by Trent Reedy
“I love this station,” Derek said.
“I know. You listen to it all the time.”
“He was right, though. It was a great win. I saw you play. Wow! You were really looking tough out there. You laid on some hard hits!”
“Thanks for coming to the game.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be so modest.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Tell me about it! Was it fun? It looked fun. You gotta be having fun out there.”
It was nice to get some congratulations from a grown-up. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sore this morning, but the game was great.”
“Your dad would be proud.”
I rolled down the window and let the breeze blow through my hair. “I know he would.”
Nobody spoke for a while. KRRP was playing an old song by the Doors. As we crossed the English River, Derek sat up. “Watching that game last night sure brought back a lot of memories.”
I hooked a left to bring us onto the highway that led into town. “You played?”
“Not as well as you, but yeah. I remember me and some of the guys drove over to Lone Tree once at like two in the morning the night before we played them. They got that big Lumberjack statue out in front of the school, and we spray-painted the whole thing bright red.” He frowned. “Course I think we ended up losing that night in overtime, but it was still all sorts of fun. I heard it took them forever to get the paint off the statue, and even then, for years there was still the faintest trace of red.” Derek grinned. “Keep that kind of between the two of us, okay? They never did find out who did that.”
“Sounds pretty crazy,” I said.
“It was great. Hanging out with the guys. Parties at Nature Spot.” I looked at him to see if he was serious. “Hey, eyes on the road, buddy.” He pointed ahead. “Don’t look so surprised. You think you kids are the first to find that place?”
Thanks to Dad’s letters, I knew people my age hadn’t found the place, but I didn’t say anything.
“Officer Mitchell knows about every one of those parties, but he gets tired of the long walk down the railroad tracks to bust them.” He laughed and patted the armrest on his door. “But he busted one of our parties once. I got away just in time. Found your mother on her way out there and got her back to town without getting caught.”
Dad had told me that Mom used to go to parties, but I never imagined she’d almost been busted at one. Derek must have seen my look of surprise.
“Your mom is cooler than you think,” he said. “You should see if she’d come to one of your games. I bet she’d like that.”
“No way!” I turned right onto Weigand Street to head up toward the square. “The second she found out I’d gone behind her back to play football, she’d pull me off the team and prevent me from getting my license.”
“It’s your call, buddy. It just doesn’t seem right, keeping her in the dark like that. Maybe if she saw you were playing and everything was fine, she wouldn’t be so worried about it.”
I’d heard enough of this. “Do you like my mom or something?”
“I told you, we’ve been friends for —”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it. You two almost went out the other night. Plus you’re always taking her side. Do you want to date her or something?”
He ran his hand back through his hair. “I just want to help her get out and enjoy life a little, you know?”
Thinking of Mom dating again was really weird, but there had to be a lot of guys who would be worse for her than Derek. “I think you two should go out…. I mean, if you both want to. I don’t have a problem with it or anything. But I can’t risk telling her about football. She’s” — how could I explain this? — “out of touch with reality.”
“Or she’s had a little too much reality,” he said quietly. There was a short silence. “We better head back to the farm. We have some bales to stack.” He hesitated a moment. “Just don’t be too hard on her, okay?”
I gripped the steering wheel tight as I turned the Falcon back toward the highway. “Don’t be too hard on your mother.” Everybody kept telling me that. Maybe someone should tell my mom not to be too hard on me for a change.
On Monday, I wondered how things would be between Isma and me. Would we act differently around each other now that we had kissed? Would we sit together at lunch? It turned out I needn’t have worried. She preferred to eat with her friends from the band, and apart from a few shared, knowing smiles, our relationship was mostly the same, only better now that we’d made it romantic.
At practice that night, Coach started the team on our regular warm-up run. “Wilson!” he shouted. “No more extra running! You’re caught up!” A few of the guys actually clapped. Some of them slapped me on the back or on the helmet as they ran past me, saying, “Good work, man,” or “Keep it up.”
Nick Rhodes hadn’t clapped. Our battles at practice continued, only he came at me even more, and I hit him back twice as hard. Sometimes he’d win, tackling me or keeping me covered as I ran a pass route. Other times I got the upper hand. I loved throwing a block hard enough to knock him down.
* * *
Ethan found me in the lunch line on Wednesday. “Things still cool with you and Isma?”
“Yep,” I said. “Nothing’s changed in the last two days.” On Monday, I’d told him about Isma and me kissing. He’d been more than appropriately impressed.
The line shuffled ahead, and Ethan and I grabbed our trays.
“Man, you’re like a total genius with women,” he said.
“No, I’m not.”
“But you were right, dude. Thanks for making me join the musical.”
“Fun?” I asked. We picked up milk and silverware.
“It is, actually.” He smiled. “But more than that, Raelyn is finally starting to believe that Chris cheated on her. She was almost crying about it when I walked her home last night.” He sounded giddy.
“That’s … good to hear, I guess.”
“I think she’s going to break up with him! It’s really happening.”
“I’m happy for you, buddy.” I slapped him on the arm before the lunch ladies dumped chicken patties and green beans on our trays.
* * *
During study hall on Thursday, I signed out to the library and went back to my corner.
“Hi,” Isma said, already sitting back there when I rounded the dividers. “Mind if I join you in your secret spot?”
“It’s not my spot. It’s everybody’s library.” I pulled a chair around and sat down close to her. Every time I’d seen her since Friday night, there had been more warmth in her smile, a knowing look that said we had something special between us. I hoped she felt the same connection when she looked at me.
“Yeah, right,” said Isma. “Nobody else ever sits back here.”
I took her hands in mine. “Okay, then it can be our spot.”
“That sounds so dorky,” she said, but she didn’t pull away.
Isma had a point. This resembled a scene from one of those horrible romantic comedies that Mary liked to watch, but I didn’t care. She squeezed my hands and I squeezed hers back. I wanted to kiss her again. Isma, football, and Dad’s letters were about all I had thought of all week.
Only, thinking of the letters made me start to worry. If the Mystery Mailer knew about Dad’s plan to make sure I got all his letters before my sixteenth birthday, and if no more came before Saturday, that meant I probably already had all the letters from my father that I’d ever get. And I still had so many questions.
“You okay?” Isma asked.
I smiled at her. “I’m great,” I said.
“Ready for the game tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Away game at Traer.”
She rubbed her thumbs on my hands. “Are they good?”
“Yeah, they’re a tough team.” She looked away from me. She had something on her mind. “Why are you asking?”
“Well, there’s this pep bus t
hat goes to the away games,” she said. “More sports worship. But it only costs two bucks, and I thought I might go.”
“Since when do you care about the game?”
She pulled her hands away. “If you don’t want me to go, just say —”
I put my hand on her knee. “No, no! I want you to go. I’m just surprised.” Then I added, before she might misunderstand me, “Happily surprised!”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, for some reason these games are important to you, and I don’t feel like spending another Friday night putting up with my annoying brother.”
“Better than Mary, I promise you. This morning she —”
She placed one finger to my lips to quiet me, but I kissed it instead. She giggled. “I was thinking, if you weren’t busy Saturday night, you could, you know, come over to my house.” She shrugged. “We could hang out. Or my brother has a million video games. Or whatever.”
The thought of that “whatever” made my heart beat heavier.
“Unless you don’t want to,” she said.
I snapped out of fantasyland and back to the library. “What?”
“If you don’t want to come over —”
“I’d love to —”
“— I totally get it.”
“— come over.”
“It might be a little weird, since you’ve never —”
“No, not weird at all —”
“— even been to my house and —”
I placed my finger to her lips. She kissed it and laughed. “Isma,” I said, “I’d love to come over. Saturday night sounds perfect.”
“Oh, that sounds so perfect.” Rhodes spoke in a stupid high-pitched voice. He leaned on the wooden study partitions. “You could put on one of those blue body-tent things and Mikey here could crawl up inside. You two could talk about jihad or suck on each other’s fingers or whatever you freaks do.”
I stood up so fast my chair fell back. “Get out of here.”
“I just came back here to look at some of these lame poems and lookie what I found.” He ran his fingers along the books. “Dorks in love.”
Rhodes had finally crossed the honor line Dad had written about. I took a step toward him.
“Michael, don’t. It’s not worth it,” Isma said.
Rhodes got up off the divider and moved close enough that I could crack him one right there. My legs felt rubbery and my fists were tight. I wanted to knock him out so bad my shoulder twitched.
“Yeah, Mikey, there’s no need to stop being a lady.” He grinned. “Or maybe you’re going to let your little raghead girlfriend fight your battles for you.” He put his hand to his chin and squinted his eyes like he was thinking real hard. “But they never stand up and fight, do they? They stick with the roadside bombs and suicide attacks.”
“Come on, Mike. Let’s go.” Isma put her hand on my shoulder, but I jerked away.
“You go,” I said. “I got to take care of something.”
Rhodes glared at me. “We have a problem. You’re in my tight end spot.”
“Only problem is you can’t keep yourself under control on the field.”
“Gentlemen!” Mrs. Potter had come out of nowhere and stood watching us with her hands on her hips. “I suggest you both get yourselves under control right now,” she said in her no-nonsense librarian power voice. “Mr. Rhodes, are you looking for a particular book back here?”
“Naw.” He didn’t take his eyes off me. “Just looking around when I found these two —”
“Then you will move along right now.”
“Sure,” he said. “See you around, Mikey.” He walked off.
I turned back to Isma, but she had vanished. I only saw a flash of her hair as she slipped out through the library doors.
“Michael,” said Mrs. Potter.
Here it came. Mrs. Potter was usually the kindest, most helpful person in the school. She was really nice, not fake nice like the school secretary, who never stopped giggling. But when Mrs. Potter was mad, everybody knew it, and she could bring anyone in the school nearly to tears. I folded my arms across my chest and waited for the onslaught.
“Take a deep breath, Mike.”
I managed to look at her. She seemed relaxed.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said.
She waved her hand dismissively. “The problem was what you were about to do.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Think about all you have to lose by getting into a fight. First, you’d be disturbing my library, which is the worst thing you could possibly do. But if you got in a fight, you’d probably also be suspended, and then you wouldn’t be able to play football. Can you think of anyone who’d be happy about that?”
“He was the one who started —”
“Whoa! I’m not talking about any specific person,” she said. “I was asking a question.”
I doubted that very much, but I didn’t want to push my luck with her.
“You think about that, and think about how Isma would have felt to see you two fighting it out. She didn’t look very happy.”
Why was Isma mad at me? Rhodes had started all this. “This wasn’t my —”
She held up a hand. “Just think about it.” She lowered her hand very slowly. “Calm down. And think about it.”
I did think about it all the way down the hallway after the bell rang, searching the crowd for Isma. I was still thinking about it when Rhodes shoulder-checked me right into Laura Tammerin. I crashed into her chest, knocking her books out of her hands.
“Hey!” Laura said. “Watch where you’re going!”
Rhodes elbowed Clint, pointed at me, and laughed as the two of them headed down the hall. For a second I almost ran after him, but Laura was crouching down to pick up her books, and I figured I should help her.
She must have seen Nick laughing, because when I handed her binder and algebra book to her, she rolled her eyes. “Forget about that guy. He’s an idiot, and he’s just jealous that you’ve been getting so much playing time.”
“Sorry about that,” I said as we stood up together.
“I’m a big girl. I can handle it.” She tossed her hair back over her shoulder. “Are you going to the team supper tonight?”
“I don’t have a ride.”
“It’s at Piggly’s.”
“Oh.” I never found out the location until Thursday-night practice. “Then I can probably go.”
“And don’t worry about the next time it’s in Iowa City and you need a ride.” She brushed against me as she walked past. “I got you covered.”
The crowd in the hallway was starting to thin out. I’d missed my chance to try to smooth things over with Isma. I rushed to class, sliding into my desk just as the bell rang.
English usually held my attention even more than my other classes, but that day my thoughts kept drifting to the memory of that idiot Rhodes. We read the second half of act four of Hamlet, where Hamlet had this big awesome speech. I felt like standing up on my desk and shouting the last lines at Rhodes: “O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”
And then in the next scene Hamlet’s girlfriend, Ophelia, went totally crazy. Isma surely wasn’t going to put on a huge dress and drown in a stream, but her anger made about as much sense to me as the weird, insane songs Ophelia sang.
Isma ignored me through history, and after class, I hurried to catch up with her. “Can we talk for a second?” I asked, gently grabbing her elbow.
She pulled her arm away from me. “I don’t want to talk right now, okay?” She picked up her pace and faded into the crowd.
“Uh-oh, Mikey’s got twouble wit his wittle girlfwiend.” Clint wiped pretend tears from his cheeks. I took a deep breath and walked in the other direction, wishing that tonight were a contact practice.
The practice breezed by light and quick, though, and afterward, I cleaned up, dressed, and headed to the bike rack to get Scrappy. I stopped two steps outside the front doors of the school. Isma sa
t on the bike rack, reading something in her binder.
“Hey, I’m really sorry for whatever I did,” I said as I approached.
She snapped her binder shut. “That’s really not much of an apology.” I opened my mouth to speak, but she continued, “I don’t need you or anyone else fighting for me.”
“Hey, Rhodes is the guy who —”
“He’s a moron. Not worth fighting over the stupid things he says.”
I bit my lip. Her attitude was getting on my nerves. “I’m not just going to sit back and do nothing while he calls you a terrorist.”
“Shouldn’t that be my decision?” she said. “He says all Muslims are violent, dangerous people. Maybe he believes it. I don’t know. But if I get in a fight with him, or if you fight him on my behalf, even if you win, I’ll still lose because it’ll be confirming everything he said about Muslim violence. So no fights, okay?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She reached over and squeezed my hand. “No need to apologize. I’m not mad. I wasn’t mad all afternoon. I just needed a private place and time to explain all this.” She stood up. “You’ve got that sports-supper-cult thing tonight, so I’ll leave you alone.” She kissed me on the cheek and headed off toward home. I watched her walk away for a while before I pulled Scrappy out of the rack.
* * *
“Hey there, Mike Wilson!” Mr. Pineeda greeted me as I came in through the oinking door wearing my Roughriders jersey. “I’ve been hearing some great things about you Saturday mornings at Piggly’s Old Timers’ Coffee Club. They say the mighty Roughriders have a new tight end. They say he’s quick and tough.” He slapped me on the back and pointed toward the team room with his other hand. “Your teammates are in there. Keep it up, young man!”
When I entered the room, Sullivan looked up at me from where he sat in a sea of red jerseys at a table with Dozer, McKay, Cody, Hamilton, and Rhodes. He nodded, and I nodded back.
I went to the empty seat next to Ethan. He put a red plastic cup down in front of me and poured some Mountain Dew from the pitcher on the table. “You ready for tomorrow night?”
