She hung out the rinsed towel, flushed the toilet, and joined him. “That’s crazy. I know what’s going to happen tonight. Don’t you?”
He shook his head. She was always so sure of him. Even when he couldn’t figure out how to be.
Edy reached into his shirt for the dog tags she’d given him. He wore them always, even in the shower.
“You and Leahy are going to face off,” she said, running a thumb over the tags’ beaded necklace. “It’ll be the toughest game you’ve ever had. You’ll have to push harder and run faster and be smarter than you’ve ever before, because Leahy has earned his name. But when you do, when you find what’s deep down in here,” she traced a hand to his abdomen, “he’ll be smoke to your fire, trailing you to the end zone.”
Edy kissed his forehead, tucked away the tags, and stood. When she held out a hand, Hassan snatched it, not to pull himself up, but to pull her in for the fiercest of hugs.
He was ready.
Ready for anything.
~~~
Below-freezing weather for the night of the game, that was what they predicted. Hassan and his teammates were quarantined that day, remaining at school for dinner on through till it was time for the bus ride to West Roxbury. At the Phelps’ house, the excitement was palpable with everyone jostling about, shouting for hats and gloves and scarves that might have been there, next door, or in one of five cars.
With the fall of night, Edy bundled in a sweater, jeans, and black goose down coat. She painted the palms and backs of her black gloves, the fold of her black skullcap, and the tips of her black scarf all with a white “twenty-seven”, Hassan’s number. She then gave her cheeks the same treatment.
Edy told herself that she wasn’t nervous. On the drive back to school with her parents, on the climb in the bleachers to their seats and as a massive Robert Leahy, prodigy of Boston’s mean streets, trotted out to the field, she told herself that she was not nervous. She didn’t care how good Leahy was, or if they said he was the best. This was Hassan’s night. It was theirs. She sensed it.
“You okay, kiddo?” Edy’s father placed a hand on her knee and squeezed.
He placed a finger on her forehead where a white “twenty-seven” sat, pressing with a smile that reflected her own anxiety.
“This is the beginning,” he told her. “The beginning.”
Certainly, she could feel as much. Though the beginning of what, she couldn’t be sure.
Time for kickoff.
West Roxbury won the coin toss, and with it, opted to receive instead of kick. The game began like a scuffle set to mute, with neither team retreating nor advancing. Helmet to helmet, pad to pad, cleats grinding into grass, offense and defense clashed in a stubborn assault, from which neither gained an advantage. And as the minutes of the first quarter ticked on, Edy scowled at an unchanged scoreboard.
Things went wrong in the second. Six plays set at a furious pace and West Roxbury found themselves within kicking distance. Unwilling to take a chance on a failed touchdown, they opted for the field goal and put points on the board for the first time that night. Murmurs wafted from the crowd. Mutiny, Edy thought. Already it sounded like betrayal.
Time dwindled on the first half. Eventually, South End’s quarterback, Jason Mann, hurled a pass, only to have it picked off by West Roxbury.
They ran it back for a touchdown.
Edy stood at the close of the first, gaze scanning South End’s team for a glimpse of twenty-seven. Shoulders after shoulders slumped, heads lowered, helmets pulled off with the unmistakable look of the lost. And the crowd wasn’t much better. Behind Edy, a fat man in a padded navy coat with a dollop of mustard high on the breast, promised everyone within ten decibels that Leahy would be the top player in the nation come senior year, how he knew that a school like South End, with soft and pampered kids, could never match up against a beast like West Roxbury. They were tough and hungry, he went on, sloshing toppings from his hot dog, and no rich kid could change that.
“Oh, shut up,” Edy snapped. “You haven’t even figured out how to keep the food off your breasts.”
“Edy!” her father cried. But her mother laughed.
“You little brat,” the man snarled. “Watch your mouth or I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Edy’s mother interjected. “Threaten the daughter of the district attorney?”
Her mother’s gaze fell slow, taking in the increasingly widening girth as if she could melt his fat like butter under heat. When she looked up again, another lump of toppings splattered onto his lap.
“Get a bib,” her mother said. “Or better yet, keep your damned mouth closed.”
Her mother faced forward again, dignified as ever, amidst the choking chuckles of Ali. She gave him only the hint of a smile.
Never in her life had Edy’s mother spoken up for her. But before she could point that out, a roar erupted from the crowd.
Hassan had attempted a run, only to get mowed down by Leahy.
A loss of three yards.
“No tears,” her father warned, even as Edy felt them bubbling upward. “This is exactly what he needs.”
Fury made her forget the cold as she contemplated how her father could say such a thing. He hadn’t seen Hassan. He hadn’t seen the fear, the vomiting, the uncertainty. Edy turned away from her dad and refused to look at him again. Lips pursed, she stared at a distant point just past the marching band but found she couldn’t ignore his words.
Mostly, football had come easily for Hassan. After a slow start, he blossomed into long yards and big plays, his right in the wake of talent and hard work. Last year he’d set records; this year he’d do the same. Despite that, people thought Leahy better. Why?
Because Hassan had never tasted the abyss.
That was what her father meant.
When the South End football team trotted out for the second half, Edy leapt to her feet, electrified. “Get your head out of your ass, Hassan, and kill him!”
“Edy!” Rani cried.
Dismay echoed all around.
She would deal with her punishment later. But at that moment, Hassan needed her. She took to a battle cry, something wild and incoherent, a frenzy of shrieks and stomps and whistles that she could carry for as long as he needed it. She would be there for him, there in the abyss with two quarters of game play and glory to be had.
The second half began like an omen as South End’s kickoff returner stumbled out of bounds on catching the ball. He hit the ground in a tangle of feet, and a collective groan seeped from the crowd.
The end seemed near. South End was unraveling from all edges. Quickly.
Hassan’s team lined up like the bow of an arrow. Edy spied them and frowned. A glance at her father told her he couldn’t read the play either. They were in ace formation, with Hassan in the backfield and two receivers on the ground. They could pass or could run, but neither seemed good given the setup. Hassan’s blocker, Kyle, was absent from the play, with two receivers on the ground in his place. The long pass seemed a fifty-fifty shot with the setup, while Hassan’s sporadic performance had probably zapped the coach’s willingness to rely on him, so Edy bit down on her knuckle and waited.
The ball snapped, and two walls collided in the night. Breath held, Edy’s heart beat out the tune of her impassioned fear. Helmets smashed, thrashing followed, bodies tangled into a monolith—a single horrible giant with arms and legs of an endless variety. No one boy could get free from another, and yet she needed them to. Desperately. Where was he? Where was he? Where was he?
Hassan appeared, slipping from the monster smoothly, like melted butter poured out. Two steps, no more and Leahy crashed out, dead on him in wild pursuit. Arms tucked, feet pounding, form perfect, Hassan split the field—fast, faster, impossibly so, as if harnessing light and sound, fire and fury, the very shrieks that decimated her throat. Leahy couldn’t keep up. No human possibly could. She hollered it, knowing he could hear. And in the end, Hassan toppled into the end zone, rolling
back over belly, unable to slow down even once on his feet.
He was back.
Mayhem ensued.
Seventeen
Victory. He had claimed it for his own. Not from the jaws of death, as people liked to say, but from the lips of naysayers, the throats of doubters. One touchdown alone couldn’t do it, so Hassan grabbed two to seal the game.
Duffle bag over his shoulder, he crossed the darkened parking lot as he headed for the bus that would take him back to South End. Soreness beat at his shoulders, back, and limbs, though it played distant second to a game with Leahy on the losing end. In his ears, teammates jabbered about this play and that, about the party at the Dysons’ in a few. They whooped and jostled, piling atop each other with elation only winners could have. Later would bring the pain of battered limbs, the agony of bruises and contusions. But that night they would celebrate their victory. Hassan’s gaze scanned the crowd.
“On your left,” Lawrence said.
Hassan spotted her, quick in her steps to meet them. He gave Lawrence a once over and saw a conversation long overdue and a friend willing to wait a little longer. Edy broke into a run, and Hassan forgot all that, dropping his bag in his eagerness to scoop her up.
How could he tell her? There was no way she knew what she’d done for him.
Edy stood on tiptoe, arms wrapping his neck before she whispered in his ear.
“I was with you,” she said. “I was with you the whole time. You could feel it, right?”
He exhaled and let the parking lot melt away. “Yeah, I could.”
She looked up at him, face lit by the moon, brown eyes wide, hair billowing from a cap with his number painted on. He touched the “twenty-seven” on her cheek and allowed the thumb drift from it to the pulse behind her ear. He tilted her chin upward and she leaned into his touch. This girl was all he’d ever need.
“Sawn!” Lawrence snapped. “Pay attention.”
Parents.
Eyes closed, he pressed lips to her forehead, knowing that if his mother saw, he’d be answering for that kiss in particular.
“Find me at the party,” Hassan said.
Edy pulled back. Not away, just back.
To his right, a procession of teammates chanted, “Rocky! Rocky!” in a wide berth processional to him. She looked from the team to Hassan.
“If you want me to choose,” he said, “you’ll win.”
Edy sighed. “Dyson house?”
“Dyson house,” he said and chanced a thumb against her cheek once more.
“Pradhan!” boomed the team coach.
Oh boy.
Hassan spotted him filling up the doorway of the team bus with his body.
“Pradhan, you sonofa—! Get on this bus! I’ve got a wife and two kids at home!”
Hassan looked around, blinking at the sudden absence of friends.
“An hour,” he said. Hassan snatched his duffle bag and trotted for the bus.
Inside, the doors swooshed closed behind him and the darkness engulfed. Hassan took a step forward, only to stop as Mason leapt to his feet.
“Ohhhhh, you dog!” he hollered. “Don’t you take advantage of that girl tonight!”
The bus roared in approval.
~~~
People cramped the Dyson home to fire-code capacity that night. Football players, dancers, jocks, and wannabes crushed in alongside Leahy and a dozen or so other West Roxbury players, jovial despite the loss. Hassan respected his nemesis more for the disposition; he didn’t think he had it in him to do the same if he were the loser.
Steve and Tessa Dyson were away, the agreement on condition of a South End win that night. As Hassan sat on the living room couch, vaguely aware of thumping hip hop as he sipped a beer, he imagined what it would have been like to have American parents like his friends, ones that did things as normal as let them throw parties and have girlfriends.
Next to Hassan was the Dysons’ twelve-year-old sister, Vanessa, a lump of a girl that rarely abandoned the television. That night, she wore blue shadow on her eyelids and a glob of red gloss on her lips, as she stared up at him with eyes distressingly full of adoration.
“Tell me what you like to do, Hassan. Besides football, I mean.”
Most of the time, Vanessa was a non-issue, holed away in her bedroom or the theater or some other place Hassan could avoid. But that night she was there, eager to celebrate his victory. Celebrate with him, apparently.
Vanessa placed a hand on his knee. He removed it with two fingers and dumped it on her lap. In a nearby corner, Matt and Mason nudged each other and pointed, winded and wheezing from laughter. No help would come. None ever did.
“I know you like football,” she said. “And you should, because you’re so good.” She leaned forward, plump hand once again on his knee. “Better than my brothers, even.”
She batted eyelashes at him, forcing him to shift back for space.
Hassan had two options. The first entailed getting up, which would invite over scores of girls, eager to share the limelight of his win. Alternatively, sitting there would mean enduring his best friends’ kid sister. He told himself the second option was best, even as Vanessa Dyson dragged a manicured finger across his arm.
“You know what?” she said. “Your eyes are so pretty.”
“Go to bed, Nessa,” Lawrence said and pulled her to her feet.
She pouted, only to stomp off after one stern look from her brother.
“Thank you,” Hassan mouthed.
Lawrence sighed. “She promise herself to you again?”
Hassan turned up his beer and found it empty.
“Not yet,” he said, with a glance to the can.
Lawrence grinned. “Guess I should’ve waited a little longer then.”
He disappeared before returning with a fresh beer. Hassan took it, mumbled thanks, and looked around. “Sawn. You and Edy—”
“I could use some air.” Hassan said and headed for the back porch.
He weaved between a throng of cheerleaders in uniform near the door. One grabbed his wrist and pulled, forcing him to pause long enough to pry her fingers from him without being forceful. A hand gripped his bicep; lips brushed his ear in invitation. Freedom found, Hassan slipped into the cold of the night, grateful.
Another half hour passed before Edy’s arrival. He spent it on the back porch, staring out at the skyline, and above it, the crescent moon.
She used to call it a fingernail moon when they were kids. Just a sliver of whiteness suspended in the sky, the rest hidden but still there. They were the same way, he supposed. A sliver of what was real in view, the rest hidden but still there.
The door behind him opened.
Edy.
“I was starting to worry,” he said.
“Sorry. I had to climb out the window.”
Hassan grinned. An easy task for a girl with all jocks for friends. He reached out an arm to her, impatience melted away.
“Come here, already,” he said and pulled her in.
She came to him, natural as breathing. When she folded into his embrace, their bodies melded—it was always the same. His lips found her forehead and pressed. Her arms wrapped his waist and squeezed, slipping beneath the fabric of his coat.
She tilted her head up to look up at him, smiling. He took her hand from his waist, cool to the touch, and brought it to his chest, at the place where his heart beat beneath. “Feel that?”
Her fingers spread, eyes wide. “It’s beating so fast,” she whispered.
“Do you know why?”
Edy lowered her gaze. “The game?”
“Try again.” He captured her mouth with his.
Their foreheads touched, their noses, their lips, and he whispered Edy’s name like a last exhale. In the ice of winter the whole world froze, except him and her in that moment. He kissed her again. Swallowing, devouring, moving in deeper, pressing closer with each passing second.
Everything. That’s what he aimed to give. Hollowed out and emp
tied from his soul into hers. Edy clung to him, opening, purring, and reeling him in, weakening Hassan by her ready reply, scorching them both with hunger. This kiss . . . oh . . . this kiss. He had his tongue in her mouth, thrusting. Edy met it with a moan.
“Oh. Wow. Okay.”
They looked up to find Lawrence staring at them. He blinked as if trying to burn the image away.
“Twins are about to tell the team that they’re committing to Georgia. I know you already knew, but they wanted you there and stuff.”
“Okay,” Hassan said.
“Okay.” Lawrence shifted, looked awkwardly from one to the other, and then ducked back into the house.
“Well,” Hassan said. “Let’s go give ’em something to talk about, huh?”
He held out his hand to her.
When she took it, Hassan swept her in.
“Leave your window open tonight,” he said. “I don’t plan on getting interrupted again.”
~~~
Edy slipped into her room just after one in the morning, the silence of a sleeping house engulfing her. She hesitated, back at the window, listening for a sound from her parents.
Nothing.
Leave her window open.
That was what Hassan had said and that was what she thought about, with the taste of his spearmint gum still sweetening her mouth.
He wanted to come to her, uninterrupted, with the promise of finishing they’d started.
Edy looked back at her bed.
The feel of his body lingered on her, the pressure of his lips still there. She could smell him, taste him, touch him still, it seemed. But there was no way she was ready to sleep with him. Her pounding heart said maybe.
Edy turned to find him scaling their tree. She stepped back, giving him space enough to swing in. Avocado eyes met hers, heavy-lidded and weighted. Exhaustion, definitely. Maybe even regret.
He kissed her before she could ask.
Tendrils of heat licked through her, tempting with all the possibilities, of kissing, of hands pulling her in tight, of hardness flush against her.
He slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her in. The smallest breath escaped her before he stole even that in a kiss. And there it was again. The thing she couldn’t name. The thing that curled and stirred at his touch, slight from day to day, but like a vortex suddenly.
Love Edy Page 19
