Sidelined

by Kara Bietz

  Probably.

  I wouldn’t have taken the Tramadol, though. I feel better knowing it’s in my pocket and not Julian’s room. I know firsthand how that kind of stuff can start you down a road you’ll never be able pull off of. I watched it happen to my father, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch it happen to Julian, too. Even though it was just two pills that he took. It’s too easy to get caught on that slippery slope. I’m half tempted to flush the rest of the prescription down the toilet, even if Julian does think I’m being overdramatic.

  I pull my phone from my nightstand and shuffle through my photo album until my eyes get heavy.

  You awake? I text Frankie.

  She doesn’t respond.

  Just thinking about you guys tonight. Today was rough. I’ll text you in the morning. Give Coley hugs. I plug the phone in next to the bed.

  I wake up to the sound of Ray Remondo. My bedroom door is open just a crack, and his reminder that it’s going to be hot again has reached all the way through the house and tapped me wide awake. Of course it’s going to be hot. It’s September in Texas.

  I check my phone and see that Frankie responded earlier this morning with a picture of her and Coley eating breakfast. I text her back a heart and a smiley face and try not to stare too long at the picture.

  I shuffle out of the bedroom and find Julian in the bathroom with the door cracked, looking at his side in the mirror.

  I knock lightly and the door swings open.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  “Still hurts,” he says.

  The bruise is bright purple and red now. “Oof.”

  “Maybe… uh… maybe you could do that parsley thing again later?” he asks. I’ve never heard his voice so shaky.

  “I will,” I tell him. “Tonight?”

  We each get ready for school and head into the living room together. We find Ms. Birdie on the couch in a shower cap and bathrobe, humming and pulling some linen tablecloths out from the chest in the corner.

  “Ooh, you smell like Sunday dinner, Julian.” She narrows her eyes and waves her hand in front of her nose. “What’ve you been eating?”

  “Must be this new toothpaste,” he mumbles. “What’s with the tablecloths?”

  Ms. Birdie looks at Julian like he has four heads.

  “Um… the tablecloths?” He motions, pulling down on the hem of his T-shirt.

  “Oh. Oh, yes! The tablecloths. It’s Thursday. Team dinner tonight, remember? Can’t do it on Saturday because it’s an afternoon game, and tomorrow night is out because of the fundraiser dance for the Guardettes. I tell you, I think Crenshaw has got all of you overscheduled. You need time to rest and mentally prepare for these games. That’s what I think,” she says.

  “We better scoot or we’re going to be late.” Julian nods toward the clock on the wall. We’re definitely not going to be late, but I think Julian wants to escape before Ms. Birdie has a chance to sniff him again.

  Camille’s at the end of the Jacksons’ driveway as usual, a pink plastic tiara buried in her curls.

  “What the heck is that for?” Julian cackles, shutting the front door behind us.

  “I am the Powder Puff Queen, am I not? I ought to look like it. Shove it right in Mara Pinkard’s ugly face,” Camille says, naming the cheer captain.

  “This Powder Puff stuff runs deep, huh?” I laugh.

  “Almost as deep as the Taylor rivalry,” Camille says. “Speaking of which…” She elbows Julian and we both flinch. I hope she didn’t catch his bruise.

  “I know I need to start thinking about it,” Julian complains, shaking his head. “The whole thing is just so, so stupid,” he says, throwing back his head and shouting the word stupid to the treetops.

  “Yeah, we all know your feelings about it, Juls, but that doesn’t mean the entire town isn’t waiting for you to make your move. You can’t let Taylor strike first. You know what that will mean,” Camille says.

  “What will that mean?” I ask.

  Julian lets out a dramatic huff. “Camille, quit being bananas about that stuff. I’m not interested in town superstitions. We’ve got a better team this year than we’ve had since we started at Crenshaw. There’s no way we’re losing.”

  “What will it mean if Taylor strikes first?” I ask again.

  “The prank war with Taylor usually starts a few weeks before homecoming, you know. A bunch of little pranks leading up to The Big One,” she says, holding her arms wide to describe “The Big One.”

  “I always thought it was just one stupid prank right before homecoming,” I interrupt.

  “See? Even Elijah thinks the pranks are dumb,” Julian says, gently adjusting his backpack. I notice he’s not putting a lot of weight on his left side.

  Camille ignores Julian. “ANYWAY. It started out years ago as just one prank, but it’s kind of grown into a whole thing. There’s a superstition that whoever strikes first is going to win the game. And at least for the past four years, that’s been completely true.” Camille whispers the last sentence for dramatic effect.

  “There’s a superstition for everything surrounding this Taylor game,” Julian says. “Gotta strike first, can’t ever say we have it in the bag, gotta wear blue socks on game day.” He ticks them off on his fingers as we walk. “For the past few years, we haven’t had a team that could beat Taylor, Camille. That’s possibly why we didn’t win.” He rolls his eyes.

  I laugh and my insides warm. This is exactly what this should feel like. Julian and Camille and I are laughing and joking around on our way to school. No one is awkward. No one is excluded from the conversation. Just three friends walking together.

  Julian pats his side gently when Camille isn’t looking, and I see him take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I know he’s hurting, and I wish there was more I could do for him. Parsley is a ridiculous home remedy I saw the internet a million years ago. I don’t know if it actually helps, but when I saw that bruise spreading over Julian’s ribs, I figured it was worth a try.

  Painting it on his skin last night with my fingertips, I’m not going to deny the ache that started to grow in my gut. My face so close to his skin. The intimacy of being tucked into a small space together, whispering.

  “Can we please talk about something else? Literally anything,” Julian finally says as we pass Crossroads Church in our final stretch toward Crenshaw.

  I know what I want to talk about. Homecoming. The dance. I want to ask more questions about Reece. How did he and Julian meet? How close were they? Does Julian miss him? Does he think about him every day? Or even every other day?

  “Let’s talk about football,” Camille suggests.

  “Okay, there’s a subject I can get behind.” Julian laughs.

  “So, tell me, do you think you’ll be able to break the Taylor curse, even if you don’t manage to prank them before they prank us?”

  “Oh my god, Camille!” Julian says, but he’s laughing.

  “Okay, okay, I get the point,” she says, straightening her crown. “I’m only going to say one more thing. Tonight, at the team dinner, get your shit together. Seriously, Juls. Maybe it’s a waste of time to you, but it’s not to the rest of the team. Or the boosters or the alumni. They’re all looking to you,” she says.

  “If you actually swear this is the last time you’re going to say anything, then yes, I will agree that this is a great big waste of time to me,” Julian says.

  I can see his point. Pranking shouldn’t be the focus at the beginning of the season. Or even the end of the season. Shouldn’t we be worried about the actual games? Our plays? Then again, I know how big Meridien is on traditions. Even my dad played football for Meridien for a few years, and I remember him talking fondly about beating Taylor when I was little. I don’t have too many great memories of my dad, but any that I do revolve around football.

  “Hey, what was all that talk during bingo?” I ask. “Figg said something about something that happened twenty years ago? Does anyone know an
ything about it? Everyone acted like it was some big secret.” My dad graduated around that time.

  “There was some massive fight that broke out on the field right before the homecoming game,” Camille says. “Someone from Crenshaw started the whole thing, so we ended up having to forfeit the game. It is a big secret. Can’t find information about it anywhere other than in the heads of all the old-timers around here, and they’re not talking. And guess what? That was a year that Taylor pranked us first.”

  Julian rolls his eyes so hard I’m afraid they’re going to fall out of his head.

  We turn the corner into the Crenshaw driveway, and Camille stops short and puts both of her arms out to stop us from going any farther. There on the front lawn in front of Crenshaw is the Taylor High School Titans flag, waving high in the Texas breeze from our flagpole. Underneath, the Guardsmen flag lies in a heap on the ground.

  “Well,” Camille says flatly. “I guess you don’t have to worry about getting them first.”

  · fifteen ·

  JULIAN

  I pulled the flag down as fast as I could and switched it out for ours, but I know it was too late. Most of the school had already seen our flag on the ground. Which meant they knew that Taylor got us first.

  I didn’t much care. These pranks and superstitions are dumb and nothing but a distraction from the real task at hand, which is beating Taylor at all costs.

  Right?

  It had been easy to ignore up until the minute Coach Marcus pinned that C to my uniform. It meant a lot that he trusted me to lead the team and keep their eyes on the bigger picture. To the team and to Meridien, it meant that I was in charge.

  I balled up the Taylor flag and threw it into my backpack.

  “We’ve got to get them back good now, Cap!” Bucky Redd shouted to me as soon as I set foot inside the front door of Crenshaw this morning.

  “What are we going to do? We can’t let that go unanswered.” Nate cornered me before first period. “You’ve got to get serious about this.”

  “I know,” I told him. “Back off and let me think. I need peace and quiet to come up with ideas.”

  For the rest of the morning, I had football players and cheerleaders and Guardettes and band kids all wondering what my next move was going to be. I failed an English quiz because I never did finish the reading the night Elijah showed up in my kitchen. I left my graphing calculator at home, and we had a surprise “checkup” in calculus. My ribs burned every time I sat down at a desk, and my favorite pencil broke in fourth period. That was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, and by the time lunch rolled around, my head was pounding. I escaped to Figg’s classroom with my tray of chicken nuggets and a foil-covered applesauce cup.

  “What’s up, Julian? Need some quiet?” he asks, setting out his own lunch on his desk, a cardboard carton of Chinese takeout leftovers, complete with a set of wooden chopsticks and a fortune cookie.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Never. Pull up a desk,” he says, tucking a napkin into his shirt to protect his tie and breaking the chopsticks apart with a satisfying click.

  I plop into the nearest desk with a sigh and yank the foil from the applesauce. My head is spinning. And I can’t even look forward to the second half of the day.

  There are still at least three running plays I can’t remember reliably, and our first game is only two days away. My ribs are still buzzing, and I can’t guarantee that I’m going to feel 100 percent by Saturday afternoon. And now there’s this mess with the flag, and the whole school is looking for me to retaliate, when all I want to do is play football and forget about all the stupid pranks.

  Not to mention, I’m still thinking about Birdie and her meeting with Pastor Ernie and wondering what she’s up to and why she won’t tell me about it.

  And of course, there’s Elijah.

  Elijah, who painted parsley on my ribs last night.

  Elijah, who is sleeping in the bedroom next to mine.

  Elijah, who basically abandoned me three years ago and seems to have moved past everything that I haven’t been able to shake.

  “Weight of the world on you?” Figg asks as I sit there in silence.

  “You have no idea,” I tell him, shoving a spoonful of applesauce in my mouth.

  “Want to talk about it? Or is it more of a private weight?”

  “You don’t want to hear about this stuff,” I tell him, trying to sit more upright in the chair. I don’t know if I’m ready to unload all this stuff on Figg. I do wonder if he knows anything about Pastor Ernie meeting with Birdie last night, but even if he does, I doubt he’d tell me. He’d probably brush it off with one of those classic Figg “just adult stuff” excuses he uses if he can’t talk about something.

  “Why don’t you try me? My ears still work pretty well, and every so often I have a decent thought or two to lend.” He smiles between bites.

  “I failed an English quiz,” I say.

  He laughs. “Call the authorities!”

  I cut my eyes at him and smirk.

  “Julian, you’re allowed to screw up once in a while. What happened?”

  “I didn’t read the entire assignment, and I walked into the quiz without knowing anything.”

  “Well, that’ll do it. What kept you from reading the assignment?”

  I hang my head again. “Things just got busy.”

  “There’s a lot going on at your house right now, huh?” Figg comes around the desk and leans against it with his arms crossed.

  “Yeah.”

  “I can understand that.”

  Figg just watches me as I try to choke down a couple of chicken nuggets. I can feel that he wants to say more, but he’s giving me space.

  “You know you can come talk to me whenever you need anything, right? My classroom here is always open for you. And Ernie and I would be more than happy to see your face on our doorstep some evening for a Coke and a chat on the porch. No invitation necessary.”

  “I know.”

  “I hope you’re not just saying that. I really mean it. I know it can’t be easy to have Elijah living with you right now.”

  Even just the mention of his name out loud makes my cheeks burn and my stomach flip. There’s a lump in my throat, and it’s not from the chicken. Figg has a way of seeing right to the heart of things even if I dance around the details.

  “I’m sure having him in your house is probably stirring up some things for you, huh?” he says quietly.

  I just nod. I never told him about Elijah and me and what happened in the locker room freshman year. Not in so many words, anyway. I remember him asking me if I was okay after I realized the Vances had moved away, and I lied and told him I was fine. Of course, he didn’t believe me, but he never said that. He just invited me to eat lunch in his classroom if I ever needed a break, and that was enough.

  “I get that,” Figg says. “If you need to talk it through, I’m here.”

  “Thanks, Figg. That means something,” I tell him.

  “I won’t bring it up again unless you want me to. You know where to find me.”

  He holds the cardboard box in his palm and sits down on the desk, his legs dangling in front of him.

  “Did you see the Taylor flag outside this morning?” I ask, changing the subject. I drag a nugget through the last of the applesauce and toss it in my mouth.

  Figg rolls his eyes. “Yep. Guess Taylor struck first this year, huh? Is that on your mind, too?”

  “I don’t know why we even have to have this stupid prank war.” The words burst out of me in a rush. “And why is it all up to me? As if I don’t have enough on my plate right now! This whole stupid town is just waiting to see how we’re going to retaliate. It’s such a waste of time.”

  Figg laughs and strokes his salt-and-pepper beard. “You sound like your father.”

  I stop chewing and swallow. It’s not the first time someone has said that I sound like him. Or that I remind them of him. I wish I knew what they meant.

&
nbsp; “How do you mean?” I ask quietly, covering up the rest of my lunch with a napkin.

  “He wasn’t too keen on the pranks, either,” Figg says. “I remember his senior year, he wanted to do away with the tradition completely. Even started a petition!”

  My eyes go wide. “You’re kidding.”

  “Oh yeah. It was a whole thing. Unfortunately, there wasn’t another soul on this campus, other than maybe me, that agreed with him, and he got outvoted. Shame what happened that year.”

  I frown. “Is that the year of the fight? When the game was forfeited?”

  “That was the year,” Figg says, nodding slowly like he’s remembering it all.

  “What happened back then, anyway? Everyone always refers to it as a brawl. I’m picturing gladiator-level fighting out on the field.” I chuckle.

  “You’re not too far off,” Figg says. “Your Birdie never told you this story?”

  “No, sir,” I tell him. “She always waves it off when I ask.”

  “Well, you know your dad was the captain his senior year, too.” He looks at me and I nod. Every so often he’d wear his old jersey with the tattered C sewn to the chest. “He was pretty set on taking the high road and not doing any pranks at all. I think that really made Taylor upset, because they love the pranking tradition almost as much as Crenshaw does, right? They decided they were going to pull an epic prank at the homecoming game.” Figg shakes his head.

  “Did they start the fight? Was that the prank?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. The pranks can sometimes get out of hand, but they always start out relatively innocuous. The Taylor team had gotten word that one of our players had a pregnant girlfriend.” Figg rolls his eyes. “I guess they thought this was something worth calling out, and they came running out of their huddle that night with beach balls shoved under their jerseys. All fifty of them. I honestly don’t know how they got past their coaches like that. But of course, everyone in the stands was laughing, and the entire Crenshaw team was embarrassed on behalf of their teammate. When the captains met in the middle for the coin toss, there were words exchanged. And then words became shoving, and shoving turned into a bench-clearing, all-out battle in a matter of seconds. Or, as you put it, a gladiator-level fight.” He shrugs. “And of course, we had to forfeit the game.”