Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have

by Allen Zadoff

  Eventually things start to break up. People drift out to the driveway. I’m walking outside when I notice O. standing alone looking into the backyard.

  “Thanks a lot,” I tell him.

  He motions back towards everyone in the driveway. “We need you. For real.”

  “At the game last week,” I say. “You saved my life.”

  “You make it sound like some major deal. I just stuck an inhaler in your mouth.”

  “It was more than that.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  O. squeezes my shoulder briefly, then heads back to the driveway. I watch him as he goes, half of him in shadow, half lit up by our porch light. He seems like a hero in that moment. Even the way he refuses to take credit. It’s something a true hero would do.

  The players say their good-byes and pack themselves into a few cars. Lisa Jacobs get into the passenger seat of O.’s 4Runner. O. climbs in next to her and fires up the engine.

  “Are you coming, April?” one of the cheerleaders says.

  I look around, and April’s still in the driveway behind me.

  “I’m going to walk home,” April says. She smiles at me. “I live a few blocks from here.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I say.

  The cheerleader winks and gets in the car with the other guys. O. drives past us slowly. He doesn’t look over, just faces forward like he’s concentrating on the road.

  April and I stand at the end of my driveway. I look back towards the house and see the living room curtains move. Jessica, of course. Harriet the Spy.

  “Will you walk me a little?” April says.

  “Sure,” I say.

  We walk through the neighborhood together. April pulls her sweater around her. It’s the time of year when summer is definitely over, but it’s not completely fall yet.

  “What are you thinking?” April says.

  “I’m happy.”

  “Because your mom signed the form.”

  “That and other things.”

  April’s lips look soft and wet in the moonlight.

  “What’s going on between you and O.?” I say.

  I didn’t plan to say that. It just popped out.

  “Nothing,” April says.

  “You said you liked him.”

  “Everyone likes him.”

  “Like like. You know what I mean,” I say.

  “That’s over. I mean, he has a girlfriend.”

  “So you don’t like him anymore?”

  “Why are you asking so many questions? I feel like I’m being interrogated.”

  That’s what Dad used to say when Mom attacked him.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Why are you so interested anyway?” April says.

  There’s a long pause.

  This is the moment. It’s time to tell April the truth about how I feel. How I’ve never met anyone like her. How I knew she was different from the first moment I saw her.

  But all I can think is that I probably have Caesar salad stuck in my teeth. I’m going to declare my love with a giant, disgusting chunk of lettuce in my gap. I run my tongue around the inside of my mouth. I can’t feel anything, but that’s no guarantee. Lettuce is tricky like that.

  April says, “I don’t want you to get hurt, Andy.”

  “Why would I get hurt?”

  We stop in the middle of the sidewalk. She puts her hand on my arm.

  “I’m just worried,” she says.

  My entire body is tingling. Everything is telling me it’s time. Kiss the girl, the song says. The song is right. I’m sure of it.

  But there’s another song. The one in my head. It says, Fat guys don’t get to kiss the girl. This song comes with a YouTube clip. It’s a scene of a big fat kid trying to kiss this little, cute girl. She’s sitting at a desk, and he’s talking to her. Suddenly he’s overcome with passion. He leans in to kiss her, and he loses his balance and ends up knocking both of them over and practically crushing her. The title of the clip is “Elephant in Love.” When I last checked, it had three million hits.

  “You look like you want to say something,” April says.

  Three million hits of “Elephant in Love” are playing in fast motion in my head.

  Screw it.

  I take a deep breath, suck in my stomach, lean in, and kiss April.

  I’m not sure if I should aim for the lips or the cheek, so I hedge my bets and go in between. I catch the skin next to her nose, but she adjusts at the last second, and our lips meet.

  It turns into a long, slow, soft kiss that completely takes my breath away.

  My first.

  “Well,” she says. “I didn’t expect that.”

  “Was it okay?”

  “It was nice. How about for you?”

  “Nice,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  I look up at the sky. There are real stars out here. They twinkle and go on forever, not at all like the ones on my bedroom ceiling.

  “Thanks for helping me with Mom,” I say.

  “Oh, no problem,” she says.

  It’s completely dark now, and there’s a chill in the air. It’s just a little cold, but there’s something serious about it, like when your chest hurts just before you get the flu.

  “I should get home,” April says.

  “I’ll walk you.”

  “It’s just a few blocks from here. I’ll be fine.”

  “I guess I should get home, too,” I say.

  April smiles. “Do you have my number?”

  “No.”

  “Why don’t I give it to you?”

  I pull out the iPhone, and she taps it in.

  “You’re an amazing person, Andy.”

  “I know,” I say, even though I don’t.

  April laughs.

  “And modest, too,” she says.

  people standing, person sitting.

  The whole school is cheering for us.

  It’s not really the whole school, because pep rallies are voluntary now. They changed the policy five years ago when some parents complained and said it was undemocratic to force kids to cheer, even for their own school. So now kids have a choice. If you don’t want to go to the pep rally, you can go to the library. That’s what I always did—sat in the library studying with Eytan while the school walls echoed with cheering.

  Kind of ironic. The first time I go to a pep rally, I’m in it.

  Caroline Whitney-Smith kicks things off. She talks about our rivalry with Brookline, how it goes back for nearly one hundred years. One hundred games, one hundred pep rallies before the games. I don’t want to be influenced by such a sappy speech, but it’s impossible not to be.

  Being on a team. Supporting the school. Tradition.

  The stuff we used to laugh about in the library. I’m starting to think maybe it really matters.

  By the time Caroline Whitney-Smith finishes her speech, I’ve entered the Matrix. I’m cheering along with everyone else.

  Coach starts to introduce us, one player at a time. It seems like I’m on the sideline forever when I hear him say, “Now I’d like to introduce someone really special. Our new secret weapon, the point of the arrow, three hundred and seven pounds of pure grit and muscle—Andrew ‘Big Z’ Zansky!”

  Cheesy gives me a push, and I run onto the gym floor. I’m absolutely mortified. Coach just said my weight in a microphone in front of eight hundred people. I want to grab the mic back and tell everyone that I’ve lost a lot of weight during practice. I’m probably 290 now, or maybe even 285. Definitely not 307. No way.

  But here’s the really crazy thing. The crowd roars. More than roars. They explode. My name, my size—everything about me gets a cheer. I look behind me and the team is applauding, and the cheerleaders are jumping up and down. When I take my place in the lineup, I wedge my helmet against my hip like I’ve seen O. do, and all the guys pat me hard on the back.

  I’m big, and everyone knows it. Maybe they even like it.

 
; Coach waits for the cheers to die down before he starts to announce the next player. He doesn’t even get past the “O.” before eight hundred people leap to their feet in unison. It’s a prison-riot scene from a movie. I’m sure the windows will shatter.

  O. takes a breath as the cheers swell to gargantuan proportions, then he slowly jogs towards me, relaxed and completely unselfconscious, exactly the way he was in the hall that first day when we met. It’s as if eight hundred people calling his name doesn’t even faze him.

  He holds out his fist to me, and we bump knuckles. The crowd totally flips out. I’m caught up in it just like everyone else, a huge idiot smile pasted across my face as I call O.’s name and clap my hands, cheering for my own quarterback. It’s the O-Effect in full force.

  I look out across the stands where everyone is standing and cheering, and a glint of metal catches my eye. There’s a guy sitting in a wheelchair off to the side of the bleachers. He’s got a cast going all the way up his leg. At first I think he’s one of the Slow Gym kids who maybe wants to feel like a part of the action, but when I look carefully I realize I’ve never seen him before. While everyone else is cheering, he just stares.

  Suddenly our eyes meet. There’s a strange expression on his face.

  I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure he hates my guts.

  percentages.

  The guys are really excited in the locker room after the rally. Rodriguez is describing some girl in the crowd who was giving him the eye.

  Coach says, “Can I get your attention, gentlemen?”

  People stop talking. There’s a creaking sound as the wheelchair guy slowly rolls in.

  “Holt!” someone shouts, and the guys run over to him, shaking his hand and patting him on the back.

  “Who’s that?” I ask Cheesy, but he ignores me and joins the group.

  “How’re you feeling?” O. asks as he gently taps Holt’s cast.

  “Better every day,” Holt says. “Another four and I’ll be up walking again. That’s what the doctor says.”

  “Four weeks!” Rodriguez says.

  “Months,” Holt says.

  “Oh,” Rodriguez says.

  “Hey, I want you to meet someone,” O. says. He waves me over.

  “This the new guy?” Holt says.

  O. nods.

  Now that I’m close to him, I can see that Holt’s huge. He only looks small because he’s sitting in the chair.

  “Are you tough?” Holt says with a smirk.

  “He’s hard-core,” Bison says.

  “He’d better be,” Holt says, and everyone chuckles uncomfortably.

  “Hey, Coach,” Holt says, “you ready for Everest?”

  “More than ready,” Coach says.

  Holt’s face goes slack. He looks up at O. “Sorry I let you down,” he says.

  “You didn’t let me down,” O. says.

  “I let you all down,” Holt tells the team. They grunt, disagreeing with him.

  Coach interrupts. “It’s time to hit the field,” he says. He looks down at Holt. “You want to watch practice? Get a little of the old flavor?”

  “Nah,” Holt says. “I got things to do.”

  Coach says, “All right then. Let’s motivate, ladies.”

  The guys bark like Marines and head for the stairs. I check my sock and realize I forgot my backup inhaler. I’m taking the pills now, so I probably won’t need it. But I have to keep it with me just in case. That’s what the doctor told Mom.

  I run over to my locker to get it. When I come back, Holt is still there.

  “You know who I am?” he says.

  “No.”

  He grunts. “They didn’t tell you, huh? Out of sight, out of mind.”

  “What happened to you?” I say.

  He looks down at his cast. “Broken in three places. More than broken. Shat-tered.”

  He says the word like it’s got extra syllables.

  “That sucks,” I say.

  “Not your fault,” he says. “Everest.”

  There’s that name again. The mountain in the Himalayas. I’m thinking maybe Holt went on a climbing expedition and fell. It’s not like a lot of high-school kids have climbed Everest, but then again, we’re in Newton. There’s plenty of money floating around. You get back from winter break, and people have pictures from African safaris and stuff like that.

  “I have to get to practice,” I say.

  “Sure, bud,” he says. “Keep your head down out there.”

  “I will.”

  I climb the stairs towards the field. At the top, I sneak a glance back down.

  Holt is sitting there, not moving, staring at the lockers like he’s looking for something that’s not there anymore.

  * * *

  “What’s Everest?” I ask O. in the huddle.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he says.

  “He’s a friggin’ monster,” Cheesy says.

  “Shut up, Cheesy!” one of the guys says.

  “You can handle him,” O. says.

  “It’s a person?” I say.

  O. seems upset now. He ignores my question and calls the Trojan Horse.

  It’s our big sneak play. Pretend to hand the ball to a guy who can run, then hand it to a guy who can’t.

  Me.

  It’s a great fake-out. Even our own team gets fooled by it in scrimmages.

  That’s what happens now. O. fakes the handoff to Bison then drops the ball into my bread basket. An opening appears in the defense right in front of me. So I take it.

  I run for all I’m worth. I’d like to score a touchdown against our own guys. That’s would feel good. I see the goal line coming up before me. I’m pretty sure I’m home free when someone hits me from behind and I go down hard. I struggle to turn over, and I end up face-to-face with the Neck.

  “Get out now,” he says.

  I’m in shock. He hasn’t said more than two words to me the whole year.

  “I’m not a quitter,” I say.

  “You’re going to get hurt,” he says.

  “Screw you. You’ve been trying to get rid of me from the very beginning.”

  “You got it wrong,” he says.

  Coach is blowing the whistle, but the Neck isn’t moving. He’s lying on top of me, talking to me quietly, three inches from my face.

  “Listen to me,” he says. “Holt was you last year.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Everest happened.”

  Guys are running over and shouting for us to break it up. They think maybe we’re fighting. The Neck talks even faster.

  “You think you’re popular,” he says. “You think you’re part of the team, but you’re not.”

  I think about the team in my living room the other day. Everyone except the Neck.

  “Go to hell,” I say. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  That’s when the guys pull him off me.

  I lie on the field, his words bouncing around inside my helmet.

  One percent of me doesn’t believe a word he said.

  The other 99 percent knows it’s true.

  man meets mountain.

  I make it to the school library fifteen minutes before it closes. I jump online to look at archived copies of The Newtonite.

  I’ve never really read the newspaper before. Who reads their school newspaper, right? I mean, unless you’re in it, then you examine it like it’s the Dead Sea Scrolls. I’ve been in it exactly once, a group photo of the Model UN team going to New York City last year. I made sure I was in the back row peeking out from behind Eytan so my fat wouldn’t show. I brought home two copies, one to put on Dad’s desk, and one to give to Mom.

  I’ve never taken the paper too seriously, but I take it seriously now.

  I read the sports section.

  I read about O.’s amazing performance last season. I read a sports column that claims Newton is not an amazing all-around team, but more of a good team with one amazing player. The colu
mn says that O. is so good, he’s like human steroids. He boosts the performance of everyone who comes in contact with him.

  I find another article about O.’s chances of playing college ball, how even in his junior year scouts were looking at him. Division One scouts. That’s unusual for Newton.

  I follow the team’s record last year. Win after win. They add up during the season until it seems all but fated that they will have a perfect record. The perfect season with the perfect quarterback.

  Until the Brookline game.

  Until Everest.

  Junior Injured in Football Game.

  That’s what the headline says. There’s a picture of a bunch of players in a circle watching while paramedics strap Holt onto a stretcher. I look at the numbers on the uniforms. Rodriguez, Cheesy, Bison. And #I—O.

  They were all there.

  I scan the article. As far as I can tell, Everest was a late transfer from another school. He appeared out of nowhere and changed everything. O., who had never been on the ground before, was sacked eight times that game. Holt, the center, went to the hospital with a shattered leg. O. hurt his shoulder. A couple of other guys got banged up pretty good.

  And Newton lost their first game of the season by seventeen points.

  The Neck was telling the truth. Holt was me last year.

  Suddenly I feel like an idiot. I never asked why the center position was open in the first place. Maybe I assumed somebody had graduated. Maybe I didn’t think about it at all. I was so excited to be part of the team, I just went along with it.

  I wanted to be popular. That’s like a dirty word in my old circles, but it’s easy to make fun of something when it’s not an option. When you couldn’t get it even if you wanted it.

  I’m popular now.

  I don’t care what the Neck says. Eight hundred people applauded for me at a pep rally. They heard my weight and they didn’t care. I imagine the faces of the cheering people. They were smiling at me, but I wonder, were they really smiling?

  Or were they laughing at me?

  I print out the article and put it in my pocket.

  enojado.