Two Roads from Here

by Teddy Steinkellner

  I glanced up at the game clock. Ten seconds left in the half. Ten years of waiting for this moment, and now just ten seconds more.

  My heart was beating like a hummingbird on Red Bull.

  Nine seconds . . .

  My hands were dribbling sweat. I wiped them on my tuba and jacket.

  Eight seconds . . .

  Allegra looked radiant in the stadium lights. It was all I could do in that moment not to spill the freaking truth already.

  Seven seconds . . . six seconds . . .

  Our team was on the twenty-yard line, right in front of the band. DeSean dropped back for one last pass.

  Five . . .

  The Lagunita defensive dudes broke hard through the line. They came charging after DeSean. He scrambled around, trying to make a play.

  Four . . .

  He looked, looked, but no one was open. He hurried toward us, to the sideline, to try to get out of bounds—but he wasn’t alone. There was a brawny beast of a pass rusher right behind him.

  Three . . .

  Just as DeSean was about to scoot out, the beast launched itself through the air. D didn’t see it coming. He put the brakes on as he reached the sideline, but just as he stopped, that’s when the blow landed. The creature threw its entire body onto its victim. The dude’s knee made contact, right in the middle of DeSean’s left leg.

  Two . . .

  I heard a crunch, like someone stomped on a bag of potato chips. DeSean went limp on the turf.

  One . . .

  The kids around me gasped. Some screamed. Allegra’s hands shot over her eyes.

  Halftime.

  • • •

  There was no homecoming halftime show. The mood in the stadium was so somber after DeSean’s leg got destroyed that the school administrators made the decision to suspend the announcement of the queen until the following night. As the ambulance pulled onto the field, they ushered me and the rest of the band back up to the stands without letting us play. A few drunken dads and older brothers shouted insults at the Big Mack, screaming things like, “Why didn’t you suit up?” and “How could you let DeSean get Theismanned like that?” A good chunk of the crowd began booing, even some of the kids in band. Allegra looked shell-shocked, like a guy from a Vietnam movie.

  I didn’t talk during the second half. No one did. Fat Isaac tapped me on the shoulder and looked at me like, yo, we practiced that dumb song all those times; we still need our money. I slipped him the hundred-and-fifty-dollar wad, the cash I’d been saving up to buy an HD video camera, the camera I’d been wanting so I could make high-quality films for my future girl. Allegra didn’t say a word to me during the second half. Her mind seemed everywhere but the stadium. It became increasingly clear to me that I’d missed my chance at my big moment, maybe the best chance I’ll ever have.

  “So . . . ,” I said a few minutes after the game, at the start of our walk home. “That was a barrel of laughs.”

  Allegra shook her head.

  “Who do you think’s hating life more right now, DeSean or Brian?”

  “Wiley—”

  “I mean D probably won’t walk right for, like, a year, yeah? But the Big Mack’s about to become such a loser, even we might outrank him on the coolness scale.”

  “Wiley, I don’t want to talk about the game.”

  “Oh. Okay. That makes sense.”

  We walked in silence. Allegra coughed. I could see her breath. She seemed shivery, even in her heavy band jacket. I wanted to offer her mine, because that’s what a boyfriend would do, but I knew she’d just say no.

  “Let’s shift gears,” I said. “On to a funner note. We’re not too far from my birthday, you know. I’m wondering how we might want to celebrate.”

  “Hmm,” Allegra said. “Well, we’ll have to do a film festival, of course.”

  “Eighteen movies for my eighteenth,” I said. “The most ill-advised weekend ever.”

  Allie smiled. “What if we exclusively watched movies about growing up?” she said. “Stand by Me. Boyhood. To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  “Or what if we went the other way?” I said. “Forty hours of wacky baby flicks and movies featuring talking animals who move their mouths.”

  Allie snorted. “You’re a talking animal who moves its mouth.”

  “Or wait! Lightbulb! What if we made a movie?”

  “Ooh, I like it. A Wiley Otis biopic?”

  “The Fart Heard ’Round the World: Wiley’s Story.”

  “The Boy Who Did His Math Homework: A Surrealist Fantasy.”

  “We could get one of your brothers to play young me.”

  “We could get one of the men at the home to play elderly you, looking back on a lifetime of regrets.”

  “Sad Old Wiley: Same Nutter Butters, New Teeth.”

  “Sad Old Wiley: Still Wearing That Blasted Wolf Shirt.”

  “Sad Old Wiley: Having Future Sex with Robots.”

  I cracked myself up with that last one. I laughed until the mental image of a sexy robo-maid giving Alzheimer’s me a sensual striptease-slash-lap-dance wasn’t funny anymore, which took quite a while obviously. By the time I finally stopped, I realized Allegra wasn’t laughing along with me.

  “Shoot,” she said. “Darn it. Can’t believe I forgot.”

  “What?”

  She put her palm to her forehead. “I am so sorry. It utterly slipped my mind.”

  “What?”

  “Stanford sent me an e-mail,” she said. “The special admit reception they’ve invited me to, it’s in December, the same weekend as—I’ll have to miss your birthday. I’m really sorry.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I feel dreadful,” Allegra said.

  “It’s okay. Please don’t worry about it.”

  “I could always skip the college weekend, or try and go to half—”

  “Don’t be insane,” I said. “Of course you have to go.”

  We walked without talking for another block. I tried not to show what I was actually feeling. The wind picked up a little bit. I heard the sound of Allie’s teeth chattering.

  “Well, how about this?” I said. “Let’s time-shift. Instead of waiting till winter break, let’s have fun now. We could start our film festival tomorrow morning, or hey, here’s a thought, even begin preproduction on Sad Old Wiley.”

  Allegra lowered her eyes. She shook her head.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Not tomorrow. We’re taking my mom to the hospital. She’s starting round one of chemo.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We didn’t say much else until we reached our neighborhood. I think both of us felt pretty guilty, even though neither of us had done anything wrong. The world had just gotten in our way.

  We stopped at Allie’s house. I gave her a hug good night. She told me sorry again, then headed up the pathway to her door. She looked so adorable in her bright blue jacket, so small and defenseless, huddled against the wind.

  “Hey,” I said before she went inside.

  “Yeah?” she said, looking over her shoulder.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  I took an epic, gigantic, potentially historic breath.

  I still had the shot, if I wanted to take it. I still had the opening to make my bold move. I didn’t have to let her walk through that door. Not without telling her everything first. Ten years’ worth of stuff. Everything I told Nikki. Everything in my heart.

  This could be my time.

  “You’re . . . um . . . doing a really good job. With this college thing and the mom stuff. It must be so stressful, but you’re finding a way to handle it all. You’re really keeping everyone in mind. You’re a great daughter. You’re a great friend.”

  “Well, goodness,” Allie said. “Thank you for the kind words.”

  With that she waved good-bye, shut the door, and disappeared.

  * * *r />
  2. NIKKI FOXWORTH

  * * *

  As a little girl growing up in Texas, you don’t ever imagine that you’ll spend your senior homecoming inside a stuffy hospital room instead of out on the dance floor with your girls and your man. You never dream your beau will have his leg wrapped in a giant cast, fractured in two places. Or that he’ll be operating on zero sleep and about a dozen different painkillers.

  If you’d told little me that all those things were going to be in my future one day, well, gosh, I just might have burst into tears.

  But sometimes real life is so much better than the fantasy.

  DeSean was beyond broken the day after the game, basically lifeless as I stayed by his hospital bed in the hours following his surgery. That Saturday evening, he asked me when I was leaving him for the dance, and the way he asked it, his head lolling back, his voice flat and weak, oh, it darn near crushed my spirit for good.

  But I had a surprise for him.

  I left the room for a short spell, and when I returned, I was wearing my hair done up and my homecoming gown, a black midlength bodycon dress with strategically placed geometric cutouts along the sides, which may or may not have cost the better part of one of my daddy’s paychecks. Plus I had a boutonniere, the most dashing oxblood lily, for my date. I pinned it on his chest and whispered that I wasn’t going anywhere. Homecoming was coming here.

  That’s when the school called to say they’d just announced the results of the election for king and queen, and the winners were . . . us! Ms. Fawcett even stopped by with the crowns, and most of the football team and rally girls came in right behind her. DeSean couldn’t get out of bed, of course, so he couldn’t do the time-honored first dance with me, but someone played a slow song on their phone, and he smiled and shimmied in place, and I leaned over his bed and cuddle-danced with him for as long as he had the energy, and everyone took pictures of us, and it was heaven.

  At the end of the night, after our friends left, I stayed back in the room. Not for inappropriate reasons, mind you, but just so I could massage my date’s shoulders, simply so I could comfort him until he fell fast asleep. It really is true what my mother always said: There’s nothing a girl loves more than nursing her man back to health.

  So yes, I feel horrible about D’s injury. Of course I do. And I pray it doesn’t impact his college career in any way. I pray that every night.

  But all the same, there is that silver lining. This time he’s had to spend away from football, it’s bringing us closer as a couple, and I can’t for one second regret that.

  It’s the imperfections, wouldn’t you know, that make life pretty perfect after all.

  • • •

  “You look so hot in these pics,” Brooklyn said.

  “The absolute hottest,” Channing said.

  “I love this freaking dress,” Brooklyn said.

  “Hospital chic,” Channing said.

  Those girls are unbelievably sweet. Chan and Brook are the cocaptains of varsity dance, and even though I’ve only known them since I auditioned at the start of the year, they’ve basically already taken me in as their soul sister. Every single day since homecoming, so, like, dozens of times over the past few weeks, they’ve come to my house to give me compliments, do my nails, gossip about cheer, and just generally make life the funnest.

  Last night they were over again, because now that it’s late November and the football team’s fallen short of the playoffs, we girls are in charge of planning out the boys’ big end-of-year, thank-you-to-the-fans dance that they do every fall in the Greek. Obviously, though, when the three of us get together, there tends to be a bit more chitchat than choreo.

  “And you know what else is hot, Nik?” Brooklyn said.

  “Your decision to . . . Wait, you and D still haven’t . . . have you?”

  I bit my lower lip and shook my head. Probably blushed, too.

  “Not yet,” I said. “Partially because of the leg thing, and mostly because, well, I’m still not quite ready.”

  “God, I admire that,” Channing said. “So much restraint.”

  “So much sexy courage,” Brooklyn said.

  “You know who would have done it with DeSean immediately, like, without even thinking?” Channing said.

  “Let me guess . . . ,” Brooklyn said. “Does her name rhyme with . . . ‘loner?’ ”

  “Yes,” Channing said. “And every guy at our school has biblically known her.”

  “And back in old times we would have said ‘let’s stone her!’ ”

  “For the crime of consuming one too many boners!’ ”

  “Who’s the chick so diseased she can’t be a blood donor?”

  They shouted it at the same time, like perfectly synchronized cheer clones:

  “THE MOANER!!!!!”

  At that, they burst into fits. They giggled so hard they fell onto my bed and mussed up the sheets. I smiled too.

  “Look, Foxworth,” Brooklyn said. “I’m sure you know this, but there’s a right amount of time to wait before doing it, especially if it’s gonna be your first time. Like, me and Conner, we were together for four solid months before we got there.”

  “And me and Dusty dated for two and a half,” Channing said. “But, like, we’ve known each other since we were little, so it was okay.”

  Brooklyn nodded. “The point is,” she said. “You don’t wanna be like one of those cave-girl cheer sluts, giving it up to any football player who so much as sweats near them—”

  “—So effing uncoordinated they can’t even execute a basic kick ball change,” Channing continued. “Which is why they didn’t make it onto dance, which is why they have to do effing cheer—”

  “—Which is why they have to stand there with those grandma-ass pom-poms and those chubbifying outfits, screeching at the top of their lungs like fat, unwanted mistake children,” Brooklyn said.

  “In conclusion,” Channing said. “Screwww cheer. I hope they all get genital warts and . . .

  “D-I-E!”

  “D-I-E!”

  “Get an S-T-D aaaaaand . . .”

  “DIE!!!!!!!!!”

  The girls high-tenned and tossed my pillows in the air. They cackled, looked at me expectantly, and cackled some more.

  I felt my arm hairs stand on end, but I had to laugh with them. I had to.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Screw cheer. Stupid whores.”

  • • •

  After a couple more hours of dance planning and name calling, Brook and Chan finally left my house around eleven. I waited for the sound of their car leaving before counting to a hundred by Mississippis. I walked down the hall and peeked inside my parents’ room, where my mom was facedown snoring, a half-empty bottle of Lexapro at her bedside. My daddy was back in Dallas, so I texted him good night. I walked to my car.

  I always feel vulnerable on the ride over, driving through the shadows like a girl in a horror movie right after everybody’s agreed to split up. Luckily it’s only a couple of minutes that I have to feel this way. I reach my hero before the monster ever gets me.

  DeSean was waiting in his driveway, balancing on his crutches and clearly in pain but with a warm look in his eyes. I helped him into the front seat. I drove us back to my neighborhood.

  I parked in our usual spot, in the corner of this big empty construction site that no one knows about, where no one can see us.

  I slid gently into the backseat, taking care not to brush up against DeSean’s cast. He took my hand in his and looked at me for a beat, mouthing the words “missed you.” I whispered the same back to him. Then I leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. I was anything but gentle.

  As we made out, DeSean put his hand all the places that I like. He ran it through my hair. Placed it on my cheek. Around my waist. Up my back. Eventually, he unclasped my bra.

  “First try,” I said, grinning.

  “Mmm,” DeSean said.

  I peeled my top off. For a minute or so, I let him have some boy time an
d play around up there. Once he’d had his fill, I helped him get his shirt off too. I placed my hands on his museum statue pecs. I squeezed them and cooed, to show how much I was enjoying him. Then I pushed softly on his chest. I lowered him down to the seat.

  “Beeep, beeep, beeep,” DeSean said, like a truck backing up.

  “Naughty boy,” I said.

  Next came the part I always want to draw out for longer, but who am I kidding? One second we were kissing like normal, and then, fast as you can say Jack Robinson, his shorts were off, and my panties, too, and I was grinding on him in perfect rhythm, by which I mean jackhammer-fast, and I could feel him down there, making his way urgently toward me, and my God, did it feel right—

  And just like that, we were one.

  I have no idea how long we went on for, because I never keep track of that stuff. It could have been two minutes or it could have been five hours. But what I know is that in that oneness I felt with D, I wasn’t thinking about the other kids at school, or what the latest trashy rumors are, or who us dance girls are supposed to be mean to now. I wasn’t thinking about my parents, or what they must think of me. I wasn’t thinking about my future, what I’m supposed to do next year, who I’m supposed to be. And thank the good Lord Almighty, I certainly wasn’t dwelling on the past.

  All that stuff does seep back into the brain eventually. How could it not? Right after the high point happens, around the time you’re cleaning up, when you’re thinking how icky and silly sex really is, but how you just don’t notice at the time, because that’s how gosh-dang loopy the lovemaking makes you, I mean, that’s also the moment when the brain clicks back on, when I realize I’m not just some pleasure-hungry animal acting on instinct, but a real human being, a girl with dozens of secrets and too many bad memories and absolutely zero solutions to any of my problems.

  But oh, how I love forgetting.

  Let me forget. Mmm, DeSean. Make me forget.

  * * *

  3. BRIAN MACK