“End of July,” I said.
“My goodness, you’re big,” said Coach Johnson.
Ken Johnson, who was shorter than me but probably weighed over two hundred, just glowered. I didn’t smile at him. I was lost in swirling thought, guilty, crazy thought:
How did I grow so much? Am I driving Jerri crazy by eating everything? Maybe Jerri really needs my paper route money? I probably ate ten thousand pounds of food in the last year. Oh my God. We’re running out of money, and that’s why Jerri is so stressed out and has to go to a therapist and is crazy and calls me the f-bomber. I am eating Jerri and Andrew out of house and home! I ate that bagel! I ate an extra bagel! Oh, Jesus, I’m eating my family! Oh my God!
Coach Johnson talked, and Cody talked, and I spun out in my brain, and Ken Johnson shook his head, and then Cody motioned for me to follow him, which, thankfully, I did.
As we climbed the stairs to the weights, Cody said, “See, I thought you were big, Reinstein.”
“I don’t feel big, man.”
“You gotta start carrying yourself like you’re that big. Really, Reinstein. Nobody will ever mess with you again.”
“Nobody messes with me now.”
“Are you kidding me? Everybody does. I used to, and I don’t mess with anybody because I think messing with people is dumb.”
“Really? You messed with me?” Duh. I knew that. People messed with me all the time, and I hated them for it. That’s why I spent an hour drawing a picture of Ken Johnson getting shot with bottle rockets two nights before.
“Carry yourself the way you really are, though, and it won’t happen.”
“How am I really?” God, I said stupid stuff. Pee-smelling Cody could’ve made shit of me, but he didn’t.
“Here’s the truth, Reinstein. Without ever setting foot on a football field, you’re a Division I prospect. You’ve got unbelievable speed and a big frame. I’ll never have any of what you’ve got.”
“No. I’m a beanpole. You heard Ken.”
“You’re maybe a beanpole for an eighteen-year-old but not for a fifteen-year-old. You’re just plain big for a fifteen-year-old.”
“That makes sense.”
“So carry yourself like a real athlete, and everyone will treat you that way. Okay? I’ll let everybody know that you are a serious D-I prospect and then you just act that way.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
The voice in my head was still barking at me a little. It was going on about how I was eating Jerri and Andrew.
Then Cody stopped climbing and grabbed my arm, which shocked me out of my head completely.
“But you have to do something for me. You have to lift weights and practice all summer. You have to learn the playbook. If you do, we’re going to be unstoppable come fall. That’s what I want. I want to be unstoppable. We’ve got a huge line. Karpinski’s sort of an ass, but he’s an awesome receiver. I’ll get him the ball. And you? With you, Reinstein? Nobody’s gonna know what hit ’em. Jamie is going to be pissed to lose his spot, but you’re our tailback, Reinstein. No doubt. Will you work hard?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. I meant it.
“Thanks, man.”
Cody looked deep into my eyes. It was sort of weird. I got a surge of adrenaline.
“I really appreciate it,” he said.
I swallowed hard. I seriously meant it. I’d work my ass off.
We started climbing again toward the weight room, and I thought.
Who is Jamie? Oh, Jamie…Jamie…Jamie Dern…honky…grade older than me…dentist’s son. Have I ever said a word to him? Is he in the weight room now? What the hell would Gus think about this? He’d hate it. He’d make mean jokes. Should I tell him? He might not even respond to my email. I don’t have to tell him anything. Why don’t I hate it? Why do I want to do what Cody says? How did I get so damn big? When will I stop growing hair? What if I keep growing and growing and growing? What if I turn into King Kong? (Accidentally smash Ken Johnson?) What if I have to move to an island away from people because I crush them if I live among them?
We popped into the putrid-smelling weight room.
“When’s your birthday, Reinstein? It’s coming up, right?”
“July 31st.”
“I’m going to throw you a party.”
“Oh, thanks.” I wasn’t sure I liked the idea.
And then we lifted weights. Jamie Dern was up there, pumping it like the rest of the yahoos. At one point, after a couple poop-stinkers prodded him, he came over to where me and Cody were. He said he wouldn’t give up his spot without a fight, but he didn’t look mad or anything. Maybe he looked relieved? He actually shook my hand. And even though I could keep up, pumping weight and shouting gah and sweating and stinking and lifting because I’m apparently naturally strong, at the end, I was so exhausted that I could barely walk.
“That’s what I’m talking about! That’s what I’m talking about!” Cody shouted.
Sort of couldn’t walk. Before we left, Cody made me go down to the gym. He handed me a basketball. He said, “Dunk it, Reinstein.”
“I can’t. I can barely touch the net.”
“No. Dunk it.”
I looked up. Half the honkies of the world were hanging over the weight room railing, staring down at me. I got a burst of adrenaline. I bounced the ball once, looked up at the rim, took about five steps, sprung up, and stuffed the ball through hard with my right hand.
“Holy effing crap!” I shouted.
“Woooo!” Cody shouted.
“Jesus, Rein Stone,” someone shouted from above.
“You’re big,” Cody smiled.
Then my legs turned to rubber, and I almost fell over. Cody and I shuffled to his truck, and he drove me home. When he stopped in front of my house, he said, “This is going to be a great summer.”
“Yeah,” I smiled and then climbed down from the cab. “Thanks, man.”
I went in through the garage door and avoided Andrew and Jerri, who were upstairs talking. I showered but couldn’t get the smell out of my nose. Pee smell. I wondered if I would smell vaguely of pee for the rest of my life? A brawny pee-smeller with fur and muscles. I wondered if it was worth it. I figured it was. I already knew it was. Definitely. “Did you notice your brain didn’t talk to itself the entire time you were lifting?” the voice in my head asked. That’s great. Maybe I’ll learn to enjoy the pee smell. I thought of my dad and the smell in the Volvo. I sniffed and crinkled my nose. Weird smell. Then I coated myself in deodorant. I literally put deodorant on my whole body. Slip slop. Smelled like flowers soaked in pee. Gross.
The doorbell rang.
Oh, no.
Aleah.
Andrew.
Jerri.
Me.
CHAPTER 16: WE COULD ONLY SEE EACH OTHER, SERIOUSLY
Yeah, what a huge day.
From the bathroom where I’d just applied deodorant to my entire body, I heard Aleah and her father enter my house. I’d had no intention of “visiting” with them. Before. But wasn’t I large? Wasn’t I a Division I football prospect? I dunked a basketball. Holy Christ, I dunked a freaking basketball! I liked what Cody said too. I had to carry myself like an athlete. Jesus.
Before doing anything, I went into my bedroom to check email. Surely Gus would have written something hilarious by now. I opened it up. Nothing. Where the hell was Gus?
I wrote: beautiful piano girl from your bedroom is upstairs in my house.
From downstairs in my bedroom, I could hear Jerri play cheery, although I knew she was not.
“Oh, wonderful! Oh, lovely! What a beautiful dress!” She actually sounded kind of psycho (not surprising). I couldn’t hear Andrew at all, which made me think he was acting strange, probably just staring unblinkingly at Aleah from behind his plastic nerd frames and thinking about how jealous he was of her.
If I let Andrew and Jerri represent the family, there was no way I could face Aleah Jennings, super genius, at her house for the rest of the summer.
/> Om shanti shanti shanti, I mumbled. Then I slapped myself in the face. No, no, no! Not freaky om shanti! I am big. I am huge. I am an athlete.
I stood straight. I broadened my shoulders. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror that hung on my bedroom door. I said, “I am really big.” What was weird was this: I looked really big. For real. I looked like a young man you might believe is fast. I clenched my jaw and glared and looked sort of mean and ugly and, potentially, sort of smelly, which was accurate.
***
You know, I’ve never had any particular dislike for people who play sports. When I was little, I even watched football on TV. Green Bay Packers. I asked for a Brett Favre jersey once for my birthday (a request Jerri totally ignored—I believe she got me a Shel Silverstein poetry book that year). I’ve watched basketball too. I like big dunks. Sure, jocks smell funny. But animals don’t smell good, and I never blamed them for that fact. It’s nature. I never would’ve even cared that Ken Johnson played sports if he didn’t knock me off my damn bike when he was the one who parked half sideways in the swimming pool parking lot. Yes, it pissed me off that jocks called Gus names and me names and that Karpinski broke Sam Peterson’s finger in seventh grade (I’m sure on purpose, but he never got in trouble for it). None of that has to do with sports. I don’t mind sports. I like sports. I can be good at sports.
In the mirror, I expanded my chest, stood straight, and said, “I am huge.”
***
Two minutes later, I’d thrown on sweats (not to look like a jock but because all my pants were too short and they made me feel dumb) and I was upstairs, ready to face Aleah and her dad, to show that Reinsteins aren’t just a bunch of freaks.
I walked into the living room. Jerri and Aleah’s dad were sitting in the leather chairs talking about the college or something. Not a terrible scene. Aleah, who was wearing an orange sort of airy kind of sundress and looked completely, utterly awesome, sat across the coffee table from Andrew. They weren’t saying anything.
“Hello,” I said and smiled while I walked in.
“It’s the paperboy,” Aleah’s dad said. “You look bigger in the daytime.”
“I’m growing,” I told him.
“You do look tall,” Jerri said, then stared at me and cocked her head a little. She breathed out really hard. “Umm, I guess you’ve met Aleah?”
“Yeah,” I smiled.
Aleah’s mouth was open. Her eyes were watery. She looked sort of stunned.
“Uh, hi…you…”
“Hi. It’s Felton,” I said.
“Hi, Felton,” she said.
And then I blushed. I couldn’t take my eyes off her eyes. We were in this tractor beam of eyeball heat.
“I could be a zookeeper,” Andrew blurted. “That wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. I could pick up animal poop all day. I’d be happy working at the zoo.”
“Oh,” Aleah sort of whispered, still looking at me.
“I could be a veterinarian or an astronaut or a…” Andrew nodded.
“Andrew. Have you played anything for Aleah?” I asked without looking at him.
“That’d be great, Andrew. Play something for me,” Aleah said without taking her eyes off mine.
“I wouldn’t want to be a medical doctor. I don’t like people,” Andrew said. Then, he got up and played piano.
Andrew is really good. People hear him and they can’t believe he’s thirteen. He’s small, like I’d always been before the fur growth, but with big hands (I also have really big hands), and he puts his face close to the keys and looks up at the music and then back at the keys, which is sort of intriguing because it is so odd, and it seems impossible a tiny guy, so frail, can get so much sound out of a giant piano.
Neither Aleah nor I heard a single note he played. He must’ve played for ten minutes while Aleah and I stared at each other.
Then Jerri applauded and Aleah’s dad said, “Boy’s got chops.” Then there were crackers and cheese, which I didn’t eat. Andrew talked and Aleah nodded. I made a joke and Aleah laughed. Her dad laughed. Jerri laughed, not in a psycho way but in the sort of sweet, singy way she used to laugh. Aleah and I looked at each other.
“I don’t miss Chicago so much today,” she said.
“I don’t miss my old friend Gus that much,” I told her.
Aleah and I looked at each other. Andrew talked. Jerri and Aleah’s dad laughed. Jerri smiled huge. Andrew stopped talking. Andrew left the room. Jerri talked. Andrew came back dressed in his white orchestra jacket, wearing a bow tie. I laughed. Andrew played piano some more. Andrew bowed. Aleah and I looked at each other. Aleah’s dad said it was about that time. Aleah gave me her cell number and told me she’d be playing piano for me in the morning. I walked her to the door, and I guess her dad was with her, and I guess Jerri and Andrew were probably at the door too. But I honestly don’t remember. All I remember is Aleah walking to the car, backward walking so she could look at me and smile at me, and then she was gone. And I stared up the road, where dust from the Jenningses’ car hung in the summer air.
“Felton?” Jerri asked.
“Ass brain,” Andrew said.
“Hello,” I nodded at them both.
CHAPTER 17: IT'S 3 A.M.
I just turned my light off.
I’m achy and would like to fall asleep thinking about Aleah at my house that first day because that was good. But I can’t sleep. I can’t. I can’t!
In the past, after Andrew had a piano recital, which I would go to very grudgingly because I can be a jerk, he’d stay up until all hours of the night replaying the songs to try to burn it all into his memory or something. Jerri used to stay up with him, and she’d applaud after every replay and shout “Bravo!” They’d talk, and he’d play, and she’d clap and shout. I’d lie in the basement buried in pillows, going crazy, trying to get some sleep (even with my door shut, I’d very easily hear the piano vibrating through the floor like it was right next to my ear). He’d play and play and play. Crazy.
I understand.
I turned my light back on.
3 a. freaking m.!
Go. Go. Go.
CHAPTER 18: I LIKE ME SOME FRIENDS
After the Jenningses left that day, I sat stunned in my room for a while. I wanted to tell someone about Aleah. Gus was the obvious choice, but I didn’t want to send him email after email without him ever replying because I’d feel like a dork. I checked email again, hoping for Gus. No Gus.
I did have email though.
Cody sent me a link to a YouTube video of a dude named Jay Landry who is on St. Mary’s Springs, the team Bluffton was to play in its first game of the season. Cody wrote: check it. he’s a safety. big time. going to notre dame after next year. we’ll beat him.
The video was set to some kind of screamy speed metal and was just a bunch of clips of this Jay Landry hitting people on the football field, totally killing them, knocking the ball out of their hands, hitting receivers trying to make catches, standing over kids he’s knocked totally stupid, shouting, and flexing.
Oh my Jesus God, I thought. Is this really what’s going to happen to me? Does Cody think I’m going to like football after watching this? I do not want to have my whole curly Jew-fro head knocked off my shoulders by Jay Landry. Jesus.
I closed the YouTube window and looked back at email.
No, no, no. Nothing from Gus. Man!
So I decided to be a dork. I wrote: what if i said i love beautiful piano girl who lives in your bedroom and also that i am on football team and i am d-i football prospect and i jammed a basketball and i am smelly and in love?
His response came back in two minutes: what in hell you talking about? mom annoying as crap and i cant be on computer and grandmas apartment smells like poop and everybody hates me. i hate…
Before I finished reading Gus’s message, I received another email and went back to my inbox. Three messages in one day that weren’t all from Gus (only one was from Gus)? I was on record pace!
&
nbsp; It was from Cody again: me and karpinski going to grill and watch longest yard (bad football movie) sometime next week. you wanna hit that?
I responded right away: sounds good, man. thanks for video. jay landry is an animal. scary!!!
Cody messaged back right away: landry is good, but you’ll be better.
I jumped out of my chair and then sat back down. I shook my head. I’m going to be better than that animal? Then this occurred to me: I might suddenly have friends and a girlfriend. Are you kidding? That sounded really good, even if I’d have to grill out with Karpinski, one of the worst honkies on record (sorry).
What a day!
***
I mean, this is really the thing: I’d never had a girlfriend. The closest I ever came was in fifth grade when Abby Sauter lived in a house on the golf course, and we walked home from school together every day for about six weeks. One day, she said, “You’re my boyfriend. I wrote it in my diary.” After that, I almost passed out every time she was within twenty feet of me. I stopped walking home with her, running out the door after school to avoid her but tried to smile when I saw her in the hall.
By the next year, she was sticking pencils down the back of my pants and calling me Rein Stone in Mr. Ross’s independent study hour, which I totally didn’t get. Why is Rein Stone funny? It’s just my name with a vowel changed. When I cried, Jerri told me that kids have funny ways of showing they like each other. Oh, right, Jerri. She liked me because she stuck pencils in my pants. Great! I harbored the totally ridiculous notion that Abby was my girlfriend for another year.
Then in seventh grade, Abby, who had just gotten really tall and gotten boobs, shoved me against a locker so hard my head bounced off the metal. She pinned me there and breathed on my face because she’d just eaten a bag of Doritos. Jess Withrow shouted “Gross!” I figured at that point, Abby had broken up with me. My stomach hurt for a month.
But not long after, me, Gus, and Peter realized that honkies were honkies and were different than us and that we hated them.
In eighth grade, I got called Gay Boy Rein Stone so much that I began to figure I was gay, even though I was attracted to girls, especially Abby Sauter, who I believed to be a terrible person, but I couldn’t help it. I thought about how I’d like to smell her Doritos breath again.
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