Crossing Lines Page 3

  “Thank you all for coming,” Jeannie said through a round of applause.

  I made my way over to Melody and we’d just started talking when Ethan came up on one side of me, and Jeannie and Alan on the other.

  There were no introductions between Alan and Ethan, and that was probably best.

  “I’m out the door,” Ethan said into my left ear, still fending off the dog.

  “I hear you,” I told him, grabbing Barclay by the collar before I turned back to Melody and said, “Hey, that’s a really nice perfume you’ve got on.”

  “Oh, I’m not wearing any,” she responded.

  “That’s Alan’s perfume,” said Jeannie with a wide grin.

  “Yes, I was all perspired from gym and your darling sister lent me a dash of fragrance to cover up. Do you really like it on me, Adonis?”

  At that moment, I felt like I was a tightrope walker. That I was on a thin rope stretched a thousand feet up in the air over a bottomless pit with the wind pushing at me hard from every direction—with Melody and Ethan judging my every move.

  And all I knew for sure was that I wasn’t about to look down.

  “I guess so,” I answered, cautious, barely moving a muscle.

  “Well, Adonis, I just wanted to thank you, too. I know you’re coming home tired from football. It’s an imposition to have visitors, and you must want to relax. But I can’t wait to discuss those sports teams with you in English,” said Alan.

  Then Ethan slapped me on the back, and I swore I was going to fall.

  “Like I said, I’m outta here, bro.”

  I steadied myself, catching my balance, like I really was up on that tightrope. And I slowly put one foot in front of the other as I walked Melody to her car.

  “You know, you keep surprising me, Adonis,” she said when we were finally alone outside. “I thought that perfume conversation would have made you, umm, uncomfortable.”

  “Why? It’s just different people, and different situations,” I said with a straight face. “Everyone’s not the same. So I’m accepting it. It’s all I can do.”

  “Well, I was very impressed,” she said, softly brushing her hair back to one side with her hand. “Hey, I know you’re probably busy with practice and other stuff, but do you want to hang out this weekend?”

  “Sure. I’ll call you,” I answered, trying not to show any excitement.

  “Great. I look forward to it.”

  I could barely take my eyes off her round, plump lips. But I didn’t go there, and I played it ultracool by giving her a little kiss good-bye, high on the cheek.

  IT WAS NE ARLY TEN O’CLOCK THAT NIGHT WHEN DAD GOT HOME from his shift. I was up in my room trying to learn how to jump rope, because the offensive-line coach said it would make me lighter on my feet. But I couldn’t make more than two jumps in a row without getting tangled up, and my feet kept landing flat on the floor like an earthquake.

  When Mom and Dad came upstairs for bed, they stopped at my open door.

  “Son, I hear you’re complimenting men on how they smell now,” said Dad with a grin. “That’s quite a change from your attitude yesterday.”

  “He’s doing an English project with Alan, too,” added Mom.

  That’s when Jeannie came out of her room and mocked, “Oh, yeah, I’m sure Adonis volunteered to work with him. Alan knows so much about sports.”

  “Hey, I can deal with it. And I never looked so good in front of Melody because of him.”

  “That’s it, son. If you gotta put up with these types, use ’em to your best advantage.”

  “That’s not tolerance,” lectured Mom.

  “What are you talking about? I’m Mr. Tolerance,” Dad said, annoyed. “When everybody down at the firehouse figured that rookie for a fruit, I was the one who told the guys not to press him on it. That as long as he didn’t talk about his boyfriend or his lifestyle in front of us, it was the same as if it wasn’t true.”

  “And how fast did he put in for a transfer? Three weeks, was it?” asked Mom.

  “That’s because he was uncomfortable, not me,” Dad defended himself.

  “Adonis, tell me you were happy to see Alan in this house,” Jeannie snapped from the hall.

  “Hey, he’s the president of your precious club. How come you didn’t all go to his place?” I shot back, before I cleared the rope three times.

  “Because his father doesn’t approve. All right?” said Jeannie, stepping inside my room.

  “See, I told you I was tolerant,” crowed Dad.

  “Just answer the question, Adonis,” said Jeannie. “You don’t want Alan here, do you?”

  “If I say that, is it going to change him ever being here again?” I asked.

  “No, it’s not,” Mom said, firm.

  “Then why should I come off looking like a pig?”

  “That’s right, son,” said Dad. “You’re learning how to survive in this mixed-up world. I’m proud of you.”

  3

  I saw Ethan sitting with some of our teammates in the school cafeteria, Godfrey, Bishop, Marshall, and Toby among them. Ethan wasn’t much on passing up a good joke, especially at someone else’s expense. So I held my breath over whether he was going to talk up that embarrassing scene at my house from the day before.

  I’d known Ethan since the seventh grade, when I first went out for CYO football. Back then, I was an overweight kid looking for a position to play. Ethan was always a quarterback, and a leader. And he’d get lots of laughs by ranking on anybody new or different. In the beginning of our friendship, I’d heard it a few times from him about my weight.

  He’d call me, “Aroundis,” “Pudge,” or “the Walking Buffet.”

  But those kinds of comments quit once I started blocking for him, when I made the varsity squad in my sophomore year.

  Ethan’s put-downs could be pretty rough to take. But sometimes they were funny, too.

  Two years ago, in homeroom, D’Antoni called Ethan a “xenophobe,” after he made a remark about the red dot on some Indian kid’s forehead looking like the target from a laser scope on high-powered rifle.

  “What are you talking about? ” replied Ethan. “I don’t play the xylophone. I’m not in the marching band. I’m a football player. And if I was in the band I’d play something manly, like the tuba.”

  Then D’Antoni explained that a xenophobe was someone who had a natural fear of strangers or people with different cultures.

  “No offense, Mr. D,” said Ethan, turning it back around on him. “But if that were true, and I was really one of those phobes, I would have transferred out of your homeroom after the first day.”

  D’Antoni responded with a long, cold stare, before he said, “I suppose it’s good that students and teachers don’t have that option, or else we’d never really get to know one another.”

  So with all that, I was surprised when Ethan didn’t use yesterday’s scene with Alan for a few laughs.

  “Here’s Adonis, the rock of our offensive line,” Ethan said, punching me in the arm as I passed by with my tray.

  “Just trying to carry my weight,” I said, feeling relieved. “Same as always.”

  There weren’t any open seats, and I hovered there for a few seconds. I was waiting for those guys to scoot their chairs closer together, so I could bring one over from another table. Only nobody did. I left to chow down with a group of juniors on the team instead. And I worried that a little bit of my status with Ethan and the other senior players was slipping away, all because of Alan.

  At football practice that afternoon, the coaches pushed us hard, running through almost every formation in our playbook. I was really focused on my blocking and protection assignments, knocking a couple of defenders flat.

  I thought it was my imagination that guys were slapping me congratulations on my backside more than usual, saying things like, “You smelled that one out,” and “Adonis has got a real nose for the game.”

  Then, inside our last huddle, Ethan pulled us arou
nd him to bark out the play.

  “Seventy-six queer, on two,” he said, clapping his hands together to break us apart.

  I stood there lost for a second, until I realized we had no such play.

  Seventy-six was my number, and the other ten guys on offense were all staring straight at me.

  “Yo, Adonis, how you like the smell of our perfume ?” asked Bishop.

  Then the bunch of them turned around, sticking their asses out at me to fart.

  Five or six of those dudes ripped off good ones. And the stink hit me all at once. They were laughing themselves silly, with some of them rolling around on the ground, as the whistle blew to end practice.

  I was laughing, too, but deep down it felt anything but funny.

  “It matches your personalities, that perfume,” I told them. “It really does. They ought to bottle it under the name ‘Stink in the City.’”

  Inside the locker room, Ethan was the first one to put his arm around me.

  “Don’t take it personal, Adonis,” Ethan said with the rest of those guys listening. “You’re still our boy. But I’m team captain. It’s my job to keep us all loose. Somebody has to pay the price for that. Today it was you.”

  “Once we heard that story about you and gay boy’s perfume, and they served baked beans today in the cafeteria, whew, it was on,” explained Godfrey.

  “You don’t need to worry about me. I can take it,” I said, twisting a damp towel tight. “But can you?”

  I snapped that towel at Godfrey’s rear end, and there was nothing but hooting and hollering in that locker room as I chased after him, and then the rest of them, with it.

  After we’d changed, Ethan gave me another lift home. Only this time, Godfrey and Bishop were along for the ride.

  I lived just four blocks from school, so I was riding shotgun, ready to get dropped off first.

  I’d planned on buying a car before school started. But I only had enough savings from my summer job to get an old wreck. The truth was, I didn’t want to be seen driving around town in one. Honestly, I couldn’t afford to. I wasn’t some big dork carrying a few extra pounds anymore.

  I had an image.

  I was a varsity football player—a starter. And I wasn’t about to go backward in my life.

  My parents, especially Mom, were worried about how safe I was going to be driving a clunker. They promised to buy me a good used car for my eighteenth birthday in December. So I decided I could hold out till then, with Mom letting me use her car most weekends in exchange for taking more responsibilities around the house, like hauling groceries and taking Jeannie places.

  Right before we turned the last corner to my house, I started to stress thinking Alan might be there, sitting on the front steps with Jeannie. Then I imagined crazy things, like Alan would be holding hands with some other guy while he talked to her. That it would be something I’d never live down with my teammates.

  I shut my eyes tight, and when I opened them again everything was normal outside my house. There were no extra cars in the driveway, no Fashion Club meeting—just Barclay sitting out front alone, barking and wagging his tail as we pulled up.

  “What’s Barclay, one of those border collies?” asked Bishop.

  “I think he is,” answered Godfrey, before I could say a word. “I hear they’re supposed to be the smartest dog around, as smart as a monkey or a pig.”

  “A pig’s smart?” said Ethan. “I don’t think that’s right.”

  “Yeah, pigs got big brains,” said Godfrey. “Maybe they don’t use ’em, rolling around in the mud all the time. But they got ’em. I seen one count to three with its foot, on TV.”

  “Well, he is a border collie, and that makes him pretty damn smart,” I said as I opened the car door and Barclay jumped onto my lap.

  “He looks happy to see you, Adonis,” said Bishop.

  “I think he’s much happier to see Ethan,” I said, holding Barclay back from trying to lick him. “His long-lost love.”

  But Godfrey and Bishop hadn’t heard enough about yesterday to be laughing at Ethan over that.

  And as I got out of the car with Barclay, I shot Ethan a look, knowing he’d only told the team half of yesterday’s embarrassing shit. That he’d left out the part about Barclay’s nose being buried in his crotch in front of all those girls.

  “Adonis, you ought to get that dog fixed,” cracked Ethan, backing his car out of the driveway.

  “I didn’t know he was broken,” I said, patting Barclay on the head.

  ON FRIDAY, I GOT TO MR. D’ANTONI’S ENGLISH CLASS WITH Toby and Marshall, just before the late bell.

  Work on your projects today was written up on the green board in white chalk, and most of the chairs had been moved into groups.

  “Cool, free period talking about sports,” Toby said, low. “How’s your group going, Adonis? You know, with those three girls.”

  “I’ll bet that fag tries to name your team the Fudge Packers,” Marshall said even lower, with D’Antoni eyeing us from his desk.

  “Not if I’ve got anything to do with it, he won’t,” I answered, starting toward my seat on the far side of the room.

  Alan, Maxine, and Wendy were already sitting down, taking out their notes. But I hadn’t done any research. I’d had a lifetime of watching and reading about sports, and all of the answers I needed were inside my head.

  “Let’s do this in an orderly fashion,” D’Antoni told the class. “First, discuss the different teams already playing in your assigned cities. Then, talk about that city’s history. Before the period’s over, consider what sport your team might play and what names you might give it. Try to establish a list of both to work from. We’ll worry about creating a logo down the line.”

  “So, what kind of information did our two sports people dig up?” Alan asked me and Wendy, staring at my empty desktop.

  “Baseball, Cincinnati Reds,” I said with complete confidence. “Football, Cincinnati Bengals. College, it’s the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. That’s all of them. I knew it cold since I was a kid.”

  Maxine caught me off guard and asked, “What’s a bearcat?”

  “How should I know, there’s probably no such thing,” I said. “Bears and cats can’t get it on. And nobody cares. Believe me, Cincinnati’s all about the Bengals and the Reds.”

  Then Wendy looked down at her notes and said, “Well, actually the baseball team’s real name is the Red Stockings. They were the first professional baseball team, established in eighteen sixty-nine.”

  “Oh, the Red Stockings, I like that,” said Maxine, running her hand over the six different colored bracelets on her right wrist.

  “I think I see how we can dress our new team. It’s a natural,” Alan said.

  “Red Stockings?” asked Maxine.

  “All the way up to the knee,” answered Alan, smiling.

  “They call them the Reds for short,” I said, frustrated. “Nowadays, nobody says ‘Red Stockings.’ It’s just ‘Reds.’ Read any newspaper, any sports section.”

  When Maxine and Alan started their part of the project, I took out a pen and a sheet of paper, just to be polite and to keep D’Antoni from getting on my back.

  I scribbled down what Maxine said about Cincinnati being on the Ohio River, about all the steamboats that used to ride down that river, and how lots of soldiers from the Revolutionary War were given land there. Then she told us that Cincinnati is where they make Ivory Soap.

  “It became world famous as ‘the soap that floats,’” she said.

  “Maybe we should call our team the Floaters,” I joked. “Dress ’em in brown.”

  Wendy made a disgusted face, like I’d taken a dump on my desk, and Maxine said, “Ewww, that’s gross.”

  I was shocked that Alan was laughing along with me.

  “It is gross. But it’s funny, too,” he said. “You should consider a career in advertising or comedy writing, Adonis.”

  “Maybe I should,” I said coy, staring str
aight at him. “Everything looks and sounds funny to me.”

  “You know, I’ve let a lot of your little remarks go because you’re Jeannie’s brother. But don’t take advantage of that,” said Alan, staring straight back at me.

  Before I could respond, D’Antoni interrupted the class and said, “Let’s hear a little bit from each group, so we have a feel for what’s going on around us.”

  So I had to hold my tongue and listen to the history of nowhere places like Oklahoma City, Sacramento, and Boise. A girl in another group talked about Omaha, and Alan turned to us and mouthed, “I used to live in Omaha.”

  All I knew about Nebraska was that it was smack in the middle of the country, and that the college football team was called the Nebraska Cornhuskers. I could picture Alan and his gay Omaha friends sitting in a field eating corn on the cob.

  When it was our group’s turn, we agreed that Alan would speak.

  He mentioned the steamboats, soldiers, and soap, and called the baseball team the “Red Stockings-slash-Reds.”

  Then Alan said, “Cincinnati is also called the Queen City.”

  I almost fell out of my seat when he said it.

  Toby and a couple of other guys laughed out loud, and I swore I heard Marshall say “ho-mo” inside of clearing his throat.

  “Quiet! Quiet down!” shouted D’Antoni, nearly losing his hippie temper.

  “May I continue?” Alan asked. D’Antoni nodded to him. “It was called the Queen City because it had so much growth and prosperity. People were proud of it.”

  When Alan took a long pause, I thought he was finished. But he stood up, turned to look at Marshall, and said, “Now if you only had some growth, I mean more than just the hair on your upper lip, somebody might compliment you sometime.”

  Marshall shot to his feet. He almost had to. He couldn’t let a fag like Alan disrespect him that way in public.

  “You got something to say to me?” he challenged Alan with maybe ten feet separating them.

  Me and Toby jumped up out of our chairs and got in front of Marshall.