CHANGE 2–DAY 15

The end zone is in sight. I’m running top-speed (well, as fast as I can wearing a full uniform with pads and helmet). I glance left, glance right: path clear. I keep pumping; it’s going to be the first touchdown I’ve ever scored, who cares if it’s just in a practice drill?

But then, jaysus jiminy cricket, I’m plowed down. From my right side, totally unexpectedly, something clobbers me high up in my shoulders/neck area, my whole person flattened by what feels like a speeding bus. Then the crisp crack of plastic and the rattling of every bone in my skeleton from traveling in one direction to BLAM, snapping in another direction entirely, some awful, unnatural body physics I’m sure Michelle Hu would know just the right terminology for. And like that, I’m roadkill on the grass, five yards short of the goal line.

My ears ring, and wait, what? I can see sky. Where’d my helmet go?

“Sorry, holmes,” I hear from somewhere above and behind me. Jason’s voice. Of course. He sniggers. Someone else joins in. Like a pair of evil gridiron twins. “Gotta get you toughened up for the big-time Friday,” he says, walking around to survey his work. “No weak links,” he adds, stretching his jersey out enough to tuck his floppy shoulder pad back inside. He glares at me on the ground, the sun behind his head, while his hype-man Baron clutches my helmet in a gloved hand and dangles it above me.

“Get up, bitch!” Baron hollers like he’s a Marine drill sergeant.

Now I’m seeing stars. (FYI: those little white flashes don’t actually go in cute birdie circles around your head like they do in Tom and Jerry cartoons, but actually shoot in every direction inside your eyes like barbecue skewers trying to find soft tissue to pierce.)

“I’m thinking a football scholarship’s not in the cards,” Jason snarls. “Maybe soccer? Lotta homos play that.” He nudges up his face mask enough to spit on the turf beside me. Baron drops my helmet, and it bounces twice, rolls to a stop against my head.

Which I can’t move.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hear distant screeching from the other side of the track.

“Uh-oh,” Baron says under his breath, “it’s Mother Teresa,” and starts jogging away.

Jason stands up even taller. “What?” he asks, petulant.

It’s Audrey. Her face bright red and glimmering, practically in tears, like she just witnessed an animal being abused.

“I saw what you did,” she snaps. “Even if Coach didn’t. You think he’d want you injuring someone from your own team, genius?”

Jason eyes me, then Audrey, thinks for a few seconds, something suddenly occurring to him. “Oh, hell no, this is not happening.”

“Are you okay?” she asks me, but I’m afraid to nod my head. In case I can’t.

“No, uh-uh, this is not gonna happen,” Jason continues, even though the coach has blown the whistle calling everybody back into the huddle. “Being a lezzy last year wasn’t enough? Now you have to find another way to feel special?”

The whistle blows again, this time longer, seemingly more insistently. Jason snaps to and Audrey bends down toward me as I slowly sit up.

“Hey, she’s only using you to piss off our parents,” Jason says to me. “You know that, right?” He jogs off, his springy athletic trot underscoring why he’s the captain of the team however many years running. Probably since he started toddling.

“I am so, so sorry about my idiot brother,” Audrey coos sincerely, her sympathy almost splitting my heart into all of its individual chambers.

“We can’t help who we’re related to,” I manage, the torturous stars subsiding some now that I’m fully upright.

She looks so sad. The way Jason always makes her look. Now I start trying to stand up because I’ve had just about enough of being down here below everybody.

“Here, let me—” She grabs my elbow, but I shake her off. She lets go. “We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” she tries.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but right now I want Audrey to leave me alone. I’m barely managing not to puke, feeling like the entire school’s eyes are on me again, thoroughly embarrassed, ashamed, my face burning hot, even though I know I shouldn’t be feeling any of those things. There’s no logical reason. It was an unfair, dangerous hit, and Jason wasn’t even running the same drill as me. He was just asserting his dominance. Again.

And yet I can’t help feeling all those things. And Aud being there only makes it worse. Before I can stop it, last year comes flooding back—when Jason got wasted and forced himself on me, how instantly I felt like everything was my fault, that I’d asked for it somehow or, worse, deserved it, because I was weak, or naive, or simply too stupid to see it coming.

“Are you okay?” Audrey says again, jolting me back to the now.

“Whatever, it’s all good,” I say lamely, and sort of harshly. “I have to get back.”

She just waits, now on the verge of tears. I try to jog back to join the team, but every step sends shooting pain into my head and neck, so I have to slow-walk in order to bounce less. I don’t bother turning back to see if she is watching me go.

* * *

“Mom has a late group session,” Dad says, soon as I push through the door into the kitchen. “Looks like it’s just going to be you and—what’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I announce, dropping my backpack and gym bag by the door and blowing past him, causing the newspaper he’s reading to flutter to the tile floor. Snoopy jumps off the couch and runs to greet me, but I knee him out of the way too.

“Okaaay,” I hear Dad exhale, but nothing after that because I slam my bedroom door behind me and dramatically hurl myself onto the bed like a frigging teenage cliché, not that I care.

I lie there for a few minutes, too filled with, what—I don’t know, a whole all-the-emotions-you-can-stuff-in-your-face buffet—to fall asleep. All I want is for the day to be over. I’m feeling a little bad for both the newspaper and kneeing Snoopy (though not bad enough to do anything about it), when my laptop dings. It’s DJ:

 

Yo Erkel, wanna come to Nash this weekend? I got a spoken word thing on Saturday, then we’re gonna get some pizza or something. Kenya’s coming. My mom’s driving.

 

I pull the laptop onto the bed, type: Do you know Jason Stewart?

DJ: QB? Yeah.

Me: I want to kick his ass.

DJ: What for?

Me: Breathing. He’s a menace to society.

DJ: Like the movie?

Me: ?

DJ: So you comin?

DJ: Yo?

Me: Sorry. I don’t know. Yeah, I think. Let me make sure it’s cool with my parents.

DJ: My mom said she could call your mom or whatever.

Me: No, that’s okay. I’ll tell you tomorrow.

DJ: Cool.

Knock-knock. Dad at the door. Unlike Mom, at least he waits to open it until I yell, “What?”

“Howdy partner,” Dad says, calm as can be. “What’s going on?” I close my laptop and pull it out of the way before he plops parentally on the bed next to me. Snoopy noses through the door right after, so damn happy-looking all the time with that big goofy pit bull smile and wagging tongue. He’s so in the moment, incapable of resentment or self-loathing or even being pissed at me for acting like a jerk. He hops on the bed, sensing I need him more than I let on.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Dad raises his eyebrows, says nothing, sits there indifferently. I see. I’m going to talk about it whether I want to or not. I make the decision not to mention Jason by name. The last thing I need is Dad calling in the Council cavalry.

“Something crappy happened at practice,” I shrug.

“And . . .”

“And . . .” My brain fumbles around for the right language. “And, I don’t know, just this guy was being an ass.”

“How?” he asks, still calm.

“He tackled me really high, pretty much on purpose,” I say, not being as clear as I wish I could. “He wasn’t even doing the drill with me, I think he just, I don’t know . . .”

“Well, did you tell the coach?” Dad asks, and pow, instantly I regret saying anything at all. I should’ve just marched in with a giant fake smile on my face and been like, “Yay, Dad and Son Pizza Night, yay!” and then I wouldn’t be in the middle of a conversation I have no interest in being in with no real resolution anyway. Jason isn’t going anywhere. And I am on his radar. Ratting him out isn’t going to make my life any easier, that much is clear.

“No.” My stomach roils. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Well, what was it like? Who was the player?” Dad asks, now somewhat worked up.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. Who is this kid?”

“The quarterback. I don’t think anybody really wants to hear about anything he’s doing wrong when he’s supposed to bring us to State this year.”

Dad sits back. Thinks. Leans forward, hands planted on knees. “Wait. You mean the boy who tried to . . . tried to . . .” he starts, but can’t finish. “The one who . . . Audrey’s brother? The Abider?”

I don’t say anything. Which is coming off as more affirmative than if I’d screamed, YEEEESSSS! directly into Dad’s face.

“How long has this been going on? Is he bullying you outside of practice? Have you talked to Tracy about him? I think we need to take this to the Council.” Dad is all business now, funneling his outrage into problem-solving a problem that can’t be solved.

“He’s not bullying me. Please, I don’t want to tell the Council,” I beg. “It’s nothing. There’s nothing to tell. I’m a guy now, it’s totally different. I can handle him.”

“Was he picking on you for being black?” Dad asks, solemn.

“No. Not really. Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, he’s supposed to be an Abider, right? So he's probably not down with the minorities.”

“That kid is no good,” Dad says, more to himself than to me. “Racism was more overt in a lot of ways when I was your age, but we can’t underestimate its insidiousness—”

“Dad,” I interrupt, “can we talk about this some other time? My head hurts.”

“Okay, I suppose.” He seems wounded, though in a different place. “I was going to share a little about when I was an African American girl in eleventh grade, but I guess it can wait.”

“I love picturing that,” I say, trying to get him to lighten up. “So you weren’t about to choose that V?”

“I could’ve, I probably should’ve . . .” He trails off, eons away from here and now. “To be honest, if I was stronger, I probably would’ve. But . . .”

He falls silent for a minute. My head throbs, along with my pulse. Snoopy wet-noses me and I pet him behind the left ear.

“That was not to be,” Dad pronounces. Then gets all cheery, as in fake “Up with Changers” cheery (I recognize the move from the mixers at Changers HQ). “And I wouldn’t have had you and Mom had I gone that direction, so I am most certainly happy with who I am. As should you be, by the way. You’re a good kid . . . Can I get you some Advil?”

I nod my head. And that’s when the buzzer rings; it’s the doorman, advising us that the be-hatted pizza delivery lady is on her way up to the apartment with our pies.

I ate five slices—yes, five—and the Advil didn't really work, so I took two more PMs, and now I’m lying here in bed finishing up this Chronicling because I still can’t seem to fall asleep, but I need to because I want to be rested for practice tomorrow and do really well (suck it, Jason), even if it’s only for the JV squad. If I prove myself, maybe I’ll even get in the varsity game for a minute or two on Friday night. Why that matters to me at all, I’m not sure. But it does. Right now, it’s everything.