by Andrew Cotto
“I know,” she said, taking my hand. “I did, too, and I finally broke up with my boyfriend when I was home for Easter, and I was kind of giving myself some space and everything at first, and I didn’t want to, like, you know, seem egotistical and make some grand announcement about it or anything, but I was going to say something to you. I promise, I was, but then Todd just came out of nowhere. And he came on so strong. He just overwhelmed me with notes and flowers and all this charm. I felt like a princess.”
“I’m going to barf, Bren,” I said. “I swear.”
“No, no,” she begged, taking back my hand. “I’ll stop. I promise. But I want you to know that Todd told me he talked to you about us and everything. He told me he did and you said it was perfectly OK. He told me he talked to you.”
I’m pretty sure my face said all I had to say about that.
“But he didn’t talk to you, right?” she said, real sympatheticlike.
“Not a word, Bren,” I said. “And I mean that, literally, for real.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said and held both my hands in hers. “I just kind of figured that out.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, too, Bren, that I made you cry like that. You didn’t deserve that.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said quietly.
Then she smiled kind of sad and put her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled like my mother’s fancy shampoo. We sat in the silence. I could feel my heart beating. My body tingled, and I felt super-charged and super-scared at the same time. I can’t believe I was frightened, but I was somehow. I was. Fifteen minutes before that moment, I’d thought my life was crap, total crap, and now what I’d hoped for most of all, for so long, sat right next to me on a bridge, her hands in my lap and her head on my shoulder.
“Would you like to kiss me, Danny?” Brenda asked quietly, her words vibrating through my body.
“Yes!” I yelled, my voice echoing through the trees.
Brenda laughed and pulled back a bit. “Can we be friends again, too?” she asked. “I need you to be my friend again, too.”
“Sure thing, Bella Faccia,” I said. “Anything you want.”
We kissed on the bridge. Her mouth felt warm and tasted like cream soda. Sitting there kissing, I didn’t feel all that crazy energy like I used to with Genie Martini back in Queens. My body seemed as hollow and weightless as my dangling legs, and I was all of a sudden floored by the thought that maybe, just maybe, if you dreamed about something long enough, and hard enough, and often enough, it could actually come true.
Knocked out by wonder, I kissed and kissed with Brenda Divine, under the yellow moon and above the rushing water that circled and carried some of my pain away. Maybe some of hers, too.
Chapter 6
“I think we should find a better place to be alone,” Brenda insisted as we came out a doorway into the afternoon light. It had been three weeks since we’d kissed on the bridge, and just as many secret places had been found by me and then rejected by her. My latest spot was a drippy hallway, connected to an abandoned locker room in a forgotten part of the gymnasium. Very romantic.
“I’m telling you,” I said, “nobody comes in or out this way anymore.”
We were on a little hill above the path, behind some bushes and still out of sight, though she acted, even under cover, like the whole school could see us.
“It’s not that,” she said, making sure the blouse she wore under my borrowed jean jacket wasn’t too messy from all my tugging. “It’s just we could stand a little more ambiance, don’t you think?”
I skipped my SAT line. “It’s practically winter,” I observed, with an arm around her shoulder. “What do you want me to do?”
“Find a place that doesn’t give me the heebie-jeebies,” she said. We stopped on the path above the shack. She kissed me for incentive, but I was running out of ideas. Every time we got comfortable — and I had thought we were getting comfortable a few times — she would all of a sudden decide the place wasn’t romantic enough or something. And I could barely even hold her hand in public. She didn’t seem like the same girl who spent last spring on the lap of Todd Brooks. Still, I wasn’t complaining, or giving up.
“How about the Chapel?” I asked.
“No way,” she said. “I am not fooling around in a church.”
“They’re Presbyterians, for God’s sake,” I pleaded as she walked away. “What are they gonna do, report us to the Catlics?”
I watched her walk into the burning leaves of autumn, my faded jacket covering her narrow shoulders.
“Alright, alright,” I yelled. “I’ll work on it.”
She stuck a finger in the air without turning around.
I laughed like a moron. I was happy about everything those days, and could feel this magic all over me. It was like having superpowers. But, to tell the truth, falling in love was better than having superpowers. It’s better than everything.
On the path toward home, thinking about the next time I’d see Brenda (dinner: 70 minutes and counting), I saw a bunch of blue wool jackets with white leather sleeves outside Montgomery. The jackets were filled with sausages looking up at my window. Those guys — the sausages in blue and white casings — could easily have been waiting for me to go to dinner, if only it was an hour later and I’d actually had friends on the wrestling team.
“Why don’t you come on down here?” Chester challenged the empty window as I arrived. “Are you chickens or what?”
Those two new goons were standing behind him on the grass, with their arms crossed. McCoy paced the path, punishing his palm with a heavy fist.
“Hey,” Chester said to me as I tried to slip past. “Ain’t that your room?”
Super.
“Yeah,” I said. “So what?”
“Well, there’s someone up there saying stuff to us.”
“Like what?”
“Saying that we should get a room, like we’re queers or something.”
“Not in them jackets,” I cracked.
“What?”
“Never mind,” I said.
“Then they was laughing at us when we came over,” he said toward my back.
I kept walking, but not fast enough. McCoy stepped in front of the door and crossed his arms. I was trapped: Blockhead in front of me / Blabbermouth behind. I chose the safer route.
“Listen up,” I said, after turning to face Chester. “You must be confused, alright? Because that’s my room there,” I said, pointing to it, “and I’m standing right here.” I pointed at the ground in front of me. “And my roommate, you know, the one I have because of you two numb-nuts,” pointing first at Chester, then over my shoulder to McCoy, “is too smart to get mixed up in that rigamarole with you again. Got it?”
“What?” Chester asked, his face squirreled up with confusion. “Rigama...what?”
“I said there’s nothing in that room that has anything to do with you or your stupid shoes, so give it a rest.” I tried to walk away, but the barrel chest of McCoy stopped me.
I’d been bounced back a step, a big step, but I returned to where McCoy and I stared nose to nose, so close I knew he had baloney for lunch and some nostril hairs in need of a trim. I squinted to be tough, digging into his gray, gray eyes, but he didn’t seem all that concerned. I figured he was deciding whether to eat me or kill me. We stared for 10 seconds that seemed more like an hour. When his eyes moved away, I felt relieved (and a little tough), but as soon as I breathed out, McCoy snorted like a rhino and shoved me over the table Chester had made on his knees behind me. I flew for a second, skidded for a bit, and ended up flat on my back on the path. Buttons of my plaid Polo shirt bounced in every direction. I had officially made their list. Super.
“I bet you didn’t see that coming,” Chester bragged over his shoulder as the group walked away, laughing. I thought about getting up and going after them, but I was tired of getting tossed around.
“One of you owes me a shirt,” I yelled.
I brushed myse
lf off and confirmed that the backside of my favorite khakis was torn, as if the gravel in my underwear hadn’t already clued me in. I glared up at the empty window and stomped inside.
After taking the stairs two at a time, I ran into Sammie on the second floor landing, his jaw dropped and eyes bulging. He must have seen the whole thing out his window. He couldn’t have been the only one.
“Whoa, Danny!” Stevie cried. “Are you alright?”
I brushed past him into my room. Terence, slouched across his bed, gave me a sheepish glance. No one else was in there. I sensed Sammie behind me in the doorway.
“Come out already,” I said to the room, but nothing moved. “Get out here,” I ordered.
Laughter blurted from Rice, Santos, Meeks, and Grohl as they emerged from their hiding spots — in the closet and under the desks — slapping each other five.
“The hell are you guys doing?” I asked, pissed off and embarrassed about getting dumped on my ass in public, for the second time.
“Just hanging out and shit, you know,” Rice answered with a shrug.
“That’s it, huh?” I challenged him. “Just hanging out?”
“Yeah, well, you know,” he said, smiling kind of sideways. “We was up here chillin’ when we saw them man-huggers walking past, and, you know, we couldn’t help teasing them a little bit, that’s all.”
“Really?” I asked. “Couldn’t help it?”
He made some sort of spastic gesture with his body that was supposed, I think, to represent a shrug. There was no talking to that kid. I ran some fingers through my hair, tried to calm down and be smart for a change.
“You should be careful with them guys,” I said to the group before looking at Terence. “Especially you.”
“Hey, man,” he said. “I was just sitting here like this, minding my own business. I didn’t say or do nothing.”
“Yeah, relax, Dan the Man,” Rice advised me. “It’s cool.”
“You call this cool, Bozo?” I ran a hand over my tattered pants and some pebbles tumbled out the bottom.
All of them, even Terence, laughed like hell. All of them except for Sammie. He looked kind of ill.
“You talk to them guys about this at all?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“I thought you were tight with them.”
“Nah,” he mumbled. “Not really.”
“What’s the matter?” Meeks teased. “They didn’t like the way you toweled off their balls last year?”
“Screw you,” Sammie squealed. “That’s not what the manager does!”
Sammie sucked at sports, and he got away with riding the bench for the soccer team in the fall, but he was sunk in winter and spring so, last year. he signed up as the equipment manager for the wrestling team. He even seemed like part of the team there for awhile. They’d given him one of their big, ugly jackets, which he’d worn all winter long. In the spring, after the season ended and I told him we’d no longer be roommates, he still stuck around those guys, even though they’d taken his jacket back.
“Yeah, well,” I said to Sammie, “you’re better off anyway.” As for the others, I told them, again, to watch themselves and, most importantly, to leave me out of whatever they were doing.
“It’s cool,” I was assured, again. “It’s cool.”
It wouldn’t be cool. For me most of all.
Before Thanksgiving break, there was a mandatory meeting for all fourth-year students. We trampled into the chapel and sat in the pews. The school’s guidance counselor, a bald dude with a turtleneck under a corduroy jacket, spoke from the stage about college. We were supposed to be giving serious, serious consideration to the schools on our list, from long shots to safeties. There was some formula to be followed, a formula that had been outlined during previous, private meetings with him. I must have missed those.
I had no first choice. Or second. Or third. My safety, I guess, was St. John’s University in Queens. Both my parents had gone there, and my father was pressing me, big time, to go there, too. He wanted me close to home, but all I knew about college was that it could, like boarding school, get me away from home.
The way it was laid out in the meeting, and in the conversations around campus, was that college wasn’t something your parents decided. It was supposed to be our first big decision as adults and, if you got in, you got in. End of story. And even if Pop didn’t think of me as ready for the world, I wanted out of Queens and out of his sight, and college was the way. I listened up as the counselor spoke of deadlines, and of all the brochures with applications still available in his office. I figured I better get moving soon, but I had better things to do first.
After the meeting, I waited on the edge of the meadow. Hats and scarves and heavy jackets covered the people sitting beneath the concrete sky. I dug my hands into the pockets of my thick leather jacket, but still, I shivered with anticipation.
“Hello, Daniel,” Mr. Wright said, coming up beside me. Him, I wasn’t anxious to see.
“Oh, hey Mr. Wright,” I said, blinded for a second by his Technicolor sweater, paired with a bright red scarf. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” he said, pinching his mouth to one side. “I was meaning to have you to my apartment, but I might as well speak with you now.”
“No, no, it’s OK, Mr. Wright. I’ll come upstairs later. I’ll come later. What time works for you?”
“I understand you were involved in an altercation, of sorts, outside the dorm recently.” Not much of a listener, that guy. “And I wanted to let you know how troubled I was by that. Troubled and concerned.”
“Hey. I was just on my way home, and those guys were messing with me. No big deal, though. Nothing happened.”
“Well, I imagine there was more to it than that,” he said, with that all-knowing tone adults have.
“Nah, not really,” I said. “That was it.”
He squinted and crossed his arms. “Despite my efforts, I suspect there is something going on, a rivalry of sorts, between the two camps, and I want it to stop.”
“Talk to them,” I said.
“To whom?”
“The wrestlers.”
“I recently met with their coach, and it is his contention that his players are being provoked.”
He was right, and he was wrong. Like a lot of things, it was kind of complicated. I probably could have provided some insight, some help in figuring things out before they got out of hand, but I didn’t say a word.
“You know, Daniel,” he said. “The reason I brought Mr. King down to your room is that I understood you were someone who could bring people together. An ambassador of sorts.”
“Oh yeah?” I laughed. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“A little birdie told me.”
“Nah,” I said. “That’s not me.”
He stroked his beard and sized me up.
“Hey,” Brenda, thankfully, interrupted
Within the gray surroundings her auburn hair seemed especially bright. She settled next to me, and it felt good having her by my side. With a mitten-covered hand inside my elbow, she shifted her eyes from me to Mr. Wright. I began to move us away, but she held me in place while extending her free hand. “Hi. I’m Brenda, Danny’s friend.”
“Hello Brenda,” said the English teacher. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure. I’m Mr. Wright.”
“Mr. Wright, huh?” She played her own straight man. “My mother said I’d meet you someday.”
He laughed. She smiled. I pulled her along.
“Come on.”
“OK,” she said. “So long, Mr. Wright.”
“Au revoir,” he called after us. “Think about what I said, Daniel.”
We escaped Mr. Technicolor Sweater and stopped on the road behind the dining hall, beneath a tree with bare branches. Dry leaves scratched past our feet as we kissed.
“What was that all about?” Brenda pulled away to ask.
“What?”
“What Mr. Wri
ght asked you to think about.”
“I forget,” I said. “You ready to go?”
We’d been spending our afternoons in a classroom at the Language Arts building.
It was private and warm, and it only cost me a couple of Early Birds to get Grohl to cough up the information. I should have gone to him right away, because this place worked. I could feel Brenda becoming more and more relaxed, and I got to touch her and she touched me back. It’s all I could think about. I tried to pull her along, on the road behind the dining hall, but she wouldn’t budge that day.
“Was Mr. Wright talking about those boys?”
“What boys?”
“The wrestlers.”
Brenda had heard about what happened. Everyone had heard. And even though I wasn’t happy about it, I wasn’t complaining either, because it was after she’d heard that things had started happening between us in the Language Arts building. I’d take that trade any day. Hell, they could have hung me from the chapel by my undies if it got me closer to Brenda. The bad thing was that she had gotten kind of obsessed with the whole rigamarole regarding the shoes and the wrestlers and my roommate, who still didn’t talk to many people, or even come out of the room that much.
“I’m worried,” she said. “Kyle Chester is in my math class, and he was talking this morning about what they did to you, and how they were going to find out who stole their shoes, by any means necessary. Those were his exact words. By any means necessary.”
“Oh, boy,” I laughed, and rolled my eyes. “Don’t worry about those guys, Bren.”
“I do worry,” she said, taking my arm. “I just came from the mail room and they put those awful signs back up. This time in color.”
“Wow,” I cracked. “Color copies — what a time to be alive.”
She smacked me on the arm and then balled the mittens on her hips. She looked so gorgeous and ripe I could have bitten her like a peach. I swear. “OK, you’re right,” I said. “Let’s go to the LA building where it’s safe. It can be, like, our hideout or something.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m busy this afternoon.”
