“Oh, Jet, you don’t get to stay. No one makes fun of Rudy,” Killer says in a stern voice.
“Oh, you try and make me leave.” Jet holds his ground, despite being six inches shorter and seventy pounds lighter than Killer.
“Just admit it’s the best movie ever, and I’ll let you stay,” Killer says.
“Um, guys,” I interrupt. “Can we not tell the girls about my online friends? You know the girls on my phone? The pictures?”
The trio of star athletes looks at me like I’m the biggest nerd, loser, weirdo ever to walk on the gravel roads of Finch. I produce a little smile and hope for kindness or, at the very least, pity.
“Why don’t you want us to tell them?” Jet asks. “That one girl was hot.”
“I just want to keep it a secret,” I say.
“Press conference.” Kyle jumps in. “We’ll keep our mouth shut if you gives us a ten-minute press conference. We get to ask you anything and you have to be completely honest. If we think you’re lying, we’ll tell Annabelle that you’re an online sex god.”
“Yeah, that sounds cool,” Jet jumps in. “We get to ask you anything.”
For millions of people, a press conference would be fun, but not for me. I’m a very secretive person who doesn’t like to talk, much less admit embarrassing things. But I’m not on Killer’s gravel driveway to impress him. I’m here for another reason. I left my comfort zone to impress Annabelle, so I would rather say dumb stuff to these guys than her. “Okay,” I finally say through a lump deep in my throat.
“Cool,” Kyle says.
“Question number one. Why don’t you talk at school?” Killer asks.
I’m speechless. Who cares why I don’t talk? Who cares what I have to say? I’m the kid in the back that doesn’t take an ounce of attention away from the kids who thrive on it. I’m nobody’s problem, nobody’s enemy.
I thought for sure the first question would be Why are you out here? But no one seems to care about that. And if they had asked that, I would’ve lied because I’m not telling these loudmouths that I love Annabelle.
So why don’t I talk? Well, that’s an easy question to answer. “Because at our school when people talk, they’re made fun of and I don’t like being made fun of. It’s nice to be the only kid at school that isn’t picked on.”
They all erupt laughing. “Are you kidding me?” Killer says through maroon cheeks. “No one gets made fun of more than you. We call you Biggie, for Christ sake.”
“What do you make fun of?” I ask.
“Lots of things,” Killer says. “For one, last winter you wore the same Memphis Tigers sweatshirt all the time. We counted that you wore it twelve straight days.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I ask.
“You’re seriously asking what’s wrong with not changing your clothes for two weeks?” Jet asks.
“I washed it every night,” I say. “It was comfortable.”
It was also the only sweatshirt that wasn’t tight on me.
“And who roots for Memphis in Finch, Iowa?” Killer asks.
“You cheer for Notre Dame,” I say. “It’s in Indiana.”
“Don’t you dare bring up the Irish, the number one sports team in America,” Killer says. “When Memphis starts playing football games on NBC, you can root for them.”
I see headlights coming toward us.
“They’re here,” Killer says.
Even I’m floored by how quickly I got here on a gravel driveway with Annabelle. It took me only one week of tutoring Kyle to figure out the social-mathematical equation: two hours with the cool kids equals precious time with the cool girls, which include Annabelle.
She’s stopped coming to the convenience store and sitting next to me in class, so I really haven’t spent any time near her lately.
Her presence feels like home being just two feet away. If I wanted to, I could just reach out and pull on her brown wool sweater. I could run my hand up and down her curvy hips or massage her back.
Obviously I can’t do those things, but I’m getting closer. I know it. For now, I just need to show her the real me and make her forget about the emails.
She looks around the group, and I can see happiness on her face. She normally has a serious, the-world-could-end-at-any-minute look. But between Killer and Jet, she glows. I love her smile. She has this openmouthed grin. The tips of her front teeth just touch her bottom lip. Her smile is so nonchalant that it’s not a dead giveaway that she’s happy.
A person needs to look into her green eyes to find out. She has the biggest eyes when she’s happy. Most people don’t turn their oval eyes into circles unless they’re terrified or surprised. Annabelle does it when she’s happy. She laughs with her eyes. The funnier the joke or prank or pitfall, the wider her eyes open. They say if a guy can get snot to roll out of another guy’s nose, he has told a pretty funny joke. For Annabelle, if she thinks something’s really funny, her eyes open so far they look like green dinner plates with a white trim border. They’re hypnotic.
Michelle runs up and gives Kyle a kiss on the cheek. “Hey, sweetie,” she says. “I’m so proud of my smart boy.”
“Thank Biggie. He told me what to do. I knew every answer.”
Michelle spins around and sees me still sitting on the tailgate, left hand squeezing my suddenly still phone.
“Well, thank you, Biggie.” She offers me a high five.
I clap her hand, which is hung high above her freckled face, and she says, “It’s so good that you can come out with us.” I feel like she thinks I’m mentally handicapped or something. “Good that you can come out with us.” What does that mean?
I see Annabelle walk up laughing at her friend. As Michelle walks away, I keep my hand up and wave to the girl of my dreams. She returns only what’s left from her laugh, a small smile, before looking at Kyle, who has already launched a Honey Weiss at her.
“Honey Weiss, awesome,” she says.
“Biggie brought it,” Kyle says.
Annabelle, still furious, says nothing. There’s still work to do, but I feel like I’m making progress.
Unfortunately the girls don’t add anything new to the conversation. They love to talk about sports too, just in a different manner. Six days after the last game, the girls still talk about the big win and how well the guys played. After twenty minutes of football talk, the girls start talking about clothes. They tell Killer how cool his torn jeans are or tell Jet how funny his shirt is. He loves to wear short-sleeved T-shirts that say things like I used to jog five miles a day. Then I found a shortcut. Or I fart, therefore I am, the one he’s wearing tonight.
I barely listen. Instead I think about getting a big bear hug from Annabelle with her in that brown, two-sizes-too-short sweater.
Annabelle doesn’t say much. She sips on beer, looks around, and smiles. I know why she isn’t talking—because, like me, she thinks everyone is an idiot. No one really cares about sports or clothes.
When we talked at the steakhouse, the dialogue was interesting. We spent two hours talking about eighties hair metal and popovers. The time flew by. Out here, time moves slowly, even when Annabelle’s around, drinking her Honey Weiss beer and laughing with her big green eyes.
“Love that Nike sweatshirt.” Michelle notices that I’m outside of the recently created circle of popular kids. “It looks like a tent on you; you’re losing so much weight.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“How much have you lost?”
“Twenty pounds.”
“Good for you.” Michelle says.
She tugs on my sweatshirt, and reflex makes me smack her hand. “Sorry,” I say. “You can touch it if you want.”
“Touch what?” She giggles.
“What?”
“Biggie, you are so cute,” Michelle, ever the politician, says. “You need
to always hang out with us.”
As Michelle flirts with me, Killer and Annabelle wander off into the harvested cornfield, high-stepping around cornstalk stems. Michelle notices where my eyes are looking and turns. She leans in, her painted red lips an inch from my ear.
“Killer’s asking her out,” she whispers.
The words burn my ears like she’s poured battery acid into them instead of warm breath.
“He asked me today in school what I thought about it, and I said go for it,” she continues, now at safe a distance from me. “Hey, Biggie, can you open this?”
She breaks my sight line to Killer and Annabelle in the field with her bottle of Honey Weiss. I rip it out of her hands and use my boiling anger to easily spin off the cap.
“Thanks, Biggie,” Michelle says. “You’re so awesome. I’ve always thought you were really cool and smart.”
I hear Michelle speaking, but I don’t listen. My full concentration is on Killer stealing my girl.
From ten yards away with only moonlight helping me, I see it.
Annabelle’s eyes are as big as the full moon above. She’s happy.
“Do you think he asked her yet?” Michelle asks.
“Yeah and she said yes,” I reply.
“For sure?”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“How do you know? Can you read lips?” she asks.
“Nope. Eyes.”
Chapter 21
Damsels in Distress
Three weeks have passed since Annabelle and Killer became the school’s power couple. So far, he has been on his best behavior. He’s always at her locker to carry her books and to say something witty to make her laugh. I hate that laugh now—half giggle, half chuckle.
“He-he-he,” she laughs every afternoon as I place my books in my bag.
The good news is that Kyle, Jet, and Killer still ask me to hang out, which keeps me near Annabelle. She still doesn’t talk to me, which makes things awkward when the gang’s all together, but I put up with it just to be near her.
With my truck traveling sixty miles an hour down a two-lane highway, the guys share highlights from tonight’s football playoff game. Kyle had two rushing touchdowns, including a 57-yarder on the first play. He grabs the Bud Light box and grips it between his toned forearms, turning the cardboard into a makeshift football. The two remaining bottles clink, forcing me to quickly examine the cardboard for spilled beer falling toward my newly polished leather. No flood yet, but the clinking continues as Kyle sways back and forth in the front seat, reminding the guys how he dodged and juked defenders. I try to ignore the sliding and colliding bottles and keep my eyes on the road.
Killer brags about three touchdown passes. In a dramatic reenactment, he flips a twelve-ounce aluminum can to Jet after chanting, “Hut, hut, hike.”
Jet snares the cans out of the air, shouting, “Touchdown!”
It’s a weird feeling being the shy one in a group. Part of me is relieved to be left alone and left out. Another part of me would like to join the conversation. On the tip of my tongue are questions like, “So who’s your next opponent?” or “Was that team even any good?”
I could jump in, but I stay silent and watch vehicles pass us. Every now and then, I fear a cop car is going toward us in the other lane, but it’s just a car with a luggage rack. Although no alcohol has touched my lips, I’m pretty sure it’s a crime to be in the same truck with three high school juniors downing beers like M&M’s.
“What do you have on this iPod?” Killer asks.
“So what does Biggie like for music?” Killer spins through the menu. “Damn you love the eighties. These are all hair metal bands.”
“Is there any Guns N’ Roses on there?” Jet asks. “They are the only decent band from the nineteen-eighties.”
Killer searching my playlists, but I already know he won’t find anything. I grip the steering wheel and wait for the razzing to start.
“Shockingly, there’s no Guns N’ Roses.” Killer says out loud what I already know. “There’s plenty of Def Leppard. You have like every single song they have ever put out.”
“Def Leppard’s not horrible,” Kyle says. “‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ is a cool tune.”
“Not true,” Killer says. “The first twenty seconds of ‘Sugar’ is cool. The rest of the song sucks.”
Jet starts singing, “‘Love me like a bomb, bomb, bomb.’ I fucking love that part.”
“The rest of the song just sucks,” Killer says. “I don’t mean to be a jerk, Biggie, but you only have twenty seconds of decent music on this entire iPod.”
“That’s cold,” Jet says.
From the backseat, Killer reaches forward and grips my shoulder. “I know you get some online action, but if you want a real girlfriend, you’re going to need some decent music. No hot girl is going to fuck you with this crappy iPod.”
I want to tell him that Annabelle loves my music and I could care less what any other girl thinks, but I keep quiet, hoping that everyone will start to ignore me again.
“I’ll tell you what,” Killer says. “I’ll take your iPod home tonight and fill it with some good music, music from this millennium.”
“Whoa, those are girls on the side of the road,” Kyle interrupts Killer.
Up ahead are three girls standing around a green Chevy Cavalier lying grill-first in a ditch.
“Those are college girls,” Jet says.
“How do you know?” Kyle asks.
“I have college-girl radar,” Jet brags.
I have only been hanging out with Jet for a couple of weeks but I already know he’s obsessed with college girls. Every time the guys talk about weekend plans, he says we should go to the University of Iowa or the University of Northern Iowa and just hang out. He’s thankfully ignored.
“Damn, I wish I owned a tow truck right now,” Jet says as we fly past them.
“There’s a tow cable in back,” I say. They’re the first words to leave my lips since we left Finch an hour ago.
“What?” the three guys shout in unison.
“We can pull them out?” Jet asks.
“I’ve never used it, but my uncle left it in the truck when I bought it,” I say. “He said, ‘Chevy trucks were built to pull Toyotas out of the ditch.’”
“Have you ever pulled a car out of a ditch?” Kyle asks.
“No,” I admit.
“How hard can it be? Let’s do it,” Jet pleads. “You have to go back. We can seriously save them, save the damsels in distress.”
I don’t know if it’s the mocking of my iPod catalog or the constant bragging about football dominance, but I feel the need to be, well, cool. The idea of saving those three college girls makes me not only smile, but glow. The hair on my arm stands up and my fingers feel weightless on the steering wheel. I press down on the brakes.
“Let’s save some college girls,” I say.
“I can’t believe I’m going to have sex with a college girl,” Jet says.
Chapter 22
Cobb Salad
We hop out and I reach into a large red tool box in the bed of the truck. Even though I’ve had the truck for more than a year, I’ve never opened my uncle’s old tool box. The only time before tonight that I’ve even moved it was to hose out the truck bed.
Sitting right on top is a thick, silver cord with two worn metal hooks on each side. The cord is surprisingly heavy, causing me to grunt a little when I pull it out. The three guys, two with girlfriends, chit-chat with the three girls as I fiddle with the towline, which is only a couple of feet long.
“I need to back up the truck to the car,” I say.
No one responds with words. Instead, they shuffle their feet close to the road. One of the girls mimes with her arms, most likely retelling the sad story about how they ended up in the ditch.
A
fter backing the truck within a couple feet of the small, green Chevy Cavalier, I am forced to make a decision. To attach the hook, I have do what all fat people hate to do—lie down on the ground. The only way I can safely attach the far hook to the Cavalier is to get down on the cold ditch grass and secure it. This will do two things. One, I become the hero. The guy who saved the girls from massive tow bills and lost time spent shivering in twenty-degree temperatures on the side of the highway.
Two, it forces me to push myself back up. While it’s easy for a fat ass to fall, it’s not so easy for someone big like me to get back up. I have to do it in shifts. First, I use my arms to pull my chest off the ground. Then, I swing back and forth, trying hard to get my belly off the ground. Eventually as sweat swims all over my body, I get to my knees. This will allow a moment to catch my breath. Then, I kneel for a few seconds. Finally, I push hard on the ground and lift up a knee.
If I can keep my balance, I should be able to reach my feet in one attempt, but nothing is guaranteed. Best-case scenario, I secure the latch and get up in a minute. While sixty seconds in real time isn’t much time, sixty seconds in fat-guy-getting-up-off-the-ground time measures out to approximately ten hours.
I could easily avoid this situation by handing the tow cable to Kyle or Killer and let them get the credit.
“You want me to latch that?” Killer asks.
“No,” I say. “I can do it.”
Everyone circles around me in silence. All I can hear as I drop to my knees are cars flying past on the highway. The “vroom” noises are accompanied by shots of chilly mid-November wind. Like an infant, I crawl, pulling the tow cable. As I near the bumper, I drop my head counter-clockwise and slide it under the backside of the compact car. It’s not hot or even warm, which makes me think the girls have been stuck for awhile. I see a metal loop and latch the hook. The good news is that I am able to stay on my knees, which should save me several steps in the fat-guy-getting-up process.
Like pistons, my knees rotate backward and I pull my head out. I grab the bumper and pull myself up, holding my breath to avoid any weird grunts or pants. I push down hard on the bumper and pull my knees back, which lift my head, shoulders, and spine. Standing straight up, I look over the car at nothing. In front of me are only dark, empty Iowa fields. I must be able to see for miles. It’s while staring that I notice the tow cord is not in my hand, but on the ground next to my tennis shoe. Crap! Here we go again. I close my eyes and begin to bend my knees.
Biggie Page 11
