“How bad was it?” I ask Davery, bracing myself for the truth.
“Oh, your average humiliation,” he says lightly. “Ball to the nose, blood everywhere. The Beavers get the rebound off your face and go down and score. The crowd goes wild.” He cups his hands over his mouth and makes cheering noises. Then he drops his hands and adds, “Isotopes lose, in a dramatic upset. Nizhoni Begay is banned from ever setting foot in the ICCS gym again.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah, ‘ugh’ is right. What happened? You were totally spacing out back there. I thought you were going to make the winning shot.”
“I thought I was, too.” At least, that was the plan. To be honest, I’m not very good at basketball, just like I’m not very good at most things. I even flubbed my one line in The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But an opportunity like that, to get all the glory, and have the fans scream your name? I had to try, right?
“I was really hoping to launch my bid for school fame,” I confess as we start to walk toward the gym doors. “I’ve given up on being internet-famous, but school-famous still felt within the realm of possibility. A game-winning basket would have been a perfect start.”
Davery snorts. “Well, that plan is a total loss. The only thing you launched was a thousand sad memes.”
I chew my bottom lip, thinking. “Do you think this means all sports are out of reach now, or just basketball?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I could try to join the lacrosse team.”
“You don’t know how to play lacrosse, either.”
“A ball, a stick, how hard can it be?”
“Don’t let the Haud Squad hear you say that.”
The Haud Squad is the group of Haudenosaunee girls who rule the lacrosse team. Since their people invented the game, that makes sense.
“Okay, lacrosse is out. What about the swim team?” I barrel on. “Wait, do we even have a swim team?”
“Nizhoni…” Davery says, shaking his head.
“Cricket? Volleyball? Synchronized swimming?” I fling my free arm out in a ballet-like move. Davery ducks at the last minute to avoid getting hit in the head. Whoops! “Okay,” I say, “maybe not synchronized swimming.”
He sighs. “Why do you need to be famous, anyway?”
I stifle a groan. Davery wouldn’t understand. His parents love him, dote on him, and turn up for everything he does. They were front and center for The Very Hungry Caterpillar. They even came to watch him present a book report once, which was, admittedly, a little awkward, since they were the only parents there and had to sit on those tiny chairs next to Laurie Wilder, who kept asking Davery if he was “really Indian.” (Davery’s mom is African American and his dad is Navajo, and small-minded people like Laurie can’t fathom that folks can be part of two cultures—ignorance like that is another reason Davery and I both left our old public school and transferred to ICCS.) But at least Davery’s parents cared enough to come. My dad didn’t. And my mom…well, she’s been gone since I was a toddler.
I clutch the turquoise pendant under my shirt. It’s the only thing I have left of her besides the one picture of her, my dad, my little brother, and me that Dad keeps on the fireplace mantel. I still don’t know why she abandoned us, and Dad won’t talk about her, so I don’t even get the benefit of his memories. Just this necklace. Sometimes it’s enough, but more often it’s not.
So I’m that kid. The one with no mom and a barely there dad, and some therapist would probably say I crave attention or approval or whatever, and that’s why I try so hard to be popular. But it’s not just that. It’s something…deeper. Something more important. Yet every time I think I’m ready to try to explain the truth to Davery, I can’t make the words come out. So instead I say, “Are you kidding me? Heroes get all the glory. Single-handedly winning the game at the last moment with a clutch shot? My eyes get teary just thinking about it. Besides, everyone knows you when you’re the school hero. Maybe then people will learn how to pronounce my name.”
We pause in front of the gym doors and Davery gives me a dubious look. “Like it’s hard to say Nih-JHOH-NIH.” He plants his hands on his hips. “I noticed how distracted you were in the game. What’s really going on with you?”
For a second, I want to blurt it all out. But the words sit on my tongue, cold and uncomfortable, like the time I stuffed a whole bag of marbles in my mouth on a dare and they kept trying to escape from my cheeks. Almost died from that one. Didn’t!
I want to tell Davery about the weird feeling I had about the man in the black suit, the surety that he wasn’t human and the fact that, at least at that moment, his eyes were red. Explain that it isn’t the first time I’ve sensed a monster. But I don’t. The truth is, Davery is smart and funny and could have any friends he wanted. He hangs out with me because we’ve known each other since preschool—his dad and mine are old buddies from Fort Lewis College. It’s probably just a matter of time before he decides being with me is a liability he doesn’t need. And then I’ll be alone.
No, I can’t tell him about the monsters and let him think I’m even weirder than he already knows I am. Besides, if I were him, I wouldn’t believe me, because I can barely believe it myself.
“There’s nothing going on with me, and I was distracted because I’m hungry. Feed me and I’ll be fine.”
“Hey,” Davery says, “maybe we can go get froyo? Rainbow sprinkles to celebrate your humiliation?”
I laugh, accidently snorting dried blood up my bruised nose. “Ouch!!!” I know Davery’s just trying to cheer me up by offering a delicious distraction, and I’m all for it. Rainbow sprinkles are my favorite.
“At least the bleeding’s stopped,” he says. “But your uniform is toast.”
I glance down at my good old Isotopes jersey. The front of my shirt looks like a ketchup convention gone awry. Dad is not going to be happy. Although, on second thought: “It does look pretty heroic, right?”
“It looks like you lost a fight with an angry tomato.”
Okay, so maybe not quite heroic.
“What gets bloodstains out?” I ask.
“Soda pop will get it out.”
“Like from the vending machine?”
He nods. “It contains carbonic acid, which breaks down the proteins—”
“Okay, okay,” I say, waving a hand. “Stop science-ing me. How do you know these things?”
“I like to read.”
“I guess that’s what happens when your dad’s a librarian.” The head librarian of the whole school district, in fact. Davery spends a lot of time in the main branch as a result.
“Even if he wasn’t, I’d still like to read. I like knowing things.” He frowns at the look on my face. “You should try it sometime, Z. That, and doing your homework. It’s not so bad.”
“Maybe, but doing homework is not how I’m going to find my true destiny.” I push the exit door open and motion for him to go first, sighing over yet another missed opportunity to be a middle school superstar. Before I follow him out, I take one last look back at the nearly empty gym.