Man Up

by Kim Oclon

  “Nope,” I said, making another small cloud.

  “Are you going to tell the deans?”

  “Nope.”

  “You thought it was a good idea when I did it,” Tyler pointed out.

  I finally turned from the window and faced Tyler, noticing that there was still a small scar above his eyebrow but the butterflies and bruises were long gone. “That was different,” I said. “Kevin beat the shit out of you.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “He deserved to get suspended.” I ignored Tyler. “He deserved more than that.”

  “I was wrong that day in the library.” Tyler’s tone changed. “About how all we need is each other to get through stuff like this.”

  I furrowed my eyebrows. “What else is there?”

  “We need each other,” Tyler assured me. “No doubt, we need each other. But, David, you’re the only one who knows what happened to me two years ago and not saying something sooner was a big mistake.”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “I go tell the deans about my locker and they’ll point to the little rainbow flag hanging in their office and that makes everything okay?”

  “I’m not even talking about the deans,” Tyler sighed. “I’m talking about Allie.”

  “What about her?” I asked, following a car into the parking lot with my eyes and then watching it pull up in front of the door so two small freshmen could climb in after throwing their bat bags in the trunk.

  “It’s nice knowing she’s there, isn’t it? In the library, in the hallway. Just in the building itself. What if she wasn’t? What if she never moved here this year?” Tyler pressed.

  My first thought was that another library worker probably wouldn’t have let me in that day I needed Tyler. Most of them seemed like such kiss-asses. And then there was when I was doing research that turned into coming out to her. She was the first one to know besides my family. “These past few weeks would have been a lot harder,” I admitted, feeling like I was in a class where the teacher was forcing me to answer questions. I released Tyler’s hand to put the car in gear and steer my way out of the parking lot. “I don’t know if now’s the right time to make me feel better about today. I want to be mad about it for a while. It was fucking embarrassing, Tyler.”

  “I’m sure it was,” Tyler agreed. “I’m sure it still is.”

  “I fucking touched someone else’s cup!”

  Tyler laughed and tried to suppress it when I shot him a glare. “It sounded funny when you said it,” he said.

  I navigated the streets to Tyler’s house without even thinking about where to turn and when to brake. “This is not how I imagined the end of my senior year.”

  “No?” Tyler asked as if he were shocked I would say such a thing. “What could you possibly want to be different?”

  “A clean locker door in the athletic locker room.” I released the steering wheel with one hand to tick off the items. “A full scholarship.”

  “You did get a full scholarship,” Tyler reminded him.

  I shook my head. “You know what I mean.”

  “That Kevin never saw us together and never said anything?” Tyler asked.

  I had to slow down because the stoplight turned yellow. “Yes, but because he’s an asshat. Not for any other reason.”

  Tyler seemed to accept that answer because he settled into his seat and leaned over to put his head on my shoulder. Tyler must have really wanted me to feel better because there was no way he was comfortable bent over the center console like that.

  CHAPTER 39

  TYLER

  “I’m calling to make you feel better,” I said, FaceTiming with David while sitting on my bed. My AP Calculus book made for a great footrest.

  “You think you can do that?” David responded. I could see him walking into the short hallway in his house and turning into the room he shared with Robert. The phone dropped to his side so I got this weird angle of Robert sitting on the floor reading some sports magazine. David nudged him with his toe. “Out.”

  Robert huffed and made a face as he stalked out of the room.

  David turned the phone upright again and I could see the tips of his short brown hair was still wet from a shower. When he sat on his bed, I saw his fleece pants with White Sox logos all over them.

  “I’m going to try,” I said. Part of me wondered if David needed the night to just be by himself but I hoped I knew him well enough by now to be certain that he would be stewing over what happened today and wasn’t doing much homework either.

  “If you can, you’ll get a prize.” David turned his pillow vertical so he could lean against it.

  I smugly smiled. “A prize? Interesting. What sort of prize?” Several thoughts sprang into my head, one of which made my face warm and my stomach drop a little.

  “I’m not sure yet,” David said. “We’ll have to find out if you’re successful.”

  “Okay, here goes.” I quickly glanced at my laptop that was off to my side. It was probably pointless to make David feel better about the dick on his locker but maybe I could make him feel better about Sinni. I squinted at my computer screen. “So, did you know that Mark Bewhurlly went to community college too?”

  David furrowed his eyebrows, clearly unimpressed with this information. “Who’s that? Did he play for Lincoln?”

  “No, he played for the White Sox for a while.” I scanned the information on the screen to make sure I was getting this right. “Do I know something about the White Sox that you don’t know?”

  “Nope, because you’re making it up. No prize for you.”

  “No, no,” I insisted. I put my phone down on the bed but tried to angle it so David could still see me. I picked up my laptop. “It’s true. He won two games during the 2005 World Series and even closed one of themes. First time in the history of the sport that happened.”

  A loud laugh came from David as he shook his head. “Do you mean Mark Buehrle?”

  “Huh?” I doubled checked the name. “It doesn’t look like that at all.”

  “I’m willing to bet Mark Buehrle never had a cup taped to his locker,” David said.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” I replied. “There are assholes everywhere. Probably even where this Mark guy went to school.”

  “Maybe.” This cheering up thing wasn’t going well.

  “I bet D1 schools are crawling with assholes,” I added.

  “Well, I won’t have to worry about that,” David said. “You will, though. And we already know U of I is up one asshole for next year.”

  I studied David. His damp hair. The faded black of his T-shirt. How soft his pants looked. “I know I’m not going to say anything that will magically make everything better,” I said. “But maybe think of Sinni as a place to start. Not a place to end up.”

  David shrugged, unconvinced and unmoved.

  “What if Mark Buerhle didn’t go to community college because he thought it was pointless or stupid?”

  Another shrug accompanied by an eyebrow raise. “You sound like my mom.”

  Fail.

  I ran my feet under the covers to feel the cool sheets. It had been so long since David and I were tangled up on my bed. I stared into my phone as if David were really in front of me. “I liked you before I knew where you wanted to go to college. And before I knew you were some awesome baseball player. I’ll be able to say ‘I knew you when.’”

  David smirked. “When I had a dick drawn on my locker and felt like almost everyone on the team wanted nothing to do with me.”

  “Yep,” I responded. “And I also knew you when you got somehow got through this with the help of your awesome boyfriend.”

  David turned his head away from the phone but I managed to catch a glimpse of the smile he was trying to hide. “My boyfriend is kind of awesome.”

  Some success.

  CHAPTER 40

  DAVID

  The next morning, I thought about checking to see if Coach followed through on
the clean-up effort but decided against it. If the marker was still there, I didn’t want anyone to see me looking at it and I didn’t want to go through the day wondering if it would still be there when I went to practice. If it was still there at the end of the day, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I had the day to figure something out.

  While I stood at my locker looking through some psychology notes for a quiz I had that day, I felt like someone was staring at me. I whipped around and saw Mike standing there, nervous, like I was a girl he was working up the courage to talk to. He had his hands jammed into his jean pockets and managed to look at the floor with one eye and me with the other.

  “Hey,” I said, unable to hide the surprise in my voice.

  “Hey, uh,” Mike shifted from one foot to the other.

  “Are you sure you want to talk to me?” I gestured to the crowded hallway. “What will people think now that they know I’m looking for some serious dick?” Being mad felt better than being embarrassed.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, still looking down. “I wanted to let you know that it’s not there anymore.”

  I furrowed my eyebrows.

  “I wanted to put my practice clothes in my locker before school and saw it wasn’t there.” He stood off to the side of me and it was hard to hear him over the morning traffic in the hallway.

  “Oh.” A small wave of relief replaced some of the anger. “Do you know who did it?”

  Mike shook his head. “Nope.”

  “You didn’t see anything?” I pressed, suddenly concerned with the perpetrator now that I knew I didn’t need to worry about my locker anymore.

  “Nothing.”

  “I thought maybe you would have since you and your new best friends were almost late to practice yesterday,” I said, remembering how they had to hustle from the field house to the baseball diamond.

  “New best friends?” Mike looked confused. “Kurt and Alex?”

  I nodded.

  “They’re not my new best friends.”

  “My bad.” I turned back to my locker to pretend to look over my notes.

  Mike was still standing behind me. I could feel it. I didn’t know whether to be grateful that Mike was actually talking to me or be pissed that Mike had spent so much time not talking to me.

  “See you at practice,” Mike said before disappearing into the stream of students flooding the hallway.

  After scarfing down my sandwich and guzzling a drink in the hallway, I found myself standing in front of the athletic director’s office. I slowly opened the door and tossed my empty sports drink bottle into a nearby recycling bin.

  “Hi, David,” Mrs. Carlson beamed when I came in and smiled like I was a relative she hadn’t seen in a long time. “How are you?”

  “Okay.” Actually, I’d been better. “Is Coach around?”

  Mrs. Carlson glanced at the phone on her desk, which didn’t have any lights blinking on it and then to the closed door. “I’m pretty sure he’s available.” She pushed back her chair and softly knocked on the door before poking her head inside.

  I stood off to the side of Mrs. Carlson’s desk, again taking in the shrine of Carl Howell and thinking about how he was doing in spring training and getting ready for the upcoming season as a Triple A ball player. In the fall, there would be a new 8X10 photo of Carl in his current team’s uniform and then another frame of a collage of action shots from the season. Despite how impressive the professional uniforms looked and the small stadiums that sat hundreds, I had read enough magazine articles and seen enough news stories to know that the life of a minor league baseball player was eons away from anything resembling that of a major leaguer, but every guy always said they wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Many had regular jobs in the offseason since minor league contracts didn’t involve millions or even thousands.

  Above Carl’s shrine were several rows of photos of players who played a sport in college. Next year there would be a photo of Kevin in his Illini uniform, complete with the stupid tough-guy expression, and Mike in his Kansas gear. After a quick scan of the wall, I noticed an absence of CNEI navy blue. I had to snort to myself. Even my school didn’t consider it a real college. If they did, they’d have to clear the wall designated for the grainy and sun-bleached team photos from Lincoln’s earliest days.

  “He says you can go in,” Mrs. Carlson broke into my thoughts.

  “Thanks.” I ducked past her and went into Coach Kelly’s office.

  “We’re starting to make this a regular thing,” Coach Kelly said from behind his desk. He must have had a meeting this morning because the top button of his short sleeve dress shirt was buttoned, making his neck look like it had a bad sunburn.

  “I’ll be quick, Coach,” I said, closing the door behind him and ignoring the plastic chairs. I didn’t think I’d be able to sit in one of those for a long time. “I just wanted to thank you for taking care of the…of my locker. I heard it was cleaned up before school started.”

  “Well, I can’t take the credit,” Coach Kelly said. “The guy in charge of maintenance told me it was already covered up with some white paint by the time he got there. It was still wet so he said he would go over it with the yellow tomorrow morning.”

  “Someone already painted over it?” I immediately wondered who did it. Tyler? Patrick? Another maintenance guy who took it upon himself to do something?

  “It’s all covered up,” Coach assured me. “Rather poorly, if you ask me. But at least it’s gone, right?” He sounded like he was talking about a fly that was buzzing around his office.

  “Yeah,” I said, not really listening.

  “Did you make a decision about Coach Rowen’s offer?”

  “I’m still thinking about it,” I said absently, consumed with the image of a hastily painted square on a sheet of yellow metal.

  “Still?” Coach seemed shocked. “They’re not going to wait around for you, David. They have a roster to fill too.”

  “I know, Coach,” I headed to the door. “See you at practice.”

  I quickly changed into my PE uniform so I could look at my locker before class. It had been on my mind all day, and I just wanted to see it. This meant a foggy afternoon of classes. Maybe there was a pre-calculus quiz tomorrow. Maybe there was a study guide to go along with the next chapter of Brave New World. My teacher did hand something out at the end of class but that might have been a flier about a college talk we were going to next week.

  The fog vanished when I stepped into the athletic part of the locker room. I immediately spotted my locker. The glaring white paint stood out like a bleach stain on a favorite hooded sweatshirt.

  I studied the paint job feeling like a detective on one of those cop shows my dad liked so much. The coat of paint was thick and in a lopsided square with small drips running halfway to the floor. Big drops clung to the locker. The white paint covered an area that was way bigger than necessary. Whoever did it was in a rush. Not that I expected the paint job to be worthy of a discussion in Art Appreciation class.

  Everyone seemed uncomfortable at practice. It was like that girl in the eighth grade, the one who had cancer. No one knew what to say to her. We wanted to say we were sorry or say something to make her feel better but we couldn’t come up with anything so we just pretty much avoided her. Any eyes that met mine quickly looked the other way. Only Kevin said something, shifting his position in the group while they ran and whispering loudly, “Keep your eye on your dick.” He got a couple snickers in response.

  Coach Kelly made a poor attempt to find the culprit by gathering up everyone after their mile run by saying something about how it would be in the best interest of the team if everyone did their best to minimize any outside shenanigans and report anyone who was creating or adding to existing distractions. During my two seasons playing varsity ball, I had never known Coach Kelly to be so concerned about distractions and probably only heard him use the word once when a group of the guys’ girlfriends came to one of the home games and scre
amed like they were at a concert when one of them came up to bat.

  Patrick caught me shaking my head and rolled his eyes at Coach, causing me, again, to be grateful for Patrick’s presence on the team and to regret not getting to know him better sooner. I knew it was a given that Patrick would warm up with me, the same way I used to know that Mike and me would warm up together. Maybe we could continue the routine next year if I decided to go to Sinni. If.

  With the first game just a week away, barring snow, rain, or extremely cold temperatures, Coach Kelly wanted to work on situational fielding. While the players who weren’t in the field lined up behind home plate, I checked out the dirt around second base and halfway between first and second, where I would spend most of my time. It was still wet between the bases so my cleats made pronounced tracks in the dirt, but a drying agent was dumped around second base causing it to be pretty slippery. I dragged my feet through the sandy stuff, trying to spread it out.

  “Kaminski,” Coach Kelly called. “Get with the others by the plate. Let Junior take some in the field.” Junior was the nickname given to the sophomore pitcher who was moved up to varsity. He was tall and skinny and would probably only see playing time during the bottom of a doubleheader.

  Kevin looked up from the pitcher’s mound that he had been sitting on. “Why? He’s not starting next week.”

  “Because he needs the practice in case he needs to bail you out,” Coach yelled from the sidelines. “Get in line!”

  “Nobody on, nobody out!” Coach Murray shouted from behind a pair of sunglasses.

  Everyone in the infield and outfield crouched in the ready position. A hard, fast ground ball shot toward second base. I angled back at it, seeing Mike out of the corner of my eye. “I got it, I got it, I got it.” I heard Mike say as he stretched out his glove and threw the ball to first base from his knees.

  “Good grab,” Coach Murray called, getting ready to toss and hit another baseball as Kevin put his head down, ready to race down to first. “Nobody on, one out!” This time it was a hit between third and shortstop. Kurt was able to field the ball deep in the infield, but didn’t have enough time to make a clean throw to first.