“Which girl is this?” said Eliyahu.
Nakamook said, “The redhead.”
Eliyahu looked over his shoulder. He said to me, “You love a Gentile?”
I said, She’s not a Gentile.
“She looks a Gentile,” said Eliyahu.
“Who cares?” said Nakamook.
I said, Hashem wouldn’t fall me in love with a Gentile.
Nakamook asked Eliyahu: “You think I look pretty Gentile?”
I didn’t hear what Eliyahu said, though. I’d already turned into the Office by the time he’d responded — either that, or he spoke too softly.
Jelly Rothstein’s sister Ruth was leaning against Pinge’s desk, tapping a mint against her teeth so it clicked. Across from her, crowding the waiting chairs, were four Main Hall Shovers who seemed short of breath. June’s ex, Josh Berman, was one of the four, but I wasn’t yet aware of that; Blake Acer’s face was the only one I knew. (What’s more is despite the fact that Berman’s existence loomed sudden and huge over all of my thoughts, I didn’t even consider the possibility that he, himself, might be standing before me. In the few hours since Lunch, when I’d banished the thought of him, Berman had become, by way of said banishment, a mythic figure of such towering stature that to just bump into him would’ve seemed about as likely to me as just bumping into an American President, or Natalie Portman. Philip Roth, even.) In Acer’s right hand was a bright orange boxcutter, on the far chair a cardboard carton. He knelt on the chair that I fell in love with June in, sliced through the tape, reached into the carton, and came out with a handful of 2006 scarves. The scarves were, as Ruth had reported they’d be in “Nada y Pues Nada”—the last installment of “State of School Spirit,” her three-part series for the Aptakisic News—entirely absent of disputed embroidery. I stepped a little closer to get a better look, partly because June had dated a Shover — but only partly. I’d been following the controversy surrounding the scarves ever since I’d started attending Aptakisic. For the Main Hall Shovers, this moment was colossal.
******Ten weeks earlier, in the first week of school, Blake Acer got elected Shover president. The margin was narrow, 31 to 30, and the platform he ran on was scarf redesign, though by Rothstein’s analysis, his win was dynastic.
Acer’s brother Wayne had founded the Shovers. This had happened back in 2002. Rothstein couldn’t get an interview with Wayne, but according to a sidebar titled “Dawn of the Shovers” (also by Rothstein), Shoverlore had it that, after seeing Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, Wayne read fifty pages of the book in one day. Pausing only for dinner in front of the TV, he saw footage of a riot in England on a newsbreak: soccer fans storming the field of a stadium, stomping on rivals, trampling each other, uprooting seating, full story at ten. Wayne glugged down some milk and went back upstairs, googled the search terms “soccer” and “violence,” and came across an excerpt from a book about hooligans — no one remembers the title. He biked to the bookstore and purchased the book, took it back home and read fifteen pages, then broke for the news and an ice cream. The hooligans profiled protected each other. The clubs they belonged to had tough-sounding names, and they were always together, sharing a cause, making up cheers, and probably — even the fat ones, Wayne bet, even the pimpled — getting girls. They wore matching scarves sewn with intricate crests that despite being scarves were totally masculine, and all because of soccer, the girliest sport you could play without a shuttlecock.
The next day at Recess, Wayne told his story. No one wrote the speech down, but its opening was famous: “I’ve read sixty-five pages and we need to get scarves because basketball is better than soccer.”
By the end of the week, the paperwork was finished. Wayne filed a petition with twenty-five names and Miss Kimble signed on as the faculty sponsor. Like the Sci-Fi and Fantasy and Pastry-Lovers clubs — unlike Squaw Squad, Debate Team, or Band — the Shovers got semi-private status. They could meet twice a month after school in the gym, under Miss Kimble’s supervision, but the school would provide no bus-space for away-games, no section in the bleachers, no official uniforms. Shovers ordered and paid for their scarves themselves.
Twenty-one guys formed the club that first year, about 7 percent of Aptakisic’s male students. Anyone who wasn’t a bandkid could join. Bandkids were the enemies of the Main Hall Shovers: partly because their purpose rivaled the Shovers’ (though they did give an annual concert in Spring, the primary function of the Braves Brass Band was to “support” the Indians during pregames and rallies and homegame halftimes); partly because they got the best seats on the bleachers; mostly because the Shovers needed kids to harrass to buttress their identity and keep up morale, and whereas the few counterparts they had in the conference (i.e., the Knifelike Fangs at Heinrich Junior High, the Uberdunk Slammies at Twin Groves Middle, and the Kinderpop Pep Squad at Sandburg Middle) were encountered but twice per season at most, the bandkids were everywhere, always.
From “Red Zeppelin, Led Inddian,” part one of Ruth Rothstein’s “State of School Spirit”:
…and only two years after having founded the Shovers, Wayne Acer, as a freshman at Stevenson High School, fell in with a crowd not known for loving sports, not known for the pride they took in their school, their family, or even themselves — a crowd that is known to everyone at Stevenson.
A crowd everyone at Stevenson knows as “the skids.”
Wayne bought a chrome-zippered black leather jacket, cut holes in the knees of his jeans, and smoked. According to Blake, Wayne changed for a girl.
You just shouldn’t ever change for a girl like that,” the new Shover President told me over lunch. “If you change for a girl, who are you, really? You don’t know who you are. And I’ll say so right to Wayne’s face cause it’s true. I HAVE said it right to Wayne’s face, last May. ‘Who are you, now? Who are you, Wayne? What about basketball? You FOUNDED THE SHOVERS. You lived for the Indians. You knew all the stats.’ And he did, Ruth, he did. And not the stats for only just Aptakisic, either. He knew all the stats IN THE CONFERENCE. Where do you think I learned all that stuff from? Wayne wasn’t just some average older brother. Wayne was my mentor. Everything I know, I know because of Wayne.
But I asked him who he was now, or who, you know, HE THOUGHT HE WAS, and he looked at his feet and giggled this really uncomfortable giggle, and what that giggle meant, Ruth, was: ‘I don’t know who I am, Blake. I really need your help. I’m lost.’
Lucky for us, the Bulls were playing the Sixers, and Wayne was fighting with this girlfriend who will so-called BE A FAMOUS DRUMMER ONE DAY, and I convinced him to watch the game with me. He wouldn’t do any of the cheers we used to, and he kept going outside to smoke stinking disgusting death-causing cigarettes, but he only did it during timeouts I kept noticing. See, in the end, he hadn’t shaken basketball. He never will, either, cause no one can. Once you catch that bug. And so on.
That was last May, and since then things have gotten a little better. Wayne still says he doesn’t care about the Shovers, or the Indians, let alone The Stevenson Patriots, but once in a while, Ruth — three times now, to be exact — he’ll throw on a Bulls game on the TV in his room, and invite me upstairs to watch with him. And the silver lining — gold lining, really, even platinum if you think about it — is that during timeouts and half-times, we listen to all this music Wayne’s into, and even though the guys who sing it seem fruity, it’s okay because they’re joking about the fruitiness. What they’re really doing is making fun of dudes who think it ISN’T fruity to look all fruity. Wayne and the other skids don’t get that at all because they’re always so serious, but all you really have to do is have a sense of humor to see that even the bands who might actually be a little fruity have earned the right to be fruity like that because of how they’re geniuses. Mostly they’re joking on skids, though — it’s subtle. It’s great music Wayne listens to, though, is my point, and plain and simple? Wasn’t for Wayne, I’d have never even heard OF Led Zeppelin. And if I’d never heard of Led Zeppelin, I’d have never HEARD Led Zeppelin, you see what I’m saying? I’d have never known “Stairway to Heaven,” hands down, was the best song ever, on what is, bottom line, the best album ever, in all the history of music. If Wayne, to sum it up, never became a skid and started, in a nutshell, listening to their music, then no doubt I couldn’t’ve, long story short, had my creative revelation, and so, the 2006 scarf, to put it plainly, wouldn’t be as sharp as you’ll see in November when the order comes in and you’ll see what I mean.”