I imagine the reaction as the guys crowd around me and congratulate me for scoring. The girls on the sideline say, “Who is that guy?” And April says, “I know who he is. That’s Andrew Zansky. His mom’s an incredible caterer.”
It’s all a great fantasy, but when the moment comes to kick the ball, my body isn’t in the right place. By the time I remember that I’ve never done this before, and maybe I’m pushing my luck, it’s too late. I’ve committed to some kind of thing that’s way, way beyond me.
As soon as I kick, my legs go out from under me. The ball stays where it is, and I go airborne. First I crash into a group of guys. They go down like bowling pins, four or five of them at one time.
But I’ve got so much momentum that it doesn’t stop me. Newton’s First Law. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Especially a fat object.
My entire body flies into the goal. The tall goalie kid screams as I slam into him at, like, a hundred miles per hour.
Even he’s not big enough to stop me. That’s when I hit the net. For a second I think I’m going to rip through and go tumbling right out into the parking lot….
But the net holds. At least briefly.
It snags me, and then the entire thing comes crashing down on top of me. I see flashes of white nylon and grass and goalpost, and then everything stops. I end up splattered on the grass, tangled so deeply in the net that I can’t move my arms or legs.
I look back at a field full of amazed students. It’s like a scene from a war movie, bodies splayed everywhere, girls screaming. Coach Bryson is running and blowing his whistle, trying to calm people down. The girls’ coach runs inside the athletic shack and appears with a first-aid kit to treat the wounded.
I look around for April. She’s standing on the sideline with this horrified expression on her face. She’s staring at something, but it’s not me. It’s in the center of the field.
I follow her gaze until I see what she’s looking at. There’s something in the grass. A blue-and-white pair of shorts. My shorts.
I feel wind blowing on my legs. I shift around until I can see what’s going on.
I’m in my underwear. Not even cool underwear. Fruit of the Loom. White. Size XXXL.
It takes the coaches nearly twenty-five minutes to get me out of the net. They spend the first ten trying to untangle me, and the last fifteen cutting me out with a utility knife they get from the Vocational-Ed teacher.
Most of that time I look up at the sky pretending I’m somewhere else. I’m definitely not tangled in a net in my underwear with forty-nine sophomores watching me. I’m not practically naked in front of the girl I want to impress most in the world.
Coach sends everyone to play a game on the adjacent field, but I can hear them whispering about me and laughing. Just once I look over and see April looking back at me. Our eyes meet, and she turns away like she doesn’t know me. I can’t really blame her.
I hear the whole story later from Coach. It turns out that when I went to kick, my shorts fell off, and I tripped and took six guys down with me. Four of them got treated in the nurse’s office and released, one needed three stitches at the hospital because my elbow hit his chin, and the last one was able to limp off the field under his own power. I’m the only one who wasn’t hurt. Coach said it’s because my fat protected me like an airbag in a car crash.
“Congratulations,” he said, “you’ve earned a five-star safety rating.”
13. roar.
It takes about five seconds for everyone in school to hear about the soccer game. There’s no way to keep secrets in high school, especially secrets involving underpants and personal mortification.
At first people call me Tighty Whitey, Fat Ass, or the Destroyer. But none of those really catch on. Then, a few days later in History class, Justin calls me Jurassic Pork.
That catches on pretty fast.
Now instead of just being some unknown fat kid, I’m JP, Jurassic Pork, the fat dinosaur who steps on people and crushes them.
It’s pretty bad for me, but it’s worse for Warner. He didn’t do anything, but he’s guilty by association. Associated fatness or something like that. When people see us together, they make roaring noises. They scream and pretend they’re terrified. They say stuff like, “So simple, even a caveman can do it,” and they mime throwing spears at us.
Eytan tells me to ignore it, and it will pass. “Immature kids being immature.” That’s what he says. But it’s tough to ignore people taping Brontosaurus pictures to your locker.
That thing Dad said about first impressions? He was right. It’s completely possible to change people’s first impression of you.
You can make it worse.
14. the four words she says.
A couple days later I’m on the way to English class when I run into April in the hall. We’ve been avoiding each other since the soccer game. At least I’ve been avoiding her. But there’s hardly anyone else in the hall now, so we either have to say something or pretend not to know each other.
I slow down a little, and April does, too. I feel that strange sensation in my chest again. It’s crazy, but I’m suddenly hopeful. I think maybe the underwear incident wasn’t such a big deal. Maybe April is so amazing, she can look right past that kind of thing. She’s too smart to care about what people think. I wonder why I’ve been avoiding her if I could have been talking to her all along.
“How’s it going?” I say, and throw her a big smile.
“You told me you were a jock,” April says.
My smile goes away. April sounds angry. More than angry. Disappointed.
“What do you mean?” I say.
“At the wedding. You told me you played sports.”
“I guess,” I say.
“You don’t guess. It’s what you said.”
“Okay, fine. I said it. Why are you so pissed?”
“You lied to me,” April says.
Those four words—the way she says them—I swear to God I gain a hundred pounds in a minute. It’s not even fat weight. It’s heavier than fat. It’s something dense and awful, like my blood turns to lead.
“I don’t care if you’re a jock or not,” April says. “That’s not what I’m about.”
“What are you about?”
She looks at me coldly. “I guess you’ll never find out, because I can’t trust you.”
I suddenly get it. April’s not angry that I almost destroyed an entire soccer team, or even that I wear briefs instead of boxers.
She’s angry that I lied to her. Which means she was hoping I was the real thing. Which means Eytan might have been right. I really did have a shot. Did. Past tense.
I remember the time last year when Mom and Dad were fighting. It was the day Mom found out about Dad’s affair. I think she’d suspected it for a long time, but whenever she asked Dad, he said there was nothing going on. “Nothing to worry about.” That’s what he always said.
I guess when someone you love lies to you, you want to believe them. At least until you can’t believe them anymore. When Dad’s sexy paralegal, Miriam, showed up at the house one afternoon to tell Mom what was going on, everything went to hell. Mom started baking mini pecan pies, and she didn’t stop until Dad packed his bags and moved out.
April’s looking at me like she wants to bake some mini pies, too. She might even grind me up and use me for the filling. Her arms are crossed while she waits for me to say something.
It’s really confusing. Some girls are impressed if you lie to try and get their attention. I’ve seen guys bragging about all kinds of crap, and girls know what’s up, but they still fall for it.