Two Roads from Here

by Teddy Steinkellner

  • • •

  I spent the first few minutes of the third quarter collecting congratulations from my band buds.

  “Damn, Wiles. Never thought I’d actually see the day . . .”

  “Wow, mister, someone sure punched above his weight, if you know what I’m saying. . . .”

  “Dude, I always thought it was gonna be one of those things where you turn forty, you’re both unmarried, and Allegra was too addicted to her career as a neurosurgeon to find love or whatever, and Wiley, you, like, lead a drum circle or something, and then finally you get together, but it’s, like, really random and kind of unsatisfying.”

  “Um . . . thanks, Fat Isaac,” I said.

  I slipped him his money and waved him off.

  “So,” I said, turning to face my brand-new homecoming date plus hey, who-knows-what-else. “How does it feel?”

  Allegra stared ahead, focused on the game. Our team was on offense, driving up the field right in front of where we were sitting.

  “Uh, Earth to Allegra . . .

  “Allie, do you copy?

  “Yo! Since when do you care about football?”

  “Oh,” she said, still looking off. “Sorry.”

  “Hey,” I tried again. “Everything okay? The whole school’s congratulating us, and you’re off in your own little world. What’s wrong?”

  She still wasn’t responding, so I put my hand in front of her face. I had to get her attention, so I snapped my fingers, right in her eyes.

  “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  “You’re embarrassing me.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “That was rude. And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you just now, but—”

  She shook her head. “I’m not even talking about now. I’m referring to before.”

  “I . . . ,” I started to say. “What?”

  “At halftime,” she said, her eyes distant. “When you asked me what you asked me, when you did it in that way. You put me in a compromising position. Either I say no, and I look like a sociopath and I humiliate you for all to see. Or alternatively, I say yes, but I do so without genuinely getting to mull the matter over, and I say yes for everyone in this stadium except myself.”

  She shook a few curls of hair in front of her face. “So, of course I said yes.

  “But it’s a two-way street, Wiley. Just as I was considerate of your needs, so must you understand my perspective. Surely you’d agree that right now is singularly the worst time to ask me what you asked me, and indeed to ask me anything. And not just because we’re out here in public, being watched by thousands, like Christians in the Colosseum, but also because of the nature of what I’m going through at the moment. Think about my college decision. Think about my mom. Do I really have the bandwidth to be contemplating something as frivolous as a high school dance right now? Do you really think it’s justifiable to put me in that emotional position?”

  “I . . . ,” I said.

  I rubbed my eyes. I tried to make contact with hers. She was full gaze ahead, still zeroed in on the game, like nothing else mattered to her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to be bold. And fun. Of course I would never want to humiliate you. But I don’t see why this is that hard. To me it’s an easy thing, you know? I like you, okay? I like you, Allie. It’s as simple as that, and—”

  That’s as far as I got.

  “OH MY GOD.”

  • • •

  I didn’t see it happen. I heard it. The jarring clang and ringing reverb from the helmet crashing into the metal bench. The dozens of “what just happeneds” and “oh God, nos” being uttered all around me. The wail of the ambulance siren. The quiet prayers all around the stadium. Allegra’s shallow, frantic breaths.

  But I didn’t see what happened to Brian Mack. All I saw was a huge, sprawled-out, motionless mass that the EMTs were attempting to somehow load onto the stretcher. I saw players from both teams in a circle at midfield, heads bowed, helmets off, all on one knee. I saw Allie beside me, her eyes finally somewhere besides the game, buried in her hands.

  I wanted so bad to zoom past the whole scene. I wanted it to be way freaking later in the movie, after all the stupid weird sad crap.

  “So . . . ,” I said after several minutes of silence, trying to lighten the mood. “Going back to tomorrow for a sec . . . you wanna go straight from your house to homecoming, or should we grab a schmancy dinner first?”

  Allegra winced. “Not right now.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine. I’m just wondering—”

  “Not right now.”

  “Right. Totally. That makes sense. Okay, in that case, I’ll call you in the morning—”

  “Listen to me.”

  “No, yeah, I am, but all I’m saying—”

  “Please.”

  “I know it’s awkward timing, but hear me out—”

  “Have some compassion, for God’s sake.”

  “Would Italian be good? Sushi’s always fun, but who wants to boogie on a belly full of raw fish, right? So awkward, you know what I . . .

  “Hey, where are you going?”

  Allegra stood up, reached for her flute case, and glanced down at me. She let out a lengthy sigh. And she left. Allie left the game.

  But not before saying one final thing:

  “I’m sorry, Wiley. You’re my best friend. But you really shouldn’t have asked me. I could never go to the dance with you.”

  2. COLE MARTIN-HAMMER

  I almost stepped on him.

  It was this time a year ago, fall semester of eleventh grade, just before Thanksgiving. It was after school, which meant I was—where else?— in the theater. The halls outside were packed with dozens of stressed-out auditioners, all practicing dance combos and the most ’einous cockney accents you will ever ’ear. I, however, had nothing to fear. Mr. Bayer had already confessed to me that he’d selected that year’s spring musical purely so I could bring my jauntiness, my tricksiness, my ever-bewitching untrustworthiness to the villainous role of Fagin. Just before my quote-unquote-audition, I happened to be practicing my Fagin walk in the hallway—shoulders hunched, knees high, hands dangling from my wrists like marionettes—which is when I almost stepped on him.

  “Sorry! I’m sorry, Cole! I’ll move.”

  He was curled up against the lockers, hugging his knees, damn near in the fetal position. Honestly, he could have passed for one of the orphans from the show, begging for a crust of bread. He was the spitting image of Oliver Twist.

  “Oi!” I said. “ ’Ello, gov’na!”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll move.”

  “What’s yer name, then?”

  He looked confused. “. . . Neil?”

  “And what part be ye auditionin’ fer?”

  The moment I said it, Neil’s face fell.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I think I should go.”

  He reached for his backpack. His hands were shaking. I’m sure if I’d listened closely, I would have actually heard him whimpering.

  This poor kid. He didn’t just remind me of Oliver. He also happened to resemble someone else, another frightened young lad who’d gone out for theater once upon a time.

  He looked like lil’ me.

  “Rubbish,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.” I raised my foot and placed it on his shoulder, like I was claiming a new piece of land. He made an effort to stand up, but I pressed my shoe down and lowered him back to the ground.

  “What’d you do that for?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You have to let me leave.”

  I shook my head nope. “What’s wrong, Neil?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought I wanted to act. I come see all the plays. I see you in them, I see everyone having fun. I wanted to be part of this. But then I got here, and yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m not cut out for this.”

  He made an
other move for the backpack. I kicked it out of his reach.

  “Poppycock,” I said. “I won’t have any of your lies.”

  I squatted to the floor, directly across from him.

  “I was literally you,” I said, my voice low. “I feared the world. I doubted myself. I tried to bail. But then one day, I made a theater buddy, and everything changed. He gave me confidence. Life got amazing. I got amazing. So let’s go. Stand up. You’re my scene partner. We’re auditioning together. And I promise you two things, right here, right now. One, you’re going to have the best time of your life . . .

  “And two, you’re going to be Oliver.”

  As ever, I was correct. Neil crushed the audition, utilizing but not succumbing to his pathetic orphan persona in order to land the lead role. Moreover, from that day forward, he has absolutely been the real-life Oliver to my actual Fagin, the partner in crime I’ve been lacking ever since Brian. Only instead of teaching him how to pick a pocket or two, I’ve instructed Neil in the twenty-first-century version of the naughty arts: how to scour the Internet to uncover the most degrading baggage. How to cyberbully dumb-dumbs without getting caught. How to hack the big test when you can’t do math and you have no other choice.

  Mischief isn’t Neil’s native language, that’s for sure. Sometimes he excels at the tutorials I give him. More often, he displays evidence of this annoying thing apparently called a conscience. This is when our friendship hits a snag. I’ll come up with some awesomely hilarious bit of prankery, and he’ll start acting like we’re back in the hallway a year ago, like I’m trying to stomp on him all over again. It’s the living worst when he does this, when he activates crybaby mode. I mean shit, it keeps me up at night.

  I think Neil likes being my friend. Every now and then, though, I have my doubts. I wonder if he hangs out with me solely due to the circumstances of how we met. I fear that he stays by my side not because he truly wants to, but out of some reluctant sense of loyalty.

  But I try not to think about that.

  • • •

  I almost cheated.

  It was last month, the morning after the homecoming game. I was standing on that hill, about to take that test, watching those kids.

  I wanted to beat them. I wanted to dismember them. I wanted to flog and flay and tar and feather their hateriffic asses. I wanted to take those racist homophobic bully snitches, and I wanted to make them suck on my perfect score and choke on my Stanford diploma, and I needed to show them exactly what they deserved for never being friends with me these past four years, for dismissing me before they so much as gave me a chance.

  But as I watched them all, those nervous silhouettes, wandering into that big, scary room, I found myself thinking about another kid:

  The little boy by the lockers, hugging his knees.

  Neil was never onboard with my SAT plan. He got squeamish when I suggested it to him, way more than usual.

  “It’s wrong,” he told me. “Cheating is wrong.”

  “A thousand apologies,” I said. “But I really must do this.”

  “It’s so much worse than anything you’ve done before.”

  “It’ll be the last bad thing, the last time ever, I swear.”

  “You’ll wish you hadn’t done it. You always will.”

  “Hey, orphan boy,” I reminded him. “I made you, okay? You freaking owe me.”

  After waffling on it for days, for weeks, he finally agreed to help me, but essentially at a price. He’d never look at me the same way again, he said. Our friendship would have a permanent crack, running right through the middle.

  Still, I wanted to cheat. I mean, Stanford! I was born at Stanford Hospital, for crying out loud. My entire life, my parents have raved about their years there, about the people they met. The geniuses. The dreamers. “The crazy ones,” my dad used to say, quoting some speech. “The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers . . .” That is to say, people just like me. And all those people, they would actually want to be with me. They’d let me in.

  And yet.

  Before I left my car early that morning, before I went into my testing room to do the irreversible deed, I found myself thinking about yet another kid. But not Neil. And not young me.

  My old theater buddy.

  It’s unthinkable. What happened to him at the game the previous night. One false move. One gentle push in the wrong direction. One little bop on the head. Suddenly his life, as we all knew it, it’s over.

  Who knows how exactly this universe works? Who can say whether we’re rewarded for our good acts, or punished for our sins? Who can be certain that morality matters at all?

  But hell, who wants to risk it, you know? Who wants to take the chance?

  That settled it. Right there, right that split second, right before the test. I couldn’t cheat. For Neil, I had to try to do the right thing. For Brian, I had to play it safe. For myself, I had to have faith that everything would work out in the end.

  • • •

  Flash forward to today.

  “All right,” Mr. Bayer said from his seat in the way back of the house. “Mr. Fagin and Mr. Twist. Which roles will you be auditioning for this time around?”

  Neil cleared his throat. “Well—,” he said.

  “I think it’s rather obvious, don’t you?” I said, winking at our director. “You could even typecast us, if you so desired. Since I am, after all, an omniscient troublemonger with phenomenal fashion sense, I believe I would be ideal as the Cat in the Hat. And I think you’ll agree that our pal Neil here is a wide-eyed, whiny baby with much to learn. Ergo, Jojo.”

  Bayer laughed, as he always does at my jokes. Neil took the ribbing like a champ.

  “So,” my sidekick said. “This afternoon, we’ll be performing the Cat and Jojo’s bathtub dance sequence—”

  Ding!

  “What was that?” Neil said.

  “Ooh,” I said. “Methinks my phone chimed.”

  “Cole,” Bayer said. “You’ve gotta keep that on silent.”

  “My B,” I said, reaching for my pocket. “I know I’m not that big of a diva . . . yet at least, lolz.”

  And I would have ignored the notification. I swear I would have turned my phone off without a second thought, for reals.

  But I saw the words, right there on my screen: Your Stanford University Admissions Decision.

  “Okay, guys,” Bayer said. “Show me what you got.”

  “Hold up,” I said. “I really need to check this.”

  “What?” Bayer said. “Before your audition?”

  “Cole,” Neil said. “This isn’t the time.”

  I blocked them both out. I had to read the e-mail, right then and there. I had no other choice.

  Dear Cole,

  The Admissions Committee has carefully reviewed your application to Stanford University. After much consideration, we regret to inform you that we are not able to offer you a position in the class of—

  “Hey there,” Bayer said. “You with us?”

  “Huh?”

  “What is it?” Neil said. “What’s wrong?”

  I jammed my phone back in my jeans. “Nothing,” I said.

  “You sure?” Bayer said.

  “You’re ready?” Neil said.

  “Yes, goddammit,” I said, completely blocking them out, not giving two shits about being onstage, still hung up on that e-mail, still recounting those words over and over, letting them haunt me, like I’m certain they will till the day I take my last nicotine-flavored breath.

  “Yes, goddammit. Let’s do this stupid audition.”

  I bombed. My singing was flat, but my voice cracked too, which I didn’t even know was possible. I half assed my dance, forgetting most of the choreography. During my scene, I flubbed a bunch of lines, and I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with Neil, not a single time.

  Whatever. None of it matters. My audition was a formality anyway. Bayer picked the show with me in mind for the part of the Cat. Whatever. None of
it matters. I pussed out on that Saturday morning back in October. I blew the biggest opportunity of my life. I’m not going to Stanford. Whatever. I don’t care anymore. My future is dead.

  I could have been smart. I could have found my people. I should have had everything I desired. But I did the “right” thing.

  3. BRIAN MACK

  I love football. . . .

  That’s what I said in his office. . . . I told Coach I love football. . . .

  Everyone loved me. . . . Nikki made me brownies. . . . DeSean called me a soldier. . . . The brownies were the shape of footballs. . . . Kyle said, “Way to nut up. . . .” My dad’s friends came to the game. . . . They all wore gold rings. . . . I love Friday nights. . . .

  My head felt great. . . . The band played “Dancing Queen.” I felt like a million bucks. . . . The dance girls looked smokin’. . . . The cheerleaders were okay. . . . I played so hard. . . . Nikki looked perfect. . . .

  I had the game of my life . . . opened big-ass running lanes . . . pancake blocks for days . . . blocked a kick, too. At halftime Coach said thank you. . . . DeSean said, “How you feeling, bro?” I popped five Advils. . . . I said I was fine. . . . I ate another brownie. . . .

  The second half was awesome. . . . Bulldogs were on the move. . . . DeSean yelled, “Hike!” . . . I protected him like always. . . . D broke free. . . . I ran with him. . . . The crowd screamed, “Big Mack. . . .” Shit got loud. . . . That’s all I know. . . . That’s all my brain remembers. . . . I wish I could remember. . . .