Friday
night. The sky hung heavy, seamless, with heaven’s stars blotted out by
overbearing skyscrapers. Shrieks and a cacophony of cheers rang out, hysteria
supreme in a microscopic stadium rocking on the edge of Boston’s South End.
Thin and buckling bleachers rattled with the stomps of impending mania, shrill
whistles and hefty shouts: those were the true sounds of redemption. Fourteen
years and not a single touchdown against Madison High; fourteen years, but no
more.
It
had come at the hands of a freshman running back who couldn’t stop moving, a
last-minute, fidgeting substitution. To others, his appearance must have seemed
a concession, but Edy Phelps knew better. Edy Phelps knew him better.
He
was hunger and discipline, jittery and ravenous, so rattled that nerves kept
him shifting and stretching and pacing along the sidelines. Obsession fueled
him, and kept him keen on an opportunity unwilling to come. Except that night, chance came to Hassan Pradhan. His
chance. Finally.
It
happened in a breath. A snap of the ball. A fake pass and Hassan thundered
downfield at a speed only fear could sustain. His moment. His only moment. Take
it. Take it. Run. Fly.
He
could hear her thoughts—no, feel her
thoughts. Edy was sure of it. They’d always had a connection. And it was in
that way she aided him. Fists pressed to her lips, teeth slammed together,
screaming with her soul. Soar. I know you can do it.
Just
as the clock whittled to nothing, Hassan vaulted into the end zone.
A
collective roar swallowed Edy and the crowd leapt as one. A win. Few would
recall the last.
On
her left, Hassan’s parents cheered: mother in a starched linen suit and pumps
too prim for a game, father in a white button-up, belly pressing the fabric,
sleeves rolled to the elbow. His mother, Rani, was without the brilliant red
bindi she couldn’t do without, giving her forehead that naked look. On Edy’s
opposite end were her parents, their absolute best friends, in the long-sleeved
alumni tees reserved for football season, mother free of the skirt suits that
dictated her days. Edy abandoned them all for the sidelines, for Hassan. She
weaved round patches of shrieking upperclassmen, hopped over rows of empty
benches, apologized to the fat man whose cocoa she sloshed, and ignored the
slice of a sudden, early winter wind.
He’d done it.
All
those nights, all those talks, round and round about the possibility of getting
in a game, the two of them in bedroom shadows, careful to keep their voices
low. Some nights he thought a chance would never come; others, he insisted it
had to. Either way, he always said that if it did, when it did, he would
do something worth remembering. And he had.
At
the sidelines, Edy’s gaze swept a team clustered so thick, so honeyed together
with the sweetness of victory, that she worried she might never find her
neighbor, her best friend.
Ice
cut the air, and the glare of stadium lights had her like an ant under a
magnifying glass in the noonday sun. She remembered the way the Dyson twins
would burn insects and snicker, and she thought no, she’d be hot if she were a
tortured ant, not cold. The fog of her breath seconded her motion.
She
spotted him.
Edy
had come to hug someone already occupied, someone surrounded by sweeping blonde
curls, dark curtains of perfect hair, nestled by an endless supply of short
skirts. Hassan draped an easy arm around a cheerleader with shimmering flaxen
locks, mouth curling into a grin when a brunette of with pouty lips cried foul
and claimed him as her own. Soft tans and the curves of certain womanhood donned
them both. Edy looked from them to her own angular body and knew what she would
find: all edges and sharpness, slender, muscles sculpted from a life of dance.
The baggy jeans, football jersey, and sloppy poof of a ponytail she wore didn’t
give her much to run with either. That hair used to be the brunt of Hassan’s
endless jokes. Big enough to tip you back,” he’d say, before tugging it in
absentminded affection. She fingered that hair with the same sort of absent-
-mindedness, before looking up to see a blonde plant rosy lips on Hassan’s
cheek.
Ugh.
Edy
didn’t care about the movies, the books, the popular culture that insisted
football player and cheerleader, jock and pretty girl, were a natural sort of
fit. It wasn’t. They weren’t. It absolutely couldn’t be.
A
girl like that couldn’t understand what made him him. So what if he was
. . . obscenely gorgeous, with
sun-licked bronze skin, silken black locks, and eyes an ever-glimmering,
gold-flecked green. He had a quiet sort of beauty, made for old Greek sculptures
and timeless works of art. Not that he was quiet. He was explosive, with good looks and athleticism. But beyond that
were pleasures and disappointments, what he loved and could not bear. Imprinted
on Edy’s mind were the crinkles at the corner of Hassan’s eyes when he smiled,
the clench of his jaw when irritation set in, the rich and sonorous laugh that
had slipped octaves lower in recent years. A girl like that blonde could be
nothing to him—could know nothing of him. She knew a moment and a
touchdown. That was it.
Edy’s
hands made fists.
The
blonde moved in to kiss his cheek again, just as a teammate shouted his name.
Hassan jerked back, only to be caught at the corner of his mouth by her lips.
A
whoop rang out from the guys.
Heat
flushed Edy’s veins and her fingernails dug, digging, digging, until tears
blurred her vision.
Wait.
He
was her best friend, family really, if you considered the way they were brought
up. So, she really had no reason to—
The
blonde threw her arms around Hassan. The team swarmed and the two disappeared
from sight.
They
were kissing, weren’t they?
Edy
closed her eyes, forcing back the hottest tears and the bitterest taste of
sudden envy.
She loved him. Dear
God, she loved her best friend.
It
fell down on her at once, uncompromising truth and the weight of reality like a
cloak too heavy to bear.
The
boy that had grown by her side, promised to another in a tradition as old as
marriage itself, another girl of his ethnicity, religion, beliefs: that’s the
boy she loved. A single line existed between Edy’s family and his, between the
Pradhans and Phelps, who otherwise acted as one.
But
Edy loved him.
And,
of course, there was no recourse for that.
You like to think you're different, special somehow. But trust me, I'll have you wet and begging for it before you can think of all those bullshit, good girl reasons why not.
It's OK, you can admit it. I won't tell. You want it rough and deep and dirty. You want to hear the steel in my voice when I tell you exactly how to please me. And you want to know, I won't hesitate to punish you if you don't follow my commands to the letter.
