What to Say Next(55)

Suddenly people want to talk to me. I’m stopped so often on my way down the halls that I don’t even bother with my headphones. I let them dangle around my neck in that casual way like a rock star necklace.

“Dude, you’re a monster!”

“Yo, man, didn’t know you had it in you!”

“Hi-yah!”

Enthusiastic sentences are shouted in my face, often with crazy hand gesticulations or faux karate kicks. I even get a few high fives, which I don’t think allow for an alternative interpretation other than good job. I’m about ninety-seven percent sure that none of these people want me to die. At least not today.

“You’re late,” José says when I arrive at the decathlon meeting. I am not late. I am twenty-three seconds early. Instead of saying this, I show him my phone, which is synced to Greenwich mean time to the second. “Okay, fine. But traditionally we ask that members arrive by two-fifty-seven.”

“Well, then you should have told me that,” I say, looking around at the group. There are seven people here. Two girls. Five guys, including myself and José. I don’t know their names and can’t look them up because my notebook no longer accompanies me to school. “I appreciate specificity.”

“Noted,” José says. “What happened to your face?”

“How can you not already know this? He, like, demolished the entire football team. Joe Mangino, who is officially the worst person in the world, is in the hospital because of this guy!” a kid with a hairstyle I believe is called a mullet says, and then fist pumps the air. Miney does that sometimes, though she accompanies it with the words Can I get a woot woot? I never oblige. I have no idea what a woot woot is.

I consider correcting Mullet, since there are probably worse people in the world than Meat Boy—like, say, ISIS members, or even Justin—but I remember that it’s rude to correct people. Then again, this is the Academic League, so you’d assume they’d want to get their facts straight.

“I cried every day of freshman year because of Joe Mangino,” José says.

“Drucker, our freakin’ hero,” Mullet says, and stretches his arms out wide. “Meet the team.”

A girl with yellow pigtails and glasses and an awesome T-shirt that says DON’T TRUST ATOMS; THEY MAKE UP EVERYTHING smiles at me and puts out her hand, which I assume means she wants me to shake it, and so I do. Her palms are cool and soft. I search my brain for her name, but all I can come up with is Wheelchair Girl. I consider that she may be the second-prettiest girl in school, though it’s still too early to officialize it, especially because I haven’t spoken to her yet. That T-shirt is too little to go on. She must be a senior, because we don’t have any classes together.

“I’m Chloe. On behalf of all of us, who have endured much verbal abuse from those guys through the years, and also on behalf of José’s copious tears, I salute and thank you,” Chloe says, and does a little wheelie with her chair as punctuation.

“You are very welcome,” I say, and wonder if I’m flirting. Does my ability to banter extend beyond Kit? Probably not, but can’t hurt to try, as my mom likes to say.

“Okay, Drucker, we’re expecting you to kick ass for us at next week’s meet against Ridgefield Tech. The team is all Asian, so they’re amazing,” Mullet says.

“That’s racist,” I say.

“I’m Asian, though. I’m allowed to say it. My people slay at this shit.” I don’t say anything back because I don’t know if being Asian allows you to say racist things about other Asians. I’m not aware of this carve-out.

“Tell us everything you know about quantum mechanics,” José says, and then, just like when I drop-kicked Meat Boy, my whole body sighs with pleasure.

—

“Where have you been?” Trey asks with a big contradictory smile on his face when I come home to find him waiting on my front porch. He has his guitar in his lap, and his feet are, as usual, in flip-flops even though he has been presumably stuck outside for at least seventeen minutes. I do not like looking at his exposed toes and their spritely hair patches.

“Oh no, I forgot about our lesson!” I say, and my heart drops. I never forget prescheduled events, but the meeting devolved from Academic League prep to a debate about the existence of the multiverse and the mechanics of the time-space continuum, and I must have gotten lost in the conversation. Chloe is surprisingly well read in the quantum world and knows almost as much as I do. Mullet is an expert in the field of theoretical mathematics. José is a history whiz. The whole experience turned out to be stimulating in the good way, not in the Jessica’s blond hair or Abby’s perfume sort of way. “Sorry.”

“Seriously? You forgot?” Trey asks as he follows me inside and upstairs to my room, where we practice. “That’s awesome!”

“It’s been a big day.” I’m rattled. How could I have forgotten my lesson? And why would Trey think that’s a good thing? Routine is important. That’s why tonight, like every Tuesday night, is pasta night, and also why, contrary to my mother’s insistence, risotto doesn’t count. (If it was a designated Italian night, not a pasta night, she might have a point.)

“Your sister texted me about the fight. You okay?” he asks, and points to his nose, which is decidedly less blue and swollen than mine.