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  “You get the ball first, ’cause you guys are gonna get your asses handed to you, anyway,” Steve said, and we went back to do “the kickoff.” I really wasn’t that familiar with football, so I decided my strategy would be to hang back and watch.

  Steve kicked off, throwing the ball really high and far toward the other team, which was facing us. Then we all ran toward one another, the strong sun blaring down on us, the air thick like honey.

  It turned out to be pretty fun. The guys on the other team tried to block us as we ran toward the one who caught the ball. One guy put his forearms up in front of him while I ran at him, so I tried to run around him. He knocked me in the chest with his arms one time, which nearly knocked the wind out of me. Then I looked over and Steve was slapping two hands on the guy with the ball, and the play was over.

  While the guys on the other team huddled up, Steve told us all what to do. I was supposed to cover Robinson. He came to the line, saw me, and smirked. He was taller and broader than me, with leg muscles way bigger than mine, and he wore a cross around his neck. I just figured that if they gave him the ball, I’d make sure to tag him before he got by me.

  This tall kid with lily-white skin and a buzz cut stood in the middle, with two guys on either side of him, facing us. He yelled, “Hike!”

  Robinson took horselike strides, and I backpedaled for a bit, staring at his face. His eyes got big, and he accelerated past me, so I turned and ran as fast as I could. I heard Steve’s voice yelling my way, and I somehow knew to look up.

  There was the ball, flying toward us. Robinson turned and was adjusting so that he could catch it. I was right next to him, and the split second before he jumped, I did.

  I’ve played volleyball. I know how to jump high, and I know how to spike. I used my fists and smashed the ball down to the ground.

  “Yo!” Steve screamed, running over to me like a crazy person. “He is Schroeder! Nobody brings that shit into my house!”

  Zack was coming over too, and the two of them looked like I’d done something incredible. Blood coursed through my veins, and I felt the hairs on my neck stand on end.

  “That’s what Schroeder used to say,” Steve said, high-fiving me.

  I copied the voice Steve had used when imitating Schroeder. “Nobody brings that shit into my house!” I bellowed.

  Steve looked over at Zack, and they bumped fists. “He even sounds like him!” Steve said.

  I pointed at Robinson, who was jogging back to his teammates. “Nuh-uh,” I said, wagging my finger at them. He ignored me and went back to his huddle.

  Steve and Zack hugged in hysterics. “Now that one’s pure Colorado. No finger wagging for the Schroedster! We gotta call you Schroedster Two!”

  In my life there had been moments of great pleasure. I couldn’t recall any, though, that felt anything like this one. It surprised me. I’d never thought of myself as the kind of guy who wanted to fit in with the jock crowd, but here I was, swelling with pride at being given a nickname.

  Me, a jock? I thought about it, rolled it around on my tongue. It made me smile, and then laugh a little. I was elated. That was the feeling in my chest. Elation. I’d never experienced it before.

  Bathing in it, I glanced over at Ben and Bryce in time to watch them share an eye roll. I stopped smiling, embarrassed. What was that for? What had I done to them? All I had done was enjoy myself. They reminded me of the jock versions of PIBs, back in Boulder — the People in Black, the kids who wore trench coats and sat on the sidelines and judged everyone. Who the hell were they to judge me?

  Despite that, the football game was a good time. I was actually a bit relieved that the name Schroedster Two died a quick death when I showed myself to be less adept at catching passes. Steve threw me two in a row, and the first one skidded off my hands, while the second hit me in the chest and bounced off. I thought I was close, especially on the second, but that didn’t seem to count for anything, and the name fell away. Fine. Just another label to define me.

  “Okay,” Steve said in the huddle as we set up for our final drive, with the score tied. “Colorado, you do a ten-step buttonhook. Zack, go flat left. Benny, out and in. Bryce, flag deep. Okay?”

  In previous huddles, he’d traced the routes on his hand with his finger, but suddenly we were getting names of plays. I had no idea what to do, so after we all yelled, “Break!” I tapped Ben the Jerk on his massive left shoulder.

  “Um, what’s a buttonhook?” I said.

  He looked at me funny. Then he turned his palm up and drew the play for me, a quick run — ten steps, I guessed — and a turn.

  “Thanks,” I said, forcing a smile. “I owe you one.”

  He cocked his head slightly and went off to the other side of Steve. I lined up on the left, facing Robinson, and when Steve said hike, I ran the ten steps and spun around.

  The ball was in my face immediately. It smacked me in the nose right as I put my hands up. Too late. The pain in my face knocked the wind out of me. The football glanced against my left hand as it ricocheted off my nose, and I adjusted, thrusting my hands out away from my body.

  There was the ball, against my fingertips. I juggled it until it was cradled in my hands, and then I closed them in, brought my arms into my chest, and began running.

  “He only got him with one hand!” I heard Steve yell, and I sped up, scurrying toward the other team’s end zone. I knew once I got going, Robinson wasn’t going to catch me.

  “Touchdown!” Steve yelled. I spiked the ball, like I’d seen football players do on TV and like I’d seen some of the other guys do. Then I did a little dance, because you gotta dance when you get into the end zone. Everyone knows that. I shrugged from side to side, lifting my shoulders rhythmically as I moved back and forth.

  “Kid’s got moves!” said Steve, coming over to slap me on the back. I turned toward him to say something, and that’s when I felt the blood.

  “Oh, shit!” Steve said, and the other guys on the team ran over.

  “Looks bad,” Bryce said.

  “I’m fine,” I said. It didn’t really feel fine, but I wasn’t in the mood to have my celebration cut short, even for a medical emergency.

  Ben grabbed my shoulder. “We should get you to the infirmary. Could be broken.”

  “Nah,” I said, pulling away. “This thing bleeds if you look at it funny. I’m cool.”

  He looked me in the eye. His eyes were a translucent blue. He looked kind. I didn’t want to look away. I realized that not being the gay kid here allowed me more access. I wasn’t supposed to hold eye contact with jocks back in Boulder. It was understood: They accepted me, and I didn’t freak them out with eye contact. Here, no such contract had been made. Ben blinked at me, I blinked back, and when it began to feel a bit too close, I averted my eyes.

  That turned out to be the winning touchdown. I played the final set of downs with blood dripping from my nose, and when the game was over, Bryce came over and handed me some paper towels.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No worries,” he said, with a lack of inflection, and he and Ben walked off, all holier-than-thou, leaving me with Steve and Zack.

  We walked back to the dorms together, and they asked if I wanted to have dinner with them later. “Hell, yeah,” I said. And I went back up to the room with a bloodied nose and a euphoric feeling in my chest that was entirely new to me.

  Wow, I thought, climbing two steps at a time up to my dorm room, keeping pressure on my nose with the paper towel. Here I was, two hours into my Natick adventure, and I was already in that entirely new skin I had fantasized about. Jock Rafe.

  It felt freaking fantastic, to be honest.

  Nothing could throw a wrench into this new plan, I thought, and then I cursed myself, because anyone who has ever watched a single Hollywood movie knows that thoughts like that lead to, well, big-ass wrenches.

  Enter big-ass wrench number one.

  The door to my room was open, and I peered in. Inside, a short, pu
dgy guy in a black T-shirt was unpacking the suitcases that had been in the middle of the room. Lying where they had been amidst the wreckage — cereal boxes, soda cans — was a skinny kid with spiky hair. He was facing away from me, and his hands were behind his head like he was doing sit-ups. I pressed the paper towel to my nose and then took a look at it. Still pretty bloody.

  “So let me ask you,” the spiky-haired guy said. “Let’s say there was a gang of six-year-olds roaming the streets. And they attacked you. How many of them could you fight off?”

  I stood in the doorway, as yet undetected. Aside from the disaster area that was the middle of the room, I was pleased to notice that at least things were being put away. A pile of what appeared to be nothing but black T-shirts on the short kid’s bed was getting pretty high. He opened a drawer on the dresser next to his bed and started stuffing it with shirts.

  “Do they have weapons?” he asked.

  “No, just fists,” Spiky Hair replied.

  “Then probably four of them. Two of them could probably take out my legs, but I’d still have my arms. They could each grab hold of one limb, but then they wouldn’t have anyone to go after my midsection. I’d be pretty much, like, incapacitated, I guess, but I’d be alive.”

  “Yeah,” said Spiky Hair. “Probably four. I’d like to think I could take on four myself. I know if it was five, I’d be in some trouble.”

  “What if they had weapons?” Stocky Guy asked.

  I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorway, which creaked when I put my weight against it. Both guys turned and looked at me.

  “So why are these six-year-olds in a gang?” I asked, wiping blood from my nose.

  Spiky Hair sized me up.

  “Bad parenting,” he said. “Their parents are like crystal meth addicts, and the kids don’t have anywhere to go at night, so they roam the streets, looking for trouble.”

  Stocky Guy chimed in, “Also peer pressure. They have older brothers who are in eight- and nine-year-old gangs.”

  I nodded, folding the paper towel so that I could place a clean part of it under my nostrils. “Yeah, peer pressure is hard. Do they really want to do you harm, or are they just showboating?”

  “Mostly showboating,” Spiky Hair said. “It’s like an initiation thing.”

  If these guys were at Rangeview, I thought, they’d be survivalists, kids who wore army fatigues and hung out at the shooting range and watched lots of shows about fishermen who got killed hunting crabs and stuff. Hence the exploding-car poster, I realized.

  “I wonder what a six-year-old has to do to become a gang leader,” I mused. “Knock over a 7-Eleven made from Legos?”

  Stocky Guy squinted at me. “Don’t be naive,” he said. “It’s a strength thing. Survival of the fittest. Toughest becomes leader. Like Lord of the Flies.”

  “Yeah, in Lord of the Flies there was a fight to the death for that role,” Spiky Hair said, sitting up and facing me and rubbing a zit on his cheek.

  “Right,” I said. And then we were all silent.

  “You’re Rafe?” Stocky Guy said.

  “Yep.”

  “I’m Albie. And this here is Toby.”

  “Hey,” I said, coming in and sitting down on my bed. “You have a radio with lots of buttons.”

  “It’s a police scanner. Knowledge is power,” Albie said. “You have a bloody nose and lots of dirt on your legs.”

  “Football,” I said.

  Albie looked over at Toby, and they exchanged a look. “Great,” he said, in a way that meant not great.

  I glanced around the room. “So I’m guessing you’re not studying to be a housekeeper?”

  “Not so much,” he said. “Are you seriously anal-retentive?”

  “Nah,” I said, realizing that I was, in fact, seriously anal-retentive, since just looking at our room was filling me with the strong urge to buy a vacuum cleaner. Or maybe a butler. “That’s a lot of black T-shirts.”

  “Thanks,” Albie said.

  “Albie shops at the waiter’s store,” Toby said.

  “Yeah, that’s hilarious,” Albie responded. “You shop at the ‘I could never be hired as even a busboy because of my criminal record’ store.”

  “Good one,” said Toby.

  “So what do I need to know about Natick?” I said.

  Toby and Albie shared another look.

  “Run for the hills!” Toby said.

  “It can’t be that bad. And I’m pretty sure I just came from the hills. I’m from Colorado.”

  “Well, then I guess it depends on what kind of guy you are,” Albie said.

  The old Rafe would have let it go. But I really felt like I had to call him on it. “Why do I have to be any particular type?”

  He looked me up and down, in a very obvious way. “Well, you don’t have to be, but you are.”

  I grabbed another paper towel from the roll on my desk and pressed it against my nose. “Okay, then,” I said. “What’s my type?” I crossed my arms and stuck out my chest a bit.

  “I’m guessing preppy jock,” Albie said.

  “And that’s … a bad thing?”

  Albie shrugged. “Having a moth fly into your ear and lodge itself into your brain is a bad thing. Being a preppy jock is just … I don’t know. It’s a thing.”

  “You mean it’s a bad thing.”

  “Well, it’s not a moth burrowing into your brain, but, yeah, it’s kinda lame.”

  “Geez, Albie!” Toby said.

  “Well, he asked.”

  Maybe it was the adrenaline from the football game and getting the nosebleed. Maybe it was just the irony that I’d finally been labeled something mainstream and acceptable, and now here was my loser roommate giving me trouble. “And I see you’re the type of guy who enjoys exploding cars and police scanners,” I said. “Are you in a militia?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re a genius. I am in a militia. You should probably sleep with one eye open.”

  “Dork,” I muttered.

  “Republican” was his response.

  Me? A Republican? I imagined my mother’s head actually exploding. My face started to get red, and Albie turned toward me. His face had no expression, but I saw a flicker of something in his eyebrows. Fear? Was he afraid of me? No one had ever been afraid of me before, physically, at least. I felt like I had walked into a totally new dimension. Toby stood up and got in between us, which almost made me laugh, because it was like, What? Are we going to rumble?

  “Is it horrified in here, or is it just me?” asked Toby. “Okay. Boys, here’s what we’re going to do.” He walked over to Albie and put his hand on his shoulder. “You. Are going to stop being defensive to somebody who totally didn’t deserve it.”

  Albie shrugged his shoulder away for a quick moment, and then relented. He nodded.

  Then Toby walked over to me. He was extremely skinny, and his spiky hair was platinum in places. If this were Boulder, he’d definitely be a gay kid. But, then again, who was I to label?

  “And you. You’re going to take back your militia comment and never say anything negative again about that awesome poster, which happens to be for the coolest show in the history of television.”

  “Survival Planet? Never heard of it.”

  “Now that’s something we can help you with,” Toby said, squeezing my shoulder, and I blushed. Yes, possibly gay. And so, so not my type.

  I took a deep breath before answering. “I’d watch,” I said. “Always up for something new.”

  I looked over at Albie. He had paused in his unpacking and was just standing still, looking out the window. He looked sad. I thought about what I had said, calling him a dork. That was so not part of my plan when it came to the first conversation with my new roommate.

  “Hey, Albie,” I said, “I should not have called you a dork. I shouldn’t have said any of that. I didn’t mean it. I have Tourette’s.”

  He looked over at me and rolled his eyes. “If you have Tourette’s, then you did m
ean it. You just lacked the ability to filter your thoughts.”

  Now I had to laugh. “C’mon, dude. You’re making it hard to take back the dork comment,” I said. His face fell, so I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder with my fist. “I’m kidding, kidding. God, sensitive.”

  He seemed to ponder this for a moment. And then he shrugged. “Fine. Whatever. Start again?”

  I grinned. “Sure.”

  He frowned, put his hands over his face, and then removed them to display a smile.

  “Hi, you must be Rafe, my athletic new roommate.”

  I shook his hand. “And you must be Albie, my unorganized new roommate.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “I don’t feel the urge to clean up this horrendous mess at all. And, by the way, great poster. I love that show,” I said.

  “Let’s go play some sports,” said he.

  “Now that’s much better” was Toby’s response.

  Albie went back to unpacking, and I lay down on my bed, a respite from the calamity that was the rest of our room. I wondered whether we’d work as roommates. On the plus side, they were both kinda funny. On the negative — well, why focus there, right?

  “Shit, the lightbulb is dead,” Albie said, switching his desk lamp on and off.

  Toby put his head in his hands and pretended to sob lightly. “O bulb! We hardly knew ye,” he said.

  Ah, yes. The negative.

  It’s not exactly right to say I always wanted to sit at the jock lunch table back at Boulder. I mean, I’d enjoyed sitting with my best friend, Claire Olivia. We’d had a lot of laughs, and some of those laughs were at the expense of the jock kids. But I admit I had always wondered what it would be like to be at the top of the food chain.

  On my first night at school, I got to experience the Natick version of exactly what I’d been missing.

  “Your first day, huh? A hot one for ya,” Steve said. I was sitting at a table with eight guys, all of them from the football game earlier. My nose had stopped bleeding, and now the only thing bothering me was a serious case of jitters. What if I said the wrong thing?

  “Yeah,” I said as I bit into an exceedingly adequate hamburger.