After a few minutes I began to hear screaming and feet scampering above me. I looked up and watched people sprint across the floor above me, scampering legs and flashing laser packs. One kid stopped and stood still right above me. I watched as he carefully looked both ways and felt the same adrenaline I feel on the football fi eld.
I quietly, precisely, raised my gun and shot his pack. Bull’s-eye.
I watched from below as he looked around, no clue what hit him. He didn’t look down, but hurried off, in search of a target. All seemed quiet on my level. Of the ten or so of us, I wondered if I was the only one in the basement.
Then I felt a buzzing around my midsection, and my first thought was that I’d put my cell phone on vibrate. Then I realized I’d been hit, and I looked around, but saw no one. My laser pack stopped shaking after a few seconds, the lights on it died, and when I picked up my gun and fired it, nothing happened. A few seconds later the pack lit up again as if someone had recharged the battery, but only for a second before I was once again shaking.
“What the hell?” I said, and then I heard laughter, from above and behind me. I turned around and looked up and there was some kid, maybe twelve, with his gun pointed down at me through the grating.
No way was he going to hit me again.
I jumped up and moved positions, raised my gun, and was about 93
to shoot him when once again I shook. Anger flooded through my veins, and I could feel my head pounding. I hated losing.
The kid took off running when he saw me move toward him.
It reminded me of my tenth birthday party. My parents rented out a gym and we played dodgeball, the sport I lived for at the time, all day. I was feeling invincible until my friends ganged up on me. They waited until I threw the last red ball on my side, and then I noticed that five of them, all on the other side of the middle line, were holding onto red balls and smirking at me. They all attacked at once, hurling the balls at me. The plastic orbs collided with each other and ricocheted into different parts of my body—one got me in the nose, one in the chest—and I fell under the impact of them. My so-called friends then crossed the center line, against the rules, gathered the balls, and proceeded to pummel me. My fists clenched with rage as I lay on the ground. My eyes welled up, my head pulsed and I screamed at them to stop. I ran to the bathroom and locked myself in, and didn’t come out for hours.
So as I felt myself hit for the third time in less than thirty seconds, I felt the same emotions simmer and begin to rise to the surface. This time I turned and saw it was Carrie, behind me, grinning, the bitch. She looked a little demented with the laser pack on, very intense.
“Dead meat,” she said, and then she turned, grabbed her gun in both hands, and hustled out of the area. At that moment she became the only possible target.
I ran after her, actually angry. She could hear me running right behind her, and I could see her slowing and I knew what she was going to do. I beat her to the punch. She flung around at me, wildly, and tried to aim her gun, but I was too quick for her. I grabbed it from her hands and tossed it aside, and proceeded to shoot her, point-blank, in the gut.
94
It felt good.
“Jerk,” she said. She stormed past me and picked up the gun.
The bravado was in my chest now, the strange pride that I could feel in my lungs, coupled with an anger that at once enveloped and embarrassed me.
“You shot me, I shot you back.”
“No. I shot you, you chased me and threw my gun, and shot me. Bullshit,” she said, bending down and picking up her gun. A guy, maybe fourteen, with a Mohawk appeared in the doorway, and quickly set our packs ablazing.
“Fuck you!” we both screamed at him, and he saw that there was something beyond a game going on and booked it out of there. Carrie’s face was red, and I could feel the same heat rising in me.
We stared each other down. This was a new thing for us; we never raised our voices with each other. There was never any reason. Carrie picked up her gun, placed it against my rib cage, and pulled the trigger.
I felt the pack and its buzz, again, and it sent unusual shock waves through me, into my pelvis. I waited a few seconds and fired back, and we stood there, taking turns shaking.
Finally Carrie laughed. “What’s wrong with us?” she said. I wasn’t quite ready to laugh. My gut was in knots and a primal roar far beyond the game was welling up within my belly. “Maybe we should just get it over with and kiss,” she said. “Make love, not war.” She was leering at me. She didn’t get it, didn’t see that something had broken in me in the midst of a stupid game.
I just stood there, looking at her.
For a moment I was lost in thought, and then I saw Carrie’s lips, a dark shade of red, and plump like overripe fruit, coming toward me.
She pressed her lips against mine.
I searched myself—for arousal, for anything good, for proof that 95
I’d made all this gay stuff up—and for a moment I felt a pressure on my upper groin but not the kind I’d expected. I pulled away and looked down, and saw it was her pack pressing awkwardly into mine.
We stood there, connected by our packs and staring at each other. I imagined Carrie standing there topless, and shivered at the thought, her breasts like alien bumps on her chest where no bumps should be. A guy about our age ran by the corridor we were in and shot Carrie in the back. She laughed, softly, her eyes huge orbs of innocence and wonder, and I loved her at that moment, not sensually but emotionally, loved her and wanted to protect her from bad things.
From me.
Our midsections shook together.
“See what you do to me?” she said, raising one eyebrow, and she tilted her head slightly once again, made her eyes into slits, and moved her overripe lips to mine.
I jumped back.
It was involuntary. I’d meant to stay with it, but whatever power deep within me that I couldn’t control pushed a button and I pulled away from her before she could get me.
Carrie seemed to galvanize at that moment, her eyes registering comic disbelief and a level of injury I’d never seen before. She opened her mouth to speak, but could say nothing. She looked away, up at the ceiling, as if the answer were there, and then back to me. She shook her head in disbelief and sighed in a manner I hoped never again to hear, ever, in my life. A sigh of resignation and pent-up rage, if you can believe one might sigh with rage. She marched right past me. I stood still, facing away from her, unsure how to help. Then my pack began buzzing again. No one was above me or in front of me.
I’d been shot in the back, and when I turned around, no one was there.
96
I stood there for a few moments, paralyzed and not knowing what to do.
Then it hit me:
Tell her.
The thing to do was to find the exit, and find Carrie, who had probably stormed off. I’d talk to her, tell her the secret that might hurt her, but at least would explain why I didn’t want to kiss.
A sign pointed me toward the exit, and I headed that way, my heart beating very fast. It would all be okay once I told her. I hadn’t done anything wrong.
After a few minutes of winding through dark hallways, I found the exit, pushed open the heavy black door, and was back in the lobby, the waiting area. I was alone, no Carrie.
The geeky girl was sitting on a bench, reading a magazine.
“Did you just see a girl with fl aming red hair—”
“She just left,” she said.
I ran out to the parking lot just in time to see Carrie’s red Jetta peel away.
97
“You see what Vince Young does? He keeps his options open,” my father said to me as we watched a game one Sunday in early October. We were sitting on the couch in the living room. He reclined, I sat forward, wolfing down chips from an open bag and dipping them into an open container of salsa. “If no one’s open, he’s not afraid to run. That’s what you need to do.”
“Sure, Dad. Good idea.” I wiped salsa off my chin.
My father acted as if I’d never watched a pro football game before, let alone played quarterback.
He never had; he’d played baseball in school, yet somehow he was the football expert.
“I never see you scramble,” he continued as we watched a replay of Young, the Tennessee Titans quarterback, running for a fi rst down.
There was, of course, a reason for this. I was a total drop-back passer. I was slow as molasses and I had a rocket of an arm. He 98
should have been comparing me to Peyton Manning, not Vince Young.
It was one of those fall Sundays that I loved so much. Sometimes the best thing was just to relax, hang out, not have anything expected of you. It was so rare for me, especially in the fall. We were now 4–0, having beaten Los Altos handily, 34–10. I’d played well, three touchdown passes, two to Rahim. My folks showed up, which was nice. After the game, Bryan had once again been there, and this time I just smiled politely. I avoided more weirdness by leaving with Rahim and Austin, going to a party even though I didn’t really want to go.
I’d almost told Coach on Wednesday. I went to his office and sat down, but all that came out of my mouth was more stuff about my parents. It was shameful, getting Coach to feel sorry for me and not telling him what was really up.
Yesterday, as I was doing homework, a call came in. It was an assistant coach from Stanford, telling me that he wanted me to visit Palo Alto to talk about the program. My spine tingled, but I acted all calm and collected and told him that I would, and that I would be taking trips to visit schools when the season was over. When I told Dad, I thought he’d go nuts, but instead he sort of smiled about it, didn’t get up at all.
Hello? The one thing you seem to care about
when it comes to me? Can I get a reaction? My dad is so weird.
As we watched the late game, Tennessee at San Diego, my father, who used to scream at the television through a game, kept dozing off. He’d be awake for a while, make his commentary, definitive statements no one should ever challenge about who the best running back in the game was, and then suddenly I’d hear snoring. My father never used to sleep through games. I didn’t say anything about it when he’d wake up and look around for a moment, and then close his eyes again.
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My father nodded off and I watched Young in the midst of a pretty impressive drive against the Chargers. I was studying his footwork in the pocket when the doorbell rang. Mom was out. I paused for a moment to watch Young throw an incomplete pass before I hurried to the door.
Standing there, wearing an ugly purple windbreaker and a black fanny pack, something that hasn’t been in style in our lifetime probably, was Finch Gozman.
“Hey,” I said, less than thrilled. The talk we’d had two weeks earlier had been nice, but were we buddies now? We’d talked maybe twice since then, just “hey, how are you?” kind of stuff in the hallways at school. Couldn’t we just be people who talked in a parking lot after a game once and leave it at that?
“Hey, Bobby Framingham,” he said, a wide smile on his face.
“Can I borrow you for a few minutes?”
Borrow me? Why couldn’t he just talk like a normal human being? Who went to someone’s house and borrowed the person who lived there?
Finch Gozman, apparently.
“Well, I’m kind of busy with my father,” I said. “Watching a game. Actually I’m watching and he’s asleep.”
“Well, if he’s in there, maybe we’d better talk out here.”
I sighed. I hadn’t agreed to talk to him, and now here I was, backed into a corner. “Fine,” I said.
We walked out to the huge oak tree at the foot of our front yard.
When I was a kid, I sometimes used to try to climb up and sit on a branch. I broke several branches that way. We stood beneath it, and I leaned on it as Finch paced beside me.
“Stanford called,” I told him.
He adjusted his fanny pack, fumbled through it, before turning 100
and looking at me and smiling. “Wow! How excellent. Are you going to sign with them?”
“No offer was made, Finch. I’m going to wait until December for all of that.”
“Wow. I doubt I’ll get in. Mrs. Markowitz said I need to write something great, something that’ll get me noticed.” He rubbed his neck.
“You’ll get in,” I said.
“Well, we’ll see,” he said.
And we stood there, awkwardly silent.
“I wanted to thank you for last weekend, listening to me whine.”
I laughed. “You weren’t whining. Well, not much, anyway,” I said. “No problem.”
“Thanks,” he said, and there it was, the silence again. I looked at Finch and wondered if all he wanted was a random conversation with me.
“The thing is,” Finch said, “I kind of have to ask you a question.”
“Shoot.” I leaned against the tree.
“Remember our interview? I’ve really been thinking about it a lot. And there’s this one thing that I don’t know how to . . . I don’t know. What I’m trying to say is . . . are you gay? If you’re not, please don’t hit me.”
He sort of jumped back, as if he were afraid of me.
I kept still.
Inside, I felt the pulsing of my heart, the wheezing of air through my lungs. I said nothing. A flurry of thoughts flooded my head. I thought of Dr. Blassingame:
If you can’t change something, you have
two choices: you can accept it, or you can deny it
.
I couldn’t change being gay. And now I couldn’t change the fact that Finch knew. No one would ask you something like that unless 101
they were pretty sure about it. I pictured a football field, and saw Finch there with me, in the backfield. He was already there. Would I rather have him on my team, blocking for me, or the opposing team, chasing me down? I studied him silently.
“I didn’t come here to cause you trouble, Bobby Framingham.
You know I consider you a friend.”
I continued to observe him, thinking back to the time in ninth grade when Dennis pinned a sign on Finch’s back that said I’M A FAG.
The popular jocks were always picking on him. It was right after history class with Dr. Blassingame and everyone was laughing and pointing at Finch, and I could see the pain on his face. He didn’t know what was going on. When none of my friends were looking, I tapped Finch on the shoulder, peeled the sign off his back, and handed it to him. He turned bright red. I said, “People are stupid,”