The Female of the Species (14 page)

Having Alex in my shitty truck doesn't make me feel good.

When we run we're on the same level; when we end up at parties together we know we're going to find our own corner eventually. We expect to hear from each other every night, each of us checking our phones to see if we missed that moment somehow. But a real date hasn't happened yet, and there's a reason for that.

I can't afford Alex Craft.

Hell, I can't afford any girlfriend, but there's an unspoken agreement that Branley pays my way wherever we go, and I've always managed to string other girls along until I'm bored with them as a hookup and cut them loose. With Alex it's different because I want to
take her out on a real date and my big mouth made that happen before my wallet filled me in on how skinny it is.

The truth is we're in my busted-ass truck and she somehow blends in completely yet looks like a million bucks at the same time, and we're headed toward a burger joint because it's either that or a sit-down place the next town over and I don't have enough gas to get us there. And after we've plowed through our five-dollar burger plates I'm going to have to ask her to pay for it, because I am a fucking loser and she'd be flat-out within her rights to call me that.

So that's what I'm thinking about as I pull into the restaurant on our first real date—what a fucking loser I am.

We walk into the place and my mood drops even further because Brian Spurlani yells my name from the back kitchen when he spots us. Three years ago Brian was everything I wanted to be. He was a senior when I came in as a freshman, football two-a-days kicking my ass in ninety-degree weather. We'd lose five pounds in the morning, put it back on when we went home to eat lunch, then lose another seven in the evening. We smelled like ass sweat and our faces were permanently broken out but Brian kept our heads on straight, putting out fires before fights broke out, telling the guys
who were about to pass out that they could make it five more steps. And then the five more after that.

Brian is truly a good guy. That's why it kills me a little bit when he comes out of the kitchen to talk to us while we eat and he's wearing a hairnet.

“Hey, man,” he says, flipping a chair around backward to sit at the end of our table. “What's up?”

“Just out grabbing something to eat,” I say. “Brian, this is Alex.”

“Hi,” Alex says, and he looks her up and down.

“Alex Craft? I knew your sister. What happened to her was bullshit.”

Alex smiles. “Possibly the best description I've heard.”

And while she doesn't seem to care that it came up, I hate that Anna is the first thing everybody thinks of when they see Alex, whether it comes out of their mouth or not. Like when people run into me and all they want to talk about is the winning streak of whatever sports season it is, like I'm destined to be only a stat record in their head. Always winning but never moving on. Stuck in this town forever and hauled out in twenty years to hand off a basketball or a football to the kid who breaks my school record, and then that's it. I'm done. Washed up. I'll be like Brian, who is sitting here smiling at me, his pores full of grill grease.

“Didn't you go to Fairmont to play ball?” I ask, and
his smile falters a little.

“More like went to Fairmont to ride the bench,” he says. “That and play tackle dummy. Tore my ACL when some big asshole hit me and that was it. Came home over Christmas break and got Tammy pregnant, so . . .” He holds his hands up, like he was totally innocent of any involvement. “So that was that.”

I put down my burger, what I have eaten a lead ball in my stomach as I think of all the times Branley was in too much of a hurry and I was too horny to bother with a condom.

“But I'm going back,” Brian says, his tone too hopeful, like the way you sound when you talk about your dreams, not your actual plans. “Once little Becca gets into kindergarten, we won't have to pay for day care, and that money can go to Daddy getting his degree.”

“Yeah, man, cool,” I say, but I know as well as he does that money is going toward putting in a second bathroom, or paying for the next baby.

“So.” Brian's eyes wander to Alex. “I heard somebody fucked up Ray Parsons's face—that was you, right?”

Alex takes a sip of her drink. “Yep.”

“Right on,” Brian says, and fist-bumps her. “Ray used to be a decent guy, but . . . you know.” He lays his finger on one side of his nose.

I get it. Decent guys backslide into meth and gang
rape. Good guys knock up their girlfriends and flip burgers.

We get up to leave, my tray still half full because all I can think about is vomiting. Brian refuses to let us pay for our food, so that solves my money problem but doesn't leave me feeling any less of a loser.

“Hey, man.” Brian snags my arm at the door as Alex goes ahead. “Just so you know, Ray ain't exactly happy about everyone knowing a chick kicked his ass.”

I watch Alex pop open the passenger door of my truck; she has to wrench it a little because it tends to stick.

“Alex can take care of herself,” I tell him.

“That's for damn sure, but maybe don't go driving down Central unless you have to, hear me? Ray's mom lives there, and since you kicked them out of the church, Ray and his guys have been holing up there. I don't know, just be careful. Can't ever tell what a tweaker's gonna do.”

“Truth.” We hug awkwardly before I leave, the smell of hamburger grease sticking to me as I get behind the wheel.

“What was that about?” Alex asks as I pull away.

I should've known I couldn't play it cool with her, act like running into Brian was a casual thing, not a terrifying flash-forward of what my life is going to be if I don't get the fuck out of here and never come back.

And while Alex might know me well enough to get it, starting the conversation means telling her about how I've convinced myself that I can earn it by being a good guy, that getting out and staying out is how karma is going to reward me for not hitting the next joint and turning down every drunk girl who crawls into my lap at a party. And maybe it'll sound crazy to her that every decision I make, every day, is a choice between right and wrong with my future in the balance.

“Jack?”

I don't know how to say these things to her. So I go for the simple version.

“You know how the first day of English class, Miss Hendricks had us write an essay on how we define success?”

Alex nods.

“What did you write?” I ask her.

“What was expected. What did you write?”

“One line—
getting out of this shit hole
. She gave me an A.”

“Oh, Jack Fisher,” Alex sighs, a teasing smile on her face. “Must be hard when everyone loves you.”

I have to laugh at that. Me feeling sorry for myself, with my brain and my looks and my talent. I reach over to put my hand on her knee and she takes it, our fingers entwining as I drive out of town—on Central, because fuck Ray Parsons.

“Define success,” I say almost to myself.

“I didn't kill anyone today,” Alex says.

I laugh again. “A-plus, babe.”

And I think I could probably tell this girl anything, and she would understand.

I'm trying very hard to be normal.

This is not easy for me. Jack helps. Claire helps. When I'm with them I can manage myself a little better, filter my environment so that the little things slide off my new shiny facade. But some things penetrate, and when that happens, I go places I know they can't follow.

We are in the gym. It's negative fifteen outside, and so many of the buses wouldn't start this morning that they put those of us who drive in the gym for now, like a holding pen until the rest of the flock gets here. There aren't enough people for me to fade away, but too many for me to ignore them all. I don't know what to do with myself even though Claire is beside me, chatting about something to her friend Sara.

Sara doesn't like me, and that is fine. It's in the way she watches me from the side, like she doesn't quite trust me. After seeing me rip Ray Parsons's nose and part of his ear off his head, that might be a smart decision on her part.

“Jesus,” Sara says as Branley walks past us. “Too cold to show off cleavage, so instead she goes for jeans so tight I can see her thong.”

“She looks nice,” I say, and she does. Branley always looks put together in a way that tells me she spends hours in front of a mirror before going outside. And while I don't understand that, I can respect it.

Sara looks at Claire like she's waiting for her to jump in, but Claire only shrugs. “Whatever,” she says, which earns me a dark look from Sara that I don't understand.

“So you're thirty points from the school record, right?” Claire says, and Sara's face lightens a little bit. They talk on about basketball, which switches over to a party last weekend, and then on to something else that I tune out, their combined voices a pleasant drone.

I watch Claire for a moment. The minimal physical damage she took that night at the church has healed entirely. The emotional damage has left a scar, though, bumpy tissue somewhere deep inside her soul. It's like her naïveté was excised, caution growing back in its place. It's a good thing. I watch her now, this girl who
was so close to the unthinkable, now able to laugh and talk about inconsequential things. Part of me wants to ask her how she has done this, but another part of me already knows the answer.

She started from a better place than me. Claire's baseline is closer to normal than mine, her beginning a smooth plane while my life has always been peaks and valleys. Sara has taken me to a valley right now. She knows I don't belong here; something in her senses the wolf in me and would ban it. So I oblige her as much as possible, sinking down into one of the valleys. These are the places my friends can't follow, and I let Claire's voice fade away beside me.

Out on the court Jack is playing a pickup game. Even in jeans he's fluid, his body doing exactly what he wants when he wants it to. I could watch him and find some reassurance, but behind him something else is happening.

There's a boy in the corner humping a basketball and pretending to climax, his face going through a complex series of contortions. It's lewd in its accuracy and I can't stand that I won't be able to get it out of my head now, what this stranger looks like in his most intimate moment. And I hate that he's going back to do it again, egged on by his friends, who seem to find some high cleverness in the fact that now he's behaving as if the basketball is performing oral sex on him.

The teachers see him, I know it. Hendricks looks away and shakes her head; the others roll their eyes when she points it out, but no one stops him. His impropriety has thrown a wall of disgusting around him that no one wants to walk through. And so he keeps doing it.

A few bleachers down, a group of freshmen notice and explode in a chorus of giggles. I don't think it's funny but I can't tear my eyes away. I find myself memorizing his face, my brain cataloging his name when I hear it being tossed around by the girls below me. I shake my head to clear it, finally breaking my line of sight as he
finishes
, as if it's vital that he get to the end of his pretend sexual encounter with sports equipment.

I wonder what would happen if I went down there, took a ball out of the cage, and pretended to have sex with it. I think people would stop and look. I think the whole gym would come to a standstill and teachers would definitely interfere. There would be discussions (again) about what exactly is wrong with me that I would do such a thing. I would definitely log some more hours in the guidance office.

But
boys will be boys
, our favorite phrase that excuses so many things, while the only thing we have for the opposite gender is
women
, said with disdain and punctuated with an eye roll.

The announcements come on and let us know that all
the buses have come in; we can go to class now, resume our daily lives. I'm going to try. I'm going to do my best to get that boy's face out of my head, to ban the distinct expression that signified his pleasure from my mind so that I can open my locker, get my books, smile at Jack when he touches my elbow.

I'm trying to be normal.

But it is so very hard.

There's a dead spot on our gym floor, a place where the padding underneath has fallen away from the wood. When a ball hits a dead spot, it doesn't bounce back right; physics takes over, and talent can't fight science. You're thrown off, the millimeter of pushback you were expecting doesn't come, and from there it's a domino effect. You lose control of your dribble; the fast break that looked so promising collapses into a turnover that makes you look like an asshole. Except that doesn't happen to my team because we know exactly where the dead spot is. It's the definition of home-court advantage, and we've needed every ounce of that tonight.

I'm at the foul line, the entire gym a hurricane of sound as the fans on the visiting bleachers scream at
me to fail, while the home side screams equally loud in support, all their words merging into a single wall of sound in which nothing is comprehensible. I glance at the clock even though I know there are only a few seconds left. After I take this shot, there'll be only a tiny sliver of time for the other team to score, our path to the division title easily paved with the passage of one free throw.

If I make it.

My eyes slide off the scoreboard, and in all the waving signs of the bleachers, spinning noisemakers, and screaming people, I spot my Alex, still as a stone, both hands in fists on either side of her face and eyes locked on mine. Around her is chaos, the gym packed with everyone from the point guard's great-grandma to the local bar owner as the best team we've had in a decade closes the books on the regular season. Alex is silent and intense, the exact opposite of everyone around her, yet the only one who has my attention. We could be alone in this moment, and I know before the ball leaves my hands that it's good.

I go straight for her at the buzzer, ignoring the fans who pour out of the bleachers, the pats on the back, the cheerleaders' fingernails sliding off my arms. All I want is Alex, and she stands still, waiting for me to come to her. Her skin soaks up my sweat as I hug her, my jersey
as stuck to her as it is to me when we finally separate.

People are still screaming all around me; everyone's got their phones stuck in the air to capture the moment. Kids I don't even know cram their faces next to mine for selfies. And I'm stoked that we won and I made the shot that did it, but right now my mind is somewhere else entirely, my hand in Alex's as I thread through the crowd, leading her over to my mom and dad.

“Alex,” I say, pulling her in front of me. “This is my mom and dad. Mom and Dad, this is Alex.”

“Hello,” she says, nodding at both of them. “It's nice to meet you.”

My mom goes in for a hug, which kinda makes me cringe but Alex lets it happen, her hand stiffening in mine a little, but she doesn't drop-kick Mom either so it's not a failure.

“We're so glad to finally meet you,” my mom says, her hands still on Alex's shoulders. She actually takes a piece of Alex's hair and tucks it behind her ear, which I totally understand the urge to do because I've done it myself a hundred times, but I shoot her a warning look anyway.

My dad is smart enough to keep his distance, but he smiles at her. “You're the girl—”

And I swear to God if he says
with the dead sister
I will fall right through the dead spot in the floor. But instead
he finishes with, “—whose car we pulled out of the ditch, aren't you?”

Alex asks me, “Do you pull a lot of girls' cars out of ditches?”

I squeeze her hand. “Nope.”

“Then, yes, that was me,” she tells Dad.

“Well, it was worth the effort, then,” he says, and she gives him the biggest shit-eating grin I think I've ever seen on her adorable face.

“You two have plans?” Mom asks, her own hand snaking through Dad's. “Or do you want to hang out with the old folks after the game?”

And to be perfectly honest, I was kinda hoping I could park the car out on 27 for a bit before taking her home, but Alex tells Mom she'd love to come over, so I'm roped into at least two hours of euchre and twenty minutes of Mom showing Alex my baby pictures.

And I'm actually kind of looking forward to it.

I squeeze her hand as they walk away, the last few people emptying out of the gym. “You did fine,” I say. “I told you not to worry. Just be yourself.”

“That is never good advice,” she says, and I hug her again. Because I just can't stop touching this girl.