by John Goode
“Hey, Shayne,” I said as if we always talked instead of the three times we’d ever actually exchanged words.
“Hey, dude, have a second?”
He had that tone of voice that made you want to do what he said no matter what. It was the voice of a leader, of an alpha dog, and it was damn annoying because I didn’t have it. People usually went along with what I said because they either liked me or liked what they thought I was, but it was rarely because of a commanding presence or anything. Shayne was the opposite. He was Foster’s Captain America and would grow up to be a cop or a firefighter, and people would just automatically do what he said even if he was wearing a T-shirt and jeans.
“Let me grab my coat,” I said, realizing I had done exactly what he wanted without even asking why.
Josh looked at him in the door and then back to me. “You want some backup?” he asked quietly.
“Do you think he knocked at the door to invite me to get jumped?”
Josh had no answer for that. Instead he called out, “Take your phone just in case.”
I shook my head and closed the door behind me. “Where we going?” I asked Shayne.
He looked both ways down the hall and said. “DQ is across the street?”
“Sure,” I said, slipping my jacket on. I was expecting some version of trash-talking since Granada was in the playoffs as well. After all, the rivalry between our schools was pretty intense. There was no basis for it; it was just the way it had always been and most likely will always be in Foster.
We got in the elevator and headed down to the lobby. “Congratulations for getting here, by the way,” he said absently.
“Um, thanks, you too, man.” This didn’t feel like trash-talking.
“You know it’s going to come down to us, right? I’ve seen the same game tapes as you have. You’re the only competition we have this year.”
I hadn’t looked that far ahead, to be honest. I knew who we played tomorrow and didn’t have a thought past that game. I couldn’t think about what was next, because what was here needed every single bit of my concentration. But thinking about who else was here, I had to agree with him. “It’ll be a good game, though.”
He smiled as we got off in the lobby. “You can count on that.”
We walked out of the hotel and crossed the street to Dairy Queen. We both ordered a sundae and sat on the benches out front. Neither one of us talked for a while as we consumed the ice cream. Finally he said, “I heard what happened.”
I looked up at him, having no idea what he meant.
“About the prom thing. I heard what they did. That sucks, man.”
“Yeah,” I said bitterly, trying to have some form of a poker face. “Just more shit on top of a shitty year.”
“Did you turn down A&M?” he asked, paying acute attention to my answer. “I heard rumors, but I want to hear you say it.”
I finished my sundae and nodded. “Yeah, they wanted me to lie about being gay and all that. Was a whole set of things I could and couldn’t do. So I told them to fuck off.”
“Wow” was all he could say as he took another bite. “I don’t know if I could have done that.”
“Yeah, but you’re not gay,” I reminded him.
“No, but still, I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t give up to be an Aggie. Had to be hard.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything, ’cause what was there to say?
“Anyways, I asked about our prom, and they said you had to actually go to the school to be able to get in and all that, which sounds like bullshit since no one ever cared who went to what prom before. So I’d say you guys can come to ours, but I have a feeling they’re going to do the same thing.”
I just stared at him for a long time, not even sure how to compute what he’d just said.
“But what they’re doing, it’s crap. I just thought you should hear that from someone else, and I’m not the only one who thinks that.”
“I don’t get it,” I said slowly. “We’re not friends. Why do you care?”
“I can only care about friends when they’re being fucked over?” he asked rhetorically. “I knew Kelly too. He went to football camp with my brother, and he was cool enough. I just think after everything is said and done, what you do in your bedroom doesn’t matter to me. And it shouldn’t change if you can go to your fucking prom or not.”
He grabbed the empty sundae container and tossed it into the trash. “I just wanted to let you know, no one who counts cares if you’re gay, man.”
I was kind of blown away. “Thanks, man.”
He gave me a grin and said, “You want to thank me? Kick the shit out of those losers so I can play you in the championship. I’ve been dying to take you down since I was twelve.”
I laughed. “You can try, Fuller, but I got your number.”
He held his fist out for me to bump. “Then we’re cool?”
I bumped it back. “More than cool, dude. Consider yourself a friend.”
He nodded as we got up and walked back to the hotel. It was going to be an interesting few days.
THE BASEBALL nut in me wants to explain every single moment of the next two games, but I have a feeling you’d doze off somewhere around the third inning. So let me tell you, we won both games and ended up in the finals against Granada, just like Shayne had predicted. We were tired, but there was no way any of us were sleeping the night before the game. Tyler, Matt, Kyle, and his mom went to dinner with me and my parents that night. It was the first time all my families sat at one table, and I was more than a little nervous about how they would get along.
“So, UC Berkeley?” my dad asked Kyle after we had ordered. “That’s not an easy school to get into.”
I saw Kyle’s mom beam with pride as Kyle blushed slightly from the praise. “So is A&M,” Kyle remarked after taking a drink of water. “A lot harder to get in on a baseball scholarship than an academic one.”
My dad paused for a moment. This was his first exposure to Kyle’s underhanded snark, and as always it took a moment for a first-timer to recognize it. “I agree, and I was very proud of Brad for both achieving it and for turning it down.”
“It’s hard to read emotion on some people sometimes,” Kyle replied, sounding apologetic even though I knew he wasn’t. “Was just making sure.”
My dad studied Kyle for a long few seconds and then said, “I think maybe you were just busting my balls because you’re not my biggest fan.”
Kyle nodded, putting his glass down. “That too.”
It took everyone half a second to realize what Kyle had said.
And then my dad started laughing boisterously. Everyone else followed hesitantly. “You really are my son’s defender, aren’t you?”
Kyle gave him a small smile, which indicated he was publicly acknowledging the mirth of the situation but wasn’t sharing in it. “Your son can defend himself just fine. What I refuse to do is let someone belittle him ever again. That isn’t going to happen on my watch.”
Kyle’s mom nudged him and whispered something to him, but he refused to acknowledge it. Instead he just locked eyes with my dad and waited.
Slowly my dad nodded. “Agreed.” He looked over at me and added, “I am as proud as I can be with the way you’ve been playing the last two games, and it doesn’t matter what the score is for the next game. In my book you already won everything that counts.” He looked back at Kyle. “Better?”
Kyle smiled for real. “Completely.”
My mom looked over to Kyle’s mom. “You mind if I borrow him sometime? I need to know how he does that.”
Linda looked at Kyle, and the expression on her face looked like she was seeing him for the first time. “I’d like to know that too.”
After that, the tension at the table went away, and we began to talk randomly about the game, graduation, and everything else. Under the table, I grabbed Kyle’s hand and squeezed it in thanks. He squeezed it back, and I knew it meant “I love you too.”
Yo
u couldn’t have pried that smile off my face with explosives.
“So what are we going to do about prom?” Tyler asked after dinner but before dessert.
“I put a complaint in to the school,” my mom said. “But they said the rule came from the prom committee, which is voted on by the students, so there was nothing the school could do.”
“That’s bull,” I said, stopping myself from finishing that word. “Raymond put them up to it. He’s had it out for us from the start.”
“We’re just not going to go,” Kyle said out of nowhere, ignoring the way everyone looked at him in shock. “What? Why would anyone think we would want to spend our prom at a dance that the people don’t want us attending? What is there to get out of it besides pissing people off? I’d rather stay at home and be with people who actually like us than sit in a dance in some form of protest.” He shook his head and refused to look anyone in the eyes. “I’ve charged at all the windmills I can in this town. I really just want to spend the rest of my time here drama-free.”
No one said a word. The sound of the restaurant was deafening in the silence. Finally my dad cleared his throat and said, “Well, that just sounds like you’re chickenshit.” Of course, everyone looked at him, but he was staring at Kyle. “It’s hard to read emotion on some people, so just wanted to make sure we were clear. That is a chickenshit reason.”
Kyle gave him a half smile. “I think maybe you were just busting my balls because you’re not my biggest fan.”
My dad gave him the same smile back. “Then you’d be wrong because right up to you saying that, I was becoming a huge fan. Now, not so much.”
My mom hit him on the arm, but he ignored her as nicely as Kyle had ignored his mom.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Kyle answered diplomatically.
My dad finished his drink before responding. “That’s the problem with the world, young man. No matter what or who you believe in, you’re going to disappoint someone. What separates the boys from the men is how much you care about it.”
Kyle said nothing, and Tyler chimed in, “He has a right not to go,” even though he had made it pretty clear a couple of minutes ago he thought we should go under protest as well.
My dad looked at Tyler. “Yes, he has a right not to go. But I think the point of the conversation is that he also has a right to go. The decision should be his, and instead, he has let someone make it for him.”
“I’m still in the room,” Kyle said, sounding a little annoyed.
My dad didn’t miss a beat. “Are you? I couldn’t tell by the way you weren’t saying anything.”
“Nathan,” my mom exclaimed. “That’s enough.”
“Is it?” my dad asked Kyle. “Is it enough?”
Kyle tossed his napkin down. “I’m not hungry anymore.” He pulled his chair away from the table. “I’ll meet you guys outside,” he said to his mom and Tyler.
I got up as he walked out. I shot my dad an evil look before chasing after Kyle. He got to the parking lot before I could get him to slow down. “Come on, please,” I said, panting. “I’ve played like three games in a row. I do not need extra running.”
He spun around and looked at me. “How did you live with that man?” he demanded. “He is so… arrrrghhh,” he screamed, turning around.
“My dad is a dick. I thought you knew that,” I said, trying to calm him down.
“‘Dick’ doesn’t even come close to… I mean, where does he get off….” His words tumbled out of his mouth carelessly, like each one was fighting with the other to get said first. “Do you agree with him?”
This would be the moment, if I was in one of Kyle’s comic books, that there would be squiggly lines all around my head telling me danger was close.
“If you don’t want to go, then we shouldn’t,” I answered as neutrally as possible.
“I didn’t ask that. I asked if you agreed with him,” Kyle reiterated.
“Yeah, I do,” I said bluntly. “I think what they’re doing is bullshit, and I can’t believe I’m not going to get to dance with you in front of the entire school and show them how stupid they are, but I’m in love with you, which means if you don’t want to fight, then I don’t want to fight. But if you ask me if what we’re doing is chickenshit, then I’d have to say yes, it is.”
He stared at me for a long time. It was pretty much the same look I’d expect from him if I had grown a second head or a third arm.
“Why didn’t you say something?” he asked after a while.
“Because I’m in love with you.” I tried not to make that sound like duh, but I’m pretty sure I screwed that up. “If you don’t want to fight, Kyle, that’s your choice, and I will respect it, completely. But you asked if I agreed with my dad, and I do.”
“If you want to fight it—”
“No,” I said, cutting him off and walking over to put my arms around him. “We don’t fight because I want to. That’s not how it works.”
He pressed his face onto my chest. “But we don’t fight if I say so? How is that fair?”
“It isn’t.” He looked up at me. “It’s not, but trying to fight Raymond again isn’t something we do because the other wants to. It has to be both of us or nothing. That’s the only way it works.”
He leaned into me again, and he sounded like he was going to cry. “I’m so fucking tired. I just want to close my eyes and wake up and have this whole thing over with.”
I kissed the top of his head. “Then close your eyes. Before you know it, we’ll be gone.”
A couple of minutes later, Tyler, Matt, and Linda walked out into the parking lot. “Honey, you okay?” Kyle’s mom asked. “That man is….” She looked at me and smiled. “Sorry, I know it’s your dad, but he is a real gem.”
“It’s okay, I’ve called him worse,” I assured her. “You okay?” I asked Kyle quietly.
“I feel like an asshole. This is supposed to be about your game, and now it’s—”
I kissed him, which was the nicest way to tell him to shut up I knew how.
When I was done, he smiled at me, and I knew it was going to be okay. “Kick their ass tomorrow?” he asked.
“For you, anything.”
It wasn’t a perfect night but close enough for my life.
The next morning the locker room was quiet as a library, which, let me assure you, was not normal at all. Usually there was laughing and wrestling as we tried to burn up a little energy before we went out onto the field. But now, no one said a word as we got dressed. You could swear we were going to a funeral. Shaking my own worries out of my head, I decided to change that.
“Okay, listen up,” I said, walking to the center of the unfamiliar locker room. “I have something to say.” Everyone looked over at me. I didn’t see a calm face in the bunch. “This is just another game, same nine innings as every other one. It is no different than any other one we’ve played this year. We are going to walk out onto that field, and we are going to play the best game we know how to. And you know what? We’re going to win. And you want to know why? Because we don’t go to the newest school, and we don’t have the shiniest equipment or the most expensive gear, but you know what we have that they don’t?” I pointed to the black armband on my sleeve. “We have something we’re playing for. I don’t want to go out there to beat them, and I don’t want to win because it would make us cool. I want us to go out there and play one more game for Kelly, and I want to show him how much we miss him. Not by crying, not by being sad, but in a way he would understand. By kicking Granada’s ass off the field.”
Everyone started to cheer with me.
“We are not players, we are warriors, and we are fighting for those who cannot fight anymore. Who’s with me?”
The sound was thunderous in the small room. One by one they began to chant “Kelly,” again and again. I looked around at my team, and I had never been so damn proud of a group of guys, ever. We charged out of the locker room as a team, ready to take blood if we had to.
> So it turns out that Shayne wasn’t lying. His team was every bit as good as he implied.
He was a wicked good pitcher, and he had taken me out swinging twice. Each time I wasn’t even close to the ball. It was just dumb luck that we were only behind by two runs. It was top of the seventh, and I was beginning to have a bad feeling about this. I looked out to the stands and saw my parents sitting with Kyle and the rest of the Brady Bunch. They didn’t look like they were feeling any more positive than I was. I looked a couple of seats down and saw that Frank guy from A&M sitting there looking at his iPad.
There were two guys on base, and I watched Shayne pitch to Kenny. The ball dropped low as it got to the plate, an obvious ball. I ignored everything else and just watched Shayne wait for his catcher to toss him back the ball. I could see the sweat soaking through his cap and the way his eyes looked at the batter with a sense of dread.
He was out of gas.
He was at his breaking point, and his arm was about to give out. He could still pitch, but he was about to lose his heat, which meant he had maybe a couple of pitches left before he was going to have to tag out and be replaced. Kenny took another ball, and I saw Shayne cuss quietly to himself, no doubt telling himself to keep it together until the end of the inning.
I was up next, and I knew I finally had a chance to catch us up or pull ahead if Kenny got on base.
Looking over to Frank, I saw him watching intently, no doubt looking for someone to take the hole I opened up when I walked away. I saw Shayne throw a weak strike that Kenny fouled off. Yeah, he was about to lose it.
“We got this,” Josh said from behind me. “Now’s your time to hero it up.”
I looked back at him and heard the umpire call the third ball. Every particle of my being told me to shut up and just agree with Josh. Go out, slam the fuck out of that ball, and be the guy who turned the championship around once and for all. Shove the fact that just because I was gay didn’t make a damn bit of difference on how I played ball. I thought about the cheering and the celebration, and then asked myself what would Kyle do.
