I didn’t totally get what she was trying to say, but I knew it was good. She sounded good reading it. Confident and smug. I hated her. She hadn’t looked at me all week. She walked by my desk and still didn’t look.
Dave threw a party that Friday. No one came but us. We sat in the basement together and got drunk, except for Richard, who we still hadn’t seen. We slept over, splayed out on the floor. I couldn’t sleep, and I got up and drank the last two beers by myself. I stood looking out of the sliding glass door that went out onto Dave’s deck. There was a spotlight on, and I watched the moths flutter around it.
The next morning we went out for egg-and-cheese bagels. There was a group of private school girls at the bagel place when we got there. They must have seen us before we saw them. They were sitting there silently, staring at us. We thought that we should probably leave, but no one made the move. The girls all stood up at once. I heard one of them say, “Two, three,” and then they screamed, “Rapists!” in unison. We backed out, trying to act like we’d just decided to go somewhere else. We went out to the parking lot and sat silently in my car, each of us looking out our own windows, hungry, with nothing to combat our hangovers. Eventually Max said, Bitches.
All week, I just tried not to think too hard about it. I tried to focus on playing well. I was waking up earlier and earlier in the mornings anyway, so I would go to the track and run twice as far as we were supposed to during the off season. It was dark and cold, and my breath would puff out ahead of me as I ran. I’d get to the showers first and stand in the hot water, alone. After school I ran more. If I wasn’t running I was drinking. So I ran as late as I could, because I wanted to play well, and to play well I couldn’t drink too much. So I ran for hours. I ran farther than I’d ever gone before. I tried not to think about Haley when I ran. She was wrong. It wasn’t peaceful.
* * *
• • •
RICHARD SHOWED UP at my house on Sunday morning. I ran downstairs when the doorbell rang, because I didn’t want my mom to wake up. I hadn’t told her anything about Richard and Max. I didn’t want her to hear it for the first time from a cop.
But it was just Richard. I hadn’t seen him since lunch on Tuesday. His hands were folded behind his neck like he was stretching. He looked tired. There was a spray of pimples on his chin, and he’d missed a couple of hairs shaving. Poor guy, I thought.
We went to the basement to play video games. Neither of us wanted to think about anything for a while. But when I turned on the system, Richard said, Wait.
He was sitting on his knees, looking at the ground. The theme music for the game played on a loop; behind him, the screen asked us to choose between one player or two.
Nick, we made the whole thing up.
What whole thing?
The thing with the girl.
The thing with the girl?
Nick, quit it. You know what I mean when I fucking say the thing with the girl.
Richard had never talked to me like that before. I reminded myself of what Coach had said: no matter what, we couldn’t turn on each other, we would make it through as long as we stayed loyal to each other. So I said nothing.
The private school girl. All we did was drive her home. We didn’t touch her, we didn’t finger her, we didn’t jizz on her tits.
I thought you said you jizzed on her stomach.
Well, not that, either. I’m telling you, nothing happened.
The music from the video game system was making me crazy. I grabbed the controller. I selected TWO PLAYERS. Richard picked up the other controller. We started playing. I was trying to think. Mostly I was just shocked because I realized I’d never heard Richard actually say it before. I’d heard the story from Alan, from Dave. Richard almost sounded like he was Mr. Kaminsky or something when he said the words finger her, like the words disgusted him. I wondered again if Richard could be gay.
Tell me the whole thing, I said, finally.
I was glad to have the screen to watch as he talked. Max was in the back seat, basically passed out with her. If he even put an arm around her, I didn’t see it. She was more awake than he was, actually. She told me where she lived. But then by the time we got to her house Max woke up, and she had mostly passed out. We drove straight from the party to her house. Ten minutes. I never touched her.
But you carried her up the lawn.
Well, except for then.
But you guys were gone like an hour.
We went to the Giant parking lot after so Max could get high. Then he spent like an hour trying to talk this slutty girl behind the counter at 7-Eleven into locking the doors and taking him up on the roof. Richard was mashing the controller. Aliens died in splatters of blood. Which she didn’t. I don’t think Max gets half the girls he says he does.
But, what about the thing about the toilet paper. You said there was toilet paper in her pubes.
Because then in Denny’s Max starts shitting on me. The way Max always shits on me. His guy had died. I thought about how it wasn’t just Max, it was all of us who gave Richard a hard time, but only because Richard never hooked up with anyone. I kept playing. Richard kept talking. So I started agreeing with him: Yeah I pulled the car over. Yeah I got in the back seat. Yeah we’re basically porn stars. Richard shook his head. I didn’t think it would get around like that.
My guy died and I let the game sit for a minute, my guy’s dead body on the ground under the words GAME OVER. I looked at Richard. I felt this was important. I believe you, I said. And I did.
Richard was shaking his head. He didn’t say anything. He was upset, I knew. But to be honest, I was starting to feel kind of good. And not just because it meant that Richard wasn’t ahead of me, that I wasn’t the only guy on the team not getting laid. It was because he had told me. Of all of us, I was the one he came to talk to. I was the one he trusted.
We were each other’s oldest friends. I felt like I was realizing for the first time how important this was. I’d let my own shit get in the way. But we were friends. This was what mattered. Not girls and parties. Loyalty. When your friend got into a bad place, it was your job to back him up. That’s what mattered.
I said, Not to sound like a cliché, but I think we need a drink.
It’s Sunday morning.
What do you care, aren’t you Jewish?
Richard followed me upstairs. My dad was at church, and my mom was still asleep. She had worked overnight at the hospital and was no doubt in her room with the blackout shades pulled down and her earplugs in. We went into the kitchen and dumped the water out of our Nalgenes, then filled them up with white wine from a box in the fridge. This had been my trick for a little while. My parents didn’t drink beer or hard liquor. When I could get a bottle of vodka, I hid it in the basement, in a box marked TAXES, which I knew my parents never touched. But when I ran out I’d go into the kitchen and put some boxed wine in my Nalgene. Richard was the first person I shared this with—I guess, in my own way, I was trying to show him that we could trust each other.