The League (8 page)

When I got back to the house, Kate was in the backyard unrolling Dad’s putting green. It was a long, narrow rug with a hole at one end and a spot to putt from on the other end. A putter lay in the grass next to a bucket of golf balls.

“Guess what?” she said. “I know the big secret. Aaron has a new girlfriend, just like I said. Her name is Olivia.”

“That’s not the big secret,” I said, rushing to the back door.

“Then what is?” Kate asked, following me into the house.

I responded without turning around. “I don’t know, but I know that’s not it.”

Kate’s reply froze me in my tracks. “Francis called here like three times. Mom talked to his mom. I think you’re in trouble.”

I had forgotten all about the golf tournament Francis had invited me to! I had a feeling things were about to get complicated.

When I walked through the back door, Mom was waiting. “Wyatt, where were you? And why are you so dirty? What were you doing?”

“I was with my friends,” I said.

“What friends?” she asked, eyeing my dirt-caked legs and shorts.

I stood behind a chair. “Just some guys from school. You don’t know them.”

“What were you doing?”

I hesitated before answering. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Mom the truth. Lately, telling the truth had not worked out so well for me. But how mad could Mom get about one football game? “We were playing football.”

“Football?” Mom said. “I thought we already talked about this. No football.”

“It was just two-hand—”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Mom interrupted. “Why didn’t you go to the tournament with Francis today? He said you made plans.”

“I know. I forgot.”

“Wyatt, when someone invites you to do something and you accept the invitation, you cannot just forget. What you did was incredibly rude.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” Mom answered. “Now go upstairs. You can call Francis after dinner.”

“I’ll see him Monday.”

Mom stood in the doorway. “Not Monday,” she said. “I want you to call Francis tonight.”

I wished I could run right through Mom and keep going. I was so sick of doing whatever anybody told me to do when other people just did whatever they wanted. In fact, this made me want to play football even more. “Fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I’ll call him later and say I’m sorry.”

“And say it like you mean it, Wyatt.”

I wanted to kick a hole in the wall. It wasn’t enough to tell me what to say, Mom also had to tell me how to say it. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her how I felt, so instead I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll say it like I mean it,” I promised, ducking under her arm on my way out of the kitchen.

Upstairs, Aaron was studying himself in the mirror and whistling to music. “Come in here,” he said as I passed by the bathroom.

“What?”

“Did you play football after Mom specifically told you not to?” Aaron asked without taking his eyes off himself.

“Yes,” I admitted. “Why?”

“Would you do it again? I’m asking you man to man, so tell the truth.”

I got the feeling he was being serious. “Yeah, I would do it again,” I said. “It’s worth it, even if I get in trouble.”

“In that case,” said Aaron, slapping aftershave on his face, “maybe you’re ready after all.”

I winced as the odor hit me. “Ready for what?”

Aaron kicked the bathroom door shut. “To learn about the League of Pain,” he said.

My mind was racing one hundred miles an hour. Did I hear Aaron right? Did he say the League of Pain? What kind of football league was that?

Aaron lowered the lid over the toilet seat and directed me to sit down. “First, I’m going to give you a little advice,” he began. “Never, ever tell Mom you’re playing football. That was a mistake you cannot repeat.”

“Okay, don’t tell Mom about football. Got it. What is the League of Pain?”

“It’s our own league,” Aaron explained. “We play in the park and we make our own rules. And nobody knows about it except the people who play in it.”

“Who plays in it?” I asked.

“Some people you know and some people you don’t know,” Aaron answered.

“Can I play?”

“You can watch. That’s all I can promise.”

“When?”

“Our first game is at noon on the first Monday of summer vacation.”

“That’s the first day of golf camp,” I said.

Aaron shrugged. “That’s your problem.”

That was a problem, but I had already made up my mind that I was not going to golf camp.
I
was going to choose what I did this summer, not Mom or Dad.

“Remember,” Aaron added. “Never, ever tell Mom you were playing football.”

“You really think I should lie?”

“It’s your life, not hers,” Aaron said. “If you want to live it your way, sometimes you’re going to have to tell her what she wants to hear and keep the rest to yourself.”

“Why did you change your mind?” I asked. “Why are you telling me all this now?”

“It’s like this,” Aaron replied. “Things are going pretty good in my life. If you show up at school in the fall acting like the helpless dweeb you are now, it could be bad for business—for me. So I figure if you see a little combat over the summer, you might grow
a spine and not totally destroy the Parker name. That’s the idea, anyway.”

“I’m not a dweeb,” I said. “I played football today, remember?”

Aaron opened the bathroom door. “Two-hand-touch football, and yes, you are,” he said, showing me out. “But don’t feel bad. This is just me being honest, brother to brother. Now go. I have a date tonight.”

Out in the hallway, Mom was pestering Kate about her math homework. “Is it done?” she asked.

“No,” Kate admitted. “It’s too hard.”

“I don’t think you tried,” Mom responded.

“Can Wyatt help me?”

Mom shook her head. “No, you need to do it,” she said, looking at both of us.

“He helped Aaron with his homework.”

“My answer is no, Kate,” Mom said, shooing Kate to her room. “Now get to it. Your test is in less than a week.”

“I know that,” Kate said. “And by the way, it’s take-home, so stop stressing.”

“Get to work,” Mom said again.

Back in my room, I picked up the football and ran around in short spurts, pretending to dodge invisible tacklers on my way to the end zone. In just over a week, I’d be doing it for real in an actual football
game. I was so happy about the idea of playing I didn’t even care that I’d be in something called the League of Pain. I already felt like Brian Braun.

A knock on the door interrupted my celebration. “Is everything okay?” Mom asked.

“Yep,” I said. “Everything’s fine. I’m just doing my homework for, um, gym class.”

“Did you call Francis?”

“Not yet.”

“Call him now, Wyatt.”

“Fine.”

I picked up the phone, then decided it would be easier to send Francis a text.
Sorry about today. Something came up. Later
. I set the phone down and spent the next twenty minutes trying to spin the football on my finger.

“Can you believe it’s almost summer?” Evan asked, swatting at a mosquito later that night. “I’m so ready for school to be over.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I kind of like school.”

“You’re such a nerd.” Evan slugged me gently on the shoulder to let me know she was kidding.

“Whatever, tomboy.”

Evan socked me again. This time, it wasn’t gentle. “Don’t call me that, Wyatt. I told you I hate that.”

I rubbed my shoulder. “Well, maybe I hate being called a nerd.”

We were quiet for a few minutes. It wasn’t a good
silence, like when one of us looked for the shooting stars while the other person read, or when we were sitting in a theater waiting for a movie to begin.

Evan was the first one to speak. “Sorry I punched you.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “It didn’t hurt.”

“Liar.”

“Hey, I could have punched you back.”

Evan batted her eyes. “You’d never hit a lady, Wyatt. That’s what I like about you.”

“Call me a nerd one more time and see what happens.”

Evan laughed. Suddenly, she sat straight up in the lawn chair. “Oh, I totally forgot to tell you. I got a job at the pool this summer. Well, not a job exactly. But I’m going to be a junior swim instructor. You know, like helping the real instructors teach swim lessons.” Evan pretended to do the crawl stroke. “I’m so excited! I get a free pass to the pool
all summer
, and when I’m sixteen it’s almost automatic that I’ll get to be a lifeguard.”

Evan leaped up and started dancing around the porch. “Go, Evan. Go, Evan. Go, Evan.” Then she froze. “And guess who else works at the pool? Ooh la la, Brian Braun. He was there when I turned in my application and he was like, are you working here this summer, and I think I said, um, yes, but I might
not have said anything, I don’t know, and he said, cool, I’ll show you around.”

“Around where?” I asked, even though I didn’t care.

“The pool, I guess. But isn’t that great? Now I’ll have something to talk to him about next year. You should meet him, Wyatt. You’d totally like him. He’s a really nice guy.”

“Woo-hoo.”

“Wyatt, this is a really big deal. It’s like a job.” Evan sat back on the porch swing. “I didn’t tell you the other best part. I met a bunch of the other people who are going to work at the pool and they invited me to watch the fireworks on the hill. You should come.”

I was pretty sure who else was in that group, which meant I was out. The last thing I wanted to do was hike up some hill so I could watch fireworks with Evan and Brian Braun, even though I thought he was pretty much the coolest guy in Pilchuck.

“I don’t know if I can,” I told Evan. “I might be folding American flags at the retirement home.”

“Um, okay,” she answered. “Well, when you get done with that, you should come find us.”

I told Evan I would think about it, but I had already made up my mind. Evan and I had never hung
out in groups, and I didn’t want to hang out with Evan in a group now. I wanted to hang out with Evan by myself.

I went to my room and found Kate in my beanbag chair, reading a book. I pointed to the door. “Good night.”

“Why don’t you want to watch the fireworks with Evan?” she asked.

“Were you listening?”

“The window was open. Why don’t you want to watch the fireworks with Evan?”

“Who said I didn’t?”

“You told her you had to think about it. That’s the same thing. Why don’t you want to watch the fireworks with Evan?”

I sat on my bed. “Because she’s going to be with a bunch of people I don’t know and there’s nothing fun about that.”

“But she invited you.”

“I don’t want to go,” I said.

“Why don’t you just admit you like her?” Kate asked me.

I looked at Kate. “Like her?”

“
Like her
like her,” she said.

“I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

Kate didn’t care. “You should tell her. She might like you too.”

“We’re just friends. That’s all. She likes Brian Brian. I mean Braun.”