The Book of David (2 page)

The hard part is getting through today without tipping off Monica. She's wearing her cheerleading uniform, and she was actually skipping down the hall next to me on the way to first
period just now. She's got trig first period. Monica has more brains than the rest of the girls on the varsity squad combined, but I'm pretty good at keeping a poker face. She'll never figure out that I already know about the party.

Besides my unsurprising surprise birthday party, she's also really jazzed about the pep rally this afternoon. We'll all get out of seventh period early, and by that time, Mr. Chadwick will have posted the cast list for the school musical, which is the third reason Monica can't stand still today. She was telling me all about the auditions earlier this week. I'll just say it: I do not understand musicals. I get what they are, but musicals represent zero form of any reality I've ever seen. I mean, I guess there are weirdos who do flash mobs, but that's just public dancing. It's not like people walk down the street and suddenly burst into a song about their day and dancing strangers join them in four-part harmony.

Monica says this year's show is called
The Music Man
. It's about a librarian who falls in love with a con artist. She's auditioned for the role of the librarian named Marian. I can only assume there are lots of songs that rhyme the word “librarian” with the name “Marian.” I'm already bored just thinking about it. Not to mention that this is precisely what I mean about musicals not making any sense. Monica is
way
hotter than any librarian
I've
ever seen.

I can't believe I'm doing this. Yes, it is Saturday. Yes, I am slightly hungover. Yes, it is my birthday. And yet here I am, writing in the journal I'm supposed to keep during English class. With a pen. I don't really know why except that something feels right about putting this all down on paper. A lot happened last night, and I just think I'll feel better if I write it down. Also, I want to remember it. I'm afraid if I don't get it all down right now, I won't remember how I feel about what happened last night. Or maybe I'm afraid that I just don't know how I feel about it at all. I think I'm all mixed up about it, and maybe if I put it down on paper, I will figure out how I feel about all of it.

Jeez. If Tyler saw me doing this he would roll his eyes and say, “That's so gay, dude,” which brings me to Tyler, one of the reasons I have to write about yesterday.

We were losing by ten at the half last night. Jefferson was creaming us, which was stupid because we're a better team. Tyler was not having a good night. I could tell he was all amped up before the game. I mean, he's usually rocking and rolling around school all day before a game. He doesn't even have to drink one of those crazy energy drinks—he's just got that much adrenaline when we've got a game. Anyway, he told me before the game that the Arkansas scout was meeting him afterward, and I guessed that meant he was going to tell them he was going to
accept their scholarship offer. He gave me a weird look and said, “Maybe.” Then he told me that Oklahoma was sending a scout to the game tonight, too. I asked him what he was saying, and he looked at me and grinned. “Wouldn't it be awesome if we played on the same team in college, too?”

It's weird, because if he'd asked me that at any other moment in the last six months, I'd have said, “Hell, yeah!” But for some reason, a bomb went off in my chest, and I got real quiet. I couldn't make my mouth work 'cause I was afraid of what might come out of it. I felt like I was gonna yell at him. It took everything I had not to yell: You dumbass. Oklahoma is
my
school. That's
my
offer.

But why would I be mad? I mean, Tyler's my best friend. Shouldn't I want to get to play on the same team with him in college? I didn't have time to think about it. I just nodded and muttered something like, “Oh, cool,” and then we hit the locker room and Tyler was doing that thing he does: tearing around, pounding on lockers and helmets and snapping the jockstraps of lowerclassmen and leading the whole team in this chant that involves a lot of roaring (because we're the Lions) and how we're the kings of the jungle.

I couldn't even join in. I just tossed my bag on the bench at my locker and pulled off my shirt while I kicked off my shoes. I was shucking off my jeans when it hit me: I was jealous.

Which is so stupid.

Tyler and I have been neck and neck in the national quarterback rankings since sophomore year. We've both risen through the ranks within five positions on the list. We started out in the seventies, and now he's fourteen and I'm seventeen. It's not like he's got anything on me. I know this in my head, but somehow I didn't know it in my gut. I was just pissed off that he was starting quarterback. While I watched him standing on a bench in his boxers roaring like an imbecile at the top of his lungs, I felt like he'd taken it from me somehow.

I stared too long, 'cause all of a sudden he stopped and turned and looked at me. He realized I wasn't yelling. That's the thing—Tyler might
act
like an idiot, but he's not. I saw his eyes narrow, and that damn smirk spread across his face, and he yelled my last name. Every head turned to look at me. “You staring at my abs again?” He rubbed his hands down his stomach, thrust his crotch out in my direction, and grabbed his junk. “This'll make you ROAR, baby.”

I should say right now that this is normal for Tyler. He makes these jokes about everybody. It's one of the things that cracks me up about him. It's one of the reasons that we're best friends, but somehow this was different. There was a glint in his eye, and I was mad anyway, and then I made the fatal mistake and blushed.

I've dealt with my secret for long enough to know what I have to do to stay under the radar. I know where to keep my eyes in the shower. I've been practicing not getting a boner in the shower since I was in seventh-grade PE. My voice isn't too high. I carry my books against my hips and not my chest. I know how to talk about girls. I know how to talk
to
girls. I know how to get the captain of the cheerleading squad to be my girlfriend for two years. I've got this down to a freaking science. The one thing I can't figure out is how to keep from blushing. I've got blond hair and blue eyes, and even though I can get tan and don't burn in the summer, I blush like a little girl. It starts on my ears and spreads down the back of my neck, then shoots around my entire face.

Tyler knows this, and when he decides it's my turn on the chopping block, there's nothing I can do about it. I covered pretty fast, but Tyler saw the blush. And even though I covered, even though I did what I always do and take the douche thing he's doing and give it right back to him, even though I jumped up there in my underwear and roared and yelled about shooting his lion with “these guns” while I flexed my biceps, Tyler knew he'd gotten to me. He saw the blush, and he knew I was pissed. He knew what it was about, too, 'cause as soon as everybody went back to the general business of padding up and getting dressed, he came over to his locker right next to mine and said,
“Dude. Chill out. I thought you'd be happy about Oklahoma. Not trying to steal your thunder.”

The truth is, Tyler has been like a brother to me. I just don't know if I want to have to keep dealing with this weird competition with him for the next four years.

I just looked at that last sentence and realized that I
do
know. I
don't
want to continue this weird competition with Tyler.

Of course, I didn't know how to tell him that at the time. How do you find the words to tell your best friend why you don't want to play college ball with him? That you don't want to have to put up with his bullshit antics anymore?

If he knew who I really was, would he still hurl all those jokes my way? Does he actually already know somehow? Is that why he's making these cracks? Is that why they feel like grenades aimed right at my head?

I hate myself for being a coward. For not being able to say these things to his face or to ask him these questions. If we're really like brothers, shouldn't I be able to?

But there he was, doing that thing he does, coming back and giving me as close to an apology as I ever get: “Chill out, dude.”

I hated myself for blushing. I hated myself for not being just a normal guy who could take anything he dished out without getting all freaking sensitive about it. None of the
other guys had caught on, but Ty sure did. He knows me better than anybody else—as well as I'll let him know me. That's the double-edged sword of having a best friend.

That's also why I can't stop thinking about what happened next. Namely, that we went out and started losing to Jefferson. Bad. We won the coin toss; then three plays after kickoff, Tyler threw an interception. It wasn't really his fault. Corey Tracker, one of our wide receivers, had his hand on the ball and just tripped. Tracker is a sophomore. He's fast as a mofo, but he gets excited and forgets to do things like check his shoelaces. He went down hard, but not before batting the ball right into the hands of a Jefferson safety, who ran like a goddamn greyhound all the way down the line and right into the end zone. Nothing went right for us after that, and just before halftime, Jefferson scored a field goal.

Coach lit into us like Brad Pitt in
Fight Club
. I decided I'd rather be crushed at the bottom of a tackle than come back into the locker room without a touchdown in the second half. Tyler must've had the same thought, because as soon as Coach broke his clipboard and told us to get the hell back out on the field and play the game like we'd been playing all summer in practice, Ty bumped my knee with his and whispered, “First play is the Snap.” I said no way. Coach had told us both to hold on to that one. He wanted to practice it a few more times
before we used it in a game. Tyler just looked at me and said, “Jesus. Grow a pair.”

So I did.

He called the play in huddle. We broke. Ball snapped. I circled, and Tyler pulled off the fake perfectly. He didn't even look. He dropped back to pass at precisely the right moment and just trusted me to be there when he dropped the ball backward and threw his arm forward. I was in the end zone before Jefferson even realized he hadn't thrown a pass. The crowd went berserk. Tracker was right behind me and came running at me. He grabbed my helmet, and it was while we were roaring at each other through our face masks that the crowd went silent.

I turned around and saw the huddle in the middle of the field and I knew exactly what had happened. Tyler had gotten nailed after the fake.

This weird fear that had been hiding out behind my sternum since Ty told me the OU scout was gonna be there tonight exploded up toward my throat and down toward my stomach. Then I was running back down the field. The silence of the crowd was eerie. It all happened so fast that by the time I got to where he was, Tyler was being loaded onto a stretcher. I knew it was bad. They don't bring out a stretcher unless they think it's an injury that has to be stabilized. If it were a sprain, or a hard hit, they'd have walked him off.

Coach turned around and looked right at me and shook his head once. “You're up.” I nodded, but I was staring after Tyler, and Coach got in my face. “Hey. He'll be fine. I need your head right here in this game.” I said, “Yes, sir.” He hit my butt and said, “Hey, do that touchdown thing again, will ya?”

I did.

Twice.

I was a machine. Whatever weird fog had settled over us in the first half lifted completely. Those Jefferson monsters were hitting hard, but I kept dropping back and nailing Tracker and our other running back, Mike Watters, and if neither of them was open, this fast freshman kid we'd been calling Flash all summer would just magically appear and we'd pick up twenty yards, then thirty yards, then
blam
: end zone. I hardly heard the crowd. I couldn't even hear Monica cheering. I could only feel the guys shoulder to shoulder in the huddle, the words of the next play on my tongue, the rough snap into my hands, the ball spinning off my fingers. I passed for almost as many yards in the second half of last night's game as I'd passed total in every practice this summer.

When it was over, we were up by ten, and as the clock ran out on Jefferson's last play, Coach and I watched from the sidelines for a second as the crowd spilled out of the stands and went running toward a pileup in the middle of the field.
A split second before Tracker and Sears Tower hoisted me up on their shoulders, Coach looked me right in the eye and said two words I'd never heard him say in the three years I'd been playing for him:

“Thank you.”

I saw the water cooler get emptied over Coach's head right as Monica and a bunch of the cheerleaders and their friends descended on me. Somehow my parents found me at the exact same moment, and it was like a massive group hug and celebration dance, with people shouting and screaming and crying and generally acting like idiots.

Finally the crowd started to die down. Monica was talking one hundred miles per minute, and she had that new kid from English with her. I almost didn't recognize him 'cause his hair wasn't wet. He was smiling and wearing a T-shirt that said
THE CURE
. She kept calling him Jon and talking about how they met, but I didn't really catch the story. I didn't know she knew him, and I was really surprised to see him there. He walked up and stuck out his hand and said, “Congrats, man. Nice game.”

It was the weirdest freaking thing. Like, all this pandemonium is going on all around us, and he isn't yelling or anything. He just smiles and says, “Nice game,” sort of quietly. And even with all the noise and the crush and the craziness . . . I heard him.

I reached out and shook his hand, and it was like everything
else just faded down to a dull roar—like in a movie where everything goes slow motion all around the main character, and all he can see is the big explosion that's taking place right in front of him. Only this time it wasn't an explosion. It was just me staring into Jonathan's eyes. He held my gaze as I shook his hand, and for a split second it was like there was nothing else in the world—just me, and him, and our . . .