He slid past Robbie and Bry and the girls, who were paying more attention to the band and the cheerleaders than the game. He caught sight of Stephanie as he made his way down the bleachers. She was sitting with some girls he recognized as former cheerleaders. Not her usual crowd by a long shot, but then, her usual crowd was at college. As she should be. He felt disoriented as he stepped off the bleachers and onto the worn grass at the edge of the field. A group of teenage girls brushed past him, not recognizing him, and almost knocking his Coke out of his hand. The band was playing “Go, Fight, Win!” noisily and slightly off tempo. Suddenly the crowd cheered crazily, and he heard the shuffle of the scoreboard numbers flipping into place. Willowboro had finally scored a touchdown.
He got in line for the concession stand. The wait was longer than he expected, and he could barely see the field, but that was fine with him.
The woman who had come to stand behind him in line tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to find Laura.
“I thought it was you!” she said. “Everyone looks a little different in their civilian clothes.”
She was wearing a blue baseball cap and a blue zip-up sweatshirt, both emblazoned with Willowboro’s eagle mascot. Her long hair was in a ponytail, pulled through the back of her cap.
“Looks like you made a run on the school store,” Dean said.
“I guess I’m just excited to have a permanent job—one that actually makes use of my degree.” She smiled nervously, which made him feel better; he was nervous, too. “Tim’s home sick,” she added. “Apparently he always gets the flu at the beginning of the school year. All those little-kid germs.”
Dean wondered if she lived with Tim now, but he couldn’t figure out a way to ask.
“He actually mentioned you before I left,” Laura said. “He says you’re not coaching anymore?”
“It’s better for my kids if I take a season off. I’m a single parent now.” Dean couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.
Laura nodded without saying anything, and Dean knew he’d made things weird.
“Sorry, this game is making me antsy. The guy who took over for me, he’s changing everything up . . .” He stopped himself, realizing that Laura didn’t care what happened in football games. And that was kind of a relief.
“What are you sorry for?” she said. “I’d be bummed if I had to give up the thing I loved best in the world. Anyone would.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean felt embarrassed; he still had the napkin she’d given him at church. It sat on top of his bedroom dresser, next to his dish of loose change. He glanced at it every night when he emptied his pockets.
“Who’s next?” called the teenage girl working at the concessions booth. “Oh, hi, Coach!”
Dean insisted on buying Laura’s pretzel along with his hot dog and then the girl wouldn’t let Dean pay, saying his money was no good. He put five dollars in the tip jar that went straight to the Boosters.
“I should hang around with you more often,” Laura said. “Free snacks!”
“You want to watch the game over there?” Dean pointed to an empty spot at the fence.
“I actually have a friend waiting for me in the bleachers.”
“I should get back to my kids anyway.” He felt like he’d pushed things too far, but he’d thought she seemed flirtatious. Or at least bored.
“Right,” Laura said. “I should tell you, uh, I actually talked with Robbie today. He was sent to my office.”
“Oh,” Dean said. For a couple of treacherous seconds it was all he could think to say. “I guess that makes sense. You’re the counselor now.”
“I’m sorry, I should have said something right away. He’s a great kid, really great.” Laura’s voice had changed, gotten cool and smoothed out, like she’d flipped on the professional switch. “I’m really looking forward to working with him.”
Amid Dean’s confusion and embarrassment, a sense of loss was emerging. He wouldn’t be able to talk with her in the same way anymore, not if Robbie was confiding in her.
“You know, I pack his lunch,” Dean said. “I pack him the same thing I pack for myself. I don’t know why he’s been going to Asaro’s.”
“You don’t have to explain anything.”
“The vice principal says it’s because he doesn’t have friends, but he has friends. He’s a popular kid. Good-looking. I’m trying not to make too much of it, but between you and me, I think it’s odd—”
She interrupted him with that professional voice. “Dean, I shouldn’t be talking with you about Robbie. I mean, not informally.”
“Of course,” Dean said. But he was confused. What about the way she’d touched his arm in the church parking lot, what about giving him her number?
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” Laura said. “They don’t tell you about this scenario in graduate school.”
He wondered what the scenario was in her mind.
The crowd was very loud again, chanting over the cheerleaders and the band. Dean turned to see Smoot barreling down the field. The boy dodged his attackers elegantly, as if he had some foreknowledge of their trajectories. Dean remembered being his age, the exquisite feeling of gaining control of his body, of his mind, of the two forces being braided together in perfect accord.
“Come on!” Dean said, heading toward the empty spot at the fence. “Go, Smoot, go! Bring it home!”
Dean gave himself over to the excitement, clapping and yelling, allowing himself to believe that his claps and yells were bringing the boy closer to the end zone. In the stands, everyone was on their feet, chanting “GO EAGLES!” Smoot slowed, ever so slightly, a few yards from the end zone, and a member of the Beech Creek team slammed into him, coming at him from an angle. Dean was exhilarated by the heavy, animal sound of their bodies smashing together beneath the clanking layers of equipment. He remembered getting the wind knocked out of him. The dizzying, disconcerting pain of it.
“God,” Laura said. “It’s like they have a death wish.”
STEPHANIE SCANNED FACES in the darkened basement room, searching for someone who seemed weird. She had a philosophy—one that she sensed was basically adolescent but that she was not yet ready to discard—that there were two types of people in the world, the weirds and the normals, the normals being those who traveled serenely through life, unhindered by extremes of thought or feeling, and the weirds being those deemed “sensitive,” who felt lots of different emotions about lots of different things. All through high school, Stephanie had assumed that she was in the weird category of people (had assumed that anyone who was even aware of there being two categories must automatically be in it), and that her parents were in the normal category. And with this assumption had come the idea that it was somehow better to be in the weird category, that to be normal was to be timid in some essential way, to not live fully.
Now Stephanie thought she had gotten it wrong. Certainly, she had been wrong about her mother. It was possible she’d been wrong about her father, too, though if her mother was in the weird category, it made sense to her that she would be attracted to someone normal, someone who could distract you from life’s big questions.
That was how Stephanie had felt about Julie Ashbaugh, a girl she barely knew: she was distracting. She had graduated with Stephanie, and when she saw Stephanie at the game, she greeted her as if they’d been very friendly in school, even though the only class they’d ever had together was chorus. They gossiped about the handful of friends they had in common and then they’d watched the game, which turned into a close one and ended up a victory, the perfect game for fans. Even Stephanie got into it and cheered herself hoarse.
Julie was a student at the junior college, and after the game, she and Stephanie went to a party with other junior college students, where they drank coconut rum and smoked menthol cigarettes, a combination that reminded Stephanie of fluoride treatments at the dentist. Julie deemed the party lame and so they decided to cruise the dual, except they didn’t do it ironic
ally, as Stephanie and Mitchell would have. They just drove around and around, listening to the radio—country, of course—and looking for something to do, as if a new restaurant or movie theater might magically appear along the strip, or, more likely, a place that had initially seemed boring would begin to seem interesting after true boredom set in. As the ride went on, Stephanie began to feel claustrophobic in Julie’s car, a Mazda Miata that smelled strongly of synthetic banana, emanating from a yellow pine tree that swung merrily from the rearview mirror. Everything that was dull about Julie could be summed up by this particular aesthetic decision, Stephanie thought. And it was in thinking of Mitchell, and what bitchy thing Mitchell might say about this tropical pine tree car freshener, that Stephanie heard herself say aloud that she missed high school.
Which was how they had ended up at a high school football party.
“Steph, you have to catch up!” Julie said, pointing to her beer bottle, still three-quarters full.
The low-ceilinged room was crowded and hot. Green Day, the one rock band that seemed to cross all clique lines, played loudly from small speakers perched on top of a mostly empty bookshelf. Some of the football players started dancing—not actual dancing, more like jumping around—celebrating their win.
Stephanie reluctantly took a sip of her drink. She didn’t get beer. She remembered an article she’d read about alcohol use before Prohibition, how people used to drink beer all day, even for breakfast. It was milder then, apparently. She told Julie, just to say something, but Julie barely listened.
“You read a lot of articles.” Julie looked around the room restlessly. “I thought I would know more people here.”
“Me too,” Stephanie said, even though her friends had all graduated. “I’m going to get a soda,” she said. “You want my beer?”
“Yeah, okay,” Julie said. She held out her empty bottle. “Throw this away?”
The party was in the basement rec room of the big suburban house of Brett Albright, her old crush. He’d given her a wave when she came in, but she clearly didn’t mean anything in particular to him. He had a girlfriend, anyway, a sophomore girl who wore his chunky class ring on a gold chain that hung between her breasts. Brett’s parents were home and his father, a jowlier version of Brett, occasionally came downstairs to replenish the refreshments. He seemed to know about the beer stash but not about the liquor that was being surreptitiously added to sodas. His presence made Stephanie feel especially pathetic. She poured herself a Coke from a freshly stocked two-liter bottle and ate an Oreo.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder and said her full name. She turned to find Laird Kemp looming over her. He was one of those football players who actually intimidated her, with his five o’clock shadow and oversized feet and hands. At the same time, he had a calm face, with sleepy eyes set beneath hopelessly undergroomed eyebrows.
“I thought you graduated,” he said.
“I thought you moved.”
“I did. I’m visiting.”
“Me too.”
“Why?” Laird asked. “Does your dad need help or something?”
“Why would my dad need help?”
“I don’t know. Sorry. I’m just confused . . . with your dad quitting and all.” He held out a flask, helplessly. “Want some?”
She accepted his generous pour without even asking what it was. Rum, she decided. She had never really considered Laird before. He didn’t seem quite at home in his big square body. He wasn’t graceful like Brett. But she liked being near him, she liked his broad forearms with their thick black hair, she liked his shoulders, and she liked his sleepy yet curious gaze. Around his neck was a silver chain with something on it—but it was hidden beneath his T-shirt.
“You a Pearl Jam fan?” he asked, catching her gaze on his T-shirt.
“Yeah, kind of. I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan. I don’t have their albums or anything. But I like their music. When it comes on the radio, I don’t change the station.” Stephanie took a sip of her drink to stop her nervous chatter. You’re in college, she told herself sternly. A very good college.
“No one at my new school likes Pearl Jam,” Laird said. “I mean, no one on the football team.”
“Is that why you’re back here—to find a Pearl Jam fan?” Stephanie said, lamely. She felt like she’d made an old-person joke.
“I’m back here because I miss it,” he said. “I’m fucking homesick. I hate my new school. I love these guys.”
“Why are you talking to me, then?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I thought it would be more fun to hang out with them. But I wasn’t in the game. It’s not the same. And everybody keeps asking me why I’m back and what my new team is like and it’s like I don’t have any good answer.”
“I’m getting the same thing.”
“Why are you back?” Laird asked. “I thought college was great.”
“It is,” Stephanie said. “I just don’t know anyone there.”
Laird nodded. “My new school sucks. Everyone is snobby. They say I have a hick accent. The coach isn’t half as good as your dad.”
“Maybe you just don’t know him that well.”
“No,” Laird said. “You can tell. He’s a yeller. Your dad isn’t like that. I can’t believe he’s not coaching anymore. I didn’t find out until tonight. I was like—what? All the guys are so bummed.”
Stephanie shrugged. “You guys won tonight without him.”
“That’s Beech Creek,” Laird said, dismissively. He fixed his gaze on her, suddenly seeming less sleepy. “Do you even know how good a coach your dad is? He has a football mind.”
“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
“You don’t get it, your dad can work with any team, it doesn’t matter how good they are. He’ll come up with plays to match the players. If he’d been coaching Beech Creek tonight, they would have beaten us. That’s a fact.”
“A verifiable fact.”
“Basically, yeah.” Laird grinned at his hyperbole. Behind him, his teammates were bellowing the lyrics to a Garth Brooks song. “I don’t miss that,” he said.
“What’s on your necklace?” Stephanie asked.
“It’s my number.” He pulled on the silver chain to reveal a silver 12.
Stephanie reached out to touch the charm. It was warm from his body. “So it’s a football thing. Everything’s a football thing for you guys.”
“Not everything,” Laird said. He took a step closer to her.
Stephanie kept hold of the number for another moment before letting it go. “Did you drive here?”
“Yeah, why?” He grinned.
“Because maybe we could drive somewhere else.”
AFTER THE GAME, Joelle volunteered to let the boys sleep over so that Dean and Ed could go out. Ed took Dean to Coach’s, a new sports bar that was owned by one of his friends. “Thought you’d get a kick out of it,” Ed said when Dean commented on the blinking neon sign, shaped like a football. Inside, it was busy, with the Orioles game playing on all the TVs. The staff wore baseball caps and team jerseys, and the walls were lined with salvaged trophies and old sports posters. The overall effect was cluttered and casual, as if you were in someone’s disorganized basement—wholesome and easygoing. Not the effect, maybe, that Ed’s buddy was going for, but more appealing than the seedy places along the dual highway.
Ed got the first round and a basket of salted peanuts, which he began to shell methodically, amassing a pile of nuts before devouring them in one quick handful. They watched the baseball game for a while, Dean marveling, as always, at how relaxed baseball players seemed as they stood at the plate, waiting for a ball to be hurled at them at ninety-plus miles per hour. They reminded him of cows, the way they chewed their cud and calmly regarded the cars whizzing by. Maybe that was why Ed liked the game so much.
In between innings there was a commercial for Nike shoes, featuring a long-legged girl running through the woods. Ed started talking about “air ponies” aga
in, unable to get the name right even when it was right in front of him. He said he was thinking of buying Megan a pair anyway.
“She’s such a good kid,” he said. “And she never asks for anything.”
“They’d be better for her feet,” Dean said. “You ready for another round?”
“Yeah—and some more of these?” Ed held up an empty peanut basket.
Waiting at the bar, Dean glanced around the room. The crowd skewed younger than he’d expected, everyone around Garrett’s age, in their late twenties to early thirties. He checked for his assistant coach and was relieved not to find him. He’d congratulated Garrett after the game, shaking his hand on the field, but he didn’t go to the locker room to see the players, afraid he would be called upon to say something about the game—a victory despite Garrett’s rearrangements.
A woman was waving to him from a table in the back. Laura, he realized. He waved back with a tentativeness that made her laugh and say something to her companion, a dark-haired woman Dean vaguely recognized.
“I’ll be right back,” Dean said to Ed, dropping off their round. “I just need to say hello to someone.”
“Sure.” Ed’s eyes were fixed on the game as he started in on the new peanut basket.
“I thought you’d never see us,” Laura said as he approached her corner table. “We were waving for, like, ten minutes—this is my friend Abby. She teaches music at the middle school.”
“Your son Robbie is in one of my classes,” Abby said. “Chorus.”
“You probably hear his voice more than I do, then,” Dean said.
Abby looked at him like he was pretty much the asshole she’d expected, but Laura smiled.
“Sit down with us,” she said.
“I would, but I’m here with my brother-in-law.”
“Invite him over, too.”
“I don’t want to spoil your ladies’ night.”
“You’re not spoiling anything! Come on, one beer.”
Dean allowed himself a grin after he turned away from them to check in with Ed. He assumed Ed would decline, but Ed was more than happy to meet two young women. He followed Dean to their table and immediately engaged them in conversation, asking what subjects they taught and what they thought of the new principal.
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