Dad stopped speaking to me. You know about The Fight, how Dad hasn't talked to Win and Bill since Christmas? Well, now I was in their club. Yippee. On the other hand, I wouldn't have had much to say if Dad did talk to me, because I was so mad at him that the thought of trying to engage in some heart-to-heart Oprah Winfrey conversation was about number 34,679 on my list of priorities. So I guess to be fair, I should say that it wasn't so much that Dad wasn't speaking to me as we weren't speaking to each other. Which wasn't as awful as it sounds, because I was barely home, and when I was home I was either writing in my room or asleep.
The good news, I guess, is that Dad's hip was getting so much better that he could milk in the afternoons at least. Not that he told me or anything. He just started one day before I got home so I could just go on inside and ignore him back.
Brian also stopped speaking to me. But just like Dad—even though before this I'd never thought of the two of them having much in common—he also never told me.
Monday night I tried his cell phone and just got a recording. I'm not too good at leaving messages, so I hung up fast before it got to the beep part. Tuesday morning I got the recording again, which was frustrating. I couldn't stop thinking about that slapped look he had when he saw me, and how bad Beaner must have sounded, saying I was playing linebacker and that I'd take him down. I wasn't going to do either one of those things, but it's hard to explain that into an answering machine.
Besides, you know, I missed just talking to him. I'd notice something like the trim on the barn windows and I'd remember when we painted that and what we'd talked about, and then I'd wish we just could get together to joke about how much preseason sucked and just shoot the breeze the way we used to.
Finally, because I was getting a little nervous and everything, because I just wanted to talk to him, Wednesday night I called his house.
"Hello?" a woman answered.
"Um, hello," I said, sounding like the brain surgeon I always do on the phone. "Is, um, Brian there?" Then I added, remembering my manners finally, "It's D.J. Schwenk."
"Oh. D.J.," said the woman in this voice that I couldn't figure out at all. "Just a minute." She was gone for a while—long enough for me to start feeling sick—and came back on and said, "I'm sorry, but it looks like he left."
"Oh. Can you, um, tell him I called?"
"I'll leave him a note. Goodbye."
It was so obvious that he was really home—she might as well have said that Brian told her to say he was gone. And then it hit me all of a sudden that Brian's cell phone has caller ID. He knew all the time it was me calling, or at least someone from the SCHWENK, WARREN household because the phone's still in Grandpa Warren's name because we never got around to changing it. And he was probably betting it wasn't Curtis.
That's when I figured out he wasn't talking to me.
Well, of course he didn't want to talk to me, because he was spending all his time around Hawley guys. You heard how sweet they were in the parking lot. Those guys are evil. Okay, that's a little strong. But they're not good. I'd bet a million dollars they were tearing me to bits, making all these cracks about me and ragging on Red Bend, and saying all sorts of nasty things that would make anyone bummed out if they listened enough. That plus the shock of seeing me Monday afternoon, well, no wonder Brian wasn't talking.
So I gave this a lot of thought, trying to figure out how to handle it in a real Oprah kind of way, and finally I decided to throw a brick through his window. Ha ha, just kidding. Although what I came up with wasn't that far off. If he wasn't going to talk to me on the phone and we probably weren't going to run into each other, not until the scrimmage, which probably wouldn't be too good a place for a heart-to-heart conversation, I decided to go by his house before practice when he'd be sure to be there.
Which, I just want you to know, was real brave of me, and shows how serious I was.
So Friday morning I left home extra early in our rusty old pickup, right after milking so I missed breakfast even, and headed over to Hawley. Brian's house was really new-looking, with new little trees around it and all, with a bunch of other houses in what used to be a field. I even remember when it was a field, which makes me sound like Grandpa Warren or something, but it's true.
I didn't even make it to his house, though, because just as I was pulling onto his street his Cherokee came the other way. I'll tell you one thing: he sure looked surprised to see me.
I stopped right there in the middle of the street and rolled down my window, and I guess because he didn't have a choice, Brian rolled down his window too.
"Hey," I said.
He glared at me.
"What are you so mad about?"
"Tell me you don't know," he said bitterly. "I spent every day with you all summer, and you never told me?"
"About football, you mean?"
"Duh! Of course about football!"
"I didn't think it ... mattered." Which wasn't quite true. There's a lot I would say if I could have this conversation over again. About me feeling like a cow, about my feelings for him, maybe even about Amber if we talked long enough. But I couldn't say all that right there in the street. I don't think that fast, and certainly not when I'm getting yelled at. Which I was.
"Do you think I'd train like that, every day, with someone who'd be playing against me? Would you do that if you were me? I trusted you. But you—you just used me."
I didn't have one word to say.
Boy, did Brian look mad. Mad and hurt. "You Schwenks, you're messed up. You might be good at football but you really suck at life." He shook his head in disgust. "When you don't talk, you know, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said."
Which, sitting here now writing it down, sounds pretty obvious and a little stupid, even. But hearing it then, boy, it just about killed me.
I headed back to Red Bend on autopilot or something. How would I feel if I'd spent all summer playing pickup with someone only to find out they'd been planning the whole time to play against me? After learning all my weaknesses, all my tricks? If that happened ... I could see how Brian was mad. Because I'd pretty much want to throttle whoever that person was. Training someone, that's a commitment you make. And by deciding to play myself, I'd broken that. I like to think of myself as an honest person. If I had to list what I like about myself, I'd put "honest" right near the top. But not telling someone something—even though I'd always planned on telling him once I was sure it was happening and all—after a while not telling is about the same thing as lying. I'd lied to him.
I didn't like thinking that at all.
It wasn't until later that I remembered I'd never had a chance to say that I wasn't even going to be playing linebacker. So I'd never even be on the field at the same time as Brian. We'd never really be playing against each other. But by the time I thought of saying that, well, by then it was way too late.
So that was how absolutely wonderful my life was at this point, and the only thing that made it that much better was that I had to spend every free minute I had, until I passed out in bed because I was so exhausted, working on English. Every afternoon I'd eat everything in the fridge and take a shower until the hot water ran out, standing there wishing Amber and I were still friends because then she could give me one of her amazing back rubs, missing her in a way just as much as I missed Brian. Then I'd head into my room the way Smut walks into the vet's. Which if you're wondering means I was pretty darn reluctant. Even though Mom had brought a good computer home from school because ours is so old it could probably use Dad's walker.
The only reason I was even writing at all was because by now everyone in town, in the whole state it seemed, knew about me and football. And if they found out I couldn't play because I'd flunked English and hadn't finished my makeup work, that would be just about the worst. I'd pretty much have to leave the country. So if you're ever looking for motivation, there's one idea. Get everyone talking and you'll be sure to do whatever it is you need to do. Well, maybe it wouldn't work for you, but it sure worked in my case. I mean, I hope it does. It's not over yet.
And it turned out, if you want to know the truth, that writing wasn't half as hard as I thought it would be. Except for the fact that all I could do was think about Brian and want to die.
One evening as I sat there staring out at the sunset and feeling like a dried-up old cowpie, Curtis stopped by my room.
"Hey," I said, not turning around. I could see his reflection in the window.
"Hey." He stood there all hunkered down and uncomfortable. Finally he asked, like he was offering to fall on a grenade or something, "Are you okay?"
"No," I said, because I was too beat to lie.
"Do you, um, like Brian?" Which I have to give him a lot of credit for because it was probably the bravest thing he's ever done, asking that.
"Yeah." I thought about it. "Yeah, I like him a lot."
"Oh." He stood there a bit longer. "I'm sorry."
I turned around to look at him standing there looking as cut up as I felt. It just about killed me, seeing how much he cared. "Thanks," I said. I meant it too.