“Pissing. Peeing. He was peeing in the toilet next to the shower. I saw his…”
“No.”
“Yeah, I saw it,” she says. “How creepy is that?”
“Real creepy. Weird too. You weren’t joking.”
“No,” she says. “That’s fucked up, huh? He was standing there over the toilet…just holding his, um…He was just shaking it off.”
I want to ask if Will’s thing was soft or hard. I’m curious, and it matters. I want to ask about that, but I also don’t want to ask a girl I still don’t know that well that question. Then I think of something else. “Wait,” I say. “Do you only have one bathroom in the house?”
“No. We have four.”
“Four bathrooms?”
“Yeah.”
“So why did he use the one where you were showering?”
“Exactly,” she says. “What the hell?”
“Were other people home? Was your mom home?”
“No. She was still at work.”
“So it was just the two of you home. You have four bathrooms, and he took a piss in the one where you were showering.”
“Right.”
“Wow. I don’t know what to say about that.”
Natalie picks up a handful of gravel and throws it in the water in front of us. She says, “I can’t believe he saw me naked.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” Natalie says. “I screamed and cussed at him, and he acted like it was some kind of big misunderstanding. A mistake. He kept saying how sorry he was and that he just went to pee without thinking, that he just walked in there by accident.”
“No, no, no,” I say. “No way.”
“I know, right? Fuck that. It wasn’t a mistake.” Natalie takes another handful of gravel and sorts the rocks in her hand. Moves the little ones toward her thumb, the big ones out to her fingertips. Then she tilts her hand and lets them fall off.
I say, “I’m sorry. That sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“That’s messed up.”
Neither of us says anything for a minute. There are black lines on the water in between the ripples of orange and yellow light. The lines shift, and above them, on the east side, the windows of the houses are wide and bright.
Natalie stands up.
“What is it?”
“Shhh.” She sneaks forward.
I stand and try to see what she’s seeing.
She crouches down by the edge of the water, on the left side of my little gravel beach. She reaches into the long reeds, reaches with both hands, then stops.
I say again, “What is it?”
She lunges and clasps something in her hands. Stands up. “Got it.”
In the dark, I can’t see what she’s holding. “What is it?”
“A frog.” She sits down again. “So why was your day wonderful?”
“Well,” I say, “the highlight was when I punched a Seventh-day Adventist.”
“You what?”
“I punched a missionary guy.”
Natalie cups her other hand over the frog’s head and looks straight at me. “Really?”
I nod.
“Was he hurt?”
“I don’t know if he was hurt for real, but I know I knocked him out.”
“What the…How hard did you hit him?”
“Pretty hard. I knocked him out and then I took off. Ran to my bike and pedaled away.”
Natalie shakes her head. “But why’d you punch him in the first place?”
“It’s sort of hard to explain,” I say. “My grandpa…”
Natalie waits for me to explain. She pets the frog some more. “Your grandpa was there?”
“No, no. It’s a long story.”
“Well,” she says, “I’m kind of in a hurry to get back to my stepdad’s den of perversion, so I don’t really have much time right now….” Natalie pushes me.
“All right,” I say. “I’ll explain then. My grandpa gets high.”
“Your grandpa?”
“Yeah.”
“High? Like, smokes weed?”
“Yeah.”
Natalie giggles. Then she stops herself. “I’m sorry. That’s not funny.”
“He gets high every day, smokes my grandma’s medical weed. She has a card since she’s been sick.”
“And he smokes hers?”
“Yep.”
“Every day?”
“Yep. He smokes a ton. Gets super high.”
“This is your grandpa we’re talking about? An old man?”
“Right, I know. It sounds like something a person would make up, but I’m not. He smokes all the time, and my grandma’s not doing well. But Grandpa doesn’t seem to be worried about that. He just watches baseball and smokes weed. Eats Doritos or brownie batter. And tonight he took a bunch of Grandma’s pain pills and got all messed up. He couldn’t even stand right.”
“Like, he was wobbly?”
“And mumbling.”
“Oh damn,” Natalie holds the frog in one hand and points back at my house with her other hand. “Do you live with them all year? With your grandma and grandpa?”
“Yep.”
“Full-time? Even during the school year?”
I nod.
Natalie sets the frog down. Nudges its back to make it jump toward the water. Then she wipes her hands on the grass. “And this missionary guy, he said…”
“He said that my life was too easy now but that soon enough I’d realize what the real world was like—how difficult life can be.”
“Wow,” she says. “Super condescending.”
“I let him talk for a minute, but then I just punched him.”
Natalie laughs. “Sorry, but that’s pretty funny. And maybe he learned a good lesson, right? Maybe he’ll learn how to talk to people.”
“Maybe,” I say, “but I’ve got to stop punching people. I can’t afford to do that anymore.”
“Wait, is this something you do regularly? Is my shirtless neighbor boy secretly a UFC fighter?”
We both laugh, and I shake my head. Natalie’s next to me, her smooth, strong legs six inches away. I want to run my hand up and down those legs, but instead I look away. Creature told me once that if you want a girl, do the opposite of everything you think of, the opposite of everything you want to do. He also said that ignoring a girl for a minute or two will do wonders. I force myself to look away from Natalie, and try not to say anything.
While I’m still looking the other direction, Natalie leans against me, bumps my shoulder with hers. “You and punching, huh? You might have a little bit of a problem?”
“I guess I might even punch myself. You never know.” I smile at her.
Her shoulder is still touching my shoulder. I like the way she feels leaning against me. A breeze comes from behind us and I consider putting my arm around her. But then I think of Creature’s advice and I lean away again. I don’t want to, but I lean just far enough away that Natalie and I are not touching anymore.
Natalie’s phone buzzes and she taps the screen to check the text. “It’s my stepdad.”
For some reason—just a reaction—I grab her phone out of her hands and throw it over my shoulder.
“Hey,” Natalie says, “why’d you…”
“I hate those things. Plus, your stepdad sounds like a dick.”
“True,” she says, and kisses me. Just like that.
I’ve kissed girls before, but it’s been a while since I have, and I’m not expecting it. Natalie kisses me and I kiss her back, and she’s holding my face, and she tastes like mint ChapStick, her lips and the tip of her tongue. I smell the mint on her lips and the lake water on her hands, and the smell of torn grass.
We slide onto the ground and roll over. I roll up on top of her, and her body feels long and lean underneath me, strong, and I love the feeling of our bodies against each other, and she’s still holding my face in her hands and she’s kissing me hard. I’m kissing her too and I can feel the dark
of the sky changing above us and the ground moving underneath our bodies like everything is tilting and spinning fast.
Natalie rolls us over, and then she’s on top of me. She kisses me slower then, sucks at my bottom lip, kisses the side of my neck.
I open my eyes. See the night above the outline of her head, the first stars pricking through the deep blue.
She kisses me on the mouth again, then stops and pushes up. Says, “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now.”
I want to be kissing her again. I want to take her shirt off, want to feel her skin against mine.
She puts her hand flat on my chest. She says, “I like my no-shirt neighbor boy.”
“If you want me to, I could put my shirt on more often.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” she says. “Don’t wear too much clothing. It’ll probably restrict your movements or something, make you claustrophobic, might even mess up your basketball game.”
“Right,” I say. “I’ll just keep my shirt off for basketball purposes, then.”
“Good,” Natalie says, “and that way I’ll be able to continue objectifying you.” She smiles and leans down, kisses me once more, then stands up. “Where’d you throw my phone?”
We search around in the grass for the phone. It takes a while to find it, and I’m glad I didn’t throw it farther. It’s wedged in a wide crack in the dirt between two big clumps of grass. I hand it to Natalie. “Here it is.”
“Thanks.” She checks her texts, then locks the screen and slides the phone into her bra. It’s those little things that girls do sometimes that devastate me: sliding a phone into a bra, adjusting panties under a skirt, redoing a ponytail.
Natalie turns and walks down the footpath toward the blackberry growth.
I say, “Want me to walk you home?”
“No,” she says. “I’m okay. I’ve got mace on my keychain and it’s only old people who live here. I think I can mace an old man all by myself.”
“But what if your mom’s not home yet?”
She turns around and looks at me, walks backward as she talks. “Then I’ll mace my stepdad.”
I laugh, but it’s not funny.
She puts one hand up and waves, then disappears into the shadows of the blackberry growth.
CANOE RIDE
The morning is like a new box of nails, dew silver on the grass. I walk up to the house to see if Grandma is awake. In her room, she’s sitting in bed, eating saltine crackers, sipping at a cup of Sprite.
I say, “Good morning, Grandma.”
“Oh, good morning, sweetie.”
“Feeling all right?”
She smiles. “I’m doing just fine.”
I sit down on the edge of her bed and she stops eating.
“No, no. Keep eating, Grandma.”
She takes another bite of cracker.
I pat her leg. “Is today good?”
“Yes. I think we should take a short canoe ride together.”
“Perfect.” I stand up. “I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
I grab pillows and a blanket from the closet, jog down the hill, flip the canoe, and set up a spot for Grandma in the front of the boat. Then I push the canoe to the edge of the water, slide the bow in, weight the stern with a rock, and jog back uphill.
Grandma’s still sipping Sprite in bed.
“Are you ready?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
I help her to her feet. Support her as she shuffles out of the room, down the hall to the back door.
Grandpa’s in his study, modeling. He calls out, “Where are you all going?”
“Short canoe ride, Grandpa.”
“Is that a good idea?”
I ignore that question. Slide the back door open and lift Grandma off her feet. “I can carry you from here.”
“Are you sure, sweetie? Even down the hill?”
“Definitely.”
I carry her down the hill through the long grass, past my tent, careful not to trip on any of the gopher mounds, the ruts, the bigger river rocks. I wade out into the water and set Grandma in the front of the canoe, on top of the pillows. Pull the blanket over her. “Are you comfortable, Grandma?”
“I’m perfect, sweetie.”
“Good.” I push off and jump in. The canoe rocks back and forth as it glides out. I hold the paddle. Wait for the glide to slow.
I stroke to the middle. The canoe cuts across green glass, no wind and no fish jumping. South of us, a family of ducks steps off a mud peninsula, swims out past the shallows into the algae patch.
“This is wonderful,” Grandma says.
“Yeah, it’s pretty nice out here.” I say this as I scan the top of the water for caiman eyes, for the swish of a monster’s tail.
“Oh no, sweetie,” Grandma says, “it’s more than nice.”
I can’t see her face, but I know she’s smiling. I can hear the smile in her voice, see the way she tilts her head a little bit as if the smile weighs something, as if it pulls her head just a little bit off center.
KERMIT WASHINGTON
We’ve had this meeting set up since the end of school. I wrote it on the calendar that I keep in the kitchen and circled it in bright red pen. It should be a good meeting. Coach always liked me. But I haven’t talked to him since school got out, so I’m nervous. I make myself eat a bowl of cereal and drink a glass of water to try to settle my stomach before I leave, but I still feel like I could puke.
I bike down to the high school and lock my bike outside the gym. Go in the west-side door and onto the hardwood. I don’t see anybody in there yet, and I’m 15 minutes early, so I start dribbling. Right-handed, left-handed, crossovers, behind my back, and cutting. I dribble out to the three-point line, then cross up an imaginary defender, drive, and lay the ball in off the glass. Then I do the same sequence but finish with a reverse layin to use the rim as protection against shot blockers.
Coach comes in. He says, “Can you do that with your left hand? If you come right to left?”
“No. Not as well, but I’ve been working on it.” I dribble back to the three-point line. Run the crossover, drive, and hit the layin left-handed. Then back to the three-point line, crossover, drive, and reverse layin with my left, but I miss the shot. The ball rolls off the front of the rim. I rebound and put it back with a power layin. Say, “Let me do that again.”
Coach smiles and nods. “Go, Russell Westbrook.”
I run the play four more times. On the first, I hit the reverse layin. Then I miss again. Then I hit two in a row.
“Good,” Coach says. “Now let’s go to my office.”
I was just getting a sweat going and his office is hot. He reaches into a mini-fridge under his desk and pulls out an orange Gatorade. Hands it to me.
“Thanks, Coach.”
He waves me off. “Let’s cut to the chase here, T. Let’s talk about last year.”
“Okay, Coach.”
“Do you know why you made varsity as a freshman?”
I take a drink of Gatorade. “Is it because I was a year older than most freshmen?”
He smiles. “That probably didn’t hurt you. But no. Most sophomores don’t make varsity either. There were two reasons that you made it, and I’ll give you a hint: neither of them had to do with your shot or your ball handling.”
“Well, I was going to guess my ball handling,” I say. “I wasn’t going to guess my shooting, that’s for sure. But it’s getting better.”
Coach smiles again. He has a way of smiling that doesn’t show any of his teeth. It’s like his face turns into a map of cracks. He says, “Your handles are better than your shot, that’s true, but it didn’t have to do with that.”
I wait for him to tell me.
“See, T, after tryouts, we came up with two words for each player in the tryout pool. Things like ‘shooter’ or ‘rebounder,’ ‘mistake-prone,’ ‘defender,’ ‘lazy,’ or ‘foolish.’ And do you know what our two words were for you?�
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I shake my head.
He holds up two fingers. Touches the first finger and says, “Quickness.” He touches the second finger and says, “Passion.” He smiles again. His face cracks into a dozen lines.
“Thanks, Coach.”
“No, don’t thank me. You earned those two words. Those were the words that all of the coaches agreed on. We needed a guard quick enough to stay with any guard in the league, and we also needed a kid passionate enough about the game of basketball to go out and bleed on that floor, to dive for loose balls, run through screens, play help defense. And that’s why you made varsity.”
“Thanks, Coach.”
“The problem is”—he pauses—“we didn’t know that you’d make someone else bleed on the court too.”
I hang my head when he says that. I hate to think about that night. I hate to think about the lost season, how much I let everyone down, how I let that player get to me. I say, “It was a big mistake, Coach. I’m real, real sorry about that.”
“Now I understand,” Coach says. “I know what he said about your mom, and I get how fired up you can be during a ballgame. Believe me, I understand all that. Your passion is infectious out there. But still, you can’t do what you did. You can’t act like that.”
“I know, Coach. I really do.”
“See, because he was running the other direction, there was so much force in the punch. He ran into your fist, and it looked like his head was going to come off.”
“I know, Coach. I jammed my wrist when I hit him. My wrist didn’t loosen up for a week.”
Coach nods. “Did you see the video on YouTube?”
“No, Coach. I didn’t want to see that. Creature told me.”
“It went viral. The video has a little bit of game footage to start, then the punch, then the paramedics on the court and a long shot of a girl holding her hands to her mouth and crying.”
“It sounds horrible.” I hang my head even more. It’s like someone’s placed a 45-pound weight bar on the back of my neck and it’s pushing my head down.
“Yeah, that video is horrible,” he says. “And it might even be why you got such a harsh penalty from the league.”
I nod.
He says, “There was a punch like that a long, long time ago in the NBA. A forward named Kermit Washington punched another forward, a guy named Rudy Tomjanovich, and it ended up being Washington’s defining moment in the league.”
This is the Part Where You Laugh Page 10
