First & Then(9)

Football wasn’t as grand in Temple Sterling as in some of those places you hear about in Texas and even in other parts of Florida—twenty thousand–seat stadiums and a full-scale town shutdown on game nights. But still, it was undeniably important. The football followers were devoted: parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins of boys on the team. Kids like me, unrelated but still wanting to be a part of something. Men, from the guys down at the bank to seventy-year-old Fred of Fred’s Service Station, who played on past TS teams, who understood the feel of the stadium on a Friday night, and who migrated there Friday nights since to try to claim a little piece of it back. Football was something everyone had in common—like a mutual religion. We all believed in touchdowns and field goals. We were all baptized in the floodlights.

I wove through the crowd that night, Foster in tow. He grabbed the back of my shirt as we worked our way up to an emptier stretch in the far bank of bleachers, in front of the end zone.

“They look like an army,” Foster murmured, and I followed his gaze to the visitors’ bleachers, a sea of blue and gold.

After we claimed our seats, I surveyed the crowd around us. A rowdy group of freshmen was in front, and there was a large group of seniors behind us—people I recognized but no one I was particularly friendly with. In Jane’s time, they put a huge distinction between acquaintances and friends. Friends you could disclose your innermost feelings to and spend a lot of time with. Acquaintances you visited for a quarter of an hour because propriety called for it.

The equivalent of that quarter-of-an-hour visit today was a few smiles, some waves, and a “what’s up?” here and there. That’s what I received from the seniors, and what I readily returned with as much friendliness as the occasion called for, before turning back to observe the rest of the crowd.

Foster was sitting next to a Goth couple who were so deeply entwined it was hard to tell whose limbs were whose, and to my right, holding a cigarette and looking mildly bored, was Emir Zurivic.

“I was wondering when you’d notice me,” he said.

I didn’t know much about Emir; only that he had moved to America just a couple of years ago, and that he already knew cooler slang and more obscenities than I had learned in my seventeen.

“You psyched for the game?” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say but felt as if some conversation was required.

“Psyched to make some cash. I put a hundred down that we win by more than thirty.”

“More than thirty? That’s five touchdowns.”

He shrugged. “Flat Lake’s a shitty team, and that Ezra kid’s good.”

“Five touchdowns good?”

“You seen him play?”

Everyone had seen Ezra play, and everyone knew he was good—five touchdowns good. He never missed a pass. Where the average guy could push five yards, he pushed twenty. But I thought about him in gym class, that lazy drawl, You were supposed to lateral it, and so I said, “He’s all right. Nothing special.”

Emir smiled. “I like a girl with impossibly high standards.”

I looked out at the field once more. Emir’s smiles tended to make me a little uneasy. Somehow frowns seemed more natural on his face.

I couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like for him, transitioning to Temple Sterling. Emir was the source of many rumors around school, mostly concerning his pre-suburban Florida life. I thought most of them were pretty outlandish, but as Emir looked out over the field, I couldn’t help but examine his face for some indication of his past. Like maybe there was some sort of mark people bear if they’ve seen tragedy in their lifetime. A look around the eyes, some downturn of the lips. But nothing looked out of place on Emir’s face, aside from a slightly crooked bar piercing his left eyebrow.

Action started up on the field before I could ponder Emir’s past any further. The crowd around us leaped to their feet as the players entered, a wave of TS red and white from one end of the stadium. The cheerleaders had one of those paper banners, which the first few guys burst through with ease. From the other end of the field came the blue and gold, and the Flat Lake bleachers erupted. The scoreboard glowed like the tip of Emir’s cigarette, and the game began.

It wasn’t a particularly good game. Not too exciting, I mean, because we gained a three-touchdown lead in the first half and maintained it for the rest of the game. It pushed ahead to a five-touchdown lead in the last fifteen minutes. Emir was practically beaming at the prospect of his wager.

I let my mind wander through the better part of the game; I had been rereading Sense and Sensibility—I called it my favorite, but every Jane Austen book was my favorite every time I read it. The only one I couldn’t completely throw myself behind was Mansfield Park, because—spoiler alert—the main character has a huge thing for her cousin. I know things were different back then, and maybe it was completely acceptable in their eyes, but the idea of cousins declaring romantic love for each other made me feel a little queasy, especially since Foster had arrived in our lives.

The only other complaint I had about Jane’s books, cousin-loving aside, was the getting-together part. They were stories of such unconquerable love, such strong feelings. You follow these characters through the ups and downs of an emotional roller coaster, this breathtaking will they or won’t they, and is it too much to ask for a little more time spent on the I love you and want to be with you part? It was the very best part, and I wanted to draw it out. I wanted kisses—good, long, passionate ones. Jane never wrote about those.