In junior year, I was the fat kid. And I mean fat; I had two shawarmas for lunch and one for dinner. Occasionally, I’d slip another in between those two holy moments. Can you call cake a snack? I did.
I had only one friend, who I resented because he had a big head. Our friendship was based on our physical mediocrity. The year went by. I figured playing sports could help me meet new friends and work off some shawarma fat. I was fifteen and pimple-faced. A stylist/personal PR guru would not have helped. Playing sports was the answer.
At school, I stealth-walked around the grey halls gathering intelligence. I picked up pieces of a bunch of conversations. I found kids who played that old imperialist sport called cricket. Barring golf—no way was I playing that—cricket seemed like the least taxing sport to play. I willed myself to give cricket a go.
Saturday was a sunny, blue, perfect, gorgeous, warm day. No bad omens. Mom was at work. I stepped out of our apartment and walked to school with a bat. The grass bordering the sidewalk funneled me to the greatest social opportunity I ever had. I arrived at the concrete slab where they played, and looked into the social viper pit. Nobody noticed when I made my entrance because nobody knew who I was. I ended up being picked last. They assigned me to the outfield. I was grateful for being picked at all.
Cricket is a team sport, but really it’s just about who throws the ball fastest and who hits it back hardest. Fielding is the only team part; fielding is boring. I watched the kids face off and realized the nightmare I’d walked into. The grass and sun and sky had lied. There was no way I was going to make friends with these people. They could play and I had a feeling I could not. I felt weird standing around. I was terrified of a ball coming my way. What if I dropped it? What if it hit my face and knocked off my glasses? Nobody would ever want to be friends with me.
The pitchers threw the ball fast. I expected I would shit my pants when it was my turn to bat. But I couldn’t bail on my team. Camaraderie and wanting to make friends. I prepared myself for a graceful exit.
It was my turn to hit.
I faced this funny-throwing kid. He flipped the ball out so it bounced and changed direction. He threw slower and I thought I could knock him out of the park. I watched a couple of balls. I blocked them and checked my adrenaline. At the fifth ball, I went for the big swing. I missed, jumped back, and didn’t feel too bad.
The next pitch came.
I swung so hard I heard a pop. The sky flipped over. I fell and crashed into pain. I received a loud alarm from my right leg and realized I had scraped my elbow. My entire plan totally flopped. I felt my right knee swell up.
A guy reluctantly walked over to me.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Okay. Need help?”
“Nah, I’m okay.”
He walked away. I kept up the tough guy veil until I tried standing. I doubled over/toppled over/fell. Mr. Reluctance walked back over and helped me up. I brushed a patch of shit and gravel off my side. My leg hurt when I put weight on it. Something bad bad bad had happened.
I leaned on my bat for a few minutes. My athletic guy ruse fell, revealing the fat guy inside.
I limped home with my bat. The grass did not funnel me to joy. I stopped along the way, checking my knee. The kneecap floated under skin, the knee softball-sized. Injury was not good for me. I puked when I scraped my arm. I cried for two weeks when I broke my arm. What could happen now?
I realized I had no keys when I reached home. The security guy buzzed me in. The lobby mirrors shot back images of my failure. I took the elevator to the ninth and knocked. Nobody answered. Mom was still at work. I slumped to the floor and reflected on the year so far. The peachy corridor with pot lights was a far cry from the dingy sewer I was really in. My knee grew bigger. Patellae should not feel as loose as mine did.
A couple of hours later, Mom showed up. Her reaction was the opposite of capital-E Empathy. It was more along the lines of capital-D Disappointment. Seeing me sit there, puffy and sad, she realized something had gone wrong wrong wrong.
“What happened?”
“I fell.”
“Are you okay?”
“No. Can you take me to the hospital?”
“Fine.”
We got to the hospital and I got a ticket, like the ones at the butcher so you know when your turn is, and I rested my leg on a bench.
An hour later, a bunch of medical types saw me. They poked and pushed my swelly bits and I made ouch noises. They sent me to a room after poking for a scan of some sort. I tried to feel tough and not cry but I probably looked more constipated.
I noted the marked indifference of the hospital staff. Today was not an important event for them, just another sporting injury. After the scans, a doctor poked and touched my knee again.
“You sprained your ACL.”
“What is an ACL?”
“It’s one of the ligaments that hold your knee together. It’s not a tear, so you’ll be okay.”
He posted the scan on a lit-up part of the wall. I didn’t like seeing my insides jumbled up.
“You’ll need a cast.”
“Is this going to hurt?”
“A little. You’ll need physiotherapy.”
I reconfigured my making friends plan after hearing the doc talk. Physio and a cast would be cool. I could get sympathy points out of people at school. They would know I existed. Two medical types pushed me into another blue room. They lathered hot gluey sheets on my entire leg. I did not know the cast would reach my groin.
“You have to wait here until the cast dries a little.”
“Sounds great!”
Mom went and bought some crutches. Extra sympathy points. Half an hour later, I left feeling much better and safer. I couldn’t see my wobbly knee anymore.
I stayed home for the next three days. I was a cast-ridden baby. I stayed in my ten-by-twelve paradise full of cookies and coke, playing Dragon Quest VIII. I never got to the dragon at the end but I managed to hit things with a sword. My only friend called each evening with homework updates. I brushed him off, thinking of all the new people I’d meet. I ate too many shawarmas and too many cakes over three nights.
Nobody cared when I got to school on Thursday. The math teacher asked me why I hadn’t done all the homework and everyone moved away from me because I smelled like shit because I hadn’t showered in four days.
I was more than disappointed and less than enthusiastic. Again, my making friends plan failed. I went unnoticed. I thought about Dragon Quest and how much better a shitty videogame was than this. I sulked around all my classes gathering all the work I’d missed. Math stopped making sense and I had no idea what the Cuban missile crisis was. Saddest of all, I’d missed a tape showing of Pride and Prejudice. I cursed sports and ate my lunch in the schoolyard. I did not feel surprised when nobody approached me. I sat with my bigheaded friend. The fit kids still ran around, the dorks still swapped CDs, and I still sat on a bench. My little tragedy meant nothing.
Getting home that day was horrible. I usually snuck onto the bus unnoticed, safe. With the cast and crutches, I drew attention. I sat at the back, put my leg up, and pretended to be dead until home came.
That evening I waded through school stuff I did not understand. The emotional malaise of having a balloon for a knee didn’t encourage me to figure out trigonometry. I gave up on memorizing Cold War dates and didn’t dare understand Hamlet’s pain. I had my own version of to be or not to be. I sat at the table looking at my cast and thinking about how kids in the movies had better casts. They had signatures and tokens of affection. Mine had nothing. I took an early leave to bed.
I struggled out of bed the next morning with enduring leg pain. I did not enjoy my usually beloved bowl of Nesquick. The bus was horrible again. I considered wearing earplugs full-time but decided against it, given my already severe fashion problems. Math confused me more this morning. I had missed a piece of the puzzle earlier in the week.
I jeopardized my decen
t grades for a shot at friendship.
I felt dejected and foolish at lunch. I sat at my usual bench eating a fat tuna sandwich, my one source of joy. As I bit into the sandwich I saw my number-one feared guy of all.
He was the worst kind of bully. His command of racial slurs was impeccable, his glare sublime, and his social network formidable. I felt anticipatory panic from enduring regular verbal abuse. I tried hiding behind my sandwich but my head was much bigger than two slices of Wonder Bread. He walked over with the kind of ease an unaware piece of shit possesses. This scared me more, but I had also been through the worst five days in recent memory. I felt the thing tough guys maybe feel: an adrenaline-fueled desire to fight rather than to run and eat an entire cake. I put my sandwich down safely in the solid Ziploc box.
He came within shouting distance and said something like, “Hey, what’s happening, Paki!”
And I did something I never did before and I thought it was a great idea at the time and I forgot for a moment that I was a lefty liberal and targeted him racially because he had targeted me and I said, “You eat any poo today, you poo-skinned idiot?”
The next thing I knew, a lot of things hurt but my leg was okay and I realized I had crutches. I smacked him in the knee (subconsciously maybe wanting to inflict on him the pain I experienced). It didn’t hurt him, of course, and he looked at me in the way people look at confused children.
I think he might have felt concern for me. “Yo, what’s wrong with you, man? You want to get hurt?” he said.
I did hurt and I finally understood where I really fit in the class struggles of high school. At that moment I was angry but I also accepted who I basically was. I said yes, I want to get hurt and he shook his head and walked away.
Over the next five months I skipped all my rehab appointments but stretched my knee back into some semblance of shape. I went into my senior year okay with Bighead.
Put some Ice on it
Carine Abouseif
BANG.
A fist slams into the open bathroom door. The door smacks the wall behind it and bounces back. The hinges squeal. The edge of the door collides with the door-frame. A crack crashes through the room.
I drop to the bathroom floor. I fist my knuckle into my stomach.
I extract my hand from the folds of my stomach. I flex my fingers.
Green, blue and purple bruises flower over the back of my hand. The skin of my knuckles dents inwards. My hand shakes.