First & Then(10)

She didn’t write about high school football, either, so I wondered how I would do it, how to explain the pride Miss Tennyson felt when watching Mr. Kincaid rush ten yards. The crimson glow of TS helmets sparkling in the light of the flood lamps. The faint scent of marijuana hanging on Emir. Would anyone have dared to write about weed back then? Jane would probably be shocked.

Foster didn’t talk at all through the entire game. I glanced over at him every so often to make sure he was still breathing, and each time found his eyes glued to the field.

“Did you have fun?” I asked as we joined the crowd flooding into the parking lot after the game.

He replied in typical Foster fashion, not with an answer but with another question: “How do you think they learn to beat up on total strangers?”

“I don’t know … it’s not really beating up, is it? Just tackling.”

“But how do you throw yourself at somebody without really hating them?”

“You don’t have to hate them. You just have to want them not to win.”

He considered this for some time and only spoke again when we were in the car heading home. “That Ezra guy’s good,” he said, just in the same way Emir had. “He was like a … ball magnet.”

I couldn’t help but snort. “A what?”

“A ball magnet. He was the magnet and the ball was the metal. It just flew to him and stuck every time.”

All-American. Four-year varsity starter. Ball magnet. I wondered how the great and powerful Ezra Lynley would feel knowing he had acquired such a title.

“Cas dropped the ball,” he said after a moment. It was true—Cas had fumbled in the third quarter. “He’s a ball dropper.”

I couldn’t even be indignant. I just snorted again.





4


Foster must’ve been in some deep contemplation that night; he didn’t even think to invite himself to the postgame party until I pulled up to our house and he was halfway out of the car.

“Are you sure I can’t go? I’ll be quiet and I’ll stay out of the way and if you want to get drunk, I won’t even tell Aunt Kathy.”

My eyes darted to the house to make sure the windows weren’t open.

“I’m not getting drunk,” I said. “No one’s getting drunk. And it’s already past your curfew, so get inside.”

Foster’s curfew was just what mine had been at his age—ten o’clock. At seventeen, I was up to eleven thirty. For a difference of three years, an hour and a half hardly seemed fair, but I wasn’t going to push it.

“I’m not even tired,” Foster argued, still standing with the door half open.

“Curfew doesn’t mean you have to be tired, it just means you have to be home.”

“But you need me there to look after you.”

I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it. “Get inside,” I said. He dutifully shut the door and watched me pull out of the driveway.

House parties weren’t my favorite, but because it was the first one of the year, I felt obligated to go. As I made my way over to Martin Lahey’s house, I wished it could be more like how it was in Jane’s time: ordering a carriage, wearing a gorgeous gown, having your name announced when you came into the room. Real dancing to real music. Some sense of decorum. In short, nobody throwing up in the bushes. Nobody fooling around. TV and movies liked to dress it up—put a pop rock sound track under it, too few people, and too much lighting—but they kept the essentials true to life: High school parties are breeding grounds for idiotic people with too much drama and not enough sense. Walking into Martin’s house (to be sure, no one announced my name), I recalled the one thing that TV and movies never mentioned, and that a summer away from this had allowed me to forget: If you’re not one of those people, these things are damn boring.

I found Cas in the kitchen, standing around with some guys from the team, most of them nursing the classic variety of red plastic kegger cups. Cas’s hands were empty, and he threw an arm around my shoulders as soon as I made my way over. He made some comment that I couldn’t hear over the music, and I got a few hellos that I could return with only a feeble wave. Had these things always been so loud?

Stanton Perkins seemed to be leading the conversation; he was a huge, square-headed kid who played on the defensive line. His kegger cup was already drained, and he was the only one I could hear clearly over the pound of the Laheys’ overtaxed sound system.

“Like I said, it was an okay game,” he started up again. “Not our best work, but like that even matters anymore.” He shot a meaningful look at Cas.

“I would’ve liked a little more play,” Cas replied.

“I feel sorry for you guys,” Stanton said, and as the music seemed to increase in volume, his voice spiked, too. “The whole offense is f*cked as long as Lynley’s out there.”

One of the other guys said something about the interception Jackson got, and the fifteen yards Smith rushed for our fourth touchdown. But Stanton just waved one huge hand and said, “The only guys out there that get a hand on the ball are Wilcox and Lynley, and Wilcox only does because he’s the f*cking quarterback! Anything else is just a f*cking accident!” He downed the dregs of his cup and went on. “Without Lynley, we’d all be better off. Get the team going like it should be. Cas out front and not some little cast-off bitch from Shaunessy calling the shots.”