by Eric Kester
Brett chuckled. I smiled. We lay in silence. Through the window I listened to the waves crash against rocks on the shore.
“So?” Brett said after a minute.
“So what?”
“So what did her hair smell like?”
“Who’s being the creep now?”
“Come on, Wyatt. The tide out there smells like a rotten egg’s asshole. Either close the window or give me a good smell to at least imagine.”
“Since when are you a guy who swears?”
“Well, it’s the first time I’ve had a splitting headache while being directly in the waft zone of a rotten egg’s asshole. Come on, what did her hair smell like?”
“Sorry, but I don’t sniff and tell.”
“So you admit you were sniffing!”
“No! I meant smell. I don’t smell and tell.”
“Okay, okay. I respect the loyalty to her.”
We kept lying there. I don’t think we’d ever had such a long inter-bunk conversation. It was everything I’d ever wanted. It was almost perfect. Except for one thing.
“What do you remember about the final play?” I asked softly.
“I remember calling the play in the huddle. Then the next thing…” Brett trailed off. “I guess the next thing I kind of remember is being in the end zone, celebrating with you.”
“I missed the block on Leopold,” I blurted.
“But you made the catch.”
“And now your head is all messed up.”
“But you made the catch.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“You made the catch.”
“Do you think Dad will be mad at me?”
“We won. Why would he be mad?”
“Because he’s always mad.”
“Good point,” Brett said.
We lay there some more, thinking to ourselves. Through the window, I heard an extra-loud wave smash against the rocks. Whenever I feel stressed, I close my eyes and sync my breath to the sound of the waves, inhaling slowly on the rolling crescendo, exhaling quickly on the sudden crash. I tried it now, but any sense of calm was suffocated by wafts of rancid fish—our food, our income, our sustenance, our lifeblood—decaying on the shore.
“Hey, Brett, remember when we were little and red tide came and you convinced me it was the blood of our enemies?”
Brett laughed. “Yeah, I do.”
“What if, like, we are the enemies?”
“What do you mean?”
“I dunno. Everyone here is always, like, so sure that the Grayport way of life is the right way, and we’re a bunch of virtuous badasses for enduring all the hard stuff. But maybe crappy things have happened here because we deserve it a little. Karma-wise, I mean. There are a bunch of really toxic people here, you know? Maybe this isn’t a case of the innocent being cursed. Maybe it’s punishment.”
Brett was quiet for long enough that I started to worry I offended him by throwing shade at the town. In some ways, or at least in the football way, Brett embodied Grayport. But he answered calmly. “Well, maybe those people are only toxic because bad stuff keeps happening to them.”
I thought about it. “Could be,” I said. “I guess it’s like the chicken and the egg.”
“How do you mean?”
“Like, what came first? What started the cycle? Do the disasters only happen because karma or God or whatever is punishing us for being bad, or are we only bad because the disasters come first and push us to that point?”
“You’re making my head hurt more.”
“Sorry.”
“All I know is that people and towns aren’t just good or bad. Life is way more complicated than that. Everything has shades of gray.”
“Dad doesn’t have shades of gray,” I countered.
“We only know one version of Dad.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I mean, he couldn’t have always been this way.”
I thought about the old picture of Dad hanging in our locker room’s Wall of Fame. Even as a teenager he looked like a fiery son of a bitch. But at least he had some fire in his eyes, as opposed to the cold nothingness in them now. I wondered if that picture was taken before or after he mangled up his hip.
“Brett?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you have a concussion?”
“Wyatt, come on.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because it’s not allowed.”
“By who?”
Three waves swelled and crashed before he answered. “By everyone. Everything.”
Everyone. Everything.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about these words since Brett said them. And I still don’t really know why he thought a concussion wasn’t “allowed” by everyone and everything. Sometimes I think Brett meant it literally, that if this injury really was a concussion, people like Dad or Coach Crooks would pressure him to hide it and keep playing.
Other times I think Brett meant the concussion wasn’t “allowed” by Grayport as a whole. Not by the individuals of Grayport, necessarily, but by the very spirit of the old town itself, its stubborn ideology born from centuries of endurance, its hard-ass attitude that forces its residents—and especially its football players—to keep going, keep playing, no matter the pain, no matter the cost.
Or Brett could’ve been talking about himself: how his personal code of toughness and loyalty to the town would never allow him to admit having an invisible injury that, unlike his broken arm last season, he could theoretically play through.
Mostly, though, I got the feeling that by “everyone and everything,” Brett meant—or hoped—a severe concussion wasn’t allowed by whatever higher power controlled such things, that even in a world as rainy and dark as ours there wasn’t enough karmic injustice to do him like that. Not to a guy who just finished a grueling year rehabbing a broken arm, not to a guy who desperately needed a healthy senior season so he could finally escape this place.
From my pillow I stared up at the slab of plywood that supported Brett’s mattress. I thought about the body fat–measuring caliper that he was hiding there, and how a guy so dependent on measurable numbers was now reduced to hoping that the whims of fate wouldn’t end his season, and his dreams, prematurely. I thought about the watercolors I once found under his mattress, and wondered if Brett still occasionally painted the ocean’s horizon, dreaming of his escape to a distant and undefined place where he wouldn’t have to hide his art. Brett said everything had shades of gray, even Grayport. But I knew the town would never have shades of pastel, and I so badly wanted Brett to have them in his life.
I heard a rustling of sheets above me, and suddenly Brett’s upside-down face hung over the edge of his mattress. His crisp green eyes locked onto me.
“Wyatt, you can’t tell anyone about my head.”
I diverted my eyes from his, stalling. I could tell the blood was rushing to Brett’s reddening face, and soon he pulled his head back up to his bunk.
“Promise me, Wyatt,” came the voice from above.
I wanted to promise Brett. I wanted to seal our secret and our newly formed bond. I wanted another chance to protect his blind side. But I was scared. I’d heard enough about concussions to know that playing through one can be incredibly dangerous. I’d seen what permanent hip damage could do to a man. I didn’t want to see what permanent brain damage was like.
“Wyatt? Do you hear me?”
“Lavender.”
“What?”
“Her hair smelled like lavender,” I said. “And honey.”
“That’s bull. You don’t even know what lavender is.”
“Do too.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a spice,” I guessed.
“Wrong,” Brett said. “
It’s a flower.”
“Yeah. A spicy flower.”
“Flowers can’t be spicy.”
“The flower Super Mario eats lets him shoot fireballs. That’s spicy as hell.”
Brett laughed. I closed my eyes and imagined Haley, her smile and her gentle confidence and the fragrance of her hair, delicate lavender swirling in the cool salt air. The memory of the smell was almost strong enough to snuff out the putrid rot drifting through the window. Almost.
“Promise me, Wyatt. Promise me you won’t tell.”
I kept my eyes shut and listened to the waves hurl themselves against the rocks. I listened to the wind lightly rattle the shutters outside our attic window. I listened to a pair of seagulls call out to each other through the fog, cutting through the shroud of mist in their own intimate and secret language, and then I listened to myself say, Yes, Brett, I promise.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
I’ve got serious beef with Facebook. Or more specifically, with the people who designed their phone app. Not only did a poor design choice put me in an incredibly awkward situation with Haley, it almost reduced the science wing of Grayport High into a smoldering crater of ash.
Let me explain.
The morning after the Blakemore game and bonfire party, I casually sent Haley a Facebook friend request. It really was no big deal and I would’ve forgotten about it entirely if not for the 489 times I refreshed the app to see if she’d accepted my request. She finally accepted it before school on Monday morning. This was pretty clutch because I was going to see her first period in physics.
Haley was already seated when I got to class, and as I walked to my desk, which was behind hers, I had a mini freak-out trying to think of something to say. For some reason my dumb brain kept urging me to address our burgeoning Facebook relationship with a line like, Hey, thanks for hitting me back on The ’Book, or something equally as stupid and life-ruining. Miraculously, I was able to fight off my instincts and bailed on the idea at the last second. But since I had no backup plan, I didn’t say anything at all to Haley. I didn’t even acknowledge her—just sauntered on by and sat down at the desk behind her.
It turns out this was a brilliant move because it played into the brash persona I’d adopted accidentally a few nights before when I unintentionally invited Haley to sit on my lap. My bold “flirting” at the bonfire, followed by this morning’s sudden aloofness, was a magic combination that made Haley more interested in me than I ever imagined possible. Sure, it was a dick move, this unpredictable push-pull, but it worked. It also made me realize how a brazen guy like Trunk always managed to get girlfriends despite the fact that he looked like the offspring of a hippo who’d mated with a blood relative.
When I plunked down in my seat, Haley instantly turned around.
“Aren’t you going to say hi?” Her tone was inviting, so I knew she wasn’t too annoyed with me.
“Oh, yeah. Of course. Hey.”
“Hey,” she said, smiling. “How was the rest of your weekend?”
Well, let’s see: My brother’s head is scrambled because I missed a block; we licked Jell-O cups clean like we were stray dogs at a dumpster; our landlord cut off the power because we’re behind on payments; and I had to sit on the sticky floor of a 7-Eleven as I charged my phone in case you accepted my friend request and sent me a message.
“It was really good. Just chilled and did some stuff and things.”
Most of the class had filed in by this point, and from my right I heard someone singing out to me: “Brooooo. Broo-OOO-ooo.”
I ignored it, and kept my attention locked on Haley.
“Stuff and things, huh? You must be exhausted,” she teased.
“Brooooo,” the call came again. Frustrated, I turned and looked at Jeremy, who still had his hands cupped around his mouth to project whatever this weird stoner mating call was.
“Hey, Jeremy,” I said, trying to sound annoyed.
“Bro! Bro-seph. Frosty the Bro-man. Edgar Allan Bro.”
“Yes?”
“Just wanted to say ‘what up.’”
“Okay, hi.” I turned back to Haley. “Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay. A lot of people must want to talk to you now that you’re—” Haley cut herself short. “Not that you weren’t before, I mean. I’m sure you had, er, have, lots of frie—I just mean that since the game and all, you’ve become—”
“Like Bro-seidon, God of the Bro-cean.”
“Thanks, Jeremy,” Haley said, glancing at our third wheel before turning back to me. “Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to be lab partners today? Not because of the game—because of afterward. I had fun at the party, I mean.”
I said yes just as the classroom door swung open and our teacher, Mrs. Crooks, stomped in. Yup, you read that right: My physics teacher was Coach Crooks’s wife. She was about two decades younger than Crooks, making her roughly ninety-seven years old. But she was still sharp as a fishhook. According to my barber, Jack, who knows all the town gossip, back in the day Mrs. Crooks lived in Houston and worked for NASA doing quantum astrophysics. Supposedly she was fired for hazing too many of her coworkers. Like, we’re talking wedgies and stuff. After getting canned, she researched towns that matched her gruffness and found Grayport. She met Coach Crooks in the early sixties at a town hall meeting where he was proposing a law that made wearing bow ties a misdemeanor.
Mrs. Crooks slammed the door, took off her raincoat, and hung it on the doorknob. Like always, the jacket immediately slipped off and fell to the floor. She didn’t bother picking it up.
“Alright, you turd goblins, quiet down. My hangover has a hangover so we’re gonna be real quiet today.” She really was the personification of a rusty nail.
Suddenly the door swung back open and Nate scampered in. The kid was so good at physics he once made his own functional sundial, but even with his genius he could never get anywhere on time. He stumbled over Mrs. Crooks’s rain jacket, like always, and mumbled an apology.
“Tardy again,” Mrs. Crooks squawked. “Come on now, you know the penalty.”
Nate sighed, slipped off his anvil of a backpack, crouched down to the floor, and performed fifteen push-ups. When he was done he dragged his backpack to his desk, which was to the left of mine.
“Today’s lab is on friction,” Mrs. Crooks explained to the class. “We’ll do it in pairs, so find a partner you won’t want to strangle after working together for forty-five minutes.”
Chairs scraped loudly against the linoleum floor as everyone got up and slowly meandered to the lab stations that were set up on the counters along the back and sides of the classroom.
As I made my way over I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I turned around to see Nate.
“Alright, partner,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
Grinning, he hit me with one of his sarcastic butt slaps and headed over to the lab station where we always worked together.
“Wyatt! Over here!” Haley waved cheerfully from a lab station on the opposite side of the classroom. She had already set up our beakers.
Shit. Every ounce of me wanted to partner up with Haley. But I’d been thinking a lot about the promise I made to Nate in the cafeteria: that I wouldn’t become somebody different. In retrospect, it was a pretty dumb promise, because part of me did want to become somebody different. I owed Nate, though. I really did.
I froze in the middle of the two lab stations, racking my brain for a way out of this dilemma.
I looked at Haley, who was pulling a latex glove over her hand. She gave me a sly grin and let the glove’s elastic cuff snap against her skin, which was, for some reason, the hottest thing I’d ever seen. I turned back toward Nate, who picked a piece of food out of his braces.
“Our test tubes have a strange growth in them!” he called over excitedly. “You coming or what?”
I’d normally ask Nate for advice on this type of conundrum, but I had to work it out myself. Part of me figured that since my
friendship with Nate went all the way back to elementary school, it was strong enough to endure one more hit. But lately I’d been thinking a lot about the dangers of assuming something will always be there for you, even (especially) if it’s a staple of your life.
But all that is really an illusion, a veil as thick as the Grayport fog. Nothing is permanent. One minute football is there and the next it’s gone, severed like a ligament in your hip. So when you are lucky enough to have something that important in your life, something so vital and reliable that you can be fooled into believing in its permanence, then you gotta pour all of yourself into it. Can’t turn your back on it, even once.
But then again, can’t the same argument be made against devoting all of yourself to a staple, a constant, your football, your Nate? My dad may be a Grayport football legend, but when I saw him passed out on the floor the other night like a monument that had crumbled into a pile of rubble, I started to think about the importance of never getting to a point where the loss of one thing means the loss of everything.
“Parker!” Mrs. Crooks snapped. “You lost or something? Stop lollygagging and partner up.”
I still hadn’t made up my mind, but Mrs. Crooks forced my hand. I sighed and walked over to Haley. She handed me a pair of rubber gloves.
“Remember to always wear protection,” she said.
“I’m really sorry about this,” I mumbled down into my shoelaces. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. “I know I said I’d be your partner, but Nate and I sort of have this unspoken agreement that we’re a couple. Not a couple in that way—not that there’s anything wrong with that—but a couple, you know … scientifically. Like a dream team, but in physics.” I really needed to shut up. “Anyway, I can’t ditch him.”
“That’s very noble of you.” Haley’s tone was so soft and kind it was either dripping in sarcasm or sincerity. “It’s fine,” she went on. “I’ll just work with Jeremy. He should be pretty good, right? Since it’s like the third time he’s repeated the class…”
I laughed and thanked Haley again. Feeling slightly better about the situation, I walked over to Nate. He looked at me dumbfounded.
“I know you’re the hero of Grayport right now, but since when do you talk to girls? And to Haley Waters. You can barely talk to my mom without puking on your shoes.”