six

THIS WAS PROBABLY A MISTAKE. FOOTBALL tryouts. I mean, yeah, I was one of the biggest guys on the field. And I could run okay for a fat dude. I guess all that cardio at the gym paid off. But I didn’t know any of the terminology the coaches kept barking out. I kept getting in the wrong group of people, going to the wrong side of the field, getting yelled at by the revered Coach Willard, whose legend loomed large in town but who turned out to be a rather peevish little man with a whistle and a fat gut that strained above his belted khaki Dockers. After a while, it became funny, and I wished I’d told Lula I was doing it, so she’d be there to watch. She’d be laughing her head off. The whole thing was so stupid macho, and probably the gayest thing I’d ever done in public. All the grunting, everybody’s butt in the air. And all the drills had these super gay names like “The Man-Maker,” “The Machine Gun,” and “The Rodeo.” But when it came time for the sled, where they had all us big guys put on pads and helmets and run like hell at this sort of foam dummy on wheels and slam into it as hard as we could, I actually did all right.

“Hey, you’re getting the hang of it out there, man.” Sexy Seth slapped me on the back as I attempted to simultaneously catch my breath and chug Gatorade.

“Thanks,” I wheezed unsexily. “You work fast.”

“Huh?”

“Telling Morris about me. He came up to me at the gym, like, right after I saw you.”

“I didn’t say anything to Coach Morris,” Seth said, confused.

“Oh. I guess I thought . . .” Hey, wanna see my new football move called The Backpedal? Seth probably had no recollection of running into me at Walmart. And why would he? I felt myself blushing a million shades of red, and I hoped that if Seth noticed, he would just think I was dying of heatstroke.

“Oh yeah, ’cause of my mom.” Seth smiled, or maybe he was just squinting in the sun. “I know, she kept bugging me to talk to you about trying out, after we saw you at the store. But I never did go to Morris, ’cause . . . I mean, it’s not like I didn’t think you could play. I didn’t think you wanted to. I figured, you know. You’re one of those . . . bookish guys.”

“Bookish?” Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

“I just meant, like, you’re Mr. Straight As. I always see you guys reading in the quad—you and your girlfriend . . . uh. Lois?”

“Lula.” I didn’t bother to correct him on the girlfriend part.

“Right. Lula. Sorry, man—I’m shit with names.”

“Come on, ladies!” Coach Willard barked at us. “You gonna stand around and gossip like a buncha hens, or you gonna play some got damn football?!”

“I’m just saying,” Seth shook his surfer hair out of his eyes and put his helmet on. “I know you take all those College Prep classes and stuff. And being on the team kinda takes over your life. You gotta wake up early as hell, work out all the time, rain or shine. Practice before school and after. You think you got time for it?”

“Do you think I’m gonna make the cut?” We jogged out onto the field, side by side.

“Ain’t up to me,” Seth smiled. “But if it was, I’d say we could use a big guy like you if we’re gonna make it to State next year.”

Coach Morris blew his whistle and called me over for something called pass-blocking drills. The other guys groaned, but I had no idea what that meant, so I just put my sweaty helmet back on and got in the back of the line.

“Callahan, get over here,” Morris commanded. “Briggs, you too. Ty, put that dummy up right on the line.” A few yards behind us, another one of the assistant coaches, Tyver, set up this thing that looked like a stand-alone punching bag, or an inverted exclamation point. “Callahan, that dummy over there is Seth Brock, okay?”

“I can definitely see the resemblance.”

Morris squinted up at me. “Now, remember that two-point stance I showed you earlier?” I nodded, dropping into a sort of lunge. “That’s it. Just keep those shoulders back, elbows in. Yep, you got it. All right, now, Briggs here is gonna try to get at Brock, right there behind you. And you’re not gonna let him. That’s all you have to do. Briggs gets by you, hits that dummy, you lose.”

I nodded. Speed Briggs—a large, gregarious black kid—was pretty much the only guy at Hawthorne who was bigger than me. He shook his head as he dropped into a crouch in front of me.

“Set!” Morris yelled.

“Nice knowin’ ya, rookie,” Briggs chuckled.

“Hut!”

Speed came at me. I stepped back, my heel sliding in the muddy turf. Speed bore down; I felt wet clay oozing into my left sneaker. I pictured the dummy behind me, pictured Seth shaking his hair out of his eyes. Bookish. Suddenly it was like some spring uncoiled in my legs. This weird roar came out of my throat and I lunged, shoving Briggs off me like he was an overeager puppy. It was like I couldn’t see for a minute, and then I could, and Briggs was face down on the ground. Nobody said a word.

“Oh, shit, man,” I knelt down. “Are you okay?”

Speed was laughing. He rolled over and held up his hand. I pulled him to his feet. He was still giggling, picking a clod of grassy mud out of his facemask.

“Hot damn!” Speed hollered, spitting dirt. “That boy’s a monster!”

“Attaboy, Callahan!” Morris slapped me on the butt. “Back in line. Lytle, Torres, you’re up next.”

Lula would be having a total fit right now.

“YOU DID WHAT?” LULA WAS INCREDULOUS. We were out in the courtyard, eating lunch.

“I just tried out. It’s no big deal.”

“It’s Hawthorne Football, Rory. It’s the biggest deal in town.”

“It’s not that big a deal to me. One of the coaches goes to my gym. He asked me to come to the tryouts, so I did. I probably won’t even make the team. I just did it as a joke.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“I’m telling you now.” I couldn’t believe she was so upset. “I thought you’d think it was funny.”

“I think it goes against everything you stand for.” Her mouth was turned down, and with the red hair, she did kind of look like Scully for a minute. “I don’t see how you could participate, even as a joke, with those jock assholes.”

“Lula, come on. I told you, it’s no big deal.”

“Those are the kind of guys who take guys like you out into the middle of nowhere and leave them tied to fence posts—”

“Nobody’s tying me to anything, Lula, geez. I’m almost three hundred pounds.”

“Whatever, Rory.”

Now I knew she was upset. Lula hates it when people just say “whatever” and leave the rest of the conversation hanging.

“None of those guys has ever done anything to me. They don’t even know I exist,” I tried to assure her. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. A couple of those guys had told me to “Move it, lardass,” in the hallway from time to time. And one guy last semester, a linebacker who was graduating, asked me to help him write history papers for Mr. Kinney’s class, but that was because Mr. Kinney asked him to ask me.

We spent the rest of the lunch in relative silence. Except that I couldn’t really eat, not when Lula was upset with me. So I tried to make amends. I told her that her hair looked really Scully-esque today. I told her that we should watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy again, since we hadn’t done that in a while. I told her she could even fast-forward to all the Aragorn parts. That got a little smile out of her. The bell rang, and we got up, collecting our trash. She still didn’t say a word. Later, in Chemistry, she passed me a note.

Sorry I freaked out about the football thing. I just felt weird that you didn’t tell me. And it seemed kind of out of character for you. But if you make the team, I’ll be there to cheer you on. L.

I passed her one back:

Thanks, but don’t worry. I won’t make the cut. I didn’t do too well on the drill they call the “Man Maker.” If only Sexy Seth & co knew . . .

From the other end of the lab table, she unfolded the note and laughed. It got Mr. Miller’s attention, so she turned the laugh into a cough and hooked her arm around the note, hiding it and making it look like she was studiously pondering the periodic table of elements, as if it was crucial information we were indeed going to use later, rather than just memorize for the test and promptly forget.