by Allen, Jacob
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re drinking a bottle of whiskey on a Sunday morning. Let me rephrase that question. Why are you drinking a bottle of whiskey right now?”
The question didn’t stop Nick from swallowing the entirety of the contents in one gulp. Granted, it wasn’t a huge bottle—at most, it probably had two shots worth. But still! To do that out in public like so… what would have happened if a cop drove by us at that very moment? What would have happened if we’d had to deal with someone else from Providence Prep, maybe a teacher or a parent, seeing us?
“Since you won’t help me,” he said. “Maybe good old Fireball can.”
“Nick, I barely know you, why would I help you?”
“See, see, that’s what I mean,” Nick said.
Then, to further drive home the point, he opened a second bottle of Fireball.
“Nick!”
“Oh, now you care, that’s the magic number, huh?”
“I just don’t want us to get in trouble—”
“Of course you don’t, the good, sweet girl who is trying to get into all of her top choices for schools doesn’t want to get in trouble, is that it?”
Nick laughed. I started to walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“The library,” I said. “So I can go home.”
“No, don’t do that,” Nick said with a smirk, grabbing my wrist. “You’d leave me like this? Buzzed and in a shitty mood?”
“Yes.”
I wrangled my wrist free. But then Nick tried to jump in front of me. This was turning from weird to awkward to potentially dangerous far, far too fast. And this is why you don’t get involved with a Broad Street Boy. If they don’t get their way, they start acting like jackasses.
“Samantha, Samantha, Samantha,” he said as he walked by my side. “This is what you need to realize! You’re going to be alone the rest of the school year. At least this way, you and I can continue to hang out with our friends.”
“Did you not hear me earlier when I said I’d feel more alone with someone pretending to love me than actually love me?”
“Yes, but… what if we really grew?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Nick, I don’t think you’re a bad guy or someone who would fake a relationship. But if we did this, you know it would be fake. Now, please leave me alone.”
But did Nick do that? Of course not. He continued to follow me, even to the point that I could see my car. I now began to believe I was better off just walking somewhere else, far, far away from Nick so that he wouldn’t see what kind of car I’d driven here.
Seriously, how did it get to this? What had I done to Nick to deserve him at his most awkward and weird.
I pulled out my phone, deciding to text Emily and Jackie. If they were with Adam and Kevin, maybe one of them would—
Nick swiped my phone from my hands.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said.
Now it was my turn for my temper to rise. I’d mostly just found the whole situation before sadly interesting, bordering on inappropriate, but now this was outright theft. I was not going to let this happen.
“Nothing,” Nick said. “Just trying to get you to hang out a little longer.”
“Give it back.”
“Or what?”
“What are you, a fifth grader? I said give it back.”
“Hang out with me for a little longer, and I will.”
I pursed my lips. I really didn’t want this to turn into a fight. I really didn’t want to become the newest target of the Broad Street Boys’ bullshit bullying games.
Too late for that, though.
“Give me the phone, or I will slap you. If that doesn’t work, I will scream until someone comes. Do you really want to have the cops show up because you didn’t want to end a stupid prank?”
“Sam, Sam, Sam, you—”
I hated that nickname. Even when Emily and Jackie said it, I hated it.
I slapped Nick. I’d never slapped anyone before.
But I slapped him hard, making square contact with his cheek. He had never seen it coming. It was a solid hit that created a distinct, echoing noise.
His cheek turned red the instant he turned back to me. His eyes looked like they were about to shed tears. He thrusted the phone back into my chest. I had to scramble to make sure it didn’t drop to the ground.
“You fucking loveless whore,” he growled.
“What does that even mean?” I said, my voice wavering. “How can a whore be loveless?”
“Of course that’s what you’d say, you stupid, socially inept bitch,” he said.
His voice, too, was wavering. He wouldn’t look me in the eye anymore.
“You’re so goddamn incompetent. You just had a chance to have one of the best athletes at the school kiss you, and you turned away? Are you too good for this, Samantha? Is that it?”
I didn’t care any longer if Nick saw what I drove. My fate was now, apparently, sealed. I was going to be to Nick what Emily and Jackie were to Adam and Kevin, except there wasn’t some hidden desire to fall in love. I’d tangled with a Broad Street Boy experiencing a senior year crisis, about the worst condition possible for getting into a fight with one.
Now, I was officially fully isolated from my friends.
At least I was used to it.
“I’m going to make your life fucking hell!” he shouted, on the verge of tears. “You hear me?!? You’re done, Samantha! Whatever semblance of a reputation you have left is done! You’ll be nothing! No one will want you!”
I scrambled into my car, hurried to turn the engine on, and roared past him. For a brief moment, I thought that Nick was going to actually jump in front of my car.
“You want to be that way,” I muttered to myself as I drove off, trying not to show how much he’d affected me. “Then be that way. I only have to put up with you for a few months before I’m at Harvard.”
If I get there. No one at our school has in years. Am I really that different from them?
God, I hope so.
I drove without ever turning my radio up. I was on a mission to get home as soon as I could—even if Mom and Dad asked me why I was home so soon, it was a better outcome than having to deal with Nick yelling at me more.
Really, I deserved everything that had happened. I should have just kept walking past Nick when he waited for me at the exit of the library. Or, even better, I should have just never let myself stare at his screen. My stupid awkwardness and his attractiveness—physically, only—had pulled me in and made me do some stupid fucking things. I deserved all of it.
I deserved all of it, but more than that, he was right.
It hurt to be alone. It hurt to be loveless. It hurt to know that there wasn’t really anyone whom I had interest in that also liked me. Sure, a couple of the awkward guys liked me, but they were strangely rude in a different way—almost like if I wasn’t perfectly polite in return, they’d get bothered that I hadn’t given them what they thought they deserved.
It hurt knowing that my two best friends had found love, even if I thought it was fake, and that I had nothing resembling it. It hurt knowing that part of the reason I believed that their love for Adam and Kevin was fake was because I was jealous.
It hurt so much.
When I got home, I walked right past my parents. Thankfully, with them so engrossed in their studies at the table, they barely looked up to acknowledge me. For once, I was glad to have parents so distant that they couldn’t be bothered to say or do anything when their only child walked in the door.
I hurried upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, feeling the dams of my eyes start to crack with the weight of tears behind them. I was out of sight of my parents, but they could still see me. If I could just get to my door…
I got there, shut it, and bawled my eyes out. I slumped against the door. I hated that Nick was affecting me
like so.
I hated that there was no one at Providence Prep like me. If I just had the height of Emily… if I just had the social graces of Jackie… if I just had the cool and calm spirit that Nick had on every other day but today… Providence Prep would be a whole lot more tolerable.
Instead, I just felt like the oafish girl who had no choice but to look to the future if I wanted to be happy.
Hopefully, when I got to Harvard, I’d feel more socially accepted. Hopefully, when I got there, I’d be surrounded by like-minded peers who had as little tolerance for bullshit as I did. Hopefully, when I arrived in Cambridge, I’d be able to start my life without the filters I had now.
Because if I couldn’t, I would never be able to erase the feelings that my last year at Providence Prep was now guaranteed to end on.
4
Nick
“Fuck you.”
I didn’t really say those words to anyone. There wasn’t anyone around me at the bench. There were pigeons, pecking for bread I didn’t have, squawking in frustration at the lack of food, and flying away. I almost hoped one of them would shit on me, if only to keep in pattern with the rest of life and so I had an excuse to lunge out at them.
But these pigeons weren’t Samantha Young. They weren’t going to stand up for themselves like she did. They weren’t going to… fuck, I was drunk.
“Fuck you, football,” I groused. “Fuck you for making me think I had a dream I could realize, only to make me white, skinny, and short. Fuck you for probably damaging my brain and my body, all so I could have a few moments of fleeting glory.”
I laughed.
“Fuck you, basketball,” I said, giving middle fingers to the ground. “Fuck you for making me think I was good enough to play, when in reality, high school was as good as it got. Fuck that shit.”
I put my head in my hands, groaning.
“Fuck you, college, for ignoring me,” I said.
What more could I say fuck you to? What more could I be pissed off about? This was feeling good to cuss out everything that had fucked me over.
“Fuck you, Adam and Kevin, assholes saying you want to run the school, then tying yourselves down the moment a girl stands up to you and has you by the balls,” I said. “Do you think I let that happen with Samantha? Do you think if I was going to kiss her, it would turn into anything?”
As beautiful and hot as she is? As much as you’d fuck those long, slender legs and that firm ass of hers? As much as you secretly crave someone as smart as she is?
“Fuck no. I’d fuck her, laugh, and leave her behind. Not like you goddamn pussies.”
I leaned back against the bench, trying to catch control of my vision.
“Fuck you, Andrew and Clark. Sorry I can’t be like you two. Oh wait, no one would want to be as arrogant as you are. Fucking ruining the Locke name. Fuck you, Mom and Dad, for putting me on this hellacious schedule and yet believing I would turn out the exact same as them. We’re not some goddamn manufacturing plant, you know.”
I began to feel sick. My stomach began to churn. I had made a really fucking stupid mistake—I’d had the Fireball on an empty stomach. That was going to end so, so well for me.
“And most of all,” I said, just as I started to feel my stomach start to rise. “Fuck me.”
* * *
I spent the rest of that day walking around downtown Nashville, talking to no one, sometimes working on my highlight reel, most of the time just aimlessly going through different websites. There was absolutely no reason for me to actually bother trying. By now, in mid-February, football scholarships were all but done.
Hell, some of the kids in my class had graduated in December so they could have spring football practice with their schools. Guys I once went against on the football field were not preparing for prom, but preparing for spring practice in Tuscaloosa or Athens. I wasn’t competing with them; they’d already won.
The only schools offering scholarships at this point were the ones that were third or fourth tier. I’d gotten a letter from some smaller schools, like Middle Tennessee State and Buffalo, but those didn’t interest me. It was almost better to just accept Vanderbilt’s offer to be a preferred walk on and then make my way up; at least then, maybe I could end in the same place my brothers had.
And if I didn’t, well, I was never going to hear the fucking end of it.
By the time I finally felt sober enough to drive home, it was accompanied by an annoyingly strong headache that wasn’t going anywhere. I’d always thought that hangovers came following sleep, but apparently, it just showed how much I knew. Adam and Kevin had both texted me, asking me where I’d been the night before, but I decided no texts were better than half-drunk, full-anger texts.
Somehow, I made better communication decisions with the two assholes I resented right now more than I did the girl who I either liked or was desperate enough to delude myself into believing I liked. She did slap you across the face, though. So maybe she deserves some of the shit you gave her.
When I got home, I passed out hard. I hoped that sleeping the rest of this hangover off would make the start of the week better. I was comfortable with where the video was and could send it off to the schools that had said “wait and see.”
And then I woke up on Monday at 7 a.m.
Approximately an hour and a half too late, considering I’d completely blanked on the fact that the basketball team had 6 a.m. weightlifting every Monday. Good job, Nick. Your whole fucking world is coming crashing down right now, you fucking idiot.
Coach Miller sure didn’t hesitate to remind me. When I checked my phone, I had three texts and two missed calls from him. None of them were pleasant.
“Are you almost here?”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Your ass is in serious trouble when I see you.”
Lovely to see things already falling apart before the first school bell had even rung.
I at least only had a fifteen minute drive to school and about an hour before classes started. At this point, showing up in a rush only to get told to go home wasn’t going to make any damn bit of difference. I figured I might as well stay behind, look at my highlight reel, and send it off.
By now, I had my own plays memorized down to the exact positioning of my feet on my catches. The problem with that was that while some fans or casual observers might have been wowed by the plays I made, I could nitpick and see the poor things I’d done, even on the touchdowns and acrobatic catches. Why had I not run a cleaner route to avoid having to make the sick catch? Why had I not turned and run faster? Why had I tried to catch the ball against my body instead of pinpointing it in the sky?
The only thing that made me feel better was that I could see other players, the five-star recruits, making similar mistakes. If they could get recruited, so could I. Of course, they all were three inches taller, thirty pounds heavier, and much faster than I was.
I looked through the rest of my texts. Adam had messaged me, asking if I quit the Broad Street Boys knowing that he and Kevin were getting far more ass than I ever was. I ignored it, deciding I’d make a joke to him when I saw him in the hallway. Clark had messaged me, asking if I looked forward to getting burned by him at our spring break reunion football game. Andrew, naturally, had said something similar, saying that I’d never get to play wideout while he and Clark would score all over me.
What a fucked up morning.
I sent the video off to Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Mississippi State, and Tennessee before I started to pull myself together. Surely, one of those schools would at least have something for me. Someone must have dropped out or made a sudden change so far. Right?
I tried not to let the questions haunt me too much, but that was easier said than done when said questions had haunted me since the beginning of the semester, when Christmas came and passed without a single legitimate scholarship offer. I got to school ten minutes before the bell rang and pulled myself out of the car. I was still feeling the Fireball.
Would have been me if… I don’t know. Not much I could have done when Adam acted like an ass and she still chose to go to him. But still.
“Oh, hey, you’re still alive,” Kevin said as I approached. “Holy shit, hey, lover boy, look who’s here.”
Adam pulled away from Emily and visibly recoiled his head in dramatic fashion.
“So now you choose to ignore our texts and be friends with us on your own time?”
“I just had a fucking rough weekend, man, and—”
“Relax, I’m just fucking with you,” Adam said, laughing.
Of course. You’re always fucking with me.
“Good morning, Nick,” Jackie said.
“Hey, Jackie,” I said, taking a seat. “Where’s Samantha? I thought she usually hung out with you guys.”
“She hasn’t come in yet,” Emily said. “I texted her and she said she’ll be here soon. Said something about needing time away, though.”
Because of me. Not that I let the two girls know that. The longer she was away, the better; I didn’t need any further reminders of how much of an ass I’d acted this weekend. Seeing her might just make me do exactly that.
“You look like you partied yesterday instead of Saturday,” Adam cracked, though he didn’t exactly seem to be joking about it. “Do you have cooler friends than us?”
“I mean, that’s not exactly wrong. That I drank yesterday instead of today.”
The laughs got serious quickly. Adam looked like he was about to crack a joke, but even he knew better than to say something… well, he didn’t, but at least the seriousness of the other three people around us drove home that he didn’t need to say anything dumb.