Girl Crushed

by Katie Heaney

  But if she really believed that, what was she doing with number-three, formerly presumed straight girl Natalie Reid? Was what she’d said just bullshit, meant only as it applied to me?

  I spent all night thinking about it, always somewhere between asleep and awake, madder and madder the closer it got to morning. By the time my alarm went off I was practically radiating resentment. I grabbed my phone to silence it and saw that Ruby had texted me back overnight, a little after eleven-thirty, and I’d missed it. I read it and reread it, breathing in deeply and blowing air out. I didn’t need to care so much about Jamie and Natalie. I had my own thing going on. Here she was, on my phone screen, having written Yes! I’m there. She liked me enough to come watch me play soccer on a Saturday night, and that wasn’t nothing. I closed my eyes and held my phone to my chest, forcing the endless breakup replay out of my head, replacing it with Ruby with heart eyes, watching me score from the stands, shouting my name. I fell asleep that way, for eleven perfect minutes, until my mom knocked on my door and ruined it. I couldn’t believe I still had to go to school under these conditions.

  * * *

  —

  Frankly, I thought I deserved a medal for not interrogating Alexis about Jamie and Natalie the moment I saw her at lunch. It was excruciating to see her smile at me, knowing she knew something so relevant to my interests but wouldn’t say it to my face. But I also knew there was no way she could have. We only had lunch together, and Jamie was always there. I could have texted Alexis about it, and I’d thought about it, but texts could be screenshotted and sent elsewhere, and the last thing I wanted was for Jamie to have physical, incontrovertible proof that I still cared. Alexis was my friend, but she was Jamie’s friend first, the same way Ronni was mine. If I gave Alexis material she could pass on to Jamie, she’d do it immediately, reflexively, out of loyalty. It was probably agonizing for her to not tell me about Jamie and Natalie herself, but I had to imagine that Jamie had asked her not to. Which was probably why Alexis had told Ronni instead: so Ronni would tell me, and Alexis could remain technically innocent while satisfying her urge to spread information. She operated by a strict, if slightly confusing, ethical code.

  So I waited. Somehow time kept passing—hours and even days. At lunch, whenever Jamie was focused on her sandwich or looking at her phone, I stared at her, trying to see through her, analyzing her expressions to see if they seemed like those of a person in love. But she was as stoic as ever. So either nothing was happening…or something was.

  By game time Saturday I was both exhausted and jittery. We were playing Albion, most of whose players were eight feet tall and blond and went to private school. Instead of a huddle, they held a prayer circle, and whenever they beat us we took comfort in reminding each other they had God on their side. To make matters worse, they were all polite, modest winners, which made us feel terrible for celebrating when we beat them.

  With fifteen minutes to go before kickoff, the field on the visitors’ side of the bleachers was already packed with parents and friends wearing blue and white. Down below I spotted Hanna Ward, Albion’s sacrilegiously beautiful lead midfield, who used to play for us before she moved in seventh grade. After she moved, it became a recurring fantasy of mine that she and I would fall into forbidden love, Romeo and Juliet style, and get found together in the locker room showers. She caught me looking, so I gave her a little wave, and she smiled tightly. Progress.

  I turned around for the hundredth time to survey our own set of bleachers, which were still three-quarters empty and would likely stay that way. My mom always came to a handful of my off-season club games, but, encouraged by me, saved most of her momly duty for the school season, when attendance felt like more of a value judgment. And anyway, it made me nervous to have her there, and she got too worked up over what she perceived as bad referee calls, which were all the ones that favored the other team. Most of the time I had no one special to look for in the bleachers, and no reason to scan them. Which was fine, because the people I really wanted to impress were on the field with me. But I couldn’t lie: I felt giddy scanning the bleachers for Ruby Ocampo.

  Only I didn’t see her.

  I dug my phone out of my bag: four minutes until game time, and no explanatory text messages from Ruby.

  But it was cool to be a little late. I wasn’t happy about it, but it was.

  Coach called us over for a pep talk, the usual stuff about playing our best and working together and remembering what we’d talked about in practice this week. We put our hands in and shouted the Surf Club chant, and then we dispersed to take final sips of water and stretch. I dipped a hand into my bag to check my phone again, but when I stood back up, Coach was right there.

  “Ah!” I sort of shrieked.

  “Do you need surgery?” Coach asked me, unsmiling.

  “What?”

  “To get that thing removed from your hand.” She pointed to my phone, and I instantly dropped it into my bag.

  “Oh. Ha. No. All better.”

  “You need to focus, Ryan,” she said. I knew what she was thinking: Is this how you plan to get off the wait list?

  Guilt rolled into a ball in my stomach. “I know. I will.”

  Coach gave me a stern-but-encouraging clap on the shoulder, and I ran onto the field.

  * * *

  —

  I couldn’t be sure when exactly Ruby arrived. I didn’t have a chance to look in the first quarter—we were down a goal early, and I took Coach’s scolding to heart, going after the ball like my whole future depended on it. Which, in a way, it did. Only when I scored the tying goal, and my teammates rushed to crush me in a hug, did I feel safe glancing at the bleachers.

  And there she was, sitting at the very back, perfectly and oh my God thank God alone. She was leaning against the fence, and when she saw me looking, she sat up and lifted two thumbs high above her head. My whole body blushed and surged with adrenaline. It wasn’t like I’d expected her to actually bail, but I must have very nearly lost hope without realizing it, because I was so happy, and so relieved, that I felt like I could fly if I took off running fast enough. Or else I really, really liked her.

  Having Ruby in the stands wasn’t like having my mom there, or even Jamie. With them I felt like I had something specific to live up to. They’d both been to enough of my games to know what I was capable of on my very best days, and to show them anything less felt like letting them down. But Ruby had never seen me play before. I was fairly certain she’d never been to a high school–level soccer game at all. She had no expectations, so it was easy to beat them. When Jamie was in the stands I felt her eyes on me with every step I took. Ruby’s being there to see me was so improbable it felt made up, like a daydream I’d had as a freshman. My perpetual disbelief allowed me to forget she was there between time-outs, when I’d check to make sure she still was. As a result, I played better than I had in weeks. If only UNC were here to see me now, I thought. But then, of course, that would have ruined it.

  Despite my best efforts, the teams remained tied until there were four minutes left. Then three. I was stuck in the corner trying to steal the ball from a furious Hanna Ward, when finally I got a foot past her and stole it. To my left I saw Ronni rushing the net, and I crossed the ball. The placement was perfect. She didn’t even have to slow down. She kicked, and the ball sailed into the upper right corner of the net, just past the goalie’s fingertips. My team erupted in cheers and we all ran toward Ronni in a mad leaping rush, burying her beneath a pile of our bodies.

  After the obligatory interteam high-five lineup with Albion’s very gracious losers—me trying desperately to make eye contact with Hanna Ward, who avoided it like her life depended on it—Ronni looped her arms around my waist and lifted me off the ground in a hug.

  “There she is!” she yelled. “Classic Ryan!”

  I laughed until she put me down. “That goal, tho
ugh,” I said. “Incredible.”

  Ronni shrugged, visibly pleased. Her eyes locked on the stands, and she half shouted, “Oh shit!” I turned to see Ruby descending the bleachers, and felt grateful to already be red and sweaty. “Be cool,” I hissed. Ronni nodded.

  Ruby jumped smoothly off the last row of bleachers and sauntered over to us, speeding up at the last second to hug me with such force I was nearly knocked flat. I was slick with sweat, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “Wow, hello,” I said.

  “You were so good, dude!” At that last part, I winced a little, but I recovered before Ruby pulled back from our hug, and then it didn’t matter. I couldn’t be that close to her and not break into a huge, obnoxious smile. Ronni, a goddess among girls, excused herself without saying a word.

  “I’m so glad you came,” I told Ruby.

  “Me too! I felt very, like, high school.”

  I laughed, blushing because I’d been thinking the same thing, though maybe not in the same way. I’d imagined this moment so many times when I was younger: me on the soccer field, after a game, being congratulated by the coolest girl in school, who showed up just to watch me play. In the fantasy version, it was the school season, and the bleachers were full of screaming fans wearing Westville green and white. In the fantasy version, I scored the winning goal, and in the fantasy version, the girl was wearing my letter jacket draped around her shoulders. But it was, like, seventy degrees out, and watching my best friend score felt just as good as if I had. And for Ruby to come to this game, off season, that she had no school-spirited or peer-pressured motive to attend—that was better than anything I could have dreamed up.

  The fantasy ended abruptly, minutes after the game did, the girl and me still standing on the field. Even the outer limits of my imagination couldn’t conjure a kiss. The girl’s face was too blurry. She was more of a concept than a person. Here in real life, the girl standing in front of me didn’t kiss me either, but she did speak, and that was better too.

  “Should we go get burritos?”

  Half an hour later Ruby and I were seated at a table at La Posta, where she said she’d never been. Geographically, I understood: the restaurant was nondescript and cheap-looking, sitting in a strip mall on the other end of town from Ruby’s family’s neighborhood. It was cheap, and it was also responsible for the best and biggest burrito I’d ever had: four dollars and fifty cents for a tinfoil-wrapped mound the size of a human baby, tax included. Six if you got a horchata, which I insisted we do. Twelve dollars total. Ruby started digging for her debit card but I waved her off to grab us a table, handing over the second-to-last twenty from my dad. I wondered when I’d see him again, and not just because I was almost out of spending money. (Mom gave me a little cash here and there, too, but I didn’t like to ask unless I was truly desperate.) He’d said he’d be here “soon,” but coming from him, that could have meant just about anything. Including “never.” Ruby was looking at her phone when I joined her, so I pulled mine out too and sent him a text: When do you hear back?

  One of the chefs slid the tray with our food up to the serving window cut into the side of the dining room wall and shouted, “Ryan!” even though we were the only ones there. I jumped up to grab it and placed it gently in front of Ruby, who said “That looks sooo good” even though she was still looking at her phone. I unwrapped the top of my burrito and took a bite, mmm-ing loudly until she finally put it down.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Band drama.” She took a sip of horchata, and her eyes widened. “Holy shit.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m gonna be here every day now.”

  “Cool, I’ll drive.”

  She grinned and took a big bite of burrito, nodding approvingly. My shoulders instantly un-tensed.

  “So what’s going on with the band?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “Same shit as always.”

  “Oh, I see.” I paused. “I don’t actually know what that means.”

  “It means it’s boring,” she said. “Like, so boring I could cry.”

  Naturally, her saying that only made me desperate to know everything. But Ruby evidently didn’t feel like sharing, and I figured I wouldn’t become the kind of person she wanted to confide in by begging her to confide in me. And maybe it really was exhausting having everyone be permanently interested in your life. I couldn’t imagine. In my daydreams of future soccer stardom practically all I did was give charming interview after charming interview on late-night talk shows. In some notebook somewhere I had notes for my SNL monologue already written. I should really try to find those, I thought.

  “In that case, let’s talk about me,” I said. Ruby snickered. “I’m kidding.”

  “No, let’s,” she said. “Tell me everything. Who is Quinn Ryan?”

  I laughed, if only to hide the fact that hearing her say my full name made my chest whirl and flutter. “Well,” I started grandly. “It began with the forging of the Great Rings.”

  Ruby raised an eyebrow.

  “Sorry. Um. That’s from The Fellowship of the Ring.” Jamie would have laughed, I thought. As if that had anything to do with anything.

  She nodded. “Cool, so we know you’re a nerd.” But she wasn’t making fun of me. Or if she was, there was affection behind it. I could see it in her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “My parents are divorced. My mom works for the Union-Tribune. My dad is an accountant in North Carolina.”

  “That’s your parents, not you.”

  “Well, my dad is moving back, supposedly. That’s kind of about me.”

  “Kind of,” she agreed.

  Now that I had the spotlight I felt uncomfortable, unsure what was interesting enough to tell her, unsure what she wanted to hear. My solution was to eat the last bite of my burrito. And then I had a better idea.

  “Want to go to Balboa Park?”

  * * *

  —

  Second only to the ocean and any of its beaches, Balboa Park was my favorite place in California. Any time of year, any time of day or night, there was always something worth watching going on. Sometimes it was the foreign tourists posing in front of the parts of the park you least expected someone to want a picture with. Sometimes it was a couple making out or breaking up. Once I saw a woman in her twenties puke right off the carousel while her friends laughed and took pictures. Another time I watched a little boy wearing a tutu circle the pond, holding his mom’s hand and touching a plastic wand to every flower they passed, as if he were the one responsible for making them grow. When I came alone I liked to loop in and out of the buildings’ covered archways, vaguely imagining I was the handsome, bored duke who lived there. Then I’d make my way to the rose garden and find the prettiest, fullest flower there, ostensibly for my duchess. Or at least that was what I’d pretended I was doing when I was younger. Now finding the single best flower in the garden was just a habit.

  I parked near the art museum, which, along with the rest of the indoor attractions, had been closed for hours. Daytime Balboa was for families and tourists, but nighttime was for locals and young people like us. The energy changed when the sun set, and I could feel it as soon as I stepped out of my truck: a boozeless buzz, relieved and anxious all at once. It felt like it had dropped ten degrees on the drive over, so I pulled an old team sweatshirt from my duffel bag and offered it to Ruby.

  She hesitated. “You don’t want it?”

  “I’m still hot from the game,” I lied. She considered, so I added, “It’s clean.”

  “I wasn’t worried about cooties,” she smirked, pulling the sweatshirt over her head.

  Even at the invocation of a word tangentially and childishly associated with kissing, I felt goose bumps form on my arms. That, and seeing her in my clothing. I shivered.

  “See?!”

  “No, no, I’m fine.
That was an isolated incident.”

  “Good, because this is really comfy,” she said.

  “Other people’s stuff always is.”

  “No. This is special,” she said. She looked at me, and I got that tense, rubber-band-pulled-tight feeling in my chest, and I wondered if she felt it too. I used to assume that I could sense when something like that was shared, that I could tell when a moment loomed as large for someone else as it did for me. But I didn’t trust my instincts so much anymore. And it really was an exceptionally soft sweatshirt.

  “Let’s go this way,” I said.

  We walked into the park’s main square, where a bunch of other high school kids were slung around the wrought-iron tables, eating ice cream and drinking cans of soda they tipped flasks of vodka into. I was disappointed not to recognize anyone; it would have been nice to have a witness.

  “Do you want ice cream or anything?” I offered.

  Ruby shrugged. “I’m okay. Do you?”

  “Nah,” I lied. Of course I wanted ice cream. But we kept walking. A group of thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boys was scootering back and forth under one of the archways, propelling themselves into the air and clattering back to the sidewalk while the rest of them hollered, “Sick!” They weren’t really supposed to be there—skateboards and skates were banned, and scooters were implied—and they looked like they knew it was only a matter of time before they were asked to leave. I saw them see us, and I felt my shoulders creep up just slightly and pulled my hands from my pockets. Then one of the boys waved, calling, “Hi, Ruby!”

  “Oh, hey, Elon!” Ruby waved. The boys standing around him immediately began elbowing him in the arms, murmuring their admiration.

  “I used to babysit him,” Ruby leaned over to explain. “His parents paid twenty-five bucks an hour.”