If the soccer playoffs weren’t on everyone’s mind before, they certainly were the next day in school. Kids Ben didn’t even know were slapping him on the back in the halls and talking about the “amazing save” he’d made. He didn’t know whether to correct them or just accept the praise. Tyler laughed when he saw Ben’s confusion apparently written all over his face. “You’re overthinking it, bro,” he said. There was even going to be a pep rally eighth period on Friday and a fan bus to take kids to Wentworth Community College, where the Eastern Mass final would be played on neutral turf.
Ben had double lunch on Thursday—which meant he had lunch and a study hall—and he and Tyler made plans to go to Colucci’s for steak bombs to celebrate the win. He was waiting in the hallway for the Tyler Nuson fan club to clear out so they could go. He sat down on a bench and glanced at his phone, but he didn’t really mind waiting. It was kind of like watching a National Geographic special on primate primping. Tyler was leaning against his locker. One of the twins was there (who knew which one) as well as a couple other sophomore girls and a junior girl who Tyler was sort of on-again off-again dating—if you could call repeated hookups at parties “dating.” Megan Sewell didn’t hang on Tyler’s every word like the other girls did. In fact, right then she was checking her phone as Tyler recounted the header goal.
Light was coming through the skylight above their heads, and it caught some of the red and golden highlights in Tyler’s hair. His skin really was golden—not yellow like a kung fu comic book character but actually golden like pictures of summer wheat on cereal boxes or beer bottles. When he grinned he got a dimple on his left cheek. Were these things what made girls like him so much? Was it weird that he, Ben, was noticing? Someone sat down on the bench next to Ben. He flinched as though they could read his thoughts and quickly slid over.
“That’s not very friendly.” It was Darcy.
“Oh, hey,” Ben said. “I didn’t realize it was you.” His eyes flicked over, up, and down. She was wearing a tight bluish-green V-neck sweater. A thin silver chain hung around her neck with a tiny silver horseshoe resting just above the dark shadow where her boobs came together. He looked back up to see if Tyler was ready yet.
Darcy followed his gaze. “So you and Tyler are like best friends, huh?”
“Uh huh,” Ben said, although the title made him feel like a kindergartener.
“Since forever?” Darcy asked.
“Fourth grade,” Ben said. He didn’t mean to be short with her. It was just that he knew where this conversation was going. Girls were always being nice to him as a way to get to Tyler. Next she would ask if Tyler had a girlfriend, or if she was subtle she might ask if Tyler’s girlfriend got in the way of their friendship. But it was really the same question.
“So you’re probably used to all this, then,” Darcy said.
“What do you mean?”
“The Tyler show. I mean, it seems like it’s like this a lot. It must get annoying, all the waiting.”
“Hang out with Julie much?”
“Huh?” Darcy said.
“Never mind.” Ben wasn’t sure how to respond. If he agreed with her he sounded like Tyler’s sidekick, but if he disagreed he was obviously lying. But how to explain it to her in a way that didn’t sound like he worshipped at the altar of Tyler Nuson? Tyler really liked people. He liked talking to them and hearing their stories. When they were around town, it was like hanging out with the mayor of Easton. Everyone knew Tyler. Whenever they drove into Cambridge to get a burger at Bartley’s in Harvard Square, Tyler always wanted to stop and hear the street musicians. He wasn’t the guy who stood at the back and shuffled on without leaving a buck after listening to a song. He wasn’t the one who would listen to a whole set and give five dollars. Tyler would stand there for the better part of an hour, throw some money in the guy’s guitar case, and then talk to the guy about where he performed and if he had an album. And it wasn’t just music. Tyler genuinely wanted to know what people were up to.
Sometimes it was tiring. Sometimes Ben did just want to eat his damn burger in peace without hearing all about their waiter’s audition to be a janitor in the latest Matt Damon action movie.
But he wasn’t going to tell Darcy that, so he smiled and shrugged. Just then, Tyler broke away from the pack and sauntered over to where they were sitting.
“Steak bombs!” he hissed the word excitedly. “Who’s this?” he said, turning to smile in Darcy’s direction. “Want a steak bomb?”
“Tyler, Darcy, Darcy, Tyler,” Ben introduced them.
“So, you coming for steak bombs?” Tyler repeated.
Ben felt himself bristle. Why did he care if Tyler invited Darcy? Should he be the one?
“Thanks, but no,” Darcy said. She stood up and shouldered her backpack. “I’ve got class. And, as it so happens, I’m a vegetarian.”
“It’s a really good steak bomb,” Tyler said.
“That really came from a cow,” Darcy replied.
“Moo,” said Tyler sadly.
Darcy smirked. “See you later, Ben. Interesting to meet you, Tyler,” she added.
“Did she sound a little sarcastic?” Tyler asked as they walked down the hallway toward the main entrance.
“I don’t think she’s as impressed with you as the rest of your public.” For some reason Ben was pleased by this. He turned around to get another look at Darcy heading down the hall in the opposite direction.
“Well, that’s a shame,” Tyler said. “I’ll have to do something about that.” There was that bristly feeling again.
As they walked out to the car, Ben slapped his arms against his sides, questioning the decision to leave his coat in his locker. Tyler tossed his keys in the air, catching them behind his back. “There are going to be some sweet parties on Saturday after the game.”
“If we win,” Ben said.
“If we win,” Tyler said, “the parties will be insane! Unhinged! But either way, there will be parties. Jessica Albright’s parents are going out of town.”
Ben shrugged. “I’m just thinking about the game.”
Tyler turned and bowed deeply, his hands pressed together like some kind of yogi. “You are the better man,” he intoned.
“Open the car, numbnuts. I’m freezing.”
“Your wish is my command,” Tyler said, and he clicked the button.
On the ride over, Ben thought about Tyler’s reaction to Darcy. Tyler was used to getting attention from pretty much every girl who saw him. The story of how he became hot was something Ben called Ty-lore. In sixth and seventh grade they were still both pretty much dweebs. Tyler had some status as a good athlete, but neither of them talked to girls or even really paid much attention to them. They were both into video games, and that, along with endless hours of playing Pig or Horse or Around the World in Ben’s driveway, would keep them occupied for the better part of a weekend.
All that changed the summer after seventh grade. Some of the guys started playing a pickup soccer game at Albermarle Field. They played five-on-five, and usually they had enough guys to get a mini tournament going. This was where Ben first learned one of the few valuable things he knew about girls. If all the boys were somewhere, girls would turn up. This and also, with a few exceptions, girls moved in packs, and although the packs had an internal decision-making process that was a complete mystery to him, the packs could make or break you. And one day, the pack made Tyler.
They were playing shirts and skins the way they always did. A few of the shirts made a six-foot goal on each side of the field. Ben played goalie because he liked to, and because it had the added advantage of making him the good guy. No one had to be cajoled into standing in net because he was there.
At the far end of the field, a group of girls was sitting. They were braiding each other’s hair and pretending not to pay attention to the game. They had become a regular feature of the games now. None of the boys interacted with them, but their presence was now an accepted part of the scene and gave it an extra charge, something they didn’t really have a name for yet. On this one particular afternoon, Tyler—a skin—booted the ball wide of the goal, right into the center of the girls’ nest. There was some screeching and yelping as the ball bounced around them. Then Joanna Cote grabbed the ball, held it to her side, and planted a hand on her other hip. Tyler beckoned for her to throw the ball, but she shook her head no. Tyler walked closer and then closer. Now everyone on the field was watching the exchange. When he got close enough, they all watched as Joanna Cote reached out her hand and touched him. His back was to the rest of them. What did she touch? Everyone’s mind buzzed with the question. Then it was over. She handed him the ball and sat down with her friends amidst an explosion of whispers and giggles. Tyler turned around and shrugged, but his face was red, and not just from running around.
After the game Joanna and two of her friends walked right up to Tyler, who was pulling his T-shirt back over his head. “See,” Joanna said to her friends. “He’s got a six-pack.” She lifted the bottom of his T-shirt with one of her pink-polished fingernails. Everyone looked, even the boys. It was true. Tyler had a perfectly formed six-pack; the muscles around his hips and stomach rippled with definition. Ben tugged self-consciously at the bottom of his shirt. Were they going to check everyone?
Joanna, who had straight blonde hair and already wore eye makeup, cocked her head to one side and said, “We’re going to the pool tomorrow.” She chewed her gum, and Ben could see her tongue dancing delicately inside her mouth, playing with it like a seal might bounce a balloon on its nose.
When no one said anything, she looked directly at Tyler and said, “Are you going to come?”
Tyler looked at Ben. Ben shrugged. “I guess so,” Tyler said.
Joanna didn’t even glance at Ben. “Good,” she said. “At, like, three.” It definitely wasn’t a question. She turned around and the three girls walked back to their friends, ponytails bobbing and butts shaking. Ben felt a surge within himself that usually came only from soccer or sometimes from certain parts of movies that made him clamp a pillow over his lap if he was watching at home with his family.
They hung out at the pool all summer. Joanna was the first girl Tyler ever kissed. Ben could still point out the exact spot where it happened, on the side of the pool building near the dumpsters. He had been just around the corner, waiting awkwardly with two of her friends. But it wasn’t just Joanna. That was the summer Tyler became Tyler: good-looking, popular, funny, and athletic. He’d been that way all along, Ben supposed. But after that summer there was no going back.
Ben stole a sideways glance at Tyler in the car. He was drumming distractedly on the steering wheel as he scanned the street in front of Colucci’s for parking. He didn’t look like someone who was troubled by anything. Since that summer after seventh grade, Tyler had had a girlfriend here and there. But it never seemed to last more than a few weeks, and he could never get a good explanation from Tyler about why. After a while he just stopped asking about them. The story never changed much, and they were gone a few weeks later. Megan Sewell was the first one he could remember ever cracking the one-month mark—not that he was keeping track exactly, because that would be weird, wouldn’t it?
They didn’t say much until they ordered and sat down in one of the cracked red vinyl booths in the back of Colucci’s general store and pizza place. The pizza place was mostly a takeout operation with a few booths making a halfhearted attempt at a restaurant in the back. Ben could smell the peppery steak grease sizzling on the flat grill and felt his stomach contract and gurgle in response. “What about Megan Sewell?” he asked.
“What about her?”
“Are you going to see her this weekend?”
Tyler shrugged. “Maybe. She said she might go to Jessica’s party.”
Ben shook his head and grinned. “So that’s it, huh?”
The guy from behind the grill slapped their sandwiches down in front of them on two circular silver trays. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Tyler took a big bite of his sub, and his eyes bugged out in appreciation.
“Well, it’s been a while,” Ben said. He popped a grilled onion that had slid out from the bun into his mouth. He bounced it around on his tongue until the heat dissipated. “You must like her, right?”
“Do you?” Tyler asked. He seemed annoyed.
Ben’s first thought was that he didn’t actually like Megan that much. He thought she was kind of aloof, maybe even a bit snobby. But he hadn’t really hung out with her that much. She and Tyler always seemed to hook up at parties or get together, just the two of them. It occurred to him that he might be coming off as jealous, so he did something to lighten the mood.
“I asked you first,” Ben said. He blew his straw wrapper at Tyler’s face.
“Of course I like her,” he finally said. “I mean, I wouldn’t hang out with her if I didn’t. She makes things pretty easy.”
“That’s beautiful,” Ben said. He tried not to act annoyed. If there was something special about Megan, Tyler was clearly not going to tell him about it.
“What about you?” Tyler picked up the straw paper and flicked it back at him.
“Me and who?” Ben said.
“Whoever.”
Ben gave a little cough. “I don’t really think we’re in the same, er, league as far as girls.” He tried to keep his voice cool so they could stay in the world where it just hadn’t happened, hadn’t been convenient. And out of the place where he was a complete defective unworthy of a serious hookup with any girl ever.
“What?” Tyler smacked the table with his open palm. The guy behind the grill gave them a long stare. “Look at that face,” Tyler said. “Seriously, look!”
Ben glanced at his reflection in the mirror over the beer coolers. When he saw that the flesh-colored plastic in his ears was covered, he looked a little longer. Shaggy brown hair, hazel eyes, the telltale red dot on his chin from an incoming zit.
“Dude, you’re hot,” Tyler said.
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“I’m not,” Tyler said indignantly. “When am I ever an asshole? No wait, don’t answer that. But seriously, you are a nice-looking guy. You act like a Sheldon, but you’re not, you’re like a Pitt or a Cruise. Seriously. You look like that guy in the vampire movies, whatshisface?”
Ben sighed.
“Edward Cullen!” Tyler shouted. “That guy!”
“Do I sparkle like diamonds?”
“You watched it!” Tyler shouted. This time the guy behind the counter put down his spatula and made like he was coming over. Tyler put his hands up in defeat and mouthed a silent Sorry. Ben laughed and took another bite of his sub. The last time he’d slept over at Tyler’s house, Tyler had tried to get him to watch one of the Twilight movies. He had refused, opting instead for the latest in the Bourne sequence, The Bourne Calamity or something like that. Anyway, he’d given Tyler a lot of shit for trying to get him to watch it when really he’d already seen it with Shannan one weekend while she was home from school.
Now, the look of betrayal on Tyler’s face only made him laugh harder, and a piece of gristle rocketed out of his mouth onto the floor. He looked over for a minute at the grill man, but he was busy with a customer. Ben scooped it up into a napkin thinking for a minute how, whether or not it was bullshit, he was glad that at least Tyler still seemed to prefer his company over one of the countless girls he hooked up with.