Premiere, page 15
“Yes.” Mom walked away from me and into the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of water like it was no big deal. “Pretty romantic, huh?”
“It’s not romantic if he watched her get beheaded, Mom. Why would you do that to me?”
She shrugged, her shoulders lifting in a wicked slant like a bat about to suck all the juice out of some poor, unsuspecting mango. “When you were born, I looked into your eyes, and I saw a gentle soul, a romantic soul. The soul of a poet. And I just knew it was right.”
This is why I now play football.
Offensive line. Me and my poet’s soul can kick some major ass on the field. What can I say?
I compensate where I can.
Jimmy Tsao rams into me, and my shoulders ache as I dig my feet into the turf. I push back with every ounce of strength. He moves left and I block, biceps burning.
The whistle blows. I stop, panting.
He laughs, “Great play, man. Getting tired. You?”
“Yeah.” The sun has disappeared, leaving only a smudge of orange on the horizon. “Coach has to call it soon.”
But he doesn’t. Coach yells at the other guys on the line for not making their blocks, for leaving our quarterback, Derek Smith, defenseless. My mind wanders to the poem I have to write for Mom for her birthday on Friday.
The problem the coach isn’t addressing, of course, is that even when we give the guy time to throw the ball, he never makes the play. Ever. Poor guy can’t throw to save his life. How he ended up being the quarterback I’ll never know, but if he’s the best we got, then, well, it’s going to be a long, miserable season.
Personally, though, Derek is a pretty nice guy, even if I disapprove of his throws and his hair.
He has this hair that, well, it flounces. Yes, I mean flounce. I’m a pretty open-minded guy and all, but dudes just shouldn’t have hair that does that. It’s long and wavy and constantly looks like it’s been blowing in the wind.
Coach blows the whistle, and we get back on the line. Derek calls the play, and just as I start to pump myself up to block Jimmy, I look up at the bleachers.
My throat goes dry.
Hannah Smith is in the stands.
Concentrate, Wyatt, focus on the game or—
Jimmy Tsao slams into my side, and I slip and crash to the ground. Shoulder exploding in pain. No! I reach out to grab at least an ankle or something, but it’s too late. Jimmy sacks Derek, and now Coach is screaming for real.
At me.
“Thomas Wyatt Hershowitz that was the worst freaking play I’ve ever seen! Where was your head?” He stands over me, flecks of spit landing on my helmet. “Everyone else can hit the lockers. Wyatt’s going to stay here and give me a hundred push-ups. And none of that girly-knee crap. Get to it.”
I lay flat on my back for a minute as the sneakers of my teammates rush by me.
I’m cursed. Yes, I mean cursed. I’ve had a crush on Hannah Smith for as long as I’ve known that girls grow boobs.
So, um, for a while now. Like, for years and years.
You wouldn’t think that this would automatically equal eternal damnation, I know. But for me, the problem is that she’s all I think about, the only girl I ever see myself wanting to be with, and, well, I can’t speak to her.
Not like I stammer or start to drool when she’s around, or even that the words come out like a slush of slow-motion pathetic-ness.
I actually can’t speak.
Nothing.
Not a squeak or a chirp.
Nothing.
Everything, all sound, dries up in my throat, and I end up just standing there, mouth moronically ajar, looking like some kind of large, mute, gorilla-man-boy.
Watching the stars blink into view in the chill of the darkening sky, I pull off my helmet and turn over, eyes automatically rising to the bleachers as I start my push-ups.
Hannah’s at the base of the bleachers, talking to her brother. She’s always here. She’s at every game, every practice. She never misses any chance she has to support her brother in his valiant efforts to, you know, make an actual pass. Every day before practice, I tell myself to not get all distracted when I see her, but that’s like telling a frog to run and not hop. I’m just wired to go on the fritz around Hannah.
Push-ups suck. Have I mentioned this? Well, they do. As I hit number ten, I look at Hannah’s hair, how the moonlight sort of gets trapped in its waves, how it falls over the curves of her—
Enough of that. I need to get these push-ups done so I can go home. Talk to Juliet about what to do for Mom’s birthday.
But as my fingers dig into the cold earth, Hannah’s laugh carries across the empty field, riding over the waves of chirping crickets and the distant sounds of traffic from Main Street. My insides quiver. That’s right, quiver. I’ve tried to think of a manlier adjective to describe the feeling, but nothing covers it quite like quiver.
Love can either hit like lightning or burn slow and low like a … well, a really good barbeque sauce, I guess. And Hannah is definitely the lightning type of girl.
It started my first day of sixth grade.
She ran across the playground, and she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Black, wavy hair, torn jeans, and a Metallica T-shirt. She could kick a ball to the moon and then race around the bases so fast that no one could catch her. I was in awe. But then, as she was up for her third kickball at bat, Billy Flannigan called her something. I couldn’t hear what from where I was standing on the pitcher’s mound, but her face—full of light and determination and the urge to dominate the field—fell flat.
He turned out the light, the glow behind her smile. He kept talking, and her face got darker and darker, her glorious eyes wet with pools of unshed tears.
I’m not a violent person by nature, though I realize that may sound strange coming from a guy who plays on the offensive line, but that day, well, that day, standing there on the pitcher’s mound, large, round, rubber instrument of violence already in my young, trembling hands, I’d never hated anyone the way I hated Billy Flannigan. So I looked at Hannah, her eyes cast at the ground, and at the round, reddish face of Billy.
And I pitched the ball, hitting Billy square in the stomach, knocking him to the ground.
This, of course, wasn’t cool.
The teachers all rushed to Billy’s aid, and I lost my recess for, like, a week afterwards, but Hannah, well, Hannah rushed the mound just as Billy’s cries from the ground lit up the schoolyard. She grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Thanks.”
And she kissed me on the cheek. Things went all slow-motion at that point. Her lips were soft and her breath cool against the skin of my cheek, and I felt like maybe my head just up and floated off the top of my body.
I’ve been a goner ever since.
Pathetic? Yup.
But hey, when lightning strikes, it leaves a burn.
Hannah’s not in the bleachers when I hit the showers.
She never is.
Mom’s birthday lands with all the subtlety of a hurricane. Ever since Dad died, my sister, Juliet, and I have tried really hard to keep Mom’s cheer up. Her birthday is hard, though, because Dad first asked Mom out on her birthday. She’s told us the story maybe a hundred times, my crazed father sneaking into the courtyard outside of her dorm, reciting love poems through a megaphone in the middle of the night.
Things didn’t go exactly as he planned, though. Campus police arrested him before Mom was able to find her shoes and get into the courtyard to accept his invitation to dinner or whatever. She did, however, bail him out of jail, and, penniless and now a hardened criminal, he read her all the poems he had been writing for her since they’d first met in organic chemistry months beforehand, and they wandered around UCONN’s moonlit campus for the rest of the night.
Juliet and I try to keep the tradition alive, but there’s always some point in the day where Mom’s eyes go all distant and she clutches the locket that holds Dad’s picture where it hangs around her neck, her cheeks wet and her voice breaking.
This year’s poem is going to be the best yet. I just have to finish writing it. And time is running out. I want to text it to Mom before school gets out, so that way, even though she’s going to hit that dance class of hers after work, she’ll have that mid-afternoon pick-me-up to keep her going until we all get home.
Juliet made her some Eggo waffles this morning, so she’s covered, but me? I need to get this poem done and out the door.
Which is difficult because now I’m in Spanish. So is Hannah, which means, well, no hablo bueno, that’s for sure. Hard to focus on conjugated verbs or Mom’s poem when the freaking sun sits right across the room from you.
Her dark hair’s pulled back off her neck, and she’s wearing these dangly earrings that, well, dangle. They skim the creamy flesh of her neck, and my fingers ache to trace the lines of her neck, to feel the weight of the earring heavy and delicate in the center of my palm.
The teacher flips on the SMART Board, and the class shuffles into note-taking mode. Finally some inspiration comes to me, and I work out a few lines for Mom. The bell sounds, and I jot down my homework and rush out of the door and down the hall. The hall smells like kids and sneakers and gum and whatever lemon-scented cleaner they use to scrub the floors.
Study hall is next, which would be great, but Mrs. Frick keeps the class quiet. And I mean quiet. If anyone so much as coughs, she raises her slow, vicious eyes like a dragon, lifting them from her grading to shame her prey into submission.
I throw my books onto my desk with one minute left before the bell rings. “Hi, Mrs. Frick, aren’t you looking lovely this afternoon,” I say and draw suspicious stares from the other kids. Hey, a little buttering up never hurt anyone, so let them think what they will.
Mrs. Frick gives me a foul, low-toned growl thing in response and turns back to her grading.
About three seconds before the bell, Hannah slides in, robbing the room of its oxygen. I swallow as she glides into the desk beside me, her body visibly relaxing as her eyes graze the clock and she realizes she’s made it on time. Her shoulders unwind and she stretches. Her arms reach up behind her head as she arches her back, and close to three hundred thousand firecrackers go off under my skin at the same time.
Don’t look, Wyatt, just don’t—
But the bottom of her sweater rides up just a bit, exposing a thin line of a stomach that looks soft and smooth and—
My cheeks burn as I force my eyes to the desk. I cross my ankles. Uncross. Cross them again.
This is so bad. Thank God it’s last period. Notebook. Look at your notebook. The poem for your mom. Your mother. Don’t notice the legs in the desk next to you. Do not stare at the jeans that look like they were stitched into place, hugging those calves, those—
Mom. Think about your mom. Right. Mom. Got it. My hand flies as I throw myself into the poem. The hour flies by, and by the end, I think what I have is pretty good, actually. So I start typing it into the phone to send to Mom.
That’s when I feel it.
A slight brush at my hand. A slip of paper, folded in half. I look up. Hannah’s holding the paper out to me. Shaking the paper, in fact.
Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. Hannah. Holding a note out.
To me.
I stare at the note, and the blood rushes out of my face in shock. My stomach clenches and no! Don’t! No!
But it does. My mouth.
It gapes.
Falls open.
I can’t close it. My jaw just hangs there like a lead bar.
Please don’t drool. Don’t drool.
Just don’t drool.
Hannah’s brows rise like I’m some caveman, which, it seems, I totally am. I will my body into action: jaw—close now! Now! Please close now!
Nope, not working. She shakes the paper again and glances over at the grading dragon.
Now! Jaw, close now!
Yes! Finally. I swallow, since it’s all my throat can do at the moment. Speaking clearly isn’t an option for so, so many reasons. I grab the paper and Hannah smiles.
That’s right. Pulls her full lips back into a smile, and it’s like jumping into a pool on a hot summer’s day. Every muscle in my body, every sound, every thought, goes still. All I see, all I know, is that smile.
“Read it,” she whispers.
She whispers. To me.
My thoughts and my nerves tornado, and I grip the edge of the desk with one hand so I don’t pass out. That’s right, pass out.
You know, like guys do.
I am the biggest loser.
Ever.
They’d throw me off the team if they knew.
She giggles and shakes her head.
My stomach feels like I ate a whole bag of Pop Rocks, and I lose my bottom jaw again. Boom, right to the center of the earth.
I need to surrender my man card right now.
The bell rings, and Hannah gives me another smile, and it wipes my hard drive clean. Reboots everything. I glance down at the note.
Missed the Spanish homework.
Can u text it to me? 5558675309
Hannah gave me her number. My throat dries. Hannah gave me her number. My thoughts crackerjack around in my head. Her number. I have her number.
Everyone leaves class. Running for the buses.
Which is great, because that way no one but the dragon sees my hands shaking or hears the thunder going on behind my ears.
Spanish homework. Yes, I have that. I can do this. I can send it to Hannah, who gave me her phone number.
Moving my fingers over the keys of the phone feels like trying to perform neurosurgery with a sock puppet, but slowly, slowly, I add Hannah’s number to my contacts.
Should I say hi first? Or something more conversational? Like, should I say something like, Hey, thanks for asking me for the homework, or I hate vocab lists, but that’s what for homework, or Conjugating verbs sucks, pages 23-24?
Rubbing my palm against my forehead, I grimace. Why is this so hard?
I don’t have to be in the weight room for another, like, half an hour, so I have time. Sort of. The dragon shuffles and chuffs behind her desk, but she doesn’t try and hustle me out, which is great, because I really need to not mess this up.
Okay, so, there’s her number. In my phone. Her name staring at me from my backlit screen.
I close my eyes. Open them again. Yup. Still there. Still matches the number on the paper. Good. This is good.
Flipping over to the poem I wrote for Mom, I read:
There is no one in the world like you.
Kind and beautiful and warm
You make me smile when I’m down
I will love you even when you get really old.
Mom totally should have read a couple of these birthday poems first before naming me after a poet. Well, naming me after a good poet, anyway.
I should send that first, get that done, and then I’ll work out how I should send Hannah the homework. I click the button that will convert the note file into a text and—
The Dragon stands up, legs of her metal chair scraping across the tile, her voice like talons. “You going to stay here all day, Wyatt?”
“No, ma’am.” I stand up, tucking my phone into my pocket, and shove my books into my pack. “Sorry.”
She emits this low, guttural sound that I can assume means that she is either harrumphing at me or she’s preparing to belch fire.
Either way, I need to go.
Swinging my bag up onto my shoulder, I hit the mostly empty hallway. It’s funny how quickly kids scatter once that last bell of the day rings. Grabbing the stuff I need for homework out of the locker, I pull out the phone and make my way to the weight room. I don’t have to hit the weights today, but on days like today when we get to choose between cardio or weights, I always—
What?
What sent?
I hit the screen of the phone. Hannah?
I sent something to Hannah?
I blink. Heat dribbles out of my cheeks.
Oh, no.
My stomach leaps and twists and then drops straight to the floor.
No.
I reach a hand out to grasp onto the wall.
No. No, no, no, no.
There’s no way.
But I blink, and my blood rushes into my head, and the message is still there.
Mom’s poem.
I sent Hannah Mom’s poem.
I squeeze my eyes shut, taking in a long, deep breath. It’s okay. I’m going to open my eyes again and see that the phone says Mom at the top of the poem and not Hannah.
Opening my eyes, again, I shout, “No!”
Still sent to Hannah.
This can’t be happening.
I bend over, hand across my middle, my head whirling.
The girl asked me for a homework assignment, and I send her a freaking poem? And oh, my God, what a poem. I mean, I will love you even after you get really old?
I’m going to vomit.
Like, everywhere.
Right now.
This can’t be. I can delete it, right? I mean, she hasn’t necessarily seen it yet, so if I can just …
But the phone. The text, it has those little bubble things. Like she’s responding.
The police. She’s going to call the police, right? I mean, she asked me for a homework assignment, and I go and get all Shakespeare on her?
She’s never going to talk to me again. Ever, any chance, any hope I ever had of actually, like, holding a conversation with her is over.
As in: game over.
No-rematch kind of over.
I have to think. I have to figure this out. There has to be a way to explain. I can just tell her that I meant the text to go to Mom and then she’ll … what?
Not believe me?
Wonder what kind of a freak writes poems to his mom?
And this is assuming I’ll actually be able to speak when I see her.
This is bad. This is so, so bad.
Something hits my shoulder, and I hear, “Hey, bro, you going to hit the weights?”
Bro? Only one person on the team speaks eighties like that: Derek. Hannah’s brother. This must be a sign. Picking my consciousness up out of the doom-spitting vortex that’s taken hold of my head, I say, “Derek! Your sister!”
