Allen Zadoff - Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have

“What are you doing dissecting a frog on a Friday night?”

“I was in the mood.”

“You didn’t come to watch me play, did you?”

“Play what?” Eytan says. And he smiles. It’s the first smile I’ve seen from him in a long time.

I listen to the sound of my cleats clicking on the hall floor. The cheers rise and fall on the field outside, growing louder and louder as I move towards the back of the school.

I stop and lean against a locker.

I think about what O. said a long time ago. Why did I try out? What was the real plan?

It was all about April. April and Dad.

April is a lost cause. I should have known it that day at the party. She got too close to the O. magnet. Nobody gets that close and gets away.

I thought April would get to know me, and the love-at-second-sight stuff would kick in. I could win her over. Maybe I thought my magnet was stronger than O.’s. The Z-Effect.

Now I see that I was kidding myself.

It seems crazy now. I play football and get a girlfriend, and somehow that makes Dad and Mom get back together? They come to games every week and hold hands in the bleachers?

Stupid. Embarrassing.

So what now?

April has a crush on O. Dad’s leaving with Miriam. Mom’s probably sitting in the stands with her trash bag full of bagels, wanting to hit Dad over the head with them. Jessica is next to her doing leg lifts, thinking I’m a loser again.

Playing football won’t change anything. It doesn’t really matter.

Only when I think about it, it does matter.

It matters to me.

I’ve been practicing for months. I knocked down Ugo. I’m different now.

I want to go up against Everest. Not because I have to prove anything to anyone.

I just want to see if I can do it.

“What happened to you?” Coach says. “You gave me a heart attack.”

“I had some thinking to do,” I say.

“How’d that go?”

“Pretty good, I suppose. I’m here.”

The stands are packed from top to bottom. Everything is a swirl of colors, cheerleaders going nuts, the crowd shouting their heads off. Brookline on one side, Newton on the other.

Mom and Jessica are sitting together on the Newton side. Dad and Miriam are sitting about ten rows below them.

“I want to tell you something,” Coach says. He leans in so nobody else can hear. Three thousand people are watching us, but nobody can hear.

“I recruited you,” Coach says. “But it was because I saw something in you.”

“You talked to O.,” I say.

Coach shrugs that off. “I’m talking to you now. Man to man. Can you handle that?”

“Talk,” I say.

“It’s true that you’re big,” Coach says, “and Warner’s big, and I needed someone big. We needed someone big. But big is just the prerequisite. It’s like being tall in basketball. You have to be tall to play. But being tall doesn’t make you an athlete. It doesn’t mean you’re any good at it. You get my point?”

“I think so,” I say.

I glance at the Brookline players. They’re standing together on the opposite sideline. One of them is taller than the others, almost like he’s standing on a box. He’s a lot wider, too.

Coach says, “Maybe I was wrong not to tell you about Everest.” He clears his throat. “What am I saying? I was completely wrong. Maybe that was a mistake. So shoot me. I wanted to win.”

I nod. Coaches. Dads. All the people you want to be perfect end up being human. It kind of sucks.

Coach says, “If you don’t want to play today, I’ll understand. I’ll be disappointed, and I think the guys will be, too, but I couldn’t blame you. Not after everything that’s happened.”

“Um… this is a pretty crappy pep talk, Coach.”

“I already gave my pep talk. You missed it.”

“How was it?”

“Hey, Rodriguez!” Coach shouts. “How was my pep talk today?”

“Out standing , Coach! One of your best,” Rodriguez says.

“See?” Coach says.

That cracks me up. Coach laughs, too. The team looks at us like we’re crazy.

Coach bites nervously at his lip. “What do you think?”

“I’m playing,” I say. “But if you keep talking, I might change my mind.”

Coach lets out a long breath. “Thank God,” he says. “I thought we were screwed there for a second.”

O. and I stand next to each other before the kickoff.

“You decided to play?” he says.

I nod.

“Don’t do me any favors,” he says. “I can dance around Everest. I can quick-release. He won’t get anywhere near me.”

“That’s fine.”

“I’m saying I don’t need you.”

“I’m playing anyway.”

O. kicks some turf with his cleat. “Good for you,” he says.

Four quick downs and we get our first possession. In the huddle, O. calls a standard pass play, but before we can break, Rodriguez puts his hands up to stop everyone.

He places an arm around O.’s shoulder, and the huddle goes quiet.

“Protect our boy,” Rodriguez says.

He’s talking to everyone, but he’s looking right at me.

“Newton!” the guys scream, and we clap and break.

I step up to the line, and Everest settles in front of me. I see him up close for the first time. He’s not so much a mountain as he is a massive, square thing, like one of Mom’s industrial freezers. I catch sight of April over his shoulder. She’s screaming something. A few weeks ago I might have imagined she was screaming to me, but now I don’t think so.

I feel O.’s hand on the small of my back. “Steady,” he says.

He shouts, “Hup, hup, haa-eee !”

I snap the ball.

Badly.

My fingers feel like they belong to someone else. I nearly fumble, but I recover at the last second and make a sloppy transfer to O.

I instantly convert my backward energy to forward. There’s a crash as Everest and I connect for the first time. It’s the hardest hit I’ve ever felt. It’s not even right to call it a hit. It’s more like a car accident.

Before I know what happened, I’m looking up at the sky. The shadow of Everest passes over me as he moves quickly to crush O.

Instinctively I reach up for his ankle, and even though my hand slides right off, the grab slows him down for a half a second—just enough time for O. to scramble out of the way and complete a five-yard pass.

I try to stand up, but my body doesn’t work like it should. The best I can do is to roll over on all fours like a dog and moan for a few seconds.

I feel arms reach under my shoulders to heft me up.

“You okay?” Cheesy says.

“Let go of me,” I say.

He backs off, and I bring myself to a standing position alone. I look at Everest, the sheer size of him. That was only one hit, and we still have a whole game to go.

Jesus Christ.

Everest grunts and gets back into position. I try to look him in the eye, but his face is buried in shadow behind the mask. I glance into the crowd. Mom is up in the stands, her mouth frozen in a frightened “Oh.” I feel scared inside. I really want to take a puff off my inhaler, but I refuse to take it out in front of Everest. I won’t show weakness. I can’t.

The ref hands me the ball, and I get down into a crouch.

It doesn’t feel like a crouch. It feels like I’m bowing down in front of Everest, like he’s the king, and I’m his vassal.

That makes me angry.

“Get your head in the game,” O. says, and pats my back.

That’s the hard part about football. Staying in the moment. Maybe it’s the hard part about life. Things get tough and you want to be somewhere else.