E D W A R D
My father dropped me off at school Saturday morning, reminded me to message my mother once I got to the ski resort, and then again before I went to bed, and after I got out of it the next day, so she wouldn't worry. Then he drove off.
We had a game upstate this Saturday, and Coach Sargent had convinced Mr. Colton to let us stay at a ski resort nearby, which had been easy to do, since we were on a winning strike, and Mr. Colton was more than happy to keep us on it, especially if he didn't have to pay for it, although I suspected even if he had, he would still find some money on the school budget to cover the costs for this weekend.
I zipped up my jacket and pulled my bag further up my shoulder.
Someone said, "You're early."
I turned around. Allora King was getting out of her car on the other side of the parking lot, a steaming paper coffee cup in her hand, and the school colors on. After our movie night, I had gone home thinking about everything I had said and done, whether or not I had said it and done it right, or if I shouldn't have said it or done it at all. I hadn't come up with any answers for these questions, of course, and I often wondered if all this overthinking was even worth it, only to figure out that it wasn't, and do it anyway, almost every day after coming home from school or anywhere else really. I couldn't stop myself.
I smiled, and said, "So are you."
She put the coffee on the roof of her car and reached for her bag in the passenger's seat before closing the door. I watched her do all this from where I stood in the cold, bags under my eyes, the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. It was six a.m. I had woken up at half past four to make sure I had packed everything. I didn't care. I could barely sleep thinking about the weekend. I doubted that was the case for Allora. There were no bags under her eyes, no puffy face, no yawning every other minute.
She walked over to me, braids tied behind her back, and said, "I wanted to get some caffeine on the way. Do you wanna try it? I got something different this time."
I smiled again, and said, "Sure."
She handed me her coffee and watched me take a sip, a grin on her face. I had no idea why she was grinning, just that she looked good doing it. The coffee reminded me of my grandmother's pumpkin pie. It was very good. When I told her that, her grin turned into laughter. She also looked good doing that.
"It's a pumpkin spiced latte," she said, very slowly. "How do you feel?"
I was very confused, "Like I'm at Thanksgiving?"
"Sure," she said. "But is your masculinity withering away?"
I handed her back the coffee, but kept my confusion, "Should it be?"
Her grin disappeared, "Forget it. I guess it doesn't work with you. The other day, Coach saw me drink one of these, and gave me so much shit for it. Something about the capitalization of fall, and how these multimillionaire companies profited off of something we could get for free from nature, which is all good, until he said, no real man would ever drink anything with syrup in it."
"His masculinity has to be really fragile to be threatened by syrup," I managed, following her towards the buses where both her Coach and mine were already loading it up with equipment.
She shook her head and took a sip of her coffee before saying, "Watch this."
We were approaching the buses. Coach Sargent threw a bag inside and then turned to me to smile and say good morning. Allora's Coach, who I didn't know the name of, crossed his arms over his beer-belly and frowned at her.
"I can't believe you're having one of those again."
She smiled innocently, "A pumpkin spiced latte?"
The man rolled his eyes and turned to Coach Sargent, "Are you seeing this? The shit these girls blow their money on! A pumpkin spiced latte! What even is that?"
Allora went on smiling, "It's really good. Do you wanna try it?"
Coach Sargent frowned, "Does it have pumpkin in it?"
"No, just pumpkin syrup."
"Syrup! They're putting syrup on coffee! All kinds of syrup! She showed up with a caramel latte last time!"
"I would ask to try that pumpkin one, but I don't wanna shit myself on the bus," Coach Sargent said with a shrug. "Not that you're gonna â"
"Oh, don't worry. Girls don't poop. Everyone knows that." She grinned. I did too. Not Coach Sargent. He actually threw his head back to laugh. Allora took another sip of her coffee, and shrugged again, "Anyway, I don't understand what's wrong with syrup."
"There's nothing wrong with syrup, Allora, we've been over this," her Coach said, scratching his bald head. "I just don't think any of that stuff you drink is real coffee. It's just what capitalism came up with to get money off of girls everywhere. I would say all those sugary spiced lattes are the cocktails of coffee."
"I love a good cocktail," she said.
"There you go!"
"But what's wrong with cocktails?" she went on. I pretended to yawn so I could smile without them noticing. She was going to get him to say something really sexist, perhaps so she could prove her trademark cynicism was nothing but a normal reaction to a corrupt world where good-old-misogyny was handed to you like it was nothing at six a.m. on a Saturday by the man who would be responsible for you for the rest of the weekend.
"No real man drinks cocktails," her Coach said, turning away from her to look at me, "Do you drink cocktails?"
I opened my mouth to say not only did I love them, but I was really good at making them, but Allora stopped me.
"I don't understand," she said. "What's a real man?"
Coach Sargent was smirking. Not her Coach. He was rolling his eyes, and saying, "I'm not doing this with you at the crack of dawn, Allora. I'm just not."
I thought he sounded like he didn't want to do this with her ever, not the part where he implied that she was less than because of her drink preferences, but the part where she got him to admit what he really meant was she was less than because she was a girl.
"Sorry, Coach. I just love talking to you so much. You really say it like it is." It was obvious she didn't mean a word of what she was saying, and he knew it. When he turned around to help Coach Sargent with a bag, she leaned in closer to me and whispered, "He hates me so much. It's hilarious."
I shook my head, "He's just intimidated."
She leaned away to show me a curious smile, "Are you?"
"In the best of ways," I admitted.
She opened her mouth to say something else, but then Kylie arrived in her Mercedes with a bunch of the other girls from the cheer squad, music blasting from inside, all of them singing some Spanish song I didn't know.
The twins were arriving at the same time in their own truck, also with a bunch of the other guys from the team crowded in the back, singing nothing, but shouting at each other about whether or not Finn, behind the wheel, could park the car in between Kylie's Mercedes and Coach Sargent's minivan.
"I'll be very impressed if he can pull that off."
"He can't," was Allora's only take on it before turning to Kylie, who had just walked up to us with the other girls, all of them wearing the school colors, hair up in tight ponytails or elaborate braids, and said, "Coach's newest hot take is that my lattes are the cocktails of coffee."
Kylie took the paper cup from her hands and had a sip before saying, "I swear that man has the tiniest dick."
The others laughed. I smiled. They all looked at me.
I said, "I'm guessing none of you like him."
"He once said being a man was easier when you could just go home and hit your wife," one of them said.
"Well, he did say he was kidding after," another one pointed out before I had time to react. "And the whole thing was about boys these days struggling to prove themselves and having to shoot up schools because of it. He started off talking about suicide â"
"I hate him," someone else stopped her. "Every week he pinches our fat and goes, what's this?"
"He says he's not sexist cause he voted for Hillary," a girl in the back said.
Allora added, "And definitely not racist cause he would have voted for Obama again too."
"He's the fucking worst," Kylie said. "He keeps telling me to open my eyes and asking me if I speak Chinese, which isn't even a fucking language."
I asked, "Why don't you tell Mr. Colton about this?"
"Because Coach's the godfather of his kids," she said, like it was obvious, her eyes somewhere else. I followed them. Jacob was arriving at the parking lot, alone in his Porsche. In a blink, he had parked and gotten out of his car, his bag on his shoulder, sunglasses on. Kylie turned to me again, and asked, "Are you still mad at each other?"
I shrugged, which wasn't really an answer, but it was the answer I had for her.
"What happened anyway?" This was Allora.
"Girls!" This was their Coach. "Stop harassing the guy and start getting on the bus!"
I wanted to say they weren't harassing me, but the next thing I knew, they were gone, and it was the guys standing in front of me instead, the truck finally parked on the other side of the parking lot, where there had been enough space for Finn to avoid scratching any more paint off. Whoever had given him his license had been out of their mind.
"Please tell me you've hit that already," Jack said, throwing his arm over my shoulder, eyes on Allora already moving inside the bus, Kylie right behind her. I told him no, so he asked, "No, you haven't hit that? Or no, you're not gonna tell me?"
"Both," I said.
He looked disappointed, "Really? Dude, she gives it up so easy. What's wrong with you? Do you need help? Cause we can help."
He was looking at Finn, who was struggling to put both of their bags in the luggage compartment next to Liam, who was, in turn, struggling not to laugh.
"First of all, watch your mouth," I told him, pushing his arm off me so I could put my own bag next to the others. Most of the guys were already inside, fighting over who was going to seat where. Most of them except one. I turned to Jack, "Have you seen Isaac?"
He shook his head, already stepping inside the bus, and said, "No, but Coach said we're leaving, so he better get here soon. I doubt we'll wait for him."
I got my phone out of my pocket and texted Isaac. The last message had been from him, in fact, most of the messages on our chat were from him because he had started watching the tv show I had told him about and had taken it upon himself to text me all of his reactions in real time. I didn't mind. In fact, sometimes â actually, most times â I found myself checking my phone, waiting, wanting, for one of his text messages to come through. I started typing.
Then Coach Sargent said, "He's gonna kill himself on that thing."
I looked up. Isaac was coming at us in full speed on top of his skateboard, a backpack on his shoulders, a beanie on his head, and a smile on his face. I hadn't realized I was smiling too until I stopped. The closer he got, the more obvious it was. He was out of breath, face red, sweat dripping off his forehead, and dark circles under his eyes.
When he came to a stop in front of us, I asked, "Are you okay?"
"Of course, he's okay!" Coach said before he could, getting his bag from his shoulders, and pushing us both towards the bus. "Just get in! Come on, we're late!"
I went in first. Isaac followed. When I took a seat by the window, he stopped to point at the one next to me, and asked, "Can I?"
I said, "Of course." Of course.
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and took off his jacket before collapsing next to me, and saying, "I thought I wasn't gonna make it."
I asked, "What happened?"
He said, "I was out all night with Ethan."
He was leaning back against his seat, his chest going up and down, too fast, too many times. When I asked him why, he said only that it was complicated, pulling on the collar of his sweatshirt, like he was too hot, or just too out of breath.
Then Coach Sargent got on the bus, said something about seatbelts, and told the driver to hit the gas. Isaac took off his sweatshirt before putting his seatbelt on and threw it on the overhead compartment where he had already put his jacket. He was wearing a t-shirt underneath that kept sticking to his body and showing all the nice lines of it. I looked away to put on my own seatbelt.
He took a deep breath, and said, "I got home at four a.m., and I thought, right, I can still sleep for a few hours. Wrong. Obviously. I overslept. I had to skate here as fast as I could. I didn't even have time to pack. My bag only has the equipment for the game tonight and my toothbrush. That's it."
I told him he could borrow some of my stuff, and he said thank you, touching his shoulder to mine. I wanted to ask more about what had happened for him to have to spend the night out, but it didn't seem to be something he wanted to talk about, at least not with me, so I kept my mouth shut.
He opened his again, "How are things with Jacob?"
I shrugged. This wasn't really the only answer I had for this question, but I wasn't sure I could give him or anyone else any other. My father was always very much against airing out dirty laundry in public, or anywhere, actually.
"You've been friends since you were kids," Isaac said. "I think he's a fucking asshole, but that's just because I'm yet to see him be anything other than that. You probably have, and it's fine. What I mean is, you don't have to keep this up just for my sake, you know?"
Without even thinking, I said, "I don't know what else to do actually."
"What do you mean?" he asked, and I regretted every word that had just come out of my mouth, just like I was going to regret what was going to come next. I knew exactly what it was because I'd had this conversation with myself almost every day for the past week. I had also decided I was going to keep it to myself, but I found now that I couldn't. I just couldn't. I was going to tell him everything.
"When I went back to his house to get my car," I started, "he wouldn't even look at me, like I was the one who tied a person to a trainline and laughed about it. And I started thinking about it. I can't stop thinking about it actually. I just have this feeling that something's wrong all the time, that there's something I'm forgetting about, and so I start thinking, and thinking, and thinking, so that maybe I can get to the bottom of it, but there's no bottom to any of it, really. I just can't make sense of it. I was really angry about everything that happened that night, but then when I tried to talk to Jacob about it, suddenly, he was the one who was angry, I don't know, maybe because I punched him. I actually punched him that night â"
"You had a good reason for it," Isaac said.
"I had his blood on my shoes after, and he said he hadn't slept at all that night, that I made him feel like shit. All the time, not just that night. And like I said, I've been thinking, and it's probably true, you know? I don't think I know how to be his friend anymore. So much of what he does, and says, just makes me want to punch him. I don't do it, obviously. I just call him out on it, and he gets all offended, like I'm this terrible friend who makes him feel like shit all the time, which I guess I am. It doesn't matter. I'm really sorry you just had to hear all that. I'm just â"
"Don't be an idiot."
"What?"
"Why are you apologizing?"
"I don't know, I â"
"And stop talking shit about yourself, or I'm gonna go sit somewhere else, I'm serious."
I managed a smile, "He says I take everything too seriously. He's right. I â"
"He's a menace to society, Eddie," he said. No one else called me Eddie. Just him.
"You don't know his parents. Or his brother. They're â"
"You have to set a fucking boundary for that empathy of yours, or you'll just end up being pushed around all your life. There's nothing wrong with calling people out on their bullshit. He's making you feel like you're the bad guy, so he doesn't have to be. And you're so fucking nice, you'll do that for him, won't you?"
I said what I always came back to, "He's like a brother to me."
He said, "Well, families are complicated."
And I thought of my father, telling me to take my elbows off the table this morning over breakfast, and nothing else at all, and how in sophomore year, I got a concussion at a football game, and in the hospital, he asked me how I was, and I said, not too bad, and how that was probably the deepest talk we'd ever had.
Isaac and I didn't say anything else about Jacob or complicated families. Instead, I got my phone out of my pocket along with my earphones and handed it to him so he could choose what we listened to on the road upstate. He put on an indie song I didn't know, and after a while listening to it, he leaned his head against my shoulder and closed his eyes. I had thought of sleeping too, but now that his head was on my shoulder, I couldn't think of anything else, and for hours, I really didn't.