pans with their tongs. This was their celebration for big plays.

  “… and Grayport is still alive!” shouted a fevered Bobby Tingle through the radio. “An unbelievable fourth-and-ten conversion by Brett Parker has brought the offense to the Blakemore fifteen-yard line. The clock has ticked down to the two-minute warning, Grayport trailing by five. Buckle in, folks!”