“Don’t mind us,” chuckled the other.
It was no big deal, just a brief, good-natured interruption, but for some reason they never recovered from it. When they started kissing again, it felt forced and awkward, like they were trying too hard. Charlotte pulled away after only a few seconds.
“Oh, God, Ethan.” Her glasses were askew, her face pink with shame. “What are we doing?”
“It’s okay,” he told her. “We’re just having a good time.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. Her voice was barely audible. “I better go.”
“Come on. You don’t have to do that.”
“I do.”
She turned swiftly, heading for the exit. He followed her out to the parking lot, pleading with her to stay for one more drink, but nothing he said made any difference. She just kept muttering about his pregnant wife and child, and how sorry she was, all the while fumbling in her purse for her car keys.
“You have to forgive me,” she said in a pleading voice. “I’m just going through a hard time. I’m really not the kind of person who — ”
He grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at his face.
“I love you.” The words just popped out of his mouth, but in that moment they felt true, undeniable. “Don’t you understand that?”
She shook her head. The only thing in her eyes was pity.
“You need to go home, Ethan. Just forget this ever happened. Please?”
Then she got in her car and drove off, her face ashen, her eyes fixed straight ahead. He thought about chasing after her, but he knew it would be useless. There was nothing to do but go home, just like she told him.
Now that he was here, though, he couldn’t seem to get out of the car. Maybe in a minute or two he’d unbuckle his seatbelt and head inside, into the house where his wife and child were sleeping. In the meantime he was happy enough to stay right here and think about kissing Charlotte outside the men’s room and the dreamy look on Amanda’s face when he showed her the measuring tape and explained that she and Ben were dancing too close, the way she just smiled and closed her eyes and let her head fall back onto her partner’s chest, as if the two of them were the only people who mattered in the world, as if they had no one to answer to but themselves.
SENIOR SEASON
IT’S PRETTY QUIET WHEN I leave for school, not a neighbor in sight except for Mrs. Scotto, who likes to get an early start on her yardwork. She’s out there every morning in her bathrobe and slippers, cleaning up the leaves that fell overnight. She doesn’t bother with a rake; she just bends over, plucks them off the ground one by one until she has a handful, then straightens up as best she can and drops them into a bag that says YARD WASTE. She does this all day long, from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, into December if necessary. People around here call her the Leaf Lady.
I have no idea how old she is. All I know is that she seemed ancient when we moved here twelve years ago, and she hasn’t gotten any younger. She’s a permanent part of the autumn scenery on Grapevine Road, a stooped, birdlike woman endlessly patrolling her front yard, her entire existence devoted to that little patch of grass. And she gets the job done, you have to give her that. It’s late September now, but even in mid-November, when the whole town’s blanketed with dead foliage, you can count on Mrs. Scotto’s lawn to be spotless.
People around here admire her work ethic, or at least they pretend to. They all say the same thing when they walk by: Come to my house when you’re done. Mrs. Scotto always laughs and says she charges twenty bucks an hour. Then she makes some friendly comment about the weather or asks about the person’s family. She’s a sweet old lady, not nearly as creepy as you might expect.
She’s just lonely, my mother likes to remind me. She lost her husband and her kids moved away. And then my mother gives me one of her looks, like she hopes I’m filing that away for future reference.
I never paid much attention to Mrs. Scotto in the past. I was always busy and happy, and she was always just there, living her strange elderly life on the sidelines of my own. This fall, though, she’s been getting on my nerves. I can’t even look at her without feeling a little sick to my stomach, wondering how she can stand it. But she always smiles and waves in old-lady slow motion when I drive by, and I always wave right back. I’m sure it’s one of the highlights of her day.
WHEN I get to school, Megan’s standing in front of my locker, looking kinda nervous, and I know in my gut she’s gonna break up with me. It’s been coming for a while now. She was gone most of the summer, working at a camp in New Hampshire, and things have been weird between us ever since she came home, like she secretly resents me for ruining her senior year, like I’m some sad sack of shit she has to drag around while she’s supposed to be having the time of her life.
I can’t say I blame her for that.
What I do blame her for are those denim cutoffs, cuffed way up above what the dress code allows, and those teetery wedge sandals that make her muscly legs look longer and thinner than they really are. It just doesn’t seem necessary, getting all dressed up like that to break my heart, a nice big Fuck you with a cherry on top.
“Okay,” I tell her, tensing my stomach like I’m about to get hit. “Just get it over with.”
“What are you talking about?” She smiles like I’m the old Clay, the boyfriend she deserves. “I just want to know if you’re busy after school.”
“Busy?” I laugh, but even that sounds pissed off. “Busy doing what?”
“That’s what I thought.” She runs her fingertip down the center of my chest, stopping just above my belt. “Then you won’t mind a little company?”
I can feel my brain working away, trying to catch up. I didn’t used to be this stupid.
“What about your practice?”
Megan’s co-captain of the cheerleading squad, which is a major deal in our school. They go to regional tournaments and usually do pretty well. Most of the girls are trained gymnasts; they don’t mind getting tossed in the air. They like to brag about how, statistically speaking, cheerleading is even more dangerous than football. Girls supposedly break their necks all the time.
“I can blow it off.” She’s still smiling, but I can see how closely she’s studying me, like this is some kind of test. “I miss you.”
Her legs are really smooth, except for a coin-shaped scar on her left knee, a circle of shiny pink. She fell on blacktop when she was a kid, an older boy cousin pushing her from behind when she was about to beat him in a race.
“You look hot in those shorts,” I tell her.
MEGAN’S PRETTY cheerful in the car after school. She told Ms. Lambert — the cheerleading advisor — that she had a dentist appointment, and Ms. Lambert just nodded and said, Okay, see you tomorrow. It was that easy.
“That would never happen on the football team,” I tell her. “Coach Z. used to say that dead guys were excused from practice, but only if they brought a note from the undertaker.”
“That sounds like him.”
“It was a joke, but it was kinda serious, too. Nobody ever missed practice, not unless they were on crutches.”
Megan switches the radio from my hip-hop to KISS 108, the only station a self-respecting cheerleader will listen to. It’s their tribal music, the soundtrack of high school popularity. Within seconds she’s bobbing her head and singing along, doing that seated dance that girls do in cars, all hands and hair and puckered lips.
“I love this song,” she tells me.
“You love every song.”
“Nuh-uh. Just this one.”
I smile back, happy to see her so happy, to know that she can still feel that way with me. And it’s a beautiful day on top of it, the sky blue and the windows open, the trees turning color and those cuffed-up shorts.
“Ooh, look,” Megan says, like she’s pointing out a tourist attraction. “There’s the Leaf Lady.”
Mrs. Scotto’s standing in the middle of her lawn, beneath the big oak tree that’s the bane
of her existence, gazing up at the branches with a worried expression. She’s wearing regular clothes now — baggy jeans and a man’s shirt and a floppy tan sun hat — which means she at least went inside long enough to get changed. There are days, I swear, when she’s still out there in her robe and slippers when I come home in the afternoon.
“Crazy old bitch,” I mutter, not quite under my breath.
Megan looks surprised. “I thought you liked her.”
“It’s just kinda depressing, you know? Like picking up those leaves is her only reason to live.”
“She’s keeping busy. It’s way better than sitting in the house all day, watching the shopping channel. That’s what my grandma does.”
“I guess.” I pull into my driveway a little faster than I should and scrape the bottom of the bumper. “Just be nice if there were some other options.”
“There are,” Megan reminds me. “She could be dead or in a wheelchair or not even remember her own name. When you’re that age, you’re lucky to be picking up leaves.”
“I guess,” I say again, and shut off the engine.
•••
THE GIRLS on our cheerleading squad have a reputation for being kind of slutty, and from what I hear, some of them actually live up to it. Megan’s an exception. The first time we hooked up, way back in sophomore year, she explained that she was a virgin and planned on staying that way until her wedding night.
Don’t worry, she told me, right before she stuck her tongue in my ear. There’s lots of other things we can do.
That was a bit misleading, because it turns out that she doesn’t go for oral, either, so lots of other things really just means a steady diet of kissing and underwear humping and using our hands. Most of the time I’m okay with it. But it’s been a while since we were alone like this, and I can’t help hoping when we get to the bedroom that maybe today will be different, that maybe something happened over the summer at Camp Hiawatha that changed her mind about what she will and won’t do. Something that had possibly caused the distance between us, but might also bring us back together.
It’s just wishful thinking. Everything’s like always, all the old boundaries still in place. The shorts come off, but the panties stay on. The Trojan remains in the drawer, hidden inside a pair of socks.
“You’re a great guy,” she whispers, slipping her lotiony hand into my boxers. “I’m really proud to be your girlfriend.”
Megan’s not too big on the dirty talk. Mostly she just says lots of sweet things while she jerks me off, complimenting me on the way I smell, and the stubble on my chin, and my broad shoulders. But she says this stuff in a low, breathy voice, her eyes locked on mine. Usually it gets me pretty turned on.
Today, though, I’m a little distracted. She keeps working away, murmuring about my triceps and my teeth, but for some reason, all I can think about is Mrs. Scotto, and what it must feel like to be eighty-something years old, nothing left to do but pick up dead leaves and put them in a bag. Megan must sense it because her hand stops moving and her eyes get all worried.
“Clay?” she whispers. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Keep going.”
SATURDAY’S A home game against Mansfield, and I have to force myself to go to the stadium. I like to imagine that it would be a minor local scandal if I didn’t show up, that people would speculate about my absence in hushed and anxious tones: What happened to Clay? Why isn’t he here? But really, they probably wouldn’t even notice. The team’s doing just fine without me.
Coach Z. asked if I wanted to stay on the roster, which would have allowed me to travel on the team bus to away games and stand on the sidelines in my Cougars jersey. He said maybe I could do something useful — hold a clipboard, keep track of offensive formations, make sure there were enough paper cups for the Gatorade — but I told him no thanks, that I’d just watch from the bleachers like everybody else.
So that’s what I do. I line up with the civilians, show my ID, plunk down three bucks for a ticket. Then I make my way to the student section and take my place with the rowdy senior guys. I know a lot of them — varsity soccer and lacrosse players, mostly, hard partyers, loudmouths who like to give the refs and opposing players a hard time — and I do my best to blend in, show a little spirit. I clap my hands and join the chants, pumping my fist like I’m not dying inside every time the ball gets snapped and the bodies crash together without me.
RIGHT BEFORE halftime I go for a hot chocolate. It feels like I’m trapped in a moving spotlight, everybody in the bleachers watching like I’m some kind of tragic celebrity. There he is, I can almost hear them whisper. There’s Clay Murphy. My face heats up; I can’t afford to look anywhere but straight ahead.
I manage not to talk to anybody until I get on line at the refreshment stand and find myself standing right behind Mr. Makowski, my old Pop Warner coach, a big bald guy with a belly hanging over his belt like a sack of cement mix. His son Bobby’s taking my place at right inside linebacker, doing a great job, really stepping up. Everybody says so. There was an article about him in the Patch just the other day: “Makowski Making Waves, Getting Noticed.”
“Clay,” he says, smiling the way you do when you visit someone in the hospital. “How you doing?”
“All right, I guess.”
“Back to normal?”
“Almost. The doctor says it takes time.”
There’s a roar from our side of the bleachers. We both turn, a little too late to see what happened. It must have been a third-down stop because our defense is trotting off the field, the punt-return unit heading in from the sidelines. Mr. Makowski pats me gently on the shoulder, like he’s afraid I might break.
“You’re a tough kid,” he tells me. “Keep your chin up, okay?”
PARTS OF last year are pretty foggy, but I have a clear memory of the play that messed me up. It was a third-quarter goal-line stand against Bridgeton, the next-to-last game of the season. We were up 20–6, but a touchdown would’ve put them right back in the game. So our defense was pumped. We stopped them three times in a row from the two-yard line.
On fourth down, their tailback — a kid named Kenny Rodriguez — took the handoff, and somehow I just knew what was gonna happen. That’s the beautiful part of football, those moments that unfold like a dream, a little slower and brighter than real life. You’re reacting, but it doesn’t really feel that way. It feels like you’re predicting, or somehow even controlling the action.
Kenny launched himself off the ground, trying to dive for the touchdown, and I did the same thing at exactly the same time. People said it was an amazing hit, two human missiles colliding in midair. I remember the crack of our helmets, the oof of air leaving my body as I slammed into the turf. Then just a hum, like a refrigerator in a quiet house.
EVERYBODY ASSUMED that Kenny got the worst of it. I was just dazed; he was the one who got knocked out, the one who left the field on a stretcher with a collar around his neck. But he was back in the lineup the following week, even scored a touchdown. He shook it off, the way you’re supposed to.
I wasn’t so lucky. For months afterward, I had stabbing headaches and blurry vision; I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I missed a lot of school, but staying home was its own kind of hell, because there was nothing I could do to pass the time that didn’t make me feel worse. I couldn’t read or look at a computer screen, couldn’t watch TV, couldn’t play video games or make out with Megan, couldn’t even listen to music. A lot of the time, I didn’t even feel like eating.
I’d torn my ACL freshman year and had spent the whole spring recuperating, so I understood what it meant to be patient, to give my body the time it needed to heal. But when you hurt your knee, you know exactly what’s wrong and so does everybody else. You get the surgery, you get the crutches and the brace, you do the PT. You get a lot of sympathy from your buddies and attention from girls. When you hurt your brain, you don’t really know what’s going on, and nobody else does, eit
her. One day you feel pretty decent, the next you’re a wreck. Some headaches come and go; others stick around and get comfortable.
“It’s a software problem,” Dr. Koh explained. “There’s a glitch in your operating system.”
IT WASN’T until springtime that I finally began to feel a little better. The headaches got less frequent and less intense, and my short-term memory started to improve. I had fewer blackouts in class, and found that I could read for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch, do a handful of math problems, even play Call of Duty without feeling like I was going to throw up every time something exploded.
I started hitting the weight room after school, trying to make up for lost time. It was such a relief to be back in the flow, pumping iron with my boys, swapping insults, laughing at stupid shit. It was all good — the soreness in my arms and chest, the occasional dizzy spells, the sweaty clothes in my gym bag, the familiar BO funk of the locker room. Even the return of my athlete’s foot felt like cause for celebration.
I knew my mom didn’t want me to play anymore, but I wasn’t too worried about that. She’d tried to make me quit after my knee operation, and I figured I’d win this battle the way I won that one, by wanting it so bad she wouldn’t have the heart to say no. And I honestly didn’t think I was asking for all that much. I already knew I wasn’t gonna play in college — I’m too small to be a linebacker at that level, and too slow for defensive back — so all I had left was one more season. Ten games, maybe a couple more if we were lucky and made it into the playoffs.
“You’re not serious,” she said, when I handed her the permission slip for my senior season.
“I’m better now.”
“You still get headaches.”
“Just little ones.”
“You’re not yourself, Clay. I can tell.”
“I’m fine.”
“Let’s see what the doctor says.”
Dr. Koh didn’t come right out and say I couldn’t play. That’s not how they do it. He just said we needed to weigh the risks and benefits and make an informed decision based on the available scientific evidence, blah, blah, blah. According to Dr. Koh, there were a lot of risks: cognitive impairment, academic problems, chronic fatigue, serious depression, paranoia, early dementia, stuff you don’t even want to think about. He showed us an article about ex-NFL players living with post-concussion syndrome, guys who couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, couldn’t spell their names or remember the way home from the grocery store; guys who jumped out of moving vehicles or tried to fix their teeth with Krazy Glue. One guy killed himself by drinking antifreeze.