“Fair enough.”
And so we watch—still huddled close to the ground and each other—as the lame boss, now dead, gets to his feet and pulls off his helmet to reveal his sweaty, greasy, acne-riddled face.
“What,” Svetlana whispers. She stands up. “What,” she says again, louder now, and I stand up next to her.
“Shh … ,” I say. “They’re going to see us!”
“What?!” she says again, this time very loud, distinctly ignoring me, and she pushes through our cover and into the clearing.
The LARPers turn to watch her approach, and as silly as they looked in the heat of battle, they look even sillier with their shoulders sagging. She stomps toward them—toward the boss in particular, it looks like—and I decide I should probably hurry to catch up, in case this is Svetlana’s way of starting a role-players brawl.
Turns out I’m not far off: the acne-ridden warrior is my favorite former member of the Central High Gaming Club.
Svetlana strides right up to him and stands there, arms akimbo—it’s one of her words, I know—her face inches from his. It nearly makes me jealous. I jog up next to her as she snaps his name like an accusation: “Abraham!”
She’s angry, and who could blame her. He was a member of the party fighting its way through Svetlana’s semiannual campaign, a campaign she sweated and slaved over all summer, apparently, and which was, in my opinion, evidence of nothing less than her overarching creative and intellectual genius.
The same member who dropped out of the club—thereby reducing its membership below the school’s threshold for formal extracurricular status—with the excuse that he’d be finding a job to start saving money for college and establish himself as a true adult, and pressure from his parents had gotten too thick. I related at first, when Svetlana told me that he’d quit and why; after all, I’d had to cut down drastically on my own gaming when my mom put her foot down about homework. But this—this is evidence that Abraham didn’t need the extra time at all. He’d simply shifted his role-playing from the big back table in room 3212 to the woods in Elm Creek Park.
“That’s pretty cold, man,” I say, shaking my head.
“Stay out of this, interloper!” he spits at me, so I throw up my hands, but I don’t walk off. Meanwhile the other three LARPers—the party of one mage, one warrior, and one rogue, who just bested the fearsome boss—step up behind Abraham.
“I can’t believe you,” Svetlana says. “You knew this would be the end of the club, and you—you—”
“Don’t be so high and mighty,” Abraham says, but he doesn’t look her in the eye. “You’re the one who brought in this guy”—he nods toward me—“thereby destroying any camaraderie that had developed within the game over the last three years. Besides, these guys are freshmen at the U. This is relevant to my college career.”
“Oh come on,” Svetlana and I say at nearly the same instant.
She glances at me and says like a secret, “Jinx-you-owe-me-a-Coke.”
“Jesus, Lana!” Abraham says at that little display. “Why did you even come here? Just to show off your new boyfriend and make me feel even crappier?”
“Wait,” I say to Svetlana. “Did you guys used to date?”
“One time!” she says, furious, not looking at me, but red in the face and looking ready to claw out Abraham’s eyes. “We went to one stupid dance. We didn’t even dance!”
Abraham sticks out his lower jaw and narrows his eyes. “I liked you.” His voice is eerily calm and deep, devoid of all the rage and fiery emotion it had possessed only seconds ago. “I liked you so much.”
Svetlana crosses her arms and looks into the woods. “This is why you quit the GC.”
Abraham shrugs and adjusts his tunic.
The sun is mostly down now. It’s dark. Svetlana shakes once with a chill. “I didn’t know.”
“Now you do.” Then he bends over and picks up his wooden sword.
“Whoa,” I say, backing up a little. But he’s not attacking. He just storms off into the woods. His vanquishers hurry after him, their robes and tabards fluttering behind them.
Svetlana stomps the earth once and kind of grunts. I stand beside her for a minute, thinking of offering her my coat, before she lifts her chin and calls into the woods, “Enjoy being the lamest boss in all of role-playing!” Then she turns around and stomps back toward the parking lot and her car.
The ride back starts quiet again, but this time there’s no hand on mine, and I assume the quiet is letting her dwell on that scene in the woods. We’re chugging along 94, approaching the junction for 694, when she seems to snap out of it. She jerks the wheel hard, moving the car into the slow lane and onto the shoulder—right there on the interstate, she stops and puts the thing in park.
“Question,” she says, and her voice is urgent, desperate, kind of insane. It’s not a Svetlana I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure how I feel about it.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to pull over here,” I say. “I mean, unless it’s an emergency.”
“This is an emergency,” she says, “because that is 694, and I think we should go that way.”
“Why?”
She takes a deep breath, shifts on the bench seat so she’s facing me, and scoots a little closer. “Do you like soccer?”
“What?”
She doesn’t repeat it, but I heard her, so I say, “No, I don’t like soccer.”
“Good,” she says. Then she takes my hand and leans close to me, and I put my hand on ours and lean close to her. She exhales gently. I cough. She puts her hand on my cheek, and she presses her lips—so gently—against mine. As she pulls away, she whispers, “Do you like me?”
“Obviously,” I whisper back.
“Okay,” she says. “Then we’re going to the play-offs.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER 48
SVETLANA ALLEGHENY
I pull into the sports complex’s big parking lot a little after seven. The pregame cookout is over. The coolers of meat and beer have been packed up and stashed in trunks. A handful of grills sit out in the lot, being allowed to cool before storage. It’s nice to see the Thunder fanatics have the good sense to do that. I am angry at Abraham, though, not the Dark Clouds, so I take a deep cleansing breath and turn off the car.
“We’re here,” I say, but I don’t get out. I don’t even pull the key from the ignition.
“Yes, we are,” says Lesh. “Why are we here?”
Another deep breath and I drop my head onto the steering wheel, because my skin is starting to tingle. I am not prepared for this. The good news is my anger toward Abraham, which was so palpable only moments ago, has faded, flooded from my system by a rush of anxiety and deep loathing for the embarrassment that is my parents.
Forget it. It’s not worth passing out in the NSC parking lot. I reach up, grab the key, and turn it. The car roars back to life.
“And we’re leaving?” Lesh says.
I sigh again and turn off the car.
“That’s probably not good for the car,” says Lesh. I glance at him, and he’s smiling kind of adorably. He hardly ever does that. Today he does. Last night he did. It’s because of me, I think, and I pull the key from its stupid keyhole. I’m okay.
“Okay, let’s go,” I say. “I’m paying for your ticket.”
“Ticket to what, exactly?” he says as he climbs out. I look over the car at him after I get out, and he’s leaning on the top. “I mean, the play-offs. You said that part.”
“Soccer,” I say.
“Ah,” he says. “You also said that part.”
I turn to face the stadium, so he does too. “The Minnesota Thunder are in the play-offs.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed you were a soccer fan,” Lesh says, and he walks along the length of the car’s hood. I grumpily d
o too, and we meet at the car’s nose. He puts out his hand and I accept it.
“I’m not,” I say, “but my family … is. Are. They are. They’re fanatics.”
“Wow,” he says. “I wouldn’t have guessed that about your parents either. Or what’s her name. Chicken.”
“Hen,” I say, and I smile a little.
He shrugs. “Chicken suits her too,” he says. “Like Chicken Little.”
“Pff,” I say as we walk. “If the sky were falling, she’d be the last to panic. Trust me.”
The parking lot and the path to the ticket booth have never felt longer. The game’s already started. I can hear it now. The announcer is shouting—as unintelligible as ever—but louder and far more upsetting are the Dark Clouds. Fry’s little trumpet is blaring early, and the chants of “Minnesota, go!” and “Crack, crack, BOOM!” jump up and out of the stadium like baby demons crawling out of a chasm in the earth, a gateway to a dimension of pain and suffering and humiliation and blue-and-yellow face paint.
When we reach the ticket taker, the girl smiles at me and waves from behind the glass. I recognize her, though I don’t know her name. The place is staffed mostly with students who go to the nearby high school. I don’t know if they even get paid. They do have to wear some very ill-fitting baby-blue polo shirts, though. I know that much, so I sympathize.
“Your family is already inside,” she says. “They left your ticket with me. They said you might have a change of heart.”
I glance at Lesh and say, “I guess I did,” and, “But we need another ticket. I’ve never even bought one. Are they a lot?”
“Look, I can pay for my own ticket,” Lesh says, and he reaches for the wallet at the end of the chain at his hip, but I elbow him, pull a wad of bills from my pocket, and hand them through the window.
“I insist,” I say as I pull him away from the ticket booth and through the turnstile. “Believe me when I say you are giving me a huge and generous gift by even coming here. If you are a firm believer in the hereditary nature of personality traits such as soccer fanaticism and the tendency to drink and act like an oaf in public, you will very likely never want to see me again after tonight.”
“I doubt that.”
I raise my eyebrows and lead him by the hand past two souvenir stands and one food stand, across the concourse, and into the middle of the stadium. It’s more crowded than usual, since this is the play-offs. Under the lights, the field is like two great circles of preternatural green. The men’s uniforms are still gleaming in white and red and blue and yellow. They won’t be for long; it’s a rough game, this small-stakes professional soccer. Directly across the field from us is a set of bleachers disconnected from the rest. It looks like it would fold up and roll away if only there weren’t about thirty people—stomping, singing, chanting, and playing a tiny trumpet—standing on it right now.
“There they are,” I say. “Right in the front.”
“Where?” Lesh says, and he’s looking too close. He’s looking at the saner people sitting in the front row only thirty feet away, on this side of the semicircular stadium.
“No,” I say, tugging his hand and then pointing. I find Henny’s little bright-white head. Everything else is a maddening rush of yellow and blue and beer and waving arms. Only Henny, sitting on the bottom-most bench of the bleachers with a plastic clamshell of nachos on her knees, really stands out.
“I see Hen—,” Lesh says. Then he rolls back his head in a tragic nod. “Oh.”
“See them?”
“I do. I see them.”
He puts an arm around my shoulder. “It’s not that bad.”
“Now you’ve seen them,” I say, and I pull away from his half embrace. “Let’s go.”
“We’re not going to watch the game?” He sounds genuinely upset about this.
“Not from here.”
We walk around half the stadium through the cement concourse, passing ads for beer and souvenirs and Totino’s and Kohl’s. The last exit is a set of steps down to the field behind the visiting goal. Target Field this isn’t. In fact, to get to the fanatic bleachers, one has to walk on the grass itself—the carefully manicured playing surface, albeit out of bounds—behind the goal, around the side of the field, in plain sight of everyone watching the game and very likely to the distraction of the men playing, too.
Halfway to the fanatics section is the children’s playground. It’s tucked away behind a little section of six-foot wooden privacy fencing. I can imagine someone deciding to install a playground here at the stadium to entertain children otherwise disinterested in sports; I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to put said playground behind the visitors’ goal of a professional soccer field. Maybe little kids use it sometimes when I’m not around, but tonight, as usual, it sits alone, its individual parts looking fairly brand-new in the low light. Under sunshine, I’d probably see the faded bits, from sunshine and little butts, and maybe a length of rubber-coated chain where the rubber has cracked or fallen away. But right now it looks pristine.
“Wait.” I take Lesh’s hand. It’s cold and a little damp, and as I sit down on a swing, I pull him down too, to the next swing over. He sits and grabs the chains and stares straight ahead toward the Dark Clouds while I watch him.
“You don’t have to worry about them,” he says. The action is off at the Thunder’s goal, which I can see a bit of around the fence. It seems like it’s miles away. “I mean, it’s pretty hilarious.”
I nod and even smile. “It is. It really is. And I wouldn’t mind it so much if they didn’t drag me down here every week all summer.”
He shrugs one shoulder. He does that a lot, I’m realizing. “Doesn’t seem too bad. I bet they have pizza rolls.”
Fine, so I laugh. “I just don’t want you to think I’m like them,” I say, and I hate the sound of my own voice. It’s rude. It’s hateful and rude. “I don’t want you to think I’m some weirdo who thinks this stuff is important or fun.”
“Do you?”
I admit I give it a moment’s thought, but still: “No. No, I don’t.”
“Then there’s no problem,” he says. “Besides, your parents seem fine to me. They’re just like mine.”
“Really?” I say, squinting toward the bleachers. “’Cause I met your dad this afternoon, and I don’t see him over there with my parents and his face painted blue, halfway to drunky town.”
He lifts a shoulder again. “I think both our moms are decent ladies who work hard, and both our dads work hard and also like to drink and listen to the same music they liked in high school. So my dad likes American football and yours like European football.”
I kick at the scraped-up dirt under my swing and watch my parents. They’re both turned around now, facing the rest of the Dark Clouds, leading them in a cheer—bullhorn and all. I never thought to ask whose idea it was to show up at these games to begin with, Mom’s or Dad’s. I have a feeling Mom’s a pretty great lady. So I get up from the swing and offer Lesh my hand with my eyes closed, like I have to prepare myself physically and mentally and spiritually for the walk and experience we are about to attempt, and he takes it. I start to pull him away, to finish the march around the field to my seat in the back row of the fanatics’ section, but he gives my arm a little tug.
“Ow,” I say, and his arms fall around my waist. “Oh.”
And he gives me a kiss. It’s a nice kiss. It’s not desperate. It’s not hormonal. It’s a nice kiss. It’s a soft kiss, and a kiss that ends with a smile instead of a sigh or a groan or a moan.
“Okay, I’m ready,” he says, and then we walk the rest of the way side by side and hand in hand. When we climb the steps to the top of the bleachers, we pass my mom and dad, both in painted faces and both shouting and cheering and chewing something bready and fried. Dad’s got a blue beer in one hand. Mom’s got a bottle of water bigger than my left leg slung over her arm, and when we pass her, she gives me a wink and smile and wave. She even smiles at Lesh. Dad’s less sub
tle. He doesn’t notice us at once, but when he does, his eyes go wide and his big plastic cup of beer is held high as he cheers our arrival. Only a few drops land on Mom.
Lesh and I sit side by side on the top bench, and he takes my hand in his lap and keeps his eyes on the field. Below us, Henny shouts at Mom’s ear to be heard over the crowd, and a moment later, she and her clamshell of nachos are cuddled next to me. She pops open the plastic and holds them out to us. “Thanks,” Lesh says, and he takes a satisfying-sounding chomp from a cold-cheese-laden tortilla chip.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
…………………………………………………………
CHAPTER 49
SVETLANA ALLEGHENY
The week is a long one. I’m working at Mr. Hermann’s juice shop four days a week after school, and that’s just the school days. That added to the end of the official Central High School Gaming Club and that I spend too much class time thinking about a boy in black and when I can get my lips on his again means every red-second-handed minute seems to last for an eternity.
On Wednesday, Lesh promises to drop by the shop while I’m working. It’s after five when he shows up. He’s alone, in his black trench coat and with his heaviest headphones hanging from his neck. “I can’t believe you’re working,” he says. “It’s honestly melting my brain a little.”
“What?” I say. “Is it so hard to believe I have a work ethic?”
He puts up his hands and flashes an openmouth smile. “Oh, I know you have that,” he says. “But for stuff you actually want to do, not for chopping bananas and blending them with carrots and wheatgrass.”
“I don’t actually think anyone’s ordered that yet,” I say, chewing my cheek.
“So are you alone here?”
Kyle peeks out from the back. “No.”
“Hi,” Lesh says, extra perky with a little wave. Kyle rolls his eyes and vanishes. “So you gonna get me a job here? My mom wants me working before I turn seventeen.”
Guy in Real Life Page 25
