First & Then(21)

I scanned the sidelines for Mr. Harper and spotted him at the thirty-yard line. He was holding a tripod and had an enormous black camera bag slung over one shoulder.

After I introduced myself, I waited, as any normal person would, for him to hand me the camera. But Mr. Harper handed me the camera bag instead.

He held the camera up wordlessly and took a few shots of the field. For a moment I thought he was demonstrating how to work it, but then he turned and started down the field, camera still in hand.

What were Rachel’s exact words? I think I could work something out for you? As the players took the field and the game began, I came to realize that I was little more than a glorified luggage rack.

At least I had a good view of the game.

There were a few other photographers on the sidelines, but they definitely weren’t for the Herald. These were real photographers for real papers. They were commonplace around the end of last season—the team was headed to the Class 3 championship—but this was just a regular-season game. I wondered what the big story was, but it was clear as soon as we got close.

“Twenty-five,” one guy said to another as a new play started on the field. “That’s him. Watch twenty-five.”

As if he knew they were watching, Ezra emerged from the fray in a full sprint toward the goal line. He had the ball tucked under his arm and his head down, shouldering off a particularly large Freeport lineman and darting to the left as another Freeport player threw himself at Ezra’s legs. The last of the defenses failed; the last few yards were free and clear. The touchdown was Ezra’s.




“And in the second half? When the Freeport guy bobbled the ball and Ezra stole it and did that hairpin turn, did you see that? When he just took off in the opposite direction and Jordan tackled that guy like two seconds before he was going to get Ezra? Did you see it, Dev?”

Foster talked the entire way home. He paused the commentary only when we pulled into the driveway. “Are you going to go to the party tonight?”

“No.” I didn’t know the host of tonight’s soiree, and I wasn’t in the mood for a party. My shoulder ached from lugging that stupid bag around.

“Why not?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Do you like those parties? Ezra says he doesn’t. He says it’s just a bunch of people getting wasted and acting like idiots.”

I looked at Foster as we approached the back door. “When were you talking to Ezra?”

“During gym. When we ran the mile.”

I had been too focused running my own mile to pay attention to anything else, let alone carry on a conversation.

“We’re going to start training for real on Sunday. Not tomorrow, ’cause he has plans tomorrow, but on Sunday.”

I wondered what Foster was going to tell me next: Ezra’s shoe size, or whether he preferred boxers to briefs. Maybe Ezra’s opinion on foreign policy in the Middle East, or what he had for dinner last night.

“Night,” I said, heading up to my room before he had a chance to go on. I knew my mother would be happy to listen to Foster expound upon on the many talents and opinions of Ezra Lynley. I think she’d be happy listening to Foster read the nutritional contents of a box of cereal, so long as he was talking to her.

It was endearing, in that way that almost ached sometimes, how much my folks wanted Foster to be okay. And I think even more than I did, they wanted Foster to be normal. For me, being normal meant fitting in. For them, I think, it just meant being happy.




Cas took his car to the coin-operated car wash every Saturday afternoon, sort of like a postgame ritual. He had a shitty black two-door he bought used off a senior back in sophomore year, and he absolutely worshipped it.

Everything in the coin-operated car wash worked on a time limit; the more quarters you put in, the more time you got. Cas had an entire system worked out to get a maximum clean with minimum cash, but it was a two-person system. So more often than not, I found myself at the coin-operated car wash on Saturday afternoon. I didn’t mind it; I’d take mine along and we’d wash it, too. But unlike Cas, I knew no amount of ultrashine dry coats could make my old Toyota look any more glamorous and any less used.

After doing the interior, Cas positioned his car in the little open-air garage and I stood by the metal box on the wall that controlled the kind of wash you wanted. There was one knob that you turned to get conditioning coat, rinse, and ultrashine. You had to put in a dollar surcharge, and then every quarter after that bought thirty seconds. Cas reckoned the entire thing could be done for a dollar seventy-five. This was rarely the case, but it was a nice dream.

“Time?”

The rinse always tripped Cas up. “Twenty seconds.”

“Shit. Switch it.”

The ultrashine was my favorite. It smelled the best. I turned the knob and Cas blasted away. Soap was still dripping from the tires.

“You want me to put another quarter in?”

“No. I’m going to make it.”

“You don’t want to have to pay the buck again.”

“Time?”

“Nine seconds.”

He had only made it halfway around the car.

“You want me to put another quarter in?”

“No!”

I put another quarter in.

Cas finished the ultrashine, and the hose automatically shut off when the clock ran down. “I could’ve made it,” he said, jamming the wand back into its holder. “We wasted, like, ten seconds there at the end.”