TEUTONIC PUNCTUALITY
While Chip went to find Coach Steiner, I sat outside Coach Bentley’s office and iced my testicles.
Coach Steiner was Chapel Hill High School’s athletic trainer. Ostensibly he was in charge of monitoring the health and safety of Chapel Hill High School’s Student Athletes.
Go Chargers.
My pain had more or less gone away, as long as I didn’t move. Or cough. Or think.
As the team shuffled in at the end of practice, they lined up to fist-bump me one by one and express their condolences.
They actually said that: “Sorry for your loss.” One after another, Christian and Robby and Jaden and Jonny Without an H and all the guys said it, and by the time Gabe brought up the end of the line I was smiling and it didn’t hurt so much when I laughed.
“You okay, Kellner?” Coach said.
Now that I wasn’t prone on the grass, she was back to calling me by my last name, like coaches always do.
“Yeah.”
“What did Coach Steiner say?”
“I don’t know. Chip hasn’t come back yet.”
Coach Bentley’s nostrils flared.
Coach Steiner was supposed to be available to all the teams equally, but he always seemed to be with the football team, monitoring for potential concussions.
“I swear . . .” Coach Bentley began, but the door opened and Chip trudged back inside.
“Sorry. Coach Winfield was there, and he got on me about ‘abandoning the sport’ again. You know how he is.”
Coach Bentley cocked her eyebrows. “Hmm. What about Coach Steiner?”
Chip glanced at me, his cheeks turning pink.
“He said if there was no, uh, blood, to ice the, uh, affected area.”
Coach shook her head. “Darius, what do you want? Should we call a doctor?”
I shifted in my seat.
“I think I’m okay. Really.”
I did not want to discuss my testicles with Coach Bentley any more than was absolutely necessary.
“You have a ride home?”
I had not considered my return home.
The thought of riding my bicycle caused a little twinge of pain.
“No . . .”
“Why don’t you walk back to my place?” Chip said. “Your parents can pick you up from there?”
“You sure?”
Chip nodded.
“Thanks.”
Chip and I walked our bikes down The Big Hill. He insisted on carrying my messenger bag for me, so he had his and mine slung over each shoulder, the straps making an X across his chest like some sort of animé hero.
The afternoon light caught the fine hairs on the back of his neck, where his fade had started to grow out, and painted his skin gold.
Cyprian Cusumano was a beautiful guy. It was impossible to ignore that about him, even though I was with Landon.
That’s normal.
Right?
We didn’t talk much on our walk, just trudged down the hill. Sometimes Chip would glance at me and give me one of his grins.
I didn’t know what to make of Cyprian Cusumano.
And my chest felt tight, walking alone with him in a loaded silence, knowing he had seen me naked earlier, when my own boyfriend hadn’t seen me naked.
Why did it make me feel so weird?
And wrong?
And excited?
“It’s this way,” Chip said, turning us onto a side street that led up another, smaller hill. It was shorter than The Big Hill, but way steeper. “We’re at the top, sorry.”
“It’s okay. I bet it sucks riding up this after practice.”
“It’s not so bad after practice. Way worse back when I was on the football team, and Coach Winfield made us do sled pushes.”
“Coach Winfield is the worst.”
“Dude, I know. Trent says he can always tell when Coach Winfield is in a bad mood, because that’s when he makes everyone do squats. Says it brings a sense of order to his universe.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
I really didn’t get how Chip could be friends with a Soulless Minion of Orthodoxy like Trent Bolger, or how he could just bring up Trent in conversation with me when he knew—he knew—how Trent treated me.
Chip cleared his throat. “Hey. Can I ask you something kind of personal?”
“Um. I guess?”
“I kind of saw you in the locker room.”
The back of my neck prickled.
I didn’t know where this conversation was headed, but I had the strong urge to throw myself back down the hill we were climbing.
I glanced sideways at Chip—his face was bright red—and then looked back at my feet.
“Are you . . . uncut?”
“I mean. Yeah?” I swallowed. “But I think intact is a better word.”
“Oh,” he said.
And then he said, “I wish my parents had left me intact.”
My whole body was on fire.
I swallowed again.
Chip stepped around a pothole and brushed shoulders with me.
“Sorry if I made it weird.”
It was super weird.
I would rather have gotten another knee to the balls than discuss my foreskin with Cyprian Cusumano.
“It’s fine,” I squeaked. “It’s not weird. I mean.”
I didn’t know what I meant.
I cleared my throat.
Chip just shrugged and led me up his driveway. He dug through his messenger bag for a moment and must have had a remote for the garage door, because the left one started opening.
“You can leave your bike in here,” he said. “What time . . .”
Before he could finish, the door from the garage to the house burst open, and a small blur darted for Chip.
He laughed and scooped up a little toddler—they couldn’t have been more than two years old—with light brown skin and dark, curly hair.
Chip was white. At least, I thought he was white, with his pale skin and soft brown hair. So I kind of wondered who the kid was.
Not that I could ask that kind of question out loud.
“Hi,” I said as the kid looked over Chip’s shoulder at me. I gave a little wave. “I’m Darius.”
The kid’s eyes got big.
Chip laughed again and angled himself so both he and his passenger could see me.
“Say hi, Evie,” Chip said. His grin was so big it wasn’t even a grin anymore: He was totally beaming.
“Hi,” Evie whispered.
Chip planted a loud smooch on Evie’s cheek, which got a giggle. “This is my niece.”
“Oh. Cool.”
Chip led me into the house as Evie talked his ear off. I couldn’t make out a word she said: She was talking too fast, and in that funny way toddlers have, where they know what they want to say but can’t quite form the words all the way. Chip was smiling so big his eyes were squinting up.
I really liked seeing him smile like that.
He never smiled like that at school.
“You doing okay? Need another ice pack?”
“I think I’m good.”
Chip shifted Evie a little bit to free up one hand, and pulled a cheese stick out of the fridge. He peeled it open and handed it to Evie.
“Where’s your mommy?” he asked.
“Upstairs.” Evie squirmed a bit. Chip kissed her one more time and set her down. She ran out of the kitchen, doing that funny run little kids do, where they lift their knees up really high and stomp their tiny feet as they go.
Chip grabbed a red Gatorade out of the fridge and handed me a purple one.
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“Really? She graduated last year. Ana.”
“Oh,” I said. “From Chapel Hill?”
Chip nodded, like I should have remembered. “I’ve got an older brother too. But he graduated before we started.”
My ears burned.
I had a whole bunch of questions, but I didn’t know how to ask them.
In fact, I was pretty sure it would be rude to ask them.
So I said, “How old is she?”
“Ana?”
“Evie.”
“Oh. She’ll be two in December.”
“That’s a good age,” I said, because that’s what everyone always says, no matter what age is being discussed.
“Yeah.”
We looked at each other for a long moment as the kitchen walls closed in on us. The air in the room grew heavy and pregnant.
Which was a weird thought to have, since I was just thinking about Chip’s sister being pregnant while she was in high school. And wondering lots of things that weren’t my business.
My heart thudded against my sternum.
Chip kept looking at me.
I looked down at my hands.
“I should probably let my grandmas know where to pick me up.”
A dark blue Camry pulled into Chip’s driveway: Oma’s car. She honked twice.
Linda Kellner was a paragon of Teutonic punctuality.
“Oh. That’s my ride,” I said.
I dumped my ziplock baggie full of half-melted ice into the sink—I’d started aching again as we went over my Algebra II answers—while Chip gathered up our Gatorade bottles.
“Thanks for letting me hang out,” I said. “I don’t think I would have survived a bike ride tonight.”
“It’s all good.”
“And thanks for your help. Really.”
Chip grinned. “I had fun.”
I groaned. “Math is not fun.”
“Well, I enjoyed the company at least.”
Chip kept grinning at me, but it wasn’t his usual grin. There was something gentler about it. Almost like a question.
“Well. Thanks.”
“Anytime. You wanna leave your bike here? You can get it after practice tomorrow?”
My face heated at that. I wasn’t sure why.
But I said “Sure,” because Oma didn’t have a bike rack.
As I laced up my shoes, Evie ran down the stairs. Chip scooped her up mid-dash and swung her up to cover her face with kisses. She squealed and laughed and said “Noooo!”
Chip stopped. “No?”
“Not now.”
“Okay.” Chip set her down, and she scampered off into the kitchen.
I liked that he respected her boundaries, even though she was a toddler.
I thought that was really cool.
“Say bye to Darius!”
“Bye, Evie!” I called after her, but she ignored us both. Chip just shook his head.
In the driveway, Oma honked again.
“Well.” I slung my bag over my shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”