A Step Toward Falling (9 page)

“Yes,” I say. I squeeze my eyes shut so I don't accidentally cry.

“You're so much braver than I was. I'm so proud of you for that.”

“I'm not that brave,” I say, because I'm not. I don't feel brave.

“Yes, you are. You're braver than I ever was. By the time I got to your age, I was scared of everybody.”

I don't know the whole story of what happened to Mom when she had me. I just know it was hard and she
never finished high school.

“I'm not brave,” I say. “I just don't want to miss my only chance to do a job.” I don't open my eyes because there are tears behind them and I don't want Mom to see that. I don't think she knows what the employment agencies said this summer. Sometimes Nan and I don't tell her bad news because we don't want her to feel sadder than she already does.

“I was always so scared of what everyone else might think of me. I was scared of what they'd think when I got pregnant, and then I was scared of what they'd think when my baby had problems. I don't want you to be scared like I was. I want you to go back to school and show everyone how strong you are.”

Now that she's said it, I like the idea. Maybe people will look at me and think I'm strong. “Will you come with me?” I say and then I remember I probably shouldn't ask her. Nan says you shouldn't ask people to do things they can't do. Like for years I tried to learn how to make change, but I never could. Dimes don't seem like they're worth more nickels. And nickels look like quarters to me. I always make mistakes. Finally Nan said, “It's okay if you never work a cash register. You shouldn't be asked to do what you can't do. No one should.”

Mom doesn't like to leave the house which is why she's never worked except at home. Nan can't open jars which means Mom and I do it for her. If you can't do something, it's not your fault and no one should force you. That's how it's always been for us, except now I've made a mistake and
asked Mom to do something she can't do.

I feel terrible. I don't want Mom to cry or think everything is her fault. It's not her fault what happened with Mitchell Breski. It's not her fault that I can't make change and I have bad eyes. Then she surprises me. She squeezes my hand and sits up in bed.

“Yes,” she says. “If you want to go back to school, I'll go with you.”

Now she's so nervous and excited she stands up in the dark and walks around my room. “I will,” she says again and squeezes my arm. “I'll come with you.”

I
SPEND MOST OF
S
UNDAY
wanting to call Richard and find out how his night with Hugh went, but I don't. If it was a disaster, I don't want to force him to talk about it. If it was great, I assume he would have called me early to go over the details, but then I remember we're in new territory. He's never been on a date before so I really don't know what he would do. I don't know if he'll become one of those people who gets into a relationship and drops all his friends. It scares me a little, especially when I go the whole day without hearing from him. Finally, before bed, I send him a text:
So? How was it?

I get ready for the worst and think about the speech I've planned: “Even if it was a disaster, it's still good that you tried. You were brave, which is the most important part.”

Then he answers:
Great. We spent most of today together, too. He needed new dress pants for a band concert coming up. He's
a terrible shopper so I went to the mall with him.

Richard hates shopping. He always says he'd do it more if it didn't involve looking in mirrors or trying on clothes. “I wish we could just walk around with our outfits on hangers dangling from our necks,” he usually says.

Where'd you go?
I ask.

5 stores. Couldn't find pants but still had a gr8 time. Have done NO hmwrk. I shld go.

I feel like I'm no longer talking to Richard. He doesn't shorten words in texts. We make fun of people who do that, like vowels are such hard work to type out. Plus, Richard is, at heart, a nervous grade grubber. Most Friday afternoons, he goes home and does all his homework so he doesn't have to spend the next two days “worrying” about it. Now he's spent three days without it crossing his mind?

OK. Bye. C U 2morrow.

Hopefully he'll understand what I'm really saying with this text:
You don't sound like yourself. In fact, you sound a little stupid.

Apparently he doesn't, though, because the next day I don't even talk to him until right before lunch, when he tells me he won't be eating with us today because he's going out with Hugh. “He wants to keep looking for pants. I said I'd go with him. Don't be mad.”

“I'm not mad,” I say, sounding mad. “So, what, he has a car?” I don't know why this annoys me, but it does. I'm still picturing Hugh being as short as he used to be. I imagine him sitting on phone books to see over the dashboard.

“Yeah, Em. A lot of people have cars.”

“Right, I know.” I'm just the only one of our friends who does.

Richard loves to point out that he might be gay, but he's not
that
gay. He hates Lady Gaga, for instance, and has never seen a Judy Garland movie except for
The Wizard of Oz
, which doesn't count, according to him. He doesn't worry excessively about his clothes or his hair, he never watches reality TV shows, including
Runway
, which (according to him) was designed to appeal exclusively to gay teens. I'm thinking about all this because it underscores how strange Richard sounds the next day at lunch, describing in elaborate detail the pants they finally bought for Hugh. “They've got a bias cut, which makes them hang beautifully. I almost bought a pair for myself but I don't have occasions for black dress pants. I wish I did.”

“Excuse me,” I say, unwrapping my sandwich, “but who are you and what have you done with my friend Richard?” This is an old joke Richard used to make the first year we were friends any time I talked about my flag-team days.

Now he sinks a little, like I've just shot him in the chest. “Come on. Don't be like that.”

“Like what?”

“Be happy for me.”

I tell him I would be happy for him if all this pants shopping meant he found out whether Hugh was gay or not. He's already told me they didn't talk about it. Maybe I'm in an overly negative mood, but it seems entirely
possible to me that Hugh is very happy to have Richard as an enthusiastic new friend and Hugh is as straight as I am.

Richard shakes his head. “I mean, maybe you're right, but I don't think so.”

“Why don't you
ask
him?”

“We're enjoying getting to know each other. That's all. We're not at the point where we want to talk about who we'd like to kiss or if it should be each other. Why is that bad?”

I want to say:
Because you're going to be heartbroken. You know what you want and becoming better friends isn't it.
Maybe I'm only thinking this because nothing at all has happened with Chad and I haven't had the guts to change that or suggest anything. “You really think you'd be happy just being friends with him if that's all he wants?”

“Of course I would. He's a great guy.”

“And what happens a week from now when he tells you all about the girl flute player in orchestra who he wants to ask out?”

“I'll say to myself, ‘Oh well, it probably wasn't meant to be.'”

“And you'd be fine?”

“Yes,” he says, but I can hear the flicker of doubt in his voice. He wouldn't be fine. He knows it and so do I.

Two days later, Richard meets me at my locker in the morning like he usually does, but instead of talking about the TV shows he watched last night, he's humming. After a few minutes, I finally ask: “Okay, what's going on?”

He looks surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Why are you smiling and humming? What are you not telling me?”

He grins.
“Nothing.”

“Shut up. Just tell me.”

“All right, fine. Hugh and I finally had a talk. I found out his gate
does
swing in my direction, and yes, the thought of us going on a date
has
crossed his mind—” He's about to tell more of the conversation and then he just smiles, shakes his head, and stops.

“And what happened?”

“Nothing,” he says, smiling.

“Nothing? So why are you so happy?”

“I don't know. Maybe there's something nice about taking it slow. That's all. I like him; he likes me. We'll see what happens.”

“So—no kiss yet? No plans for a date? Nothing like that?”

“No. Not yet.”

I have to admit—some horrible part of me doesn't want this to work out for Richard. It's like we're in a race for who can be the most mature about a relationship and I'm losing. The longer we walk in silence, the more I think,
I'm definitely losing.
He's suddenly so mature, he's not telling me everything. I can see it on his face:
I want to keep some of this private between Hugh and me. You understand, right? You will when you've met the right person.

Oh come on,
I want to say.
You've known the guy for a week and a half.

Then I want to say:
Be careful, Richard. He's going to hurt you.

If that's going to happen, though, it doesn't seem likely in the immediate future. Hugh joins us at the lunch table later that morning and even though I'm wary, he's the right combination of shy and also appreciative. He doesn't say too much but laughs really hard at one of Candace's jokes, which means she'll definitely love him for the rest of her life.

They leave the cafeteria together a few minutes before the bell. Watching Richard and Hugh walk away, I'm struck by a random thought: Hugh looks like the kind of fantasy boyfriend I've imagined in my future. Not that he's so wildly handsome (Chad is better-looking, definitely) but Hugh is closer to who I've pictured myself with. A guy with warm eyes and sweet smile. One who gets the joke but doesn't always have to crack it himself.

And then I realize it's not the
person
I'm crushing on, it's the
idea.
Richard has found someone and I haven't. And I'm jealous.

When they bump shoulders walking up the hallway, I feel such a pang, I turn and look away.

L
UCAS LIVES ON A
street of small bungalow houses with patchy lawns and chain-link fences and no gardens to speak of. The only color on his lawn is a hand-painted sign the cheerleaders must have made that reads,
GET BETTER SOON, #89! WE NEED YOU!

“That's nice,” I say, pointing to it. “Does every injured player get that?”

“I don't know. So far there's only two of us out for the season.”

I'm surprised he's saying this so easily. “So it's confirmed, then? You're definitely not going back?”

“Yeah,” he says as I open the car door for him. Maybe this is obvious, considering it's been five days and he still looks like he's in a lot of pain. It takes him a full minute to get his bad leg in the car and situated in front of him. Of course he's not playing again anytime soon.

“Sorry,” I say when I get in the driver's side.

“About what? Why do you keep apologizing?”

Now I feel stupid. “Well, I'm a terrible driver. I'm apologizing for that ahead of time.”

He laughs. “Okay.” He puts a defensive hand on the dashboard. “I'm ready. Let's see how it goes.”

I signal before pulling out onto his empty street. “Maybe I'm not terrible so much as overly cautious to a dangerous degree. I tend to veer when I see a scrap of paper blowing on the sidewalk. I have an overdeveloped fear of hitting pedestrians who are nowhere near me.”

“What's your cruising speed on the highway?” Lucas asks.

“About fifty, usually. Sometimes I push it up to fifty-two or fifty-three.” I don't take my eyes off the road as I speak.

“And you've probably heard that going too slow causes more accidents than speeding, right?”

“I've heard about some flawed theories with no evidence to support them, yes. The truth is, I
used
to be a terrible driver. I'm a lot better now.”

As if to demonstrate the lie of this statement, I accidentally jam on the brakes ten feet from a stop sign. His leg looks like it took a jolt. “Oh God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that.”

“No, it's fine. Keep going. I can tell you're much better now.”

I ease onto the gas. “I think I'll do better if we change the subject. Can I ask what position you play on the team? I'm probably supposed to know, but I'm sorry, I don't.”

“Did play. Defensive end.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It's on the D line. Do you know what the D stands for?”

“It stands for downs, right? I'm kidding. I'm a huge football fan. I almost made one of those poster board fences for defense. I didn't actually make it yet but I might. So what does a defensive end
do
exactly? I mean, I
know
, but just remind me.”

“We set the edge, keep plays from getting around us and down the sidelines. We keep the QB in the pocket and on our best plays, we sack the QB. We have to be fast, and I know it sounds like I'm just saying this, but we have to be smart about reading other teams and anticipating their plays.”

“Are you good at that?”

“Pretty good, yeah.”

“Like you're standing on the line, looking at the quarterback, and you can tell he's thinking, I'm going long.”

He smiles at me and laughs. “No one thinks that. Have you ever been to a game?”

I have to admit, Lucas's smile is nice. “Sometimes they throw long ones.”

“They throw to
receivers.
They need a target. They don't go long and hope for the best.”

“I know that. Sort of.” I ask if he's ever made any big plays, where the whole game changed because of something he's done. Maybe it's not a question I should ask now that his season is over, but I've always wondered what that would feel like.

“Once I ran a forty-yard touchdown on a strip-sack. That was cool, but that's pretty much it for game changers. One.”

“Still, that must have been great. Was everyone in the stands stamping their feet and screaming your name?”

“Kind of. A bunch of girls took off their tops and threw them at me.” When I look over, he's laughing. “Okay, not really. I guess the stands were screaming Kessler right afterward but for some reason it sounded like MUFF-LER to me. I don't know why.”

“That would have been a little random.”

“I know, right? I was so used to people sitting in the stands not really following the game or else just watching for Moody and Cartwright to make their plays. It didn't occur to me they might be yelling my name.”

I think about the way my friends and I have come to all the football games, less for the football than for the spectacle of it all. The cheerleaders, the band, the social dramas unfolding in the stands around us. It's like a party everyone has been invited to. A party with a show to fill in any awkward gaps in conversation. I think we are reasonably attentive to the game, but Lucas is right, we probably only watch it about a quarter of the time. When we've got the ball. When we're about to make a play. If I was there for it, I don't remember Lucas's interception and touchdown. It must be strange to be the center of so much attention but not really seen. Instead of saying this, I try for a joke. “Maybe they really were yelling Muffler.”

He shoots me another look but doesn't laugh.

I try a different strategy and ask a question I've
wondered about for a while: “What makes Cartwright and Moody so good? Is it something you're born with or do they train harder than everyone else or what?”

“Do you want to know the fake answer we tell the press or do you want the real answer?”

“Both.”

“The official answer is: those guys are natural-born athletes who've raised the bar for each other and the level of play for all of us.”

“What's the real answer?”

“The real answer is they're both pretty screwed up.” Just saying this seems to make him nervous. “Never mind. I shouldn't have said that. Don't tell anyone I said that.”

He looks so nervous now I want to tell him,
You haven't really said anything
. “What do they do? I promise I won't repeat this. Really, Lucas, just tell me.” Secretly, I'm thinking,
I'll just tell Richard because he loves this kind of thing.

“They have this violent streak. Like if you hit someone pretty hard and then help them up afterward, Moody gets really mad. He thinks it shows weakness. They think every game is a battle. If you don't go for the kill, you're a pansy-ass loser.”

“That's how he talks?” I don't know Ron Moody at all except that he has a big smile and a lot of freckles. Honestly, it's hard to picture.

“Have you noticed how they don't let him give too many quotes in the paper?”

I shake my head because of course I've never read a whole article about our football team. What would I need
to know beyond the headlines?

“He gave these quotes early on promising there'd be blood on the field after we were done with Mansfield. Who
says
something like that? Finally the coaches stopped letting any reporters talk to him.”

“Who talks to the reporters now?”

“Cartwright, mostly. Me, a little bit.” He looks embarrassed at this. “I mean, not anymore, obviously. But I talked to one reporter.” He sounds like he's not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed about this.

“What did you say?”

I look over and he's staring at me, eyebrows raised, as if to say:
You really want to know?
“I said, ‘We're just hoping to play our best and have a great time. We love the game and have a lot of respect for the team we're playing. . . .'”

I laugh at the way he's said all this. “Wow, you sound just like . . . a football player.”

He smiles. “There should be a class where they teach us quotes like that, but there isn't. I thought it up myself after watching seven thousand players give pregame interviews. I was pretty proud of it.”

I ask him if he wants to keep playing in college.

“Yeah, I was hoping for that. Number one in the state, your mind does crazy things. It starts imagining maybe you'll get a scholarship.”

“Can't you still get one?”

“Probably not. I haven't played in any of the games the scouts came to. I could send tapes, but getting benched for most of senior year pretty much rules me out.”

It's hard to tell how bad he feels about this. Maybe he doesn't even want to go to college. It's a topic my friends can never get off of, but I've always assumed . . . What
have
I assumed? That yes, maybe Lucas will go to college, but he might just as easily not. I've never had a class with him, which means he must be on a different track academically. The one where students get credit for carrying eggs around school. The one we might all be on if we didn't care about having a future that looks different than our present.

Sitting next to Lucas, a strange thought occurs to me: I never picture any of these football players or cheerleaders going to college because why would any of them
want to
? How could their lives get any
better
than high school? Obviously no one can stay in high school forever, but I've always assumed that crowd will stay in some
version
of high school. They'll become dental hygienists or Pilates instructors. They'll marry each other and stay super fit and that will be that. “Do you even
want
to go to college?” I ask.

He gives me a look that I can't read.

“You don't
have
to. It's not like a
requirement.
”

Lucas goes quiet. “Right,” he says.

“There's lots of other things you can do. Travel. Work.” I can see by his face that I'm saying the wrong thing. I wish I could say what I really mean:
At least you've got choices. My friends and I don't.
Or that's what it feels like, anyway. Like we're under a lot of pressure to stuff ourselves into the same chute. If someone said to me,
Hey, don't worry about these applications that feel like a weight on your chest making it hard to breathe
, I'd think:
Great idea! I'd love to!
We're pulling into
the parking lot and I can tell he's misunderstood my point. He's opening his door before I've even stopped the car. “Lucas! Wait a minute!”

“Sorry,” he says, shutting it again. “I guess not everyone's college-bound or knows when to open doors.”

“I didn't mean that. Let me come around and help you.”

He lets me help him because he has no choice—I have to pull his crutches out of the backseat—but when he's out of the car, he walks quickly to the building and goes inside without waiting for me.

I know I've made a mistake. I sounded meaner than I meant to, but I don't have time to think about it, because when we walk into class, Mary is already speaking: “Today you're going to talk about what you'd like your ideal boyfriend or girlfriend to look like.”

My heart stops for a second because I'm not imagining this: Chad turns around and looks at me after she says that. “Hi,” he mouths.

“Hi,” I mouth back.

Mary continues, “I don't want you to only think about what this person will look like on the outside. I want you to think about what they'll look like on the
inside
, too.”

I'm pretty sure I know what inspired this exercise. Last week, Franklin, who is in his thirties and one of the older members of class, shared his strategy for finding a girlfriend, which seemed to be: ask out every waitress at the restaurant where he works, bussing tables, until one of them finally relents and says yes. “But that might not work,
Franklin. They might all say no,” Mary pointed out. “No,” he said. “Someone will say yes.”

Now Mary keeps going, “You want to think about what interests you'd have in common and about things you'd like to do together and share. About finding someone who might have challenges as well so you can share your strategies.”

Franklin isn't the only one with deluded hopes. They've all talked about wanting to date celebrities or characters on TV shows. Mary's trying to get them to think realistically, and look around a little closer to home. It's a good idea, though I have to admit the exercise seems challenging. Each person is supposed to make two lists to describe the kind of person they would like to date someday. “On one list, you can describe what their
outside
might look like, and on the other list, you should think about what their
inside
might look like.”

This is our first time working one-on-one with the other students since my terrible interview with Harrison and I'm happy to have a chance to redeem myself. I sit down next to Ken, who has his paper in front of him with nothing written on it. “I don't understand this,” he says. “How do I know what insides look like?”

“I think she means what would you like their personality to be like?” In an effort to keep him from talking too loud, I whisper and move my chair a little closer.

“You shouldn't sit so close,” he says. “I have a girlfriend and she'll get mad.”

Two weeks ago, Ken and Annabel announced their
breakup to the group. I've never talked to him before so I'm not sure if I should mention this, but I go ahead: “Does that mean you and Annabel are back together?”

“That's right. We use condoms now. Every time.”

“Okay! So maybe you want to think of what you like about Annabel's personality.”

This question is easy for him to answer. He ticks off a list, using his fingers: she likes baseball, she's funny, she smells nice, she's good at video games, she makes him do things and not be so shy. I write all this down in a list for him and then I look up. “You don't seem shy, Ken.” He really doesn't. He's one of the people who talks the most in class.