Chatham. This girl is everywhere. It’s been five days since we went out to Northgate, and I’ve hardly seen her since, but she’s constantly with me. Even when I don’t see her, or hear from her, she’s there, in the back of my mind. A preoccupation, more than a distraction: thinking about her gives me purpose, rather than taking me away from whatever it is I should be doing. She’s the reason I haven’t cut English. She’s the reason I’ve been studying my ass off . . . because I want to prove to her that she can rely on me.
“Michaels.”
Although I suppose she’s stealing my focus now. I wipe sweat from my eyes.
Coach Baldecki is standing clear across the weight room, arms folded over his chest. He makes a show of turning to look at the clock.
Yeah, yeah. I’m late, but I’m hardly the last to arrive to early morning practice. “I had to drop off my sisters at school,” I say by way of explanation, although he doesn’t give a shit about the circumstances. Late is late.
It’s only half true, as excuses go. While I did have to drop Margaret and Caroline at their preschool this morning, Chatham Claiborne is partly to blame. I swung past Aiden’s place to pick up his artwork, because he may or may not come to school today. You never know. It’s Friday, and it’s Aiden.
Aiden: I’ve never made one of these declaring someone sixteen. What’s she going to do with it? Drive?
Me: Long story, dude.
Some of the guys—the guys on the D-line—are still running their warm-up laps, but they have different rules, different expectations. It’s like I have to prove myself a hundred times an hour if I want to keep the starting QB position.
“You warm up?” Coach asks.
“Ran three loops.” I’m dripping with sweat; he should know it’s true just by looking at me, and furthermore that I practically sprinted it to catch up. I drop to the floor to stretch out.
“You study your playbook?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ninety-two, Cougar, Spread.”
Please.
“I’m looking for a receiver, long,” I say.
This seems to satisfy him. He leans in a bit closer. “Listen to me. We have scouts from Northwestern coming tonight.”
At this, I do a double take. Scouts. Scholarships. A Big Ten school. Nothing like pressure.
“You need to connect. With as many seniors as possible. With Novak. With Girard.”
I squint through the glare of a fluorescent bar behind him. Does he mean to say he wants me to pause and think about who I’m throwing to? And to make sure it’s a senior? Recipe for a sack.
“I want you to connect. Period.”
That’s his official position, but I heard him loud and clear. I know what he wants me to do. Think first.
Fuck that.
“I’ll connect, coach.”
Friday morning practices are more for team bonding than intense workouts. The coaches don’t want to exhaust us before the game. But I’ve been here less than fifteen minutes, and already I’m dog-tired.
I’m pretty sure Rosie went out to meet Damien last night. I heard her car start around three, and found a note on my bathroom mirror, telling me she had to go in early and asking me to drop the girls off.
But her note was gone and she was there at five, when I woke up, acting like nothing was amiss, as if she’d never left a note, as if she’d never left the house.
I’ll call her on it. Eventually.
But now is time for the team. I have to put Rosie’s lies in a box and store them on a shelf in my mind until a later time.
Most of us are just fucking around this morning.
We do some curls, eat some bagels and cream cheese, which the football moms—minus mine, of course—take turns dropping off. Play a game of catch.
Coach tells us to walk proud today.
All in all, it’s a pretty easy team meeting.
We head to the locker room, shower, pull our jerseys over our heads—we’re wearing them to promote unity, and to hype up the rest of the school so maybe they’ll come to the away game—and get ready to hit the halls.
“Hey. Fourteen.” Novak whips his dirty towel at me.
I know he’s calling me by number as a sort of insult, as if I don’t have a name worth remembering. So I do it, too. “’Sup, twenty-six?”
“You gonna look for me tonight, dickhead? I’ll be the one in the end zone.”
I keep it simple. “If you’re open.” I toss his towel back to him, even though the bin of dirty towels is closer to me than he is—I’m not his fucking laundry boy—and head out the door.
I detour to the art hallway, where Chatham is in open studio during what we call zero hour before school officially begins. It’s still about fifteen minutes before classes start, so I peek in. She’s leaning over a slab of clay, about twelve inches square, cutting into it with a small, thin blade and carving away some of the base. In other places, she’s built up the surface. It looks like she’s working on a topographical map.
I did look up what a clay relief is. It’s an artist’s medium: clay of any sort rolled to a thick slab, and embellished. Some of the slab is carved away into valleys, some is built up to bumps and shapes. She carves bays and gashes in the wake of her X-acto blade. And like a plastic surgeon, leaves something stunningly beautiful in its place.
A few seconds pass before she looks up and sees me.
I see it first in her eyes: a smile. A moment later, she’s wiping her hands on a towel and making her way toward me. “Hi.”
“So that’s clay relief.”
“Yeah.” She glances over her shoulder, back at her work. “It’s just a little . . .” And now’s she’s looking back at me. “You have dimples.”
“Oh.” I feel the warmth of embarrassment spread up the back of my neck. I must be smiling. Of course I’m smiling, considering who’s standing in front of me. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
She wipes a knuckle high on her cheekbone, leaves a smudge of clay there. “No, I just never noticed. Could it be you’ve never smiled in my company before? How is that possible?”
“I, uh . . .” I’m looking into her eyes, and for a split second, I forget what I’m here for. I start over. “As promised . . .” I reach into the back pocket of my jeans and pull out a genuine-Aiden, fake Illinois ID. And in case anyone’s listening, I add, “You must have left it at my house the other night.”
She looks it over, the same way I did when he first handed it to me. There’s something about seeing her name in print, let alone on a driver’s license, that gives me a jolt. It’s like suddenly, she’s permanent.
“What do I . . .” she raises a brow, but lowers her voice. “You know.”
“Oh. Nothing. On the house.”
“I couldn’t . . . You have no idea how much easier this makes things for me. I’ve been through every box—”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah. If you feel like it sometime, you could hook me up with a piece of cake at the Tiny Elvis.”
“Done.” She slides her identification into the pocket of her hoodie, then turns back toward the studio.
“So,” I say, when I really should’ve just shut up and walked away now that our business dealings are done.
Inside, I panic. Is that why we’ve been talking every day? Because I’m acting as middle-man to get her something she needs? And now there’s no reason to talk?
She looks over her shoulder, waiting.
Now I have to say something.
“Maybe after the game . . .”
“Smile,” she says.
“What?”
“I said smile. You should smile more often,” she says. “The dimples.”
I couldn’t stop myself if I tried now, but I back off, lower my gaze so she can’t see how absolutely transparent I am.
“I think, if I’m lucky, I’ll be working tonight,” she says. “But if you can, drop in after the game with the rest of your team. Bring your sisters.”
I shouldn’t have to bring Margaret and Caroline. Rosie won’t be working until way-late. But I say, “Okay.”
Every part of me hums as she returns to her relief, and I watch as she diligently digs into the slab of clay on her table.
It’s happening. I’m going to learn more about her. Maybe not tonight, but soon I’m going to be close to her, hold her hand again, feel her head on my shoulder again.
I can feel it now, if I concentrate.