Justify Your Decision
Stanford.
The secret lodged itself in my chest like a fat chicken.
The following week was short due to Thanksgiving. Instead of going to school, I got the flu (might have been psychosomatic—caused by the fat chicken).
Colleges called me. My Facebook and Twitter bubbled with recruitment. I watched TV and thought about Frisbees and mountains. I am in love with California!
***
For Thanksgiving, Jerri and I ate grilled cheese sandwiches (burnt). Then she studied and I watched football on TV alone. Green Bay Packers.
The fat chicken pecked my lungs all Sunday. Want to celebrate good things! Why can’t I just celebrate this?
***
I couldn’t stay home the next week.
“You like California, man?” Cody asked by my locker Monday morning.
The fat chicken choked, scratched. I blinked at him.
“Pretty cool?” he asked.
I pressed my forehead against the cold metal. “Yeah…yeah, it was pretty okay,” I said. My face got hot.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did it go bad?”
“Not great,” I said.
“Screw Stanford, man. We want you in the Midwest.”
“Thanks,” I said. Here’s what I wanted to say: Stanford is the most beautiful place in the world because there are bridges that disappear into the sky and old houses that look like they’re made out of freaking candy, and did you know there are foggy mountains out there in the world, not just on TV, and little dudes in dresses who smile and say, “You’re welcome,” when you order iced tea?
In Current Events class, while Mr. Farber warbled on about labor unions and corporate greed and crap, Karpinski leaned over and asked if the California bikini chicks were hot. You don’t know what hot means because it’s not bikinis—it’s library girls in plastic glasses who smile when you make jokes!
I whispered, “Not at all.”
“Madison girls are totally hot,” Karpinski said, nodding.
“Karpinski, care to share?” Farber asked.
“Madison girls are totally hot!” Karpinski shouted.
“True enough,” Farber said.
My English teacher, Mr. Linder, who is not a football fan, stopped me after class and said, “Great writers at Stanford. You could learn from the best.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not much of a writer.” I would write love poems to Frisbees!
“Bullshit,” Linder said.
“California has earthquakes,” I said. I made a face.
Then Coach Johnson, Coach Knautz, Abby Sauter, Jess Withrow, Mrs. Callahan, Ms. Rory, etc., etc., etc., all pulled me aside to talk in private, to get the lowdown. Everyone wanted to know about Stanford.
While I thought, I’m in love with library couches and red roofs and fist-bumping second-string kickers who talk smart about Louis C.K., I told them all, no, it wasn’t that cool, which seemed like what I should say—I was doing my duty to God and ESPN, keeping my secret—except Gus cornered me after he heard me tell Abby Sauter that Madison is prettier than Palo Alto (where Stanford is located).
“Felton. Shit,” he whispered.
“What?” I whispered back.
“Follow me. Now,” he said.
I followed him into the faculty bathroom, which was right across the hall from where Abby and I had been talking. Going in that bathroom made me totally nervous. (Gus does what he wants.)
“Jesus. It’s clean in here,” I said, looking around.
He turned to me, lifted his hair wad, and said, “They are going to kill you.”
“Who?” I asked.
“You’re telling people that Stanford wasn’t cool?”
“I have to keep the secret for ESPN,” I said. “It’s my job.”
“But you’re building expectations. You’re making everybody think you’ll be at Wisconsin. These are Wisconsinites, man! You know how pissed they’re going to be if you dupe them like that?”
“Dupe?” Slowly his words sunk into my brain. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Gus nodded at me. “Jesus. Just don’t say anything. Just keep it to yourself. Can’t you just hold it in a little? Can’t you just be calm and in control?”
I swallowed. I thought. “No. That’s not me.”
“Really? And who are you?” Gus asked. “Why does everything rattle you? You’re rattled about liking Stanford, aren’t you?”
I thought about it. “Well. Yeah. Sort of. I have a chicken…”
“What chicken?”
“Never mind.”
“Where are you heading in life?”
I began to get a little hot, a little mad. “Why does that matter?”
Gus looked around, then whispered, “Stanford. It’s great, right?”
“Yeah.”
“If you understood why Stanford’s the best choice for you, if it was part of the larger plan, wouldn’t you be calm?”
Larger plan. Justify your existence. “Maybe.”
“As it stands, even this good news shakes the shit out of you and you walk around lying to people, acting like an idiot, causing trouble for your future because you know you’ll have to justify your decision when you announce it and you can’t justify it because you have no idea why you make any decision.” Gus’s face had turned totally red.
I whispered, “Oh.” I sort of hated it when Gus acted like my dad, but he was generally right.
“Go home and write a list of the reasons why you like…” Gus looked around the empty bathroom and whispered, “Stanford.”
“Yeah. Okay,” I mumbled.
“And then, when it comes time to make your announcement, you can earnestly tell the State of Wisconsin why you’re destroying their dreams of Cheesehead Heaven, okay?”
I nodded.
Gus nodded. He dropped his hair wad and walked out of the bathroom.
I stood there and breathed for a moment. Then Mr. Linder entered.
“Hi-ya, Felton! Great to see you! Get the hell out of here!”
“Sorry,” I said and bolted.
***
My reasons for liking Stanford seemed ridiculous when I wrote them out instead of repeating them in my head.
1. Dude in dress served me iced tea.
2. Cute guide didn’t try to grab my wang.
3. Library had leather couches.
4. Kicker discussed Louis C.K.
5. Frisbee players were very good.
6. Fog on mountains.
I looked at the list and thought, Maybe I’m gay. Is that why I’m so confused at this tender time in my life? Is that why my stomach hurts? Then I thought about Aleah and knew I definitely wasn’t gay, unless Aleah was a dude, which she wasn’t.
An hour later, I noticed I was watching Storage Wars on TV.
An hour after that I went for a run, a hard run, and I felt better because running calms me down.
Then I did multiple sets of sit-ups and push-ups. Better.
Then I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. My heart went back to racing. My stomach tweaked. I thought: Just tell them all Stanford was okay, okay? They’re going to be so pissed. Cheesehead Heaven destroyed?
***
In the middle of the night, I got out of bed and emailed my list to Gus. I had to get it off my chest.
I saw him in the hall the next morning.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “Are you having some kind of problem with your sexuality or something?”
“No.”
“It’s cool if you’re gay, I mean. That would explain some of your confusion, right?”
“No. I love Aleah. She’s not a dude.”
“Enough about her,” he said. “Get over it. You’re seventeen. You’re not going to marry her.” He turned and left.
***
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I struggled all night long, every night, to get anchored, to be calm while the recruiters kept calling, and Bluffton kept nodding and winking and acting like it was all done and I’d play for Wisconsin, and Aleah didn’t return my texts.
Eventually, not even working out helped to calm me.
I began to wonder if I should just make my Stanford announcement, just post it on Facebook, call ESPN and cancel.
Would ESPN sue me?
I had good news! Stanford was good news! Why couldn’t I just love it and be cool? Instead of being happy, I felt like crap. Miserable about my full-ride scholarship to Stanford. Worried that I didn’t know how to explain it without falsely implying I’d come out of the closet. Worried that everybody had abandoned me.