Carter Finally Gets It

by Brent Crawford

  I show up at Mr. Rumpford’s math class three days and forty minutes late. He seems to be aware of my dilemma by the hopelessly lost look in my eyes. He doesn’t even waste his breath, he just motions for me to take my seat and continues to write on the overhead projector. The isosceles triangle means very little to me on a regular day, but today I’m in a love triangle, so it’s pointless.

  19. The Setup

  We’re getting dressed up in our stinky pads and cleats for practice, and the boys are all over me.

  “You stole my bike, A-HOLE!!!” Hormone laughs.

  “If you kicked footballs as hard as you swing textbooks, you’d be in the NFL, Carter!” Bag says.

  “Cahta drougt ah hunk!” EJ babbles. We all look at him.

  “What’d you do while you were suspended?” Nutt asks.

  “Just chilled out, saw The Rock’s new movie with Abby,” I reply.

  I thought they might ask me about the movie, like, “Was it funny?” or “Was it action-packed?” But I don’t play football with film critics.

  “Did you get some during the movie?” Bag asks.

  “Did you grab up on those tig ol’ bitties?” Andre asks.

  The whole locker room stops what they’re doing. They’re all staring at me.

  “Tell me you got a look at ’em,” Andre continues.

  “Yeah, I-I-I sort of did,” I say quietly.

  “YEAH!” the room erupts.

  “Those things are nice, huh?” Nutt asks.

  “They’re like two handfuls, right?” Doc squeals.

  “Did you get that bra off?” Levi pesters.

  “Yep, they’re nice,” I reply.

  “YEAH!” they yell again.

  “Did you go down her pants?” Andre asks. Man, this guy’s like the National Enquirer today.

  “Naw,” I say, all humble.

  They groan with disappointment.

  “’Cause she was wearin’ a skirt,” I reply.

  “YEEAAH!” they roar. “He went up the skirt!”

  I thought I was the only one who hadn’t done any of this stuff, but they all seem really interested, like they may not be the experts I thought they were.

  “Short skirt?” Hormone drools.

  “Real short,” I reply. What am I supposed to do, lie? It was short! I’m not bragging, I’m just sitting on a bench in my underwear stating the facts.

  “Did you grab on that PUNANI?” Andre asks.

  I shrug and reply, “Uh, I . . . I think so.”

  “Waddaya mean, ya think so? Did ya get up in there or not?” Andre demands.

  Well, first of all, I don’t really know the definition of “punani,” and I’m not sure what all is meant by “up in there,” but I don’t want to disappoint anyone, so I yell, “Hell yeah, I got up in there!”

  “YEAH!” roars out one last time before Coach comes in and yells at us to get to practice. Thank God! What a bunch of ninnies. I always wanted to be a stud, but that sucked. I walk out of the locker room and see Andre talking to some band kids on the way up to the field. Which is weird because Andre never talks to anyone, especially not band geeks. As I walk by, I could swear a girl pointed at me and said, “That’s him!” I could be making that up in my head, though.

  We did the whole practice thing, and I got to kick. I muffed a bunch of them because I didn’t practice like I was supposed to. “Carter, you’re killin’ me!” follows every shank. We have a game tomorrow, so we have to go into the football classroom and talk about “the game plan,” and Coach draws his Xs and Os on the chalkboard and talks his face off about focus, intensity, and blah, blah, blah. I actually have no idea what we do in this room, because it’s air-conditioned, and the windows look out onto the field, where the cheerleaders practice their yelling and jumping, and the drill team works out their dance moves. I’m pretty focused on the drill team today.

  I see Abby. I see Amber. I see a storm brewing as a couple of band girls walk up to Abby and start yapping. Huh . . . There are a lot of hands on hips, head tilting, and fierce nodding out there. I wonder what those chicks are saying to Abby, because the other drill team fatties are herding around her. They’re all touching Abby on the shoulders and stuff. And then the crying starts. Why are those bitches making Abby cry? Are they finally giving her the boot for getting too skinny? Is this the “Eat Up or Get Out” talk? I don’t like seeing Abby cry. It hurts my chest.

  Abby and the herd stomp over to the cheerleader practice really fast. She walks straight up to Amber Lee. She must be asking if she can join the cheerleaders now that the drill team has dropped her. She would look great in one of those belly button–exposing short-skirt-jumper deals. Abby is really fired up and crying hard. Amber is just shaking her head. It must be too late to join up, or they’re all out of belly-button costumes.

  Bitchy Nicky and a few cheerleaders join Abby and the drill teamers. They break out fast, leaving Amber behind. They’re stampeding toward the building like there’s a sale at the mall. They look pissed. Maybe they’re coming to see if there’s one more cheerleader getup in storage. They’re getting closer to the window that I’m staring out of. There must be twenty of them, moving fast! A cloud of dust trails them. My heart is pounding as they roll right up to the football room window. Most of the guys have noticed them coming as well, and Coach has stopped blabbering. I can hear Abby crying.

  Bitchy Nicky puts her hand on her hip and yells to the closed windows, “Carter! CARTER!!! We know you’re in there, Carter!”

  She’s cheerleader loud and her tone is deafening. All the guys turn to look at me. I might throw up. Coach looks pissed.

  “CARTER? Carter! WE NEED TO TALK TO YOU!” Nicky yells again. “NOW!”

  “What the hell is this?” Coach asks me.

  “H-h-ho-how should I know?” I reply. My eyes are as big as basketballs.

  “Get up here,” Coach says, motioning for me to come closer.

  He opens the window. Abby’s cries fill the football room as Coach asks, all nice, “What can I do for you, ladies?”

  “Coach, we need to speak with one of your players. We need a word with Car-ter,” Nicky responds.

  “Yes, I get that,” Coach says as he turns away. “The whole building gets that.”

  Tears are rolling down Abby’s face, and two girls are having to hold her up. Oh, I’m a bad guy! And not in like, a cool way.

  Coach grabs my shirt and whisper/yells, “What the hell is goin’ on? What’d you do?”

  “Well, I may have told that crying girl out there that I loved her after we went to second base together at the movies . . . I think?”

  He rubs his forehead and asks, “What do you mean, ‘you think’?”

  I whisper, “Well, I thought oral sex was third base, and I know we didn’t do that, but Nutt’s brother said third base was when you touch, uh . . . pubic hair?”

  Coach looks like he wishes he hadn’t asked me that last question, and I’m not sure I actually answered it, so I continue, “Um, but what I think the real trouble is here, Coach, is that I might have asked a different girl to go to homecoming with me.”

  Coach fights back a smile and simply says, “You ain’t too bright, Carter.”

  “No, sir,” I reply.

  “Well, we’ve got a game tomorrow, and those girls aren’t going away on their own,” he says.

  “Yeah . . . Wait. What? No way!” I reply. You’re not throwing me to the wolves just so you can go over your crap game plan!

  “Yep,” Coach says empathetically. “You made your bed, now stick your head out that window and lay in it.”

  I thought he’d at least help me out with a diagram on the chalkboard. Like, I’m the one O, and there are twenty Xs with ponytails and weapons, but he just shoots me a snarl and gives me a hard shove to the window. The guys are all

  giggling.

  “Hey, Nicky,” I say.

  She looks like a lead prosecutor in a leotard. “Did you tell the whole football team that you had n
aked sex with Abby in the movie theater?” Nicky demands.

  Abby wails! The team howls with laughter.

  “What? No!” I say. How the . . . ?

  Andre opens the window next to me and says, “Yeah, he did.”

  “No, I didn’t!” I protest.

  “Yeah, you did! We all heard you,” Andre blabbers.

  EJ runs up to the window next to Andre to defend me. “Noo, he said dat he, ‘goh up in dare,’ noh dat he had secs wit er,” EJ exclaims through his busted lips.

  That’s my BOY! Coming through in a pinch.

  I shake my head in agreement. “You see?” I yell, but Abby just cries harder.

  “What the hell was that supposed to mean?” Nicky asks.

  “WHY?” Abby cries.

  “I didn’t, Abby! They made me. They were putting words in my mouth!” I exclaim.

  Nicky breaks in with, “Did you or did you not tell Abby that you loved her, and then turn around and ask Amber Lee to go to homecoming?”

  The football room gasps.

  “No! Well, not exactly . . . Amber is, uh?” I reply.

  “What? What are you saying about Amber? Amber is

  what, Carter?” Nicky orders. Objection: this cheerleader is badgering the witness! Coach

  finally takes pity on me by yelling, “All right, that’s about all the time I got for this crap. I got a football game to win tomorrow. You gals can cross-examine my kicker some other time.” He shuts the windows, and that’s the end of that. . . . My life, that is.

  20. Full Disclosure

  We’re having chili for dinner tonight. It’s my favorite thing Mom cooks, because instead of vegetables or rice or something on the side of the main dish, we have cinnamon rolls. I don’t know who told her you could swap broccoli for a cinnamon roll, but I like it—usually. Tonight I can’t even think about eating. The phone keeps ringing. We aren’t allowed to answer the phone during dinner, thanks to my sister. The ’rents just think it’s a heavy night for Lynn’s twenty-four-hour chat line, but I think there could be a few calls in there for me tonight.

  “No calls at dinnertime!” my mom yells at the phone as if the person calling can hear. “Sooo, Carter, let’s talk,” she says all slow, and puts down her spoon. “How’s school been lately?” She puts her elbow on the table and rests her chin on her fist. She’s giving me the I’m-your-mother-and-I-know-something’s-up look.

  Huh? What does she know? I look her in the eye and try to figure out what she’s got on me. . . . Dang it! Abby’s mom must’ve called!

  “I DIDN’T HAVE SEX WITH HER!” I blurt out. Lynn spits water all over the table in shock. Mom is stunned, and I think my dad’s eyes are going to pop out.

  “What the hell are you talking about?!” Mom barks. The phone rings again.

  Huh? Maybe that was just small talk, and a “School’s fine, Mom” would’ve done the trick.

  “I don’t know! What the hell are you talkin’ about?” I say.

  “Who did you have sex with?” Lynn asks.

  “Nobody. I’m a virgin, damn it! I’ll always be a virgin! I’m gonna die a virgin!” I yell.

  “’Atta boy!” my dad adds.

  “Not helping, William!” Mom yells at Dad. “I was talking about you getting into a fight at school!” she clarifies.

  “WHAT?” I ask, shooting a nasty look at Lynn. She has picked the wrong fella to double-cross today! Her eyes get really big as I nullify our agreement. “Fight nothin’, Mom! Let’s talk about how Lynn had a huge party when we were at Grandma’s funeral, and how the house was so jacked up that she had to hire a cleaning crew and a contractor to put it back together!”

  “WHAT?!” my parents declare in unison, shooting daggers out of their eyes.

  “Is that how the doorbell magically fixed itself?” Dad asks.

  “You little jerk, I didn’t tell her anything!” Lynn screeches.

  The phone rings again. “Unplug that damn thing!” my mom yells.

  “Oh yeah, who told her then, genius?” I ask Lynn.

  “I don’t know, but it sounds like they didn’t tell her that you got suspended on top of everything and stayed home for three days jerking off and watching TV. Did they tell you all that, Mother?” Lynn asks, all snotty.

  “You got suspended?” my dad barks.

  “Lynn signed the note!” I confess. Might as well get it all out.

  Mom cries, “EJ’s mom called to see what I thought about ‘All this fight business,’ and I had to ask, ‘What fight business?’ like an idiot. Apparently I don’t know the first thing about my children! I’m just the moron who feeds them, and pays for shoes and clothes, and picks them up from the hospital!”

  “You’re both going to military school!” my dad yells.

  “Oh, shut up!” Mom barks. The phone rings for the thirtieth time, and I’m ready to pack for military school, because that sounds pretty sweet to me.

  “Oh, just answer it!” my dad orders. Couldn’t get any worse, could it, Pop?

  Lynn jumps up to see what gossip she’s missed in the last fifteen minutes, and to pass on all the drama from her own dinner table. She must be so happy I go to her school now.

  “It’s a girl for Carter,” Lynn explains, and passes the phone. DANG IT!

  “Just see what they want and call them back, please,” my mom says quietly.

  “Hello?” I say into the phone, hoping it’s not Abby calling to give me an earful. But it’s Bitchy Nicky. Even better.

  She snidely says, “Amber Lee heard what you said about her this afternoon, and we think that it would be best if she didn’t go to homecoming with you.”

  Man, I used to think Nicky was semicool and had a nice butt, but she’s really the Antichrist. “Why?” I ask.

  “Oh, let’s not play games, Carter! We all know that you are a liar and a snake, and your sweet and innocent game is UP! As far as we are concerned, you are banished!” she says.

  “Who is this ‘we’ you keep talking about?” I ask. “I didn’t say anything about Amber in the locker room,” I explain.

  “Just stop, Carter! It’s over. Abby hates you. Amber hates you. We hate you. Good-bye!” she says, and then— click—the line goes dead.

  I can’t move. My family’s not talking; they’re just staring at their only boy, who, it turns out, is really a degenerate lady-killer. They think I’m still on the phone with someone. I don’t want to tell them what the call was about; I can’t. It becomes pretty obvious that I’m not talking to anyone as tears start to fall into my chili. I start to shake and cry like a baby. My dad takes the phone out of my hand, and I fall into his arm. I garble, “I hate high school! You knew I wasn’t ready; you should’ve held me back in junior high.” I can’t take the pressure of lying and fighting and homework and rejection and bras and going out to lunch and parties and not being able to ride my bike anymore and first base and second base and clutch kicking with varsity players who can kill me if they want to and lady boobs and lifting weights and hurting all the time.

  My dad softly pats my back as I have the nervous breakdown. Nobody seems mad at me anymore, because I’m crying like a little bitch at the dinner table. I’m sobbing like a little kid who’s been thrown into a world of adults and adult problems with no training whatsoever. It’s too much. I’ve been in high school for a month and a half and I’m never going to get through it.

  “Is that Amber Lee you’re talking about?” Lynn asks.

  “Lynn, no!” Mom orders. Momma Bear has been slack on protecting her youngest cub lately, but she’s here for me now. And nobody’s going to paw at me anymore tonight. But she can’t protect me from the world anymore; she can’t even protect me from myself. I can’t ask my mom about any of this, and that thought makes me feel more alone than I’ve ever felt before.

  21. After the Fall

  I keep a low profile at school for a while and try to keep my nose clean. I haven’t seen Abby in a week. She may have noticed me and broken out in the other direc
tion. I accidentally almost ran into Bitchy Nicky when I was coming out of science class. She didn’t say anything, but she threw up her hands and made a face like I was a fart roaming the halls. Andre made a kissing noise at me in the locker room after practice yesterday. And I probably shouldn’t have, but I flipped him off and walked away.

  I’m taking a math quiz and spacing off as usual. We’ve been working on the Pythagorean theorem for the past week, and this is the test to see if we get it. Well, I don’t get it, but I have a funny joke. I call it Py-Fag-Orean’s theorem. If this was a test about jokes I might be okay, but since Mr. Rumpford isn’t into jokes, I’m screwed.

  Sarah “the Caboose” Ruiz sits in front of me, and she doesn’t get any of this, either. I know it because she’s gotten up to sharpen her pencil twenty times. I don’t mind that one bit. We don’t call her the Caboose for nothing. She wears tight, low-cut jeans, and I gawk at her booty every time she presents it. Even if I did understand Py-Fag-Orean’s theorem, I would still take a break from it to ogle that thing. It’s like two volleyball pistons under a denim blanket.

  She gets up again to sharpen the sharpest pencil in the world. Question number twenty-five means about as much to me as question five did, so I get to gawking. If her wiggly walk was a crime and I was asked to testify against it at a trial, I could give you every detail. She slowly struts up to the front and makes a smooth right turn in front of Ruddy Gill’s open answer sheet. She pauses and bends down a bit to give it a closer look. She moves on to the pencil sharpener, and I move from her right cheek to her left cheek and back again. My eyes drift from the pockets to the waist, to the tops of her short legs, and right into MR. RUMPFORD’S BEADY EYES! Whoa, he spotted me spotting her booty! Dang it, you shouldn’t be looking at me, Rumpford. You should be looking at Sarah and asking why her pencil is so damn sharp and why she keeps looking at Ruddy Gill’s test.

  He just shakes his head in disgust. Mr. Rumpford was never fourteen. He could never understand my plight. All he loves is Pythagoras and his stupid theorem. He can’t understand what it takes to get me through a day in this place. He looks away, but I can see a wide smile under his little mustache. He pretends to scratch his face to hide it. No way! He’s laughing. He’s really cracking up at me and bends down like he’s got to tie his shoe. Mr. Rumpford is a human being! He’s caught my horniness red-handed and he gets it. I’ve never recognized a teacher as a real person before. It’s almost chilling. He looks up at me still laughing quietly and shakes his head in mutual understanding. I can now see that long before he grew a mustache and combined short-sleeved shirts and neckties, he was a horn dog too!