They were all there.
I scan the article. As far as I can tell, Everest was a late transfer from another school. He appeared out of nowhere and changed everything. O., who had never been on the ground before, was sacked eight times that game. Holt, the center, went to the hospital with a shattered leg. O. hurt his shoulder. A couple of other guys got banged up pretty good.
And Newton lost their first game of the season by seventeen points.
The Neck was telling the truth. Holt was me last year.
Suddenly I feel like an idiot. I never asked why the center position was open in the first place. Maybe I assumed somebody had graduated. Maybe I didn’t think about it at all. I was so excited to be part of the team, I just went along with it.
I wanted to be popular. That’s like a dirty word in my old circles, but it’s easy to make fun of something when it’s not an option. When you couldn’t get it even if you wanted it.
I’m popular now.
I don’t care what the Neck says. Eight hundred people applauded for me at a pep rally. They heard my weight and they didn’t care. I imagine the faces of the cheering people. They were smiling at me, but I wonder, were they really smiling?
Or were they laughing at me?
I print out the article and put it in my pocket.
56. enojado.
I walk into homeroom the next day and the class bursts into applause. I guess when the whole school sees you at a pep rally in your football uniform, word gets around. Anyone who didn’t know me before knows me now.
What do you do when your homeroom applauds for you? It’s weird. I nod and wave like I’ve seen O. do. I thank a couple people and accept their congratulations. Then I move to my regular seat in the back of the room.
I notice Nancy Yee isn’t applauding. She’s buried neck deep in a copy of Infinite Jest. It looks like she’s reading a phone book.
I ignore her and sit down.
Almost.
I’m halfway in my chair when I suddenly get stuck. I push a little harder, thinking maybe I hit it at the wrong angle, but I don’t slide in like I normally do. I jam.
I know I’ve been getting bigger the last few weeks. Coach calls it bulking up.
“You need mass to work the line,” he told me. “Eat carbs. And for God’s sake, try to enjoy it. Things change when you get older. Believe you me.”
So I ate carbs. I enjoyed them, too.
Now my mass is greater than the chair will allow. I’m not getting in, so I reverse direction and manage to extract myself with a loud pop.
The Physics of Fat. Lousy timing.
Nancy Yee is looking at me now. She’s wearing a frayed denim skirt and a T-shirt with colored threads coming out of it in every direction. Her hair is all shaggy. She looks like a big ball of yarn that was attacked by a cat.
“You actually like sitting in the back row, don’t you? Sitting alone and reading.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she says. She lifts her hands like she’s not interested in fighting with me. I look at her shirt again. I squint my eyes and the threads form into a shape.
Sushi. She’s wearing a sushi shirt.
Jesus Christ.
“Have you ever heard of the Gap?” I say.
She doesn’t say anything.
“It’s where normal people shop. In case you didn’t know.”
I go to the back of the room. Warner’s there, of course. He’s been standing back there all semester.
I stand next to him. Now neither of us fit.
I slam my books down on the counter. There’s a poster that says, ¿CÓMO ESTÁ USTED? with a lot of pictures of faces with different expressions on them. TRISTE. FELIZ. CONFUDIDO. ENOJADO.
I’m enojado.
“Thanks for the other day,” Warner says. “With Ugo. You know.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You saved me.”
“I can’t save you,” I say. “Nobody can save anybody.”
Warner smiles uncomfortably. “What’s going on?” he says. “You seem upset.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
He just looks at me. Doesn’t say a word.
“It’s football, Warner. I don’t expect you to know anything about it.”
“I didn’t want to play football,” he says.
“What do you mean you didn’t want to?”
“Coach asked me, and I said no.”
“Which coach?”
“You know. Coach Bryson.”
“He asked you to play football?”
“The first week. He told me they needed a big guy to play center this year. He asked me, like, two or three times, but I said no way.”
My mind is spinning. I’m thinking about the Neck, the newspaper article in my pocket. I’m remembering the time I saw Warner coming out of Coach’s office at the beginning of the semester.
“It’s cool that you’re doing it,” Warner says. “But you’re a lot braver than me. I didn’t want to get killed. That Everest guy, you know?”
“You’ve heard of Everest?” I say.
“Everyone’s heard of him.”
I’m the biggest idiot in history. This proves it.
Ms. Weston is in the middle of taking roll when I say, “I have no place to sit.”
She glances up, nods, and goes back to calling roll.
“I said I have no place to sit, Ms. Weston.”
She looks at Warner and me, maybe wondering why she’s suddenly got Easter Island in the back of her room.
She says, “Can I ask you to take your seat, Mr. Zansky?”
“I don’t fit in my seat,” I say really loudly. “I’m too big for that little seat.”
The class shifts around uncomfortably.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know. Maybe we could find another—”
“I don’t fit anywhere,” I say.
Everyone’s looking at me now. Even Warner has backed away.
“I don’t fit in this goddam school,” I say.
“Watch your language, please,” Ms. Weston says.
The bell rings, but nobody moves. The show is too good.
I grab my backpack and sling it around. It knocks a bunch of books off the counter. I stomp towards the door. I don’t know why, but I kick my desk on the way out. It crashes into the wall and tips over with a loud crash.
57. april (and other things I don’t want).
History class. April is sitting where she always sits. My table.
“Did you know?” I say.
“Know what?”
She smiles. It usually makes me happy when she smiles. But not today.
“Everest,” I say.
Her smile drops away. “He’s just some big guy,” she says. “Nothing to worry about.”
“That’s not what I asked, April. Did you know? Before I tried out.”
“I knew.”
“So all that time you were being nice to me—was that just to keep me on the team?”
“How could you say that?” she says.
I’m putting two and two together in my head. O. saving me in the hall. April flirting with me. Everyone coming to my house. I thought I was making a choice to play football, but I can’t be sure now.
April looks at me as if she’s really hurt, and for a second I think I’m going to crack. I’m going to apologize for yelling at her, for doubting her in the first place, and then I’m going to sit down and smile and wait for that moment when our thighs bump by mistake under the table. Then I’ll spend the rest of the day thinking about it, pretending she’s my girlfriend.
Pitiful.
I don’t crack.
I don’t sit next to her.
I walk all the way to the other side of the room and plop down next to Justin. He looks at me like I’m nuts. He’s about to say something, but I grunt, and he keeps his mouth shut.