She gave an awkward laugh. “Are you okay? You sound different.”
“Yes. No. I don’t know, actually.”
“You feel like talking about it? Want to meet up?”
I crossed my legs, imagining her here with me right now. “Um. Driving. Can’t.”
“Of course,” she said. “Good thinking. Should we just talk here, then? What’s going on?”
“It’s really nothing,” I said.
“C’mon. Tell me, tell me. What’s your problem?” she asked, and then we both laughed, knowing she didn’t mean it the way it sounded.
“I don’t really have problems,” I said.
“Let’s play a game. You pretend I would never, ever judge you or whatever you say. Because, actually, I won’t. I promise.”
All my life I’d done what I was taught as a kid. You don’t talk about your problems. You don’t bug people with them. You solve them yourself. It seemed like the smart thing to do. “I told you,” I said. “No real problems. People are being exterminated in the Middle East. Millions of children in sub-Saharan Africa go without food. Meanwhile, I’m struggling with calculus and, I don’t know. A friend of mine who is no longer a friend. It’s truly nothing.”
She exhaled. “I think that’s a cop-out.”
“What is?”
“The idea that because things are worse somewhere else, you’re not allowed to have issues in your life. That’s what people who are trying to avoid having normal feelings say. Boo. I think you’re better than that.”
“Did you just say ‘boo’ to me? Did you boo me?”
“Well, yeah. I mean. The boy I met at the Bacon Free was smarter than that macho bullshit you just spewed. ‘I’m a man and I have no feelings.’ I call bullshit.”
I felt my throat close up, like the wind was sucked out of my air pipes. I swallowed. “Wow. You just say everything on your mind, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Huh.”
“Does that bother you?”
“It doesn’t … bother me, exactly. I’m not used to it, I guess. We’re not big talkers in my family. We don’t do a lot of booing and calling bullshit.”
“Well, I guess the good thing about being a woman who knows what she wants is that I don’t have to put up with bullshit if I don’t want to. So I figure I’ll call it like I see it, and if you want to tell me to fuck off, that’s cool.”
I laughed. “I’ve never met anyone like you,” I said.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I like you,” I said, feeling a little more open from the booze.
“Good,” she said. “I think I like you, but I’m probably going to have to, like, hang out with you one or two times to know for sure.”
“Um. Okay. Did you just ask me out on a date?”
“Call it what you want,” she said. “Wanna meet up this week? Wednesday?”
I closed my eyes and felt the alcohol course through my veins and all I wanted to be was sober so that I could fully enjoy this moment as Ben and not as a drunk person.
“Yes,” I said. “Very much yes.”
She laughed. “You’re so funny, the way you talk. You seem like the kind of guy who is not used to saying things.”
“I am that.”
“Well, maybe we can be the kind of friends who say things to each other.”
“Okay.”
“It doesn’t hurt that you’re insanely hot in a geeky sort of way.”
I felt heat throughout my body. “You’re hot in a beautiful sort of way.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you,” I said back.
I felt a zillion times better when we hung up, and I put the phone on my chest, put my hands behind my head, and just allowed myself to smile and tingle for a bit. Yeah, not so gay, I thought to myself.
That would not happen if I were gay.…
I jumped up and grabbed my computer. An experiment.
I had a couple Tumblr pages bookmarked for times like this. Feeds full of hot girls. I didn’t go to them. Instead I went to Google and typed in “naked gay guys.”
Up popped some pictures.
I stared at them. I studied them. The men were in really good shape. They didn’t remind me of Rafe, even though he is in good shape too. Just not like a porn model, I guess.
Down popped something else. Total deflation. It wasn’t like I was disgusted: not in the least. I just felt like I was looking at a science textbook.
I smiled. Yeah. Not so gay after all. One-time thing. One-person thing.
And then I thought about Hannah, and her maple syrup face, and the mole under her lip, and her wavy hair, and her compact, sweet body, and the scarf covering her up, and how it would feel to have her lying there with me. And I allowed my hand to drift downward, and I smiled again, because it just felt so good. Maybe there was even a little chance that right now, Hannah was thinking of me too.
I woke up around three in the morning with what felt like a ferret rampaging through my insides. I clenched my stomach and suddenly I was nauseous too. Something acidic rose into my esophagus. Oh no.
I made a run for the bathroom, my head still spinning from the booze. This. This was why I didn’t want to drink anymore. One of the reasons, anyway.
By the time I made it to a stall, I realized, to my dread, that this wasn’t some standard reaction to vodka. Maybe it was the wilted salad I’d eaten instead. My stomach rumbled, and I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
In the chilly, too-public stall, I closed my eyes and prayed for an end. When I’m sick to my stomach, I don’t feel that I want to be dead, but that it would be nice to be temporarily not alive, like I could take something and just turn my brain off while this thing coursed through me. It’s like all your life force is leaving your body, and I think, Is my life force shit? Is that what it all comes down to? Is that the fundamental human truth? We’re all shit?
I had no idea how much time had passed or what time it was when I started to hear other students coming and going in the bathroom. This was not a place I cared to have company, especially sick. Was it morning? I tried to remember what the light situation had been when I’d run to the bathroom. No idea.
“Jesus,” someone said, and suddenly there were eyes peering into the stall through the crack between the door and the wall. “Carver. Light a fuckin’ match.”
I tried to hide my face. “Go away,” I moaned. “Sick.”
“Yo, something died in here,” said another voice.
“It’s Carver.”
I heard Mendenhall’s voice yelling, “Zack, get your phone.”
“Guys,” I moaned. “Please don’t.”
But soon there was a camera up above the stall, aiming down. I wanted to stand, but it wasn’t the right time to stand. My pajamas around my ankles, I tried to hide my junk and my face at the same time, and I hated the world and all the people in it. Everyone was laughing and then my name was being chanted, and I wondered what gene you had to have to chant the name of an ailing person while they were suffering. I just didn’t get it. I would never do that to anyone.
“Party in the boys’ room,” I heard a familiar voice say. “What’s up?”
“Carver’s sick,” another voice said, just as I was realizing the new voice was Rafe’s. And then my stomach turned even more, and I felt my gag reflex gurgle.
“What? Stop it. You guys are fucking idiots,” Rafe said. “Are you insane? Leave the guy alone.”
“Weak,” someone jeered.
But Rafe kept at it, telling people to delete the video and get a fucking life and move on, and the voices slowly dispersed. And soon I could sense it was just him and me. I flushed.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling barely alive.
“Morons.”
“Sorry,” I said, but he didn’t reply, and soon I realized he had left the bathroom.
I closed my eyes and exhaled, thankful to be alone. I owed him one. We were still done, but
I definitely owed him. That was a downright decent thing to do.
About fifteen minutes later, I trudged back to my room, feeling weak, dizzy, and a bit queasy still. I opened my door, and there, in my burgundy chair, sat Rafe.
I didn’t know what to say. When I looked at him, I remembered what had happened earlier, and I opened my mouth to apologize, but then I saw the crumpled-up letter. With my note on it. Shit. He’d clearly uncrumpled it and read it, and he was staring right at me, and as soon as I thought to apologize, he shook his head and pointed to the bed. On it was a tray with a can of ginger ale from the vending machine and a light blue heating pad.
“It’ll help settle your belly,” he said, like he was my mom. It was oddly comforting. I walked over to the bed, and he hopped up and picked up the tray so I could get in easily. He handed me the ginger ale, and he said, “Drink.”
I took a sip. Ginger ale is about the most calming liquid. I don’t know why; it just is.
He plugged in the pad and handed it to me, and I pulled it under the covers. It warmed my midsection, and I closed my eyes and muttered, “Thanks.”
“No, I have no idea why Albie has a heating pad either,” he said.
I let the warmth radiate through me. “Sorry about … ” I said.
Again he didn’t answer. He gathered up his stuff, made sure I was comfortable, and said, “Call me if you need something.”
I was never so happy to be in my bed. My head was still pounding from the alcohol, my throat was raw from vomiting, and every part of my body felt wasted. I fell into a deep sleep, part of me wishing I was back at the bottom of that swimming pool.
A couple times I heard knocking but was too comfortable to answer, and then the knocks stopped and I conked back out again. The sleep was epic; it just seemed to go on and on. Occasionally I had the sense that someone was wiping my forehead with a washcloth, or re-filling a water glass and putting it by my bed, but I didn’t know for sure if I was dreaming or awake.
When I next opened my eyes, I could tell it was late morning from the position of the sun. A full glass of water sat on my desk. I looked around the room, and there was Rafe, watching me from the other bed. I took a deep breath and cringed. The room smelled vaguely hospital-like.
“I’m disgusting,” I moaned, and he laughed.
“That’s what showers are for,” he said. “How’re you feeling otherwise?”
My stomach was no longer hurting, but I felt drained, that feeling where you just want to lie there and do nothing. I stayed silent until I felt like I was being rude, and then I said, “A little better. I just wanna rest. How many days has it been?”
“It’s Sunday,” he said. I’d been asleep for twenty-four hours.
“Whoa. That’s substantial.”
“Forget sub. That’s fully stantial,” he said. “I was worried about you there. Quite a bug you must’ve had. You feeling a little better?”
“I guess.”
“Cool,” he said. “You want anything from the cafeteria?”
“Nah,” I said.
“Toast with honey it is.”
He put on his boots and his jacket, and I watched him from my bed and felt drowsy comfortable, that feeling when you accept that you’ll be in bed and it’s okay, the world will spin on without you for a day.
He gave a half wave and said, “I’ll be back,” and I closed my eyes and tried to put it all together in my head. What it meant. Was the awkwardness over? Paused? Did we have to talk about the thing I wrote on his note? Could we just pretend it didn’t exist and move on?
As I felt myself sagging into sleep, I realized it didn’t matter right now. He was a friend. The only friend who cared enough to be there for me when I needed it. And I was grateful.
I walked into the locker room on Monday before our third winter baseball practice and saw Mendenhall looming over a freshman who was crawling along the slush-covered floor on his hands and knees.
“Dogs sniff everything,” Mendenhall said. “Lead with your nose.”
The meek-looking boy—a freshman named Peterson—jutted his neck out and sniffed under and around the bench in front of his locker. I shuddered, remembering when the same thing happened to me. Freshman year, I crawled around when they told me to, even though I was bigger and stronger than some of the guys who told me to do it. I thought it was ridiculous, but I wanted to be part of the team.
I looked around the room and caught Steve’s eye. He was frowning, and I matched his frown and walked over to him.
“Do we really need to keep doing this stuff?” I asked.
“I’m all for team traditions, but this one I could live without,” he answered.
“Carver, you want Spot here to fetch something?” Mendenhall called over to me, pointing at Peterson.
“Um, no, that’s all right,” I said, now that I was at my locker. “I have everything I need.”
“There’s gotta be something,” he said.
“Nah. I can fetch it myself later.”
“Don’t worry, Ben doesn’t do fun,” Zack said.
Mendenhall shook his head in disgust. “Get changed, kid,” he told Peterson.
I stared at my locker. Some fun, I thought. Making a kid bark like a dog. But still. Was he right? Shit. Was I a killer of fun?
Why couldn’t I chill the fuck out?
I’m five. Mom has bought me a coloring book and crayons. I’ve never had crayons or a place to draw before. I have a picture of a dinosaur in front of me, and I am transfixed, using every single color, ones I’d never thought of before. I’m making a Robin’s Egg sky with an Outrageous Orange sun, and the dinosaur has Neon Carrot hands and an Electric Lime body, and I am singing. My mom is in the kitchen, cooking, and she is singing along to a song on the tiny radio she keeps on the white Formica countertop next to the sink. “I Like It, I Love It” is the song, and I’m happy, and my dad comes in to the kitchen and sees me drawing and he grabs the coloring book away and says, “If you have so much time, why don’t you go clean out the llama pen?” And he jerks open the back door. I look at my mom, and she looks sad, and my first thought is, “Dad made Mom sad.” Dad comes back with a metal bucket and shovel, I go outside, and as I shovel up llama crap I think, I shouldn’t have been having that much fun. You’re not supposed to. There’s work to be done. We’re Carver men. We work. We work hard.
I’m nine. We’re out at a restaurant for our yearly dinner out, waiting for a table. They’re playing some kind of polka music, and I start moving up and down a little bit. Luke laughs. I do it some more. Luke laughs more. Dad grabs me by the arm and pulls me out of the restaurant. He pushes me up against the wood shingles of the wall and looks me directly in the eye. “You look like a fool. You will not embarrass me, hear?” I nod and nod until he releases me.
I’m seventeen now. And I can’t remember too many times in my life I’ve gone along with other people’s idea of fun. Usually I just sit on the sidelines, like at parties when everyone is drinking and having a blast. The most fun I ever had was last semester in an apple orchard, when Rafe and Albie and Toby and I decided we were a gang and then got kicked out after a massive apple fight. I wanted to get back there. How do you get back there, when your factory setting is killer of fun? Did I have to become my dad?
I was still getting over my weekend of food poisoning, but practice itself went well. I enjoyed indoor practice. You got truer and faster hops off the laminated floor of the gym, and I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I like better in this world than cleanly fielding a grounder. Keeping track of where the runner is while I focus on the ball, keeping my glove down, squaring up my body, the fluid motion of the ball hitting my glove, my right hand retrieving it, the two steps and throw, like a perfect, un-criticizeable little dance. I don’t know where I got it from; Dad was not an athlete. He thought sports were a waste of time. Luke had never been on a team because he had to work the farm after school, and that was my story too, before Natick. I’d only been playing for a couple year
s.
Coach Donnelly hit a chopper between me and Mendenhall at short, and I ranged to my left, anticipated the high, quick bounce—ear level for me—reached out, gloved the ball, stopped my momentum midmotion, pivoted toward home plate, and rifled a bullet to our catcher.
“There you go, Carver, midseason form,” Donnelly shouted, and I kept my head down and circled behind Walton, the backup third baseman, who would get to field the next one.
Then it was time to take a few swings. A lot of the other guys tried to slam the ball into the basketball bleachers at the far end of the gym, which was probably about fifty feet short of a normal fence anyway. Big deal, you hit a can of corn to left, I kept thinking, watching Steve do it five straight times. When it was my turn I focused on going the other way. By going to right field, I could start to gauge my timing and work on staying back and making hard contact, which I did on about half my swings.
“See how our best power guy isn’t swinging for the fences? Take notes, gentlemen,” Coach Donnelly said from the mound after I took my last hack. “That there is humbleness. That there is what you aim for. Humbility.”
“Dude is humble,” Mendenhall said, and a bunch of the other guys said, “Yup.”
As I waited for my second swings, I saw that Mendenhall had two ninth graders, Clement and Zander, off to the side. I heard him say, “You wanna be varsity someday, right?”
He was holding jockstraps over each of their heads. I winced. A guy named Morris had done this with me and Bryce. We were told that if we wanted to show that we were team players, we’d put jockstraps on over our shorts. I remembered how Bryce had looked at me with this powerless expression. We both knew that this was some sort of stupid prank meant to embarrass and demean us, but what were we going to do? The mesh crotch looked stupid with nothing to bulge it out, and the seniors pointed and laughed all that practice.
I wanted to say something, to tell Mendenhall to knock it off, but more than that, I didn’t want any trouble. So I didn’t say anything. I simply watched as the two boys threaded their legs through the leg holes of the jockstraps. Donnelly seemed oblivious to what was going on, and I wondered why he would ignore such behavior.