Gut Check

by Eric Kester

  “Yes, which is the same as a muffin,” I explained. “They look exactly like muffins and they’re made from the exact same core ingredients: flour, sugar, and eggs.”

  “But muffins have such a different consistency,” Haley countered. “A different texture. And cupcakes are always sweeter. They’re dessert.”

  “Try a double chocolate muffin from Dunkin’ Donuts and tell me muffins can’t be dessert.”

  Haley frowned. “So you’re telling me you could take a bran muffin, slap frosting on it, and suddenly it’s a cupcake?”

  “No, a muffin with frosting is not always a cupcake. But a cupcake without frosting is always a muffin. It’s like rectangles and squares: Not all rectangles are squares, but all squares are rectangles.”

  Haley looked at me with a bemused smile. “Getting a glimpse inside your brain is like visiting one of those funhouse mazes full of mirrors. I’m never sure where I’ll end up, and I’m kind of weirded out the entire time, but I also can’t stop laughing.”

  “And at the end of the maze is a delicious red velvet muffin.”

  “Okay, that brings me to the second thing we need to talk about,” Haley said in a less playful tone. “Even if that is a muffin—which it isn’t—why would you choose a muffin over a cupcake?”

  I could tell from the focus on Haley’s face that she was fully aware of the sensitive territory she was treading on.

  “I dunno,” I muttered. “Muffins are just healthier, you know? More lean and more reliable. Cupcakes are good for the right occasion, but sometimes when I look at frosting I just see sugary, fatty excess.”

  “Well, when I see frosting,” Haley said, “I see extra sweetness. I see warmth and coziness and charm.”

  I felt my cheeks getting warm, and I looked down at my shoelaces. “I think people generally prefer muffins. Ever heard of the term ‘stud muffin’?”

  “Muffins can be good, but I prefer cupcakes,” Haley stated plainly. “Does that count for anything?”

  Yes, it counted for everything.

  I lifted my gaze from my shoelaces and looked back into Haley’s deep blue eyes. They were soft and steady under her gently arched eyebrows, and I suddenly realized they were inviting me to see myself through them: without judgment.

  It was the last step in a process that I now knew was mostly complete. For almost my entire conversation with Haley, I’d felt free and easy. I felt nimble and witty. I even felt light. Yes, the self-consciousness hit me at one point, but it was brief. For a while, I didn’t even feel the typical tug-of-war between desire and guilt about the dessert. A few months ago, if you were to tell me that the one and only Haley Waters would see me ogling a tray of free cupcakes at a soup kitchen, I’d be completely and utterly mortified. But that scenario was exactly what had just happened, and I was fine. Better than fine. I made her laugh.

  The third-person camera watching from above had seen a fat kid next to a bunch of cupcakes. But who was really behind that camera? Was it the only view of the scene? Another angle might see a varsity offensive lineman fueling himself up for the season. Another might see a cupcake tactician channeling his best possible vibes toward his work. And another might see Wyatt Parker, warm and cozy and charming.

  “Pass me that spatula, please,” I asked Haley, pointing to the bowl of vanilla frosting. Smiling, she handed it to me.

  “Now,” I said. “Watch carefully as I magically transform this pathetic muffin into a godlike cupcake.”

  With the spatula I scooped up a giant glob of frosting and carefully slathered it on the red velvet muffin.

  “Hold on,” Haley said when I was finished. “That icing-to-cake ratio is totally off.” She grabbed the spatula and slapped on an extra glob of vanilla icing. “There,” she said proudly. “Now that is one cozy and charming cupcake.”

  The move was so heartwarming I didn’t even tell Haley her frosting form was freaking terrible.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Wyatt?”

  “Yeah, Brett?”

  “Can I ask you a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Please stop saying ‘aye, aye.’”

  “Aye—er, okay. Sure.”

  “You’re not a pirate.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’m not your captain.”

  “I just get caught up in the moment.”

  “I can tell.”

  “I haven’t been on the water in a while,” I explained. “I’m pretty fired up.” The boat we borrowed was a small sixteen-footer, but the engine was still loud enough that I had to shout over it.

  The afternoon sun had started to break through the clouds as we barreled south from Grayport Harbor. Brett put on his sunglasses and checked the compass above the helm. “If you’re going to make me drive the boat, I wish you’d tell me exactly where we’re going.”

  I grinned. “You really can’t handle surprises, can you? Just trust me.”

  “I know you suck at driving, but why can’t he drive?”

  “Dude, look at him.”

  We glanced over our shoulders at Jeremy, who was sprawled out on the full length of the deck. He lay prone on his stomach and rested his chin on a cushion made partly of his crossed arms, partly of his springy, disheveled beard.

  “He’s so high he could probably make this boat levitate,” I joked.

  “I still don’t get why we had to bring him,” Brett said.

  “That was the deal. We borrow his boat, he gets to join.”

  Jeremy popped his head up from his folded arms. “I wasn’t going to miss this trip for the world,” he said. “It’s going to be so worth it just to see how surprised Brett is when we get to the Museum of Fine Arts.”

  “Jeremy, come on!” I shouted.

  “Wait, we’re going to the MFA?” Brett asked.

  “Well, yeah,” I said.

  “In Boston?”

  “The one and only. We’ll dock in Boston Harbor and take the subway from there.”

  Brett is not one to show excitement, but I could tell this was really getting him going. He reached his hand up to scratch an “itch” around his mouth, but there was no denying the smile he tried to hide underneath. He then anxiously crossed his arms, uncrossed them, and then crossed them again. He started chewing his gum so rapidly it hurt my jaw to watch.

  Suddenly, Brett turned to me, a grave look on his face. “Wyatt,” he said. “I don’t know how to act at a museum. I’ve never been.”

  “I think it’s pretty easy,” I said. “You just look at paintings with a slightly tilted head and whisper things like ‘brilliant’ in a British accent.”

  “Bro, you can just follow my lead,” Jeremy chimed in. “I’m super into art. Like the other day, I saw a mind-blowing painting of a really bright penny at the bottom of a lake. I stared at this painting for legit twenty minutes, and then I was like, oh shit, that’s not a penny in a lake, that’s supposed to be the sun in the sky! And then I realized, oh shit, that’s not a painting at all, but the actual sun.”

  Brett and I looked at each other.

  “You stared at the sun for twenty minutes?” I asked. “Is that why you’re wearing an eye patch now?”

  Jeremy reached to his face and felt around for the eye patch, like its presence was news to him. “Bro, I think you might be right.”

  Brett tugged on the sleeve of my jacket. “Wyatt, does the MFA have a dress code? I think there’s a dress code. I’m not dressed for any dress code. I’m in violation of the dress code!” He plucked the gum from his mouth and fired it into the ocean.

  “It’s okay,” I assured him. “First, I’m almost sure there’s no dress code. Second, if there is, then we’re both in trouble together.”

  I unzipped my jacket and showed my T-shirt underneath. In big black letters, the front of the shirt read: I DON’T SWEAT. I GLISTEN.

  “When did you get that?” Brett asked.

  “Thrift shop the other day. There’s not going to be a dres
s code,” I reassured Brett. “And if there is, maybe we’ll be lucky and it’s only against eye patches. It’ll be a chill afternoon, I promise. We’ll just go check things out, hang around Boston some, then head back to the boat.”

  “Right, right,” Brett agreed. “Plus it’s good for you to practice this route for the times you visit me at college next year.”

  “For sure,” I said, reaching up to scratch an “itch” around my mouth.

  “Yo. Dudes. Bros. Bro-yos. Vincent van Bros. Pablo Picass-bros.”

  “Yeah, Jeremy?”

  “I just had a thought.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I call you guys ‘bro,’ right? But we’re not, like, real brothers. At least I don’t think. But you two are real live actual brothers. So do you say ‘bro’ to each other all the time? Things like, ‘Bro, pass me the salt’ and ‘Bro, check out that penny in the lake’? Stuff like that? Or when you talk to each other, is the ‘bro’ subconscious?”

  I looked at Brett, who was either ignoring Jeremy’s question or thinking deeply about it. The reflection of the ocean flickered on his sunglasses as he charged the boat ahead into the horizon. We’d been on tons of fishing trips with Dad, but this was the first time we’d ever dock somewhere other than Grayport and not simply loop back to where we started. Knowing this, the little town growing smaller behind us felt different. It no longer seemed like a black hole that always swallowed you back in. Instead, it felt like a hub with two-way spokes projecting out to the world.

  I suddenly thought about Brett leaving for college next fall and was hit with a wave of nostalgia for a shared childhood and a brotherhood that wasn’t nonexistent, like I once thought, but there all along, just under the surface. The brotherhood was and is constant, and when things are going well or shitty or both, we could always return to it, the way we’d be able to return to Grayport tonight despite it being completely blotted out by fog, inaccessible even to those looking for it. We’d know the way. We’d carve through the mist and the darkness, then dock in the harbor where the water was red and thick as blood.

  “Dudes. Bros. Bro-seidons, Gods of the Bro-cean. You haven’t answered my question. Do you call each other ‘bro’ nonstop, or is there no need because it’s, like, always implied?”

  Brett and I grinned at each other.

  “Implied,” we said in unison.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you …

  … to my wife, Leigh. Night after night you held a draft of this novel in one arm and our infant son in the other, nurturing each from your infinite well of patience, humor, and wisdom. You’re a superhuman, and your qualities lie at the center of every good-hearted character I write.

  … to my son, Alden. This book was my baby until you arrived. If you’re reading this, it means that you (and the book) are now much older, so let me briefly explain what you were like at the beginning: Your first word was banana and your second word was cheese, and you always requested both, immediately, after waking from a nap. You filled buckets with dirt, rooms with laughter, and me with wonder. Whenever I became stuck on a stubborn chapter, your giggles would open up my heart and my eyes and the story within these pages. Thanks for being such an awesomely perfect little dude.

  … to Mom and Dad. There’s a lot of bad parenting on display in this book; thank you for raising me with the exact opposite approach. You have always been incredibly supportive of my writing, even when my first “novel,” crayoned at age seven with the ominous title of Big Bird’s Bad Day, had way too little plot and way too much carnage.

  … to my family: Grammie, Kelsey, Ian, Fiona, Graham, Kirsten, Evan, Laurie, Doug, Catie, Jason, Ben, Michael, Michela, and the Spielers. Your love and support throughout this project provided the scaffolding I needed to see it through. I love you all so much.

  … to my agent, Helen Zimmermann. I always dreamed of becoming an author and never dreamed that the business side of it could be so complex. Thank you for making the former come true and the latter feel painless. I am so deeply grateful for your knowledge, support, intuition, and friendship.

  … to my editor, Grace Kendall. You were the backbone of this project even before a single word hit the page, and I still can’t believe how lucky I’ve been to work with you. Thank you for sharing your remarkable imagination, steadiness, empathy, and humor with not only me but also all the characters in this story. An enormous thank-you, as well, to the entire team at FSG for your diligence and care.

  … to my students at Middlesex School. My favorite parts of Wyatt—his sensitivity, humor, and intelligence—are modeled entirely after you all. Thank you for teaching me how to properly use cool teenager terms like lit and turnt, and thank you for telling me, a few weeks later, that these terms were no longer cool. And to my faculty colleagues at Middlesex: Your care and compassion for teenagers inspired me every day as I wrote this story. I can’t thank you enough.

  … to my dear friends, the Burkes (especially Matthew, EJ, and Brendan for teaching me about teenage brotherhood), Alex and Brian, the Lauers, DeLamarters, Petersons, Swifts, Plumlees, McLaughlins, Hahns, and Colgans: Thank you for years of support and love.

  About the Author

  Eric Kester’s writing can be found in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Boston Globe, and other publications. Eric used to work as a ball boy for the NFL and he played football at Harvard. He teaches and lives in Boston with his family. Gut Check is his debut novel for young readers. Visit erickester.com, or sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by Eric Alden Kester

  Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

  A part of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC

  120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271

  fiercereads.com

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is printed in the hardcover edition as follows:

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kester, Eric, author.

  Title: Gut Check / Eric Kester.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2019. |

  Summary: When star quarterback Brett suffers a terrible concussion, his

  brother Wyatt must decide if keeping his brother’s secret is worth the

  risk to their relationship and their town’s economic future.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018039308 (print) | LCCN 2018046725 (ebook) | ISBN

  9780374307608 (ebook) | ISBN 9780374307622 (hardcover: alk. paper)

  Subjects
: | CYAC: Brothers—Fiction. | Football—Fiction. | High

  schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | City and town life—Fiction. |

  Humorous stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K51 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.K51 Gut 2019 (print) | DDC

  [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018039308

  Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First hardcover edition, 2019

  eBook edition, August 2019

  eISBN 978-0-374-30782-2