Hannah Gersen - Home Field

“There are even beds upstairs,” Laird said, leading her up the carpeted staircase. In his other hand was a plastic bag with two tall boys and a bag of pretzels. They’d stopped at the Sheetz on their way over.

“Why do they bring all this furniture in?”

“My dad says it helps the house sell,” Laird said. “That’s what the Realtor told him. It’s bad that they didn’t sell it before we moved. But my dad had to start his new job. And they didn’t want me to start the school year here and then move.”

“But you would have wanted to,” Stephanie said.

“I don’t know anymore.” Laird reached ahead to feel where the wall was. It was darker in the upstairs hallways because there weren’t as many windows. “We should have gotten a flashlight, I guess — here, come with me.” He stopped feeling for the wall and took her hand.

They turned into the master bedroom. A queen-size four-poster bed loomed in front of them. There were windows on either side, and the moonlight gave the quilted comforter a blue tint. Laird pulled back the quilt. There weren’t any sheets.

They both looked at the bare mattress. Some of the intensity of their kiss had burned off during their car ride, but it was still there, beneath their conversation.

“Let’s go to my room,” Laird said. “This is too much my parents’ room.”

They both laughed when they saw what had become of Laird’s room: there was a crib, a child’s dresser, and an airplane mobile hanging from the ceiling.

“This is actually mine,” Laird said, standing next to the little dresser, which reached his waist. “I keep one sock in each drawer.”

They had better luck in what Laird referred to as the guest room. There was a platform bed there, a desk, and two chairs. Laird pushed the chairs together and moved them in front of the window so they could sit and drink their beers. It was light beer, and it had a thin flavor that Stephanie didn’t mind. She let it warm her as she looked out at Laird’s backyard, an unadorned lawn bordered by a split-rail fence. Beyond the fence was an overgrown field where orange construction flags seemed to indicate future development. But there were flags like that all over Willowboro. Most of the time, they were just wishful thinking.

“It’s weird to be here,” Laird said.

“I feel like we’re ghosts.”

Laird laughed. “You’re so morbid! You and that guy you always hung around with — Catrell.”

“You mean Mitchell?” Stephanie felt a twinge of longing. He still hadn’t written back to her e-mail.

“Yeah, Mitch, that’s him. You guys were like the Addams family. We’d always be, like, ‘Where’s the funeral?’”

“Yeah, I know, ” Stephanie said. “I was there.”

“Sorry, we were just kidding.” He touched the ends of her hair. “Is this your natural color?”

Stephanie shook her head. “It’s blond — kind of.”

“Why did you change it?”

“I don’t know. To be different, I guess.” To Stephanie’s surprise, she felt tears coming on. It was as if Laird was exposing all her various costumes. He was more sure of himself than she was, she realized; he had a better sense of who he was. Where had he gotten it, she wondered — from his parents? From the football team? From her father? It seemed unfair that this boy should have been given — and guilelessly accepted — the very thing she wanted most in the world.

“Hey, don’t get down,” Laird said. “You know we only said stuff because we thought you were cute.”

Before Stephanie could think of anything to reply, he took her beer out of her hand and placed it on the windowsill. Then he began to kiss her. Soon they were undressing. Stephanie’s jean skirt was a hand-me-down from her mother, and as Laird pulled it down, Stephanie had a disconcerting thought: her mother might have had sex wearing this skirt. She wanted to stop everything, to tell Laird that this was all new to her, that she’d never even seen a boy naked before, but at the same time there was the voice in her saying more, more .

They paused to move to the bed. The cheap bedspread was scratchy on her back and she felt self-conscious about her body, but then Laird apologized for being “so hairy” and she relaxed. They figured things out. They had time, she realized, to figure things out. The silvery moonlight was forgiving, Laird was forgiving — the scratchy fake bedspread was not forgiving. They pushed it aside. Laird’s hands were shaking when he went to get a condom from his wallet, and Stephanie wondered if it was his first time, too. Having sex hurt and then it didn’t. She wondered if it would always be like this, a stinging feeling followed by warmth and sensation. It reminded her of swimming in cold water, that mixture of unpleasant and exhilarating.

“Oh, I am so sore and this feels so good,” Laird said, his words murmuring together.

He meant he was sore from practicing. Or maybe he was sore every day, with his muscles always tearing and repairing themselves. Maybe he was happy because his life revolved around his body. Stephanie wanted some of that happiness for herself and pulled him closer, leaning into him.

The boys’ cross-country coach had the healthy yet grizzled look of a long-distance athlete, a body and face chiseled by extreme exercise and a lot of time spent alone. His name was Erik Philips and Dean had never talked to him at length, although he had always been impressed by his athleticism. His long legs were muscular, especially his skinny calves, which had been recently shaved for a cycling trip. He had a kind of pent-up energy about him, as if he might break into a sprint, and he spoke with intensity, a vein on his forehead bulging as he discussed the finer points of cross-country racing strategy.

“It seems easy now, right, nice and flat?” Philips pointed to the soccer field, a pristine expanse that the runners had been instructed to circle twice. “But when you get in the woods, it’s uphill for a mile. One of those sneaky, slow-burning hills that doesn’t seem like a hill until you’re five minutes in and your legs are dying and you say to yourself, ‘Why am I so friggin’ slow?’”

They were doing the course walk, a prerace ritual that Philips took seriously. Dean had hoped to convince him to take over the girls’ team officially, but the first thing he said to Dean was that he was so relieved he didn’t have to coach girls anymore. He didn’t know what to do with them; he worried about injuring them accidentally. “Girls have loose ligaments,” he told Dean. “It has to do with their hormones. And then their periods get synced up, that’s another thing you have to keep track of.”

Philips was a true runner, a man who liked to start his day with “a six-mile jog.” On the weekends he biked, planning all-day road trips along the Potomac River where he could ride on the flat, shaded C&O Canal trail. Dean didn’t even have to ask to know that he didn’t have a family.

“I gotta catch up with my men,” Philips said. “There’s a turn coming up that I want them to take note of. Tell the girls: it’s good to catch people before a turn.”

He jogged ahead, disappearing as he passed a herd of Middletown runners. They seemed like royalty in their white-and-gold uniforms. Dean’s girls were trailing behind them in faded blue singlets. Dean noticed that Jessica had dropped back and was now walking a few yards behind Aileen and Lori. (See-See, who knew the course well, had stayed behind.) He approached Jessica cautiously; there was something stern and quiet about her, with her delicate body and her neat French braid going straight down her back.

“So what do you think of the course?” he asked her.