“Excuse me, Ringo?” A thin smile stretches across Brent’s unamused face, his mouse eyes narrowing as his jaw clenches. My pulse accelerates knowing what’s about to go down. I clench my hand into a fist, digging my nails into my palm.
“It’s for the band,” Shane repeats. I can’t let this happen and inch closer, but Shane glares at me. I step back. The entire band gawks at them, but Mr. Abella’s nose is buried in sheet music, oblivious.
“It’s for the band,” Brent mimics, like a toddler, then takes a long sip of water, his Adam’s apple shifting as he chugs it down. He crushes the paper cup and throws it right at Shane, hitting him square in the chest. It feels like I got hit, the wind knocked straight out of me. Shane did nothing, literally nothing, and still Brent goes after him. I can’t watch this for one more second but as I’m about to intervene, Stevie steps in front of Shane.
“Seriously?” Stevie says, her voice a whisper, a breeze. Her left hand is defiantly perched on her hip, but her right hand hangs by her side, trembling.
“This isn’t your problem,” Brent says, towering over her, like a bodyguard in reverse.
“My problem is football players who can’t form complete sentences,” she says, but this time her voice is thunder. Brent laughs, then spits on the grass. Stevie eyes his blue and gold jersey that hangs over white spandex football pants. “By the way, those tights don’t hide your small penis.”
Oh. Shit.
Shane stares at Stevie, his mouth hanging open.
“Who the hell are you?” Brent steps to her, breathing hard, a bull about to charge. His knuckles turn white as his grip tightens on the helmet’s grill. I’ve seen him like this before, but his pointless rage was always targeted at Shane, never at a girl.
Fuck it. I’m done doing nothing.
“Brent,” I say, walking fast now, straight up to his roided out shoulders.
“Hey man,” he says, backing away from Stevie and Shane. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Well now you see me.”
Brent kisses my ass for my connections, although he would never admit that. Frankly I don’t give a shit why he likes me, as long as I’m able to stop him from messing with my best friend.
“Shouldn’t you be getting to practice?” I nod at the football field and force a smile. A whistle beckons and like a dog, Brent snaps his head to the sound.
“Guess I should. I’ll catch you later.” He jams the helmet on his head and jogs away. My shoulders relax. The band returns to its usual cacophony of phlegm sliding through brass and conversation-halting flat notes. But Shane stares at me hard, hating that I intervened. But if I do nothing, Brent rags on him, gets a little too close to him. Last year during lunch Brent “accidentally” spilled soda down Shane’s back just because Shane looked at him wrong. But if I step in, like I did today, Shane feels like a coward, like he can’t handle his own problems. I mean, he’s never said that to me. But every time I intervene his shoulders slump forward, his whole body folding in on itself.
“I had it under control,” Shane says, his eyes burning into me, as he hooks the quads over his chest.
“I know,” I say carefully, unsure how Shane wants me to respond. “I just wanted to help you out.” He ignores me, instead turning to Stevie.
“Are you okay?” we ask Stevie in unison. I have the urge to jinx him like when we were little, but I doubt Shane would appreciate that right now.
“I’m good,” she says, biting at that nail again. “Are you guys okay?”
“I’m good,” we say in unison again and Shane finally cracks a smile in my direction. He holds my gaze, challenging me with his eyes and I know what he’s about to say next. I can’t help saying it with him.
“Jinx.”
* * *
After practice, Stevie’s back on the curb, stretching her legs. A late afternoon breeze cuts through the stale air, drying the sweat along my neck.
“Thanks for before,” Stevie says when I reach her, the sun landing on her cheeks, a hint of pink rising from her skin.
“Drew, come on,” Shane yells. He leans against my Jeep, arms crossed over his chest. Everything in me wants to sit next to her but Shane’s waiting.
“That was cool,” I say. “What you did.”
“I’ve never done anything like that in my life,” she says softly, picking at the Band-Aid on her thumb. Her silvery voice wraps around me, lifting my thoughts away from Brent’s maddening sneer. Instead I focus on her hair, the sun bringing out strands of copper and gold. My eyes shift to her full mouth, nerves settling back in my stomach as she speaks. “I mean, I’m not usually like that.”
“What are you usually like?” I fight the urge to step closer. She’s looking at me like everyone else in this town, like she wants something. But then I remember—she doesn’t know about Dad. She doesn’t want anything from me. She wants to get to know me, plain and simple. It’s the biggest relief in the world. Her dark questioning eyes roam my face as my heart bangs around my chest. Usually with girls it’s cool if we hang out, but it’s not something I need to happen. With Stevie, I can’t keep cool, and even though it’s impossible, I want to know everything about her in one shot. Because piece by piece isn’t fast enough.
“I’m … I don’t know … careful,” she says, her chestnut eyes locking with mine. I can’t look away. It’s like I’ve known those eyes forever, even though that makes no sense. She’s a stranger. “But I couldn’t watch that guy be such a jerk.”
“I know what you mean.” I’ve watched Brent Miller be a jerk to Shane for years. If Shane wasn’t so adamant about me staying out of his business, I would have decked Brent a long time ago.
“Who is he anyway?” Stevie asks.
“Brent Miller. Junior like me. Horrible human.”
“Yeah I got the horrible human part,” she says, and I laugh.
“This century,” Shane yells, and I hold one finger in the air.
“I should go.” I can’t help myself and steal another glance before stepping off the curb. Her mouth curves into a sweet smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners. I need to know the careful girl who also has the balls to stand up to Brent Miller. The thoughtful girl who doesn’t see Dad when she looks at me. She yells bye and even the way her sneakers kick at the gravel intrigues me, like she’s thinking with her whole body. Shane curls the brim of his baseball hat in one hand and waves at Stevie with the other. She doesn’t see him, instead her eyes are still on me.
“Don’t rush or anything,” Shane yells, and I deliberately slow my pace.
“You’re more than welcome to walk home.”
“Then who would you torture with your cheesy music?” he jokes when I reach him.
“Get in already,” I say, unlocking the Jeep. I have impeccable taste in music.
I don’t say anything else because I’m too busy eyeing a silver Lexus that pulls to the curb. Stevie gets in and I squint to get one last look as the car drives past us.
“What are you looking at?” Shane asks as he pulls himself into the passenger side, throwing his backpack and drumsticks on the floor by his feet. “Oh,” he says when he spots Stevie.
“Must be her mom,” I mumble, as the Lexus drives out of the parking lot.
“She—” We say in unison but this time no one yells jinx. We both stop short and stare at each other.
“I’m gonna ask her out,” I say fast as I turn on the ignition, praying Shane doesn’t have the same plan.
“You can have any girl you want, anyone. Her?” His eyes get wide as he shifts in his seat and my heart sinks. I can almost always guess what Shane’s thinking and right now, I bet his thoughts are exactly the same as mine. My hand reaches for the ignition and I turn it off.
“She’s just … I don’t know…” I don’t have the right words to describe how Stevie made me feel today. Real? Whole? And then it hits me. Alive. For the first time since Dad left, I feel alive.
“You don’t even know her,” Shane says quietly, put
ting his hat back on so it casts a shadow over his eyes.
“You don’t even know her,” I say. “We both just met her.”
Shane sighs, his shoulders tensing.
“Well I’m asking her out,” Shane says with a bit of an edge to his voice. Shane’s never asked out a girl in his life.
“Not if I do it first,” I say, serious.
“Not if I do it first.” Shane’s face flushes and we stare at each other, deadlocked.
“This is stupid, Shane,” I say, shaking the hair out of my eyes. “I say we flip for it.”
Shane’s mouth falls open and his eyebrows knit in confusion.
“Flip for it? This isn’t like choosing top bunk at sleepovers.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. Shane should know me better. Hell, sometimes he knows me better than I know myself. I would never think of Stevie as a bet or a game. But there’s no easy way to navigate out of this inescapable hole. If we both ask her out, it’ll get messy and one of us will inevitably resent the other. What if we stop talking altogether? I can’t risk it. Shane’s too important to me. “It’s just … flipping a coin is what we do. How we’ve always made choices. It’s the only fair way to decide. I don’t want to fight with you. I can’t fight with you.”
Shane narrows his eyes, trying to decipher my next move. After twelve years he should be able to predict what I’m about to do.
“You do realize that Stevie can still say no, regardless of who asks her out,” Shane says. Of course she can say no. Hell, she probably will say no. But we can’t both ask her out. And I can’t fight with my best friend.
“Get out,” I say, gesturing at the door.
“Huh?”
“Just get out.” I grab a penny from the middle console and fling the door open.
“This is ridiculous,” Shane says under his breath, jumping out and marching to the front of the Jeep.
“Have a better idea?” I toss the penny in the air. I agree that this is completely ridiculous. Probably one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had. Worse than the time I decided to race Dad, me on a bike with training wheels and him in his black Porsche. After one block, I wiped out and broke my arm. Dad never even realized I was behind him.
“For the record, this isn’t cool,” Shane says, but his eyebrows soften, like he’s about to give in. He sighs and kicks at the Jeep’s tire. “And odds are, you’re the one she’s going to choose, regardless of where that penny lands.”
“You can’t back down,” I say, certain of how this will play out if Shane steps aside. “If you back down, you’re going to resent me. If I back down, I’m going to resent you. This is the only way. And you know it.” I grab the penny with one hand, kissing my closed fist.
“Heads,” I shout.
“You’re an idiot,” Shane says, which is probably true.
I flick the penny high into the air, the sun catching on the copper and sending a sliver of blinding light into my eyes.
“Tails,” Shane mumbles, glaring at me.
“Shit.” I look away as the penny falls to the ground next to the tire. It bounces and clinks against the asphalt until my boot slams down on the coin, sealing fate.
CHAPTER 3
Stevie
Everyone says the first day is the worst, fraught with uncertainty and nerves. But if you ask me, the second day sucks harder than the first. On the first day it’s blissful ignorance, all rainbows and sunshine. A perfect image of what could be, not yet tainted by reality. But by the end of the first day, reality crashes down.
I should know better by now. I’ve repeated this new girl routine five times in five different towns. And even so, I followed Drew Mason like a little lost puppy yesterday, picturing my school’s band back in Seattle. A place where I could lose myself in notes and chords, where I could play songs that mean something, where I could dream about NYU’s music program, a way out of my exhausting nomadic life. But that’s not the Millbrook Marching Mustangs. I heard they’re not even invited to play the town’s Memorial Day parade. Back in Seattle I fought for my spot in the school band, earning first chair. But here, I didn’t have to audition. They don’t have a first, second, or third chair. That should’ve been my first clue. And now, without a top-notch music program, there’s no way I’ll get into NYU.
So today, on the second day, my thumb throbs as I close the car door to Mom’s silver Lexus. The high school casts a shadow on the concrete, shielding me from the just-woken-up sun. Different wings connect together in an intimidating brick maze, and I have no idea how I’ll find my way around when I start for real next week.
Bright red blood seeps from my cuticle, pulsing through my finger. I wave at Mom as she drives away and place my sax case on the curb, fishing for a Band-Aid in my backpack. Enough with this disgusting habit. The thing is, I don’t even know I’m doing it until it’s too late. It started in seventh grade after we moved from Indianapolis to Seattle and I haven’t been able to stop. I cover my thumb with a Band-Aid, throwing the wrapper in a trash bin by the curb. It reeks of curdled milk. Out of nowhere a can of Diet Coke sails through the air and smacks right into my hand. Sticky soda sprays up at my face as the can plummets into the garbage. My wrist throbs along with my thumb as I clutch my hand to my chest.
“Shit, I’m so sorry!”
A girl wearing a Mustangs jersey and gray leggings runs to me, waving a napkin in the air.
“Good shot,” I say when she reaches me. I take the napkin and blot my face dry. She stands too close to me, her hazel eyes wide.
“I’m so sorry,” she says again. “Are you new here?”
“Is it that obvious?” I use this line at every new school. It makes me sound confident and cool. But of course it’s obvious. Millbrook High is a quarter of the size of my last school, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone.
“Kind of,” she says. “I’m Ray Stone, sophomore.”
“Same. I’m Stevie Rosenstein.” I chuck the napkin into the garbage, my face still sticky from the soda. I wonder why this girl is here before the official start of school. Maybe she’s a cheerleader. That jersey probably belongs to her boyfriend, number twenty-three. She looks like someone who would date the quarterback with her movie star blond hair and teeth that for sure benefitted from years of braces. I bet she still wears a retainer.
“Rosenstein?” Ray echoes me.
My arms fold across my chest, my defenses kicking in, honed from my time as one of only a few Jewish kids in our Indianapolis suburb. But Millbrook has three temples within a ten-mile radius. I’m not a novelty here.
“As in Caleb Rosenstein?”
There it is. I take a step back as Ray’s funhouse mirror grin almost reaches her ears. The way she stares at me, like I’m suddenly someone worth knowing, makes me long for Sarah. Sarah couldn’t care less about my family. My stomach knots like one of those ropes in gym class and I brace myself for the interrogation.
“Yeah,” I say, eyeing the practice field, a steady drum beat rat tat tatting through the air. I’m going to be late.
“No way. They’re saying on ESPN that he could make a huge difference for the Jets this season.”
So what? Dad’s the quarterback coach for the Jets. It’s not like he won a Nobel Prize or cured cancer. He tells a bunch of overgrown boys how to throw an oddly shaped ball across a field. I don’t get it. I never have. What’s worse is because of Dad’s job, I never know if people want to become friends with me for real, and I never get to stay in one place long enough to find out.
The thing is, it’s usually the guys who react this way. At my last school, Martin Ross followed me around every Monday during the season begging me for inside information. It’s not like he actually wanted to hang out with me. And forget about when Dad’s team loses. When the Colts were down when I was in sixth grade, a few kids spray painted loser on my locker, complete with a black swastika. It took a whole week for the school to scrub it clean.
I mess with the Band-Aid on my t
humb, almost tearing it off before I realize and stick it back in place. A steady stream of cars head into the lot, dispensing football players, cheerleaders, and people I recognize from band.
“Ray!” Brent Miller yells as he jumps out of a black Range Rover, holding his helmet in the air like a trophy. Ray waves and I pray Brent isn’t number twenty-three.
There’s a Brent Miller at every school. Same square jaw and same inane jokes directed at that one kid who doesn’t deserve it. In Indianapolis it was Scott Barrett and his anti-Semitic jabs were directed at me. When you’re always the new kid, you’re an easy target. Fresh blood. It starts young, probably around fourth or fifth grade. I’m sure there’s a reason the Scotts and Brents of the world are the way they are, but that reason doesn’t particularly interest me. Sometimes the reason doesn’t matter.
I’ve never had the guts to talk back. Not until yesterday, and even as the words vomited up my throat, I couldn’t believe I was actually, finally saying them. Maybe I’m sick of the same old story at every school. Maybe it’s because I felt the humiliation on Shane Murphy’s face in the pit of my stomach. And even though my heart hammered against my chest, it wasn’t enough to stop the words. If only that momentary surge of confidence stuck with me, permeated through my skin and settled in my core. But if I had to rewind the clock, there’s no way I could repeat that convincing performance.
“Ray, c’mon!” Brent yells, and I want to shrink down and hide between the blades of grass lining the sidewalk. Thank God he ignores me.
“Are you guys…” I nod at Ray’s jersey. “Is he your boyfriend?”
Ray throws her head back laughing, blond hair swishing across her back, revealing brown roots by her hairline.
“God no.” She bends to my ear and her words are like tiny puffs of bubblegum. “Brent Miller’s the worst.”
I exhale, and even though Ray’s in awe of Dad, I wonder if maybe I made my first Millbrook friend. It’s a known fact that location dictates friendship. It’s called the proximity principle—the depressing idea that my entire social circle is predetermined by the town I happen to live in. The truth is I don’t need a theory to tell me I would still be best friends with Sarah if we had stayed in Seattle. Before Sarah, there was Krystal from Indianapolis, and before Krystal there was Emily from Chicago, and before Emily there was Nicole from Miami. Nothing in my life has been a choice. Not the big things at least. And it’s the big things, like where you live, that determine the little things. I’ve moved enough times to know. I’ve been forced to leave the friends I chose over and over, my entire life demolished and rebuilt with each new town. My chest tightens as words like leaving, loner, loser come at me like rubber balls in a dodgeball game. I rub my eyes, tired from another fitful night of sleep.
Where It All Lands Page 2
