RYAN
Waiting on Sunday dinner, I can observe a lot from my seat on the couch in the living room of the mayor’s house. For instance, the serious set of Dad’s mouth and the angle of his body toward Mr. Crane suggests that Dad’s talking business. Serious business. Mom, on the other hand, is laughter and giggles as she stands next to the mayor’s wife and the pastor’s wife, but the way she fingers her pearls tells me she’s anxious. That means someone asked a question about Mark.
Mom misses him. So do I.
The power of observation. It’s a skill I need to play ball. Is the runner on base going to chance a steal? Is the batter going to hit the ball out of the park or is he going to hit a sacrifice fly in order to score the runner on third? Is Skater Girl the hard-nosed chick I believe her to be?
For the last two weeks, I’ve watched Beth roam the school. She’s interesting. Nothing like the girls I know. She sits by herself at lunch and eats a full meal. Not salad. Not an apple. A full meal. Like an entrée, two sides, and a dessert. Even Lacy doesn’t do that.
Beth sits in the back of every class, except for Health/Gym, where Lacy patiently makes small talk even though Beth stays quiet. Sometimes Lacy can get Beth to crack a smile, but it’s rare. I like it when she smiles.
Not that I care if she’s happy or anything.
What I find the most interesting is that even though she’s Ms. Antisocial, she doesn’t avoid people. Yeah, plenty of kids hide in plain sight. They duck into the library before school or during lunch. They evade eye contact and walk in the shadows as if they can go to school and never be detected. Not Beth. She stands her ground. Owns the space around her and smirks if someone comes too close, as if she’s daring them to take her on. A smirk that dares turns me on.
“Are you ready for the quiz tomorrow?” Mrs. Rowe, my English teacher, rests against the arm of the couch. She also happens to be the mayor’s daughter. While everyone else wears suit pants, ties, or conservative dresses, Mrs. Rowe wears a daisy-print hippie dress. Today, her hair is purple.
Considering the fights my family has had over Mark, I’m curious about the brawls that happen behind closed doors at this house. Or maybe other families find a way to accept one another.
“Yes, ma’am.” To discourage small talk, I shove a bacon-wrapped shrimp into my mouth. Dad likes me to be at these occasional Sunday gatherings. I come in handy when the men discuss sports. I used to come in handier when I dated Gwen. Her dad is the police chief, plus my mother’s friends thought we were “cute together.”
“I hated these things when I was your age,” Mrs. Rowe continues. I pop in another shrimp and nod. If she hated them, I would think she’d remember that useless conversation is physically painful. “My dad made me attend every dinner he threw.”
I swallow and realize that not once in my four years of being old enough to represent the family have I seen Mrs. Rowe attend one of these functions. I consider asking why she’s here tonight, then remember I don’t care. In goes a meatball.
“I read your paper,” she says.
I shrug. Reading my paper is her job.
“It’s good. In fact, it’s very good.”
My eyes dart to hers and I curse internally when she smiles. Dammit, it shouldn’t matter if it was good. I want to play ball, not write. I make a show of staring in the opposite direction.
“Have you thought about expanding it into a short story?”
This I have an answer for. “No.”
“You should,” she says.
I shrug again and begin to search the room for a viable reason to escape—like the curtains catching on fire.
A sly smile spreads across her face. “Listen, I received good news and I’m so glad I don’t have to wait until tomorrow to share. Do you remember the writing project we worked on last year?”
It’d be tough to forget. We spent the year devouring books and movies. Then we tore them apart as if they were machines so we could see how the parts worked together to create the story. After that, Mrs. Rowe snapped the whip and made us write something of our own. Hardest damn class I ever took and I loved every second. Hated it too. When I became too interested or too eager in class, the guys from the team rode me hard.
“Do you remember how I entered everyone into the state writing competition?”
I nod a yes, but the answer is no. Just because I loved the class didn’t mean I listened to everything she said. “Why? Did Lacy win?” She had a hell of a short story.
“No…”
In goes another meatball. That sucks. Lacy would have been excited if she won.
“You finaled, Ryan.”
The meatball slips into my throat whole and I choke.
* * *
Ditching the formal clothes for a pair of athletic pants and a Reds T-shirt, I lean back in the chair at my desk and stare at the homework assignment I turned in to Mrs. Rowe. In four pages, poor George woke up to discover he had become a zombie. My favorite sentence is the paper’s last:
Staring down at his hands, hands that someday would likely kill, George swallowed the sickening knowledge that he had become absolutely powerless.
Why it’s my favorite, I don’t know. But every time I read it something stirs inside me, some sort of sense of justification.
I run a hand over my hair, unable to comprehend that I finaled in a writing competition. Maybe later tonight hell will freeze over and donkeys will start flying out of my ass. It all seems possible at this point.
I swivel the chair and survey my room. Trophies and medals and accolades for playing ball are scattered on the wall, the shelves, my dresser. A Reds pennant hangs over my bed. I know baseball. I’m good at it. I should be. It’s been my entire life.
I’m Ryan Stone—ballplayer, jock, leader of the team. But Ryan Stone—writer? I chuckle to myself as I pick the paperwork up off the desk. All of it describes in detail how to continue to the next phase of the writing competition, how to win. Not once in my life have I backed down from a challenge.
But this…this is beyond what I am. I toss the papers down again. I need to stay focused on what’s important and writing isn’t it.