Getting Lucky

by Daryl Banner

  I wasn’t going to like this one bit. But I had to do it. If I didn’t, I’d probably be grounded for life. Get it over with, I told myself, then put my palm to the door and pushed it the rest of the way open.

  Stefan sat on the end of his bed with an Xbox controller in his grip, playing a game on a giant TV that sat on his dresser across the room. He wore a loose white tank top and black gym shorts that only came halfway down his thighs.

  He didn’t even seem to notice me. He just kept playing, even though I was clearly in his line of vision.

  “Hi,” I forced myself to say.

  “Hey.” He kept playing, totally ignoring me.

  I swallowed once, then straightened up my back and leaned against the wall right by his door, refusing to take more than one tiny step into his room. I folded my arms and stared at the TV screen. Even though I was watching him play, I wasn’t really processing what I was seeing; I was too busy being scared out of my mind and feeling like I could pass out at any second.

  “So?” he prompted me, drawing my attention back to him even though he never pulled his own eyes from the screen.

  I smirked. “So … what?”

  “Why are you here?” he asked, mashing his thumbs into the controller as he played.

  “I’m, like … supposed to apologize to you. Or something.”

  “For what?”

  “For calling you a name.”

  “Alright. Go ahead.”

  It was infuriating, how snotty and cool Stefan was acting. He wouldn’t even afford me the decency of looking my way, his eyes glued to his game like I mean nothing at all to him.

  I took a deep breath. This wouldn’t be easy, but I was going to do it. “I’m sorry,” I grumbled, annoyed.

  “For?”

  I rolled my eyes. Really? “For calling you a faggot.”

  “Alright.” He kept playing his game.

  I was ready to throw my own mitt at his head if I had one. “That’s it? ‘Alright’? That’s all you got to say to me?”

  “Yep.” His arm muscles kept dancing as his fingers worked the controller, mashing and twisting and tilting away.

  I sighed and unhooked my arms from my body, over it all. “So are we cool? Can I go now?”

  The explosive sounds of war coming from the TV ceased at once. Stefan set the controller down on the bed next to him and, for the first time since my arrival, looked my way. “Are you one?”

  His question threw me. “What?”

  “Are you one?” he repeated.

  I frowned. “One what?”

  “A fag.”

  Coldness lanced my insides from one end of my bowels to the other at the sound of the word. I’d almost forgotten about the boner. And now we’re going to address it. “No!” I blurted out.

  “I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend.”

  “So?” My heart raced its way up my throat. My fingers tingled with fear. “I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend.”

  “We’re going to the same high school next year.”

  His shift in topic threw me yet again. What was he getting at? “Huh?”

  “Morris High.” He lifted his eyebrows. “We’re gonna see a lot more of each other.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is, we have to get along. We’re teammates, and we have a bunch of games to get through before we try out for the high school team.”

  Was this guy crazy? He actually thought I was going to face all those guys again after what happened? “I’m not on the team anymore,” I stated as if it was the most obvious thing.

  “We need you.” He leaned back on the bed, propping himself up on his elbows. “You could use some time in the cages, but with a little work, you might turn out to be a decent player. I’ve seen your swing, Caulfield.”

  I frowned. “Yeah. And you think I swing like a girl.”

  “You’re not the only one who should be apologizing.” His eyes flickered with discomfort. Apologizing was clearly an effort for him. “I’m … sorry I threw the mitt at your head.”

  I found myself staring at the floor suddenly. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I didn’t even recognize this version of Stefan.

  “And said things like … you swing like a girl,” he went on. “And that you’re the reason we lost. It isn’t true, anyway. And I’m sorry I tackled you.”

  I pressed my lips together tightly and felt my face going red again, except it was a completely different kind of embarrassment I then felt. I was never on the receiving end of such a thorough, detailed apology.

  “Alright,” I finally mumbled uncomfortably. “Can I go now?”

  “Are you still on the team?”

  I lifted my eyes from the floor to meet his again, incredulous. “Are you serious?”

  He hopped off the bed, then lightly trod across the room. He was suddenly in front of me. Very in front of me. “Yeah.” His voice was low and serious. “So? Are you?”

  I swallowed. My back was pressed against the wall. “I … I can’t face the others again. I—”

  “If any of them say anything about you, I’ll throw a mitt at their heads,” he stated boldly, his chest puffing up.

  And for once, I was thankful for his cockiness. For once, his boastfulness felt less like a weapon and more like a shield. With just those words alone, he won me over.

  “Alright.” I nodded once, surrendering. “Yes. I’m still on.”

  “Good.” He grabbed my shoulder and gave me a strong, quick, approving shake before letting go. “Then we’re good, Ryan. And your apology’s accepted.”

  Ryan. He used my first name. “Thanks, S-Stefan.”

  “Steff-in,” he corrected me. “Not Stiff-on.”

  “Steff-in,” I echoed, my pronunciation of his name corrected. We only ever seemed to throw last names at each other, the coach included. I had never properly heard his name before. “Thank you, S-Stefan.”

  He picked up his controller again and hopped back onto his bed. “Now what’re you leaving in a hurry for?” he asked, his words sounding almost annoyed. “You ever played this game?”

  “No,” I answered automatically. “I … I don’t have an Xbox.”

  “Come here. It’s easy.”

  The next moment, I was sitting on his bed. Stefan Baker’s bed. And he showed me how to throw grenades. And properly aim a rocket launcher. And reload my napalm.

  For an hour at least—who knew what our parents were doing?—we played Xbox. I wasn’t the scrawny kid on the baseball team. He wasn’t the conceited little dick with the upturned nose. We were just two awkward boys brought together by a catcher’s mitt—and something else.

  “I don’t care, by the way,” he said suddenly.

  “About what?”

  “If you are one.”

  “One what?”

  Then a battle exploded into action on the TV, and the pair of us were drawn to the game, all thoughts of our conversation lost to the music of war. Soon, Stefan was cheering when my grenade exploded a mob of enemies, and I shouted victoriously when he fired the winning shot. We were teammates again.

  We were bros.

  And I knew, from that day on, that Stefan Baker was going to be the boy who would ruin me.

  01

  RYAN

  The dream of being a school counselor is that you feel, with every precious, spirited young teen who passes through your door, you get a chance to save the world.

  Then reality sets in: “Suck my dick.”

  I lean over the desk and lift an eyebrow. “Frederick. You can’t talk to me like that.”

  “I thought I could say whatever I want here. That this is a safe place. Didn’t you say that? Or are you a liar like everyone else?”

  He’s got a lip on him, this one. “I’m here for you. No one else.”

  “Yeah, for me and five hundred other numbers at this school,” he grumbles, shaking his buzzed head. Just like the last two times he’s been sent to my office for his behavior, I turn a de
af ear to his language. Through all the punk attitude, there’s a brilliant and creative mind that used to be at the top of all his classes.

  And besides, he’s not wrong. The counselor-to-student ratio is a shocking four hundred and sixty-three to one. Let that sink in.

  “I’m not here to discipline you,” I remind him, “or make you do parabolas or run laps. I’m your friend, Frederick.”

  “Real friends let me do what I want. They don’t make me sit in their musky office and talk about boring shit.” He folds his arms and slouches in his chair, smirking.

  I give the air a sniff. “I thought I got rid of the odor.”

  “Smells like my grandpa’s nutsack.”

  I consider him for a second. “You know, maybe a ‘real friend’ knows what’s best for you and would try to help you no matter what,” I kindly suggest, “and it doesn’t always involve something pleasant. I’m concerned about your grades.”

  “I’m concerned about your face.”

  Watch me save the world. Watch me grip my desk tightly and, with every ounce of patience I have left today, save this damned world. “You did really well last year. Your teachers had only good stuff to say. Ms. Thomas wrote that you were her most promising student. That’s really great, Frederick!”

  He rolls his eyes and looks off, annoyed.

  I sit on the edge of my desk. In an instant, I’m that thinks-he’s-the-cool-new-school-counselor cliché who pretends that he’s totally not twenty-five years old. I’m trying to act like I’m on the same level as the teenager—who bleeds with attitude in front of me. “Can you tell me what’s different this year? Remember that everything you say stays between us.”

  “You’re new here.”

  I blink. “That I am.”

  “Different counselor last year. She was older. You don’t know what it’s like at this school. How toxic it is, this fucking place.”

  Again. Deaf ear. “I do, actually. I went to this school. And not too long ago, I might add.”

  He scowls at me, then looks away, over it.

  I’m still reaching. “Tell me what’s going on. Did something happen on the soccer team?”

  “I’m not on the soccer team anymore.”

  “Oh? Since when?”

  “Since yesterday.”

  His attitude and the cockiness in his eyes reminds me way too much of a certain someone I used to know. I pat his folder that sits on my desk. “I … didn’t know you played piano,” I note, changing the subject and offering a little smile. “Ms. Thomas mentioned it in your file. You still play?”

  Frederick looks up at me, dead-eyed. “Is this when we have a heart-to-heart and you finally reach me through some mutual love for music? Should I start opening up, shed tears, and show you on the doll where my uncle touched me?”

  I choke on my own air and gape. The balls on this kid … “That’s a very serious thing you’re making light of,” I warn him.

  “Everything is a ‘serious thing’. All I did was jokingly call one of my teammates a homo, and then the coach got involved, so I called him a cocksucker. I guess that’s frowned upon or something. So instead of kicking my ass—which is exactly what Coach Keys looked like he wanted to do—I was given a week of detention, suspended from the team, and sent to talk to your boring ass.”

  I swallow hard and steel myself. It’s the end of the day, but I owe this kid as much energy as I gave the first one this morning. I hear words like “homo” and “fag” slung down the hallways every day from mouths I never seem to spot, but rarely do I get the chance to directly respond.

  “What made you call your teammate that? Did he provoke you somehow?”

  “He was being a little bitch, that’s what.”

  “Did something upset you before practice?” I know something else is going on here. Maybe it’s at home. Maybe it’s in his own mind. Maybe it’s with his friends. “Lashing out at your teammates isn’t you, Frederick.”

  “How would you possibly know what’s me?” he counters.

  “Well, those weren’t very nice words to say to your teammate and your coach in a derogatory manner,” I point out. “You know better than that, so I’m left to wonder what got you riled up prior to practice. Do you know what it means when you call someone a ‘homo’? Or a ‘cocksucker’?”

  “I’m not five years old,” he retorts. “I know what those words mean.”

  “And how do you think—”

  “Look, I got no problem with gay people,” Frederick spits out suddenly, spreading his hands. “They’re fucking great. Whatever. They’ll probably plan my wedding someday or teach my kid math in the fifth grade. I don’t give a crap. I just wanted to shut up my know-it-all teammate and then shut up my coach … and I just said the first stupid thing that came to mind.”

  His answer transports me. Then, I find myself nodding slowly, knowingly, and look off toward the window. “I know exactly what that’s like … surprisingly.”

  The moment hits me so hard, I can literally hear my own voice shouting the words in that boy’s bathroom long ago. “Shut up, faggot!” The little exclamation that started it all. And the look on Stefan Baker’s face … What a funny little irony of life, that the kid shouting the words turns out to be the gay one. It wasn’t until I was seventeen that the words ever slipped from my trembling lips: “Mom, I’m gay.” She burst into tears, blubbered on about how unsafe and cruel the world is, and then we went and got hot fudge sundaes down the street.

  Hot fudge sundaes with rainbow sprinkles.

  It was the gayest day of my life.

  Fast-forward eight years later, and now I’m what I always wanted to be: a high school counselor with one attitude-filled unappreciative teenager after another sitting in that same chair where Frederick is right now, arms folded and lips pouting.

  It’s my first year. Barely one month has gone by. And all I do is endure teenage attitude and paperwork every day while gently convincing these kids that I’m not the bad guy. Is this what I have to look forward to? Rolling eyes and tightened smiles?

  Really, I’m the best damned person they can talk to at this school. It isn’t my job to discipline, to tattle, or even to scold. I’m a safe haven. All I do is counsel them and somehow marry the best interests of the parents, the school, and—most importantly—the student. Those interests don’t always align.

  I take a deep breath, then turn back to Frederick importantly. “Did … your uncle really …?”

  He rolls his eyes. “No.”

  “You know I have to take those kinds of things seriously. Even if you said it as a joke, I still have to—”

  “I don’t even have an uncle.”

  I consider him for a moment. “Do you think there might have been a better way to handle yourself in front of your coach and teammate?”

  Just then, the bell rings, interrupting whatever progress we had made. Frederick rises from his chair, swings his backpack over a shoulder, then heads for the door.

  “Frederick.”

  He stops at the door, sighs demonstratively, then speaks to me without even turning around. “What, Mr. Caulfield?”

  “We’re not finished.”

  “I have to catch the bus.”

  “You have a future, too,” I tell him. “A bright future. A future that you can’t enjoy if you don’t get your grades—”

  “We both know damned well that I can become a billionaire with or without the stupid grades,” he spits back. “Bill Gates didn’t even graduate high school.”

  “College,” I correct him. “Harvard. And he still completed two years of it.”

  He barely hears half of my sentence before the door shuts behind him, cutting off my words and leaving me in a vacuum of my own musky office as the murmur of excited, chatty teenagers echoes outside the door.

  I bite my lip and collapse against my desk, exhausted. Am I really cut out to be a school counselor?

  A dream job certainly feels a lot different when you’re paid in nothing but reality
checks.

  All I know is that I’ve dreamed for years to be right here where I am now. Really, I just always wanted to help kids find their way. I was fortunate enough to have that special brand of help when I was young and confused. Through high school, I had nowhere to put my feelings. I really thought all boys “looked” at other boys in gym class. I thought that’s why athletes looked in the mirrors at the gyms while working out, or why they swatted each other’s asses after a game.

  Seriously. I actually thought that. I didn’t realize not all of them were “excited” by it in the same way that I was.

  Oops.

  All it took was one really encouraging, positive interaction with a school counselor—her name was Becky Lemont—to protect me from the chaos that had spawned inside my head the first time I even let myself think the word: gay. Becky Lemont doesn’t work here anymore, I was sad to learn when I was hired, as she moved to Minnesota with her husband. Thanks to her, by the time I graduated, I was totally secure in my feelings, understood what they meant, and didn’t have to fear them entering college.

  And I know other youth are out there just like I was, and they are lost and confused … and they think they’re alone. I want to be there for them just like someone was for me.

  Except maybe for Frederick. Who is totally above it all. And way too cool for school.

  Sigh.

  I drop by the staff break room to grab my lunch box that I’d left and run into Dana, one of the school receptionists in the front office. She gives me a beaming smile. “Thank God it’s Friday!”

  I blink. “Really? It is?”

  “I know! The week really flew by, didn’t it? It will be winter before you know it!” She rushes up to my side. I smell her perfume in fruity, heated waves. “You’re the new counselor, huh? How are you liking it here?”

  “It’s great,” I answer.

  She gives me a quick once-over while biting her lip, which doesn’t go unnoticed. Then she asks, “So you want to grab a drink with me, handsome? It’s Friday and I’m in desperate need.”

  I smile. Maybe it’s a wince. I never know how to respond to women who come on to me. Assuming this is what this is, judging from the way she’s leaning into me with her boobs in my face. Really, she is any straight guy’s fantasy: gorgeous, slender, curls of dirty blonde hair, and eyelashes that go on for miles.